Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Malcolm and Simone interview Pastor Paul VanderKlay on why people are increasingly leaving faith traditions and how churches can adapt to strengthen communities. He sees Jordan Peterson as bringing meaning back for lost young men, but online spaces still lack the authentic bonds of real-life congregations. They discuss modeling values for children, the limitations of internet community, changes coming to old institutions, the importance of sacred spaces for honest dialogue, and more.Paul VanderKlay: [00:00:00] Traditions of almost every kind are being tremendously tested and most of them are, are, are found wanting.And this includes, now, every, all the Christians listening to this, I know a bunch of my people are going to find their way to your channel and listen to this. This includes the church, and what, so G. K. Chesterton talked about, I remember it was five or seven, but the five deaths of Christianity. He said basically Christianity has died five times, and I think that's true.And I think the church, as most of us have known it, which, again, generalizations are really tough, but many of us have known churches that are Fundamentally modernist institutions sort of created around modernist assumptions, including my own denomination, many of these [00:01:00] churches are going away and they are going away fast.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: All right. All right. So for any of our audience who does not know Paul Vander Klee, the man who is on the show here with us today you might be surprised to know that you're probably in the minority of our audience. Cause I just now was reviewing our most overlap channel subscribers.And you are one of the most overlapped and I watch your videos. Pretty regularly. I, I, like, I haven't watched all of them. You produce videos almost as frequently as we do, which may be why we, you're extremely prolific. Yeah. Yeah. But they're actually really, really solid if you want to get I, I think one, like, insider politics of competent Protestant theology these days.Oh, that's true. As, as well as what is, like, what do, like, competent Protestant theologists. think these days? How are they engaging? Because the truth is, is that if you are listening to, and this is something I always talk about, if you're listening to like the conservative [00:02:00] elite class, the vast majority of them are Catholic or Jewish in descent.And so, you know, finding really good Protestant theologians who, who talk competently is, is, is much rarer within the current media landscape. And so I want to start with one. talking about how you came to the media landscape, because to me, you are somebody who is really I'd say almost the, , the paragon of an individual who is adapting new. technology and new social structures to serve an older religious position, which was the position of the preacher. How are you doing that? And how are you thinking about that right now?Paul VanderKlay: That's a great question. I'm constantly thinking about it actually.So I, I pastor a small dine church in Sacramento, California. Most churches, the size 60 year life cycle and. I would always have [00:03:00] interests beyond just the local church, and so I was involved with denominational things and all of this stuff. I blogged for years, just, just sort of playing with it, and then Jordan Peterson arose, and I thought this is probably the most important thing for me to pay attention to in my pastoral career.Wow. And I looked around because, because, well, the reason was, I mean, you guys talk about this basically this monolithic urban culture. What, what, what this has done in churches is that people have sort of either strayed into new atheism or strayed into a light new, new ageism and everyone who's going down that road.And what I saw happening behind Jordan Peterson were people coming back down that those roads and you hardly ever saw that before and significant numbers were doing it, listening to Jordan Peterson. He was reopening the conversation in a way that I didn't [00:04:00] understand, and so I wanted to understand it and the way I understand things is by talking to people, but.People in my church weren't going to watch Jordan Peterson. They were all mostly older people. So then I looked to colleagues. Well, most of my colleagues weren't listening to Jordan Peterson and those who were, wouldn't admit it. So I knew I needed some new conversation partners. So I thought. I was reading, I was rereading.I was real reading, I'm using ourselves to death at the time. And I thought there's something about this medium YouTube. And I had played with it a little bit with a member of my church, the Freddie and Paul show, you can still find it on my channel, but so if you want to get a sense of what my church is like, watch the Freddie and Paul show.So, so I was seeing this and I thought I'll make a YouTube video. What can, what, what, what can it hurt? There are how many YouTube videos out there that have 10 to 20 viewers and that's, I just needed a few people to talk to. And then [00:05:00] something happened, which I didn't understand, which was this overwhelming response, emails coming to me.And because I'm a pastor, I wanted to talk to these people. I wanted to hear from them. I wanted their stories. And so then I would zoom them or Skype them and have a conversation. And of course that didn't end the relationship that began the relationship. This was happening locally as well. So I started a Jordan Peterson meetup where before, you know, churches do all kinds of crazy things, try to get people through the door, you know, hot dogs, trunk or tree.Um, You know, vacation, Bible school. And so I, and so a bunch of people, well, we should do a meetup. I'm like, nobody will come. So I did a meetup and a dozen people came who I had no idea who they were before. And the next month, another dozen came and it just kept growing. So this thing took on a life of its own pretty quickly.And at about 2000 subscribers, I thought [00:06:00] seriously about just shutting the whole thing down because where's this going to go, but I couldn't shut it down because The conversations were too real and the people were too honest. And what I saw was that all real people really wanted was, can I, can I just talk about this?Can I just process it with you? Let me know what you think. And I, my church is in a very distressed part of town. I'm always dealing with homeless people panhandling people who were right across the street from a gas station. So people, they want 20 bucks. They walk across the street, they knock on the church.And I thought, Knock on the church doors looking for 20 bucks, but nobody knocks on the church doors looking for a reasonable conversation about what's most important and where they can actually be honest about what they think and believe. And I thought, I've always wanted a church that could do that.And I'd be, I discovered, oh my goodness, that is exactly what we have happening here. So [00:07:00] I began to post with permission, some of the conversations that I was having with people. And then once people saw that I would talk to strangers, randos online, then the flood really started. Because then, you know, people just wanted to talk.And so the, the local meet, then other people wanted meetup groups because they can't get to Sacramento. So I'm helping other people start meetup groups and other churches and in other places that became estuary, which is this whole, it's basically a conversation format where we have. Very open conversations with people.And then the channel has just kept growing. It's grown slowly, which I'm grateful for. You know, I look at what happened to Jordan Peterson as kind of a cautionary tale, because when you grow that fast, it completely destroys your life. And I, I have, I have a wife, I have five children. I have a church. I didn't need my life destroyed and I didn't want my church.Pushed out of my life by this. And so, you know, the church and I, the church has been people who [00:08:00] watched the channel have been very supportive of the church. The church probably still wouldn't be open if people didn't financially supportMalcolm Collins: the church. Where's the church, by the way, in case any of our listeners live in this area?Paul VanderKlay: It's on Florin road in Sacramento. Okay. Great. And it's, it's Livingstone's Christian Reformed Church. You can find it. Just Google it. You'll find it. And, and so, and so the church, then, then, then visitors would start coming into church, but most of the people who'd wander into church would sit there and people are always saying, well, I want authenticity.And I always tell them my church has so much authenticity. You really don't want it. What it is. Okay. You might say, Oh, I listened to Paul online. Okay. But Paul online is just one little element of what a church is because the church is a community.Malcolm Collins: So, so talk about this, talk about what you can't achieve within the online sphere that you can't achieve within in person spaces and, and where you feel that you're achieving more within the online sphere.Paul VanderKlay: That's an excellent question too. People [00:09:00] want to know and be known and to love and be loved. Online is an attentional economy. That just basically saps our attention. And what this means is that a limited number of us who get a certain degree of visibility with the algorithm, get a decent amount of attention and get all sorts of good things from it.But the vast majority of people are participating in this online space. You know, they get a little entertainment, they get a few ideas, they get a little amusement, but they don't get anything behind it. And loneliness has gotten to. Has gotten to a point in our culture where even governments are doing things like, you know, you know, creating ministry of loneliness.And I'm thinking a government is creating a ministry of loneliness. People have, people have no, I, another thing that I think of is that part of what happened with radio and especially with television [00:10:00] and that magazines is that the images that we are completely surrounded by. Subtly form our expectations of what life is, and as a pastor, you get a very real sense of just how hard and grimy and uncomfortable and painful life is for many, many people, and You know, all the way back to Thoreau, people live lives of quiet desperation.They do all the time. And what churches have been able to do, at least to some degree, and what families do to a degree, and what friendships do to a degree, and pubs and all sorts of things, is at least give people a little tiny sense of community. That's someone out there. I remember, I think it was Jonathan Haidt talking about friendships.He's like, you need a friend. If you go to school, if you don't have one friend, Boy, you know, you're in trouble. And if you think about it, [00:11:00] just one, and many people don't have that. And in fact, partly due to all of these screens and, and where, what we've done as a society, people are desperate and lonely and their lives are filled with pain.Now they can media mediate that to a degree with television and radio. I can't tell you how often I'll go into a shut ins home and either am radio or television is on. All the time because they just want to hear another human voice.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is something I often think about. We live in this society today, which is something I often know, where you move to a new city often after college or something like that.And yet your entire, one of the things people always complain about our school system is they're like, well, what we were kids learned to socialize. Where will kids learn to make friends? And one of the things I point out is that in our existing high school and college system, people only learn to make friends with people they're forced to interact with.When somebody first leaves college and moves to a new city, I often wonder how, like, what percent of America has [00:12:00] no friends at all? Literally talks to no one else. My, like, guess would be it's probably between 15 and 21 percent of people living in the developed world right now. Just have not a singlePaul VanderKlay: friend.Yep. Yep. I wouldn't be surprised. And, and as a pastor, I Well, and this is only accelerated by YouTube. I regularly bump into people who are, if not hermits, almost so, and their main form of mediation is this internet because with radio and television, it's, it's, it's completely one sided the internet, maybe that fourth wall will be broken a little bit.So one of the things that I wanted was not just a big channel where I could get my ideas out there and, you know, maybe have a. A strategy for employment when my church dies, but I wanted, I wanted people to be able to find each other. [00:13:00] I wanted people to be able to make friends. They need friends.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Talk about TPI, because this is something you haven't talked about. And some of our listeners don't know about TPI. No,Paul VanderKlay: TCI, this corner of the internet. Oh, that's a TLC. No, sorry. TLC. That's it. This little corner, right? So I started with Jordan Peterson videos and then people were like, oh, there's an icon carbonate Jonathan, Jonathan Peugeot.You should talk to him. Jonathan at that time at 4, 000 subscribers had about a thousand. So talk to Jonathan Peugeot. So, and Jonathan Peugeot also had been a foreign missionary in his past. And so we develop a relationship and another viewer starts sending me videos from John Verveche. Who's doing courses in Buddhism and cognitive science.And so I start looking at his, and so part of what I did initially with, with his stuff was I didn't know who to talk to. And so I would just talk to the videos. So, you know, and I didn't even understand that YouTube had a genre of this. I didn't know anything about YouTube. [00:14:00] So I just started talking to the videos cause who's going to talk to me.And so then I start doing this to other people's videos because I'm interested in the thoughts. And I also noticed because, because of my kids, that there's this thing called Twitch where people watch each other, play computer games, and I thought. That's kind of crazy. But then I thought, I wonder if people watch each other, watch videos.And then I learned that that's a thing too. So I started talking to John Vervaeke and he was a wonderful guy. And so the three of us start talking and then it's like, well, we've got to really do some live events because we have to get people away from their screens into real spaces, getting to know each other, to actually.Build the kind of bonds that human people, that human beings need one. And so then because we're doing this online, a bunch of other people start YouTube channels and start doing the same thing that I'm doing or having conversations. And, and then one woman who Sevilla King, she, she had gone to art school.She was a therapist. She did a bunch of things. She had been doing little videos on [00:15:00] piercing one day. She basically says this little corner of the internet. And the funny thing about naming is that nobody knows quite what's going on. And then when a name comes in, it kind of gels it, then the group sort of has a degree of identity.And so what happened was that. So we had a discord server. I was always a little frustrated with the format of discord because with these blocks, these walls of text, a lot of the people are auto didacts, which means that it means a whole bunch of things. But then you tended to get like, first we had hardly any Christians and then people start becoming Christians.And then the Christians want to fight about theology. And it's like, I, I've grown up. I've lived all my life in the church. I know theological fights. I know my theological positions, but I don't want to space. If I have a limited amount of time with people, I don't want to fight about theology with them. I [00:16:00] want to find out about their stories because I want to find out about their lives.And I'd like to, I'm a pastor. I'd like to help them knit together community around them. So a bunch of people start YouTube channels, a whole bunch of different things, and eventually that sort of becomes a kind of community, but that's where you get this internet question. Because the internet affords a capacity for community.It's different from real life community. And figuring that out, I think we only are barely in the, barely at the frontier of this right now. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, that's sort of what I'm exploring. And it's a mess, but well,Malcolm Collins: before you go further, I, I really, I've been writing down. I've got a whole series of tabs open with questions that we need to get to.Because the first one is what do you think Jordan [00:17:00] Peterson was doing or saying that started bringing people back that other people hadn't done before?Paul VanderKlay: That's a half hours of video trying to figure this out there. There's a lot to this so part of what happened. This is going to be a little theoretical. So my apologies. Part of what happened even before Descartes. I think Tom Holland is right about a lot of his ideas about Western history at the beginning or kind of in the, at the About the year 1000, there's, there becomes a, a separation of sort of these two realms that we have, and you can map these two realms in all sorts of different ways.Ian McGilchrist sort of has the master and the emissary. People. Commonly can today. This has only been true for a couple hundred years. Talk, talk about natural and supernatural. We can talk about it in terms [00:18:00] of mental and physical, but we have the kind of experience that suggests, you know, for example, C.S. Lewis, when he says, you know, every instance of human love will die by death or betrayal, but love itself doesn't die. Plato gets into this in terms of the form. So you have this separation and the separation Eventually became in the West sort of a dualism and Descartes sort of nails it. And so, and he's trying to figure out what's the, and it's, it revolves around the idea of substance.So there's like matter is a material substance. And then Descartes says, well, there's a spiritual substance. And what eventually happens in the West is that we have degree of, we have a degree of skepticism about material, about immaterial substances or spiritual substances, and you get this differentiation and.What Jordan Peterson starts doing through psychology and the Bible is to begin to give the Bible a degree of [00:19:00] plausibility that a lot of people who have sort of thrown off the supernatural said, Oh, and when he did the biblical series with Genesis, that really triggered something. Because people began to read the Bible and say, You know, unlike Sam Harris, unlike the new atheism, maybe, in fact, there is wisdom, perennial wisdom, even in a Darwinian sense that's encoded in the Bible that, in fact, if I listen to and learn from, I can maybe make my life better.And one of the things that I noted, especially in the early years of doing this conversations, that nihilism in a good number of people, especially men, basically causes depression. Jordan Peterson did. I call him sort of the unauthorized exorcist because there's an unauthorized exorcist of the gospel of Mark that Jesus disciples are sort of saying, this guy's casting out demons in your name and we [00:20:00] should stop him.And Jesus says, leave him alone. And so Jordan Peterson completely outside the church is basically casting out. On a variety of levels, a lot of the demons that have sort of been possessing our culture and possessing individuals. And when people, he sort of would break nihilism in people. And when they woke up from their nihilism, well, guess what?You know what they want to do? They want to get a job. They want to start eating better. They want to maybe that maybe turn that love interest into a girlfriend and that girlfriend into a wife. And then they want to have kids and then they want to build something. I mean, basically. This whole group of men sort of woke up and decided to once again participate in the human race instead of wasting themselves, as the cliche says, in their mother's basement watching porn covered with Cheetos dust.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I want to know what you think of [00:21:00] Simone's criticism of Jordan Peterson's teachings. Which you have in the past, Simone said that it feels to you very much like Jungian psychology dressed up with a conservative aesthetic. Am I, am I accurately?Paul VanderKlay: Yeah. And what's so interesting hearing about your experience of Jordan Peterson Colin, I mean, I'm sure you've consumed like way more of his content than Malcolm and I have.Is that maybe like, I'm not looking at it through a religious lens at all. Like I'm looking at it more through the lens of the things that I understand. And there's just, So much Jungian psychology and it just rubs me the wrong way because anything that's like Freudian or Jungian, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and I don't know, like, I, I, I get, I, my feeling about him is he told the internet to make their beds and they were like, yes, thank you for being it.That fatherMalcolm Collins: figure, I'm going to take a different answer here. Yeah. I think that he was literally the first person. I think it was about branding. He was the [00:22:00] first person who created an intellectually feeling path to conservative traditions and, and before this, nobody, there was this branding in society that conservative traditions meant stupid and he was the first person.Who said conservative traditions don't mean stupid, and he rose to fame through the left attacking him. So, he used a debate, like if you look at how he rose to fame, it was a debate he had with a feminist reporter in Canada that then went viral. And then when people saw this and they saw that conservative attitudes didn't mean stupid, that led to his rise to fame.What's interesting to me actually is contrasting Jordan Peterson was Milo. Because Milo came before Milo Yiannopoulos, he's referring to. Yes. And, and Milo equally showed that conservatism didn't mean stupid, but he also made conservatism look kind of crazy [00:23:00] and unhinged. Whereas Jordan Peterson made conservatism.feel very, like, I think it was all about the aesthetic and the narrative made it feel very much constrained and put together. I don't know. These are, these are just our thoughts. You can. Yeah. But Paul, doPaul VanderKlay: you really think that Jordan Peterson is first and foremost about faith? Jordan Peterson is first and foremost a university professor who cared about his students and a clinical psychologist who cared about his patients.You have to understand that about Jordan. Now this second phase of him as sort of a getting into the political realm, that's not really his native environment. If you really scratch him, he cared about helping regular people make their life better. I think you're both right. He's clearly a union and He, at the same time, I think you're also, I think you're also right, Malcolm, that he, he, the man in his moment sort of found [00:24:00] their, their time together.And, you know, it's, it's not an accident that this happened at the same time as sort of the Trump emergence. So there's a populism, I mean, Peterson also. It's, it's really helpful to go to the live events and meet the people and talk to them. Now, this is, this is part of the reason when you introduced me as a theologian, this is part of the reason that I always sort of correct people.I'm not a theologian. A theologian is an academic. I'm a pastor. Now pastors have to dabble with theology, but I've, part of the reason why I don't fight about theological models on the internet is because all of these models are limited and the emergence of Jordan Peterson in reality, We can sort of speculate on models.Models have their place and they're super, super useful, but it's this, it's, it's in the commotion of everyday life down here where heaven and earth come together, [00:25:00] that things actually happen. And so I could probably write a list of a dozen reasons why Jordan Peterson changed as many lives as he did. And probably a lot of them are valid.But that doesn't mean that any one of those things is sort of key to why it happened, because reality is just that complex. Because there have been a lot of people who've done similar things to Jordan Peterson. I mean, I've got books from him. A lot of people have sort of worked Jung in this space and had sort of little eruptions.And I talked to one Canadian academic early on that basically said, yeah, another year or two and Jordan Peterson will pass out a favor. And he listed three or four guys who I could recognize, and it happened. Yeah, there's a lot of different reasons for that.Malcolm Collins: So why do you think so, so you talked about the people coming back to the faith.Why do you think people were leaving the face? What do you think were the core hooks that, that the, the, this force, whatever we want to call [00:26:00] it, the urban monoculture was using to pull people out of the face. Why do you think it was working so effectively compared with historic conditions?Paul VanderKlay: Well, I, the video that.Someone sent me the first one I'd watch of yours in terms of why people are leaving. I thought you're dead on right about a ton of that stuff. I think in my experience for a lot of people, I think there are a lot of factors to this. Number one, people are formed by their expectations are formed by technology and we now are accustomed to certain kinds of technology that works so reliably.We have a sense of, well, that's what truth is. And the scientific revolution and really the technological revolution, the industrial revolution really created those expectations for us. So therefore when, so one common story of why people leave a particular religious tradition is because they had a bad experience, something [00:27:00] bad happened.And at some deep place in their heart, they thought something like this, that if I am a good boy or girl, if I show my allegiance to Jesus or whatever God they have bad things won't happen to me now, ask almost any pastor if that is true in the past. No, even ask almost any of those people if they believe that they will say no, but when that bad thing happens at a very deep level in their life, a plausibility structure begins to break free.And this urban monoculture has in many ways delivered. On some promises in a way better than a lot of religions have at, I think, a fairly shallow level. And I think for this reason, we're going to see the urban monoculture will hold people to a degree, but it's only going to hold a certain segment of people.But those people tend to be highlighted in. [00:28:00] All of the media that the urban monoculture really uses for it's for proselytizing. And I, I've known this because, so my grandfather pastored churches, mostly of Dutch immigrants and Dutch farmers. My father pastored a church of African Americans just outside of New York City.And what you begin to realize if you spend a lot of time with African Americans is that, well, they also have a culture and their culture has roots and their roots are in the South. So they've got a deep amount of Christianity built in them. They've got some African, they've got a whole ton of stuff in it.And so I remember when COVID hit and everybody in California is like, we've got to get this vaccine into people. I thought. I've lived in the black community all my life. Guess who is not really going to be too quick to queue up for that vaccine? They are not going to jump on these bandwagons because they have seen these bandwagons before.So American culture tends to have this little level that's in the media and, [00:29:00] and, and it's just a reinforcing narrative. And of course now with with with social media, all kinds of other narratives now have space again. Those narratives had space before just because there weren't the kind of mass media that happened in the 20th century.And and now with other medias, things are breaking down again. And, gosh,Malcolm Collins: it's really interesting that you point this out because this is something that we've noticed as well. This idea that the media class was in our country right now, and it's almost like they've become a narrower class than they were even historically is so out of touch with the other groups.Especially the groups that they purport to protect or help that one of the groups that we're really, really close with because of our company and our work and everything like that is the recent Hispanic immigrant population. And they communicate the way that they relate to truth. It's so [00:30:00] different from the way that the left thinks they do and and from what the left is saying that they their their truce networks Which is very different from the black community because I think you're absolutely right about the american black community Within the hispanic community their truce networks are family based.Where they have large networks of intermarried families, and that's how they transmit information and stuff like what's going on in the news is largely irrelevant outside of these, these family networks to the extent where they're actually, you know, we talk about all the problems that we're having with the internet and everything like that.You're not seeing this within the traditional Hispanic community. They've just. much, but they've just retreated back to these family networks. To the extent where, you know, one of our friends was telling us he has friends outside of his family and he gets teased by his cousins about it. Like they call, they call him a white boy for having friends who are not family members.And it's like, that's how like intense these family networks are. And it shows it. To me, [00:31:00] when I look at like this or the way the black community relates to authority, which like the Democrats don't get it all a, these communities are not talking to each other, even in the slightest way anymore.And we do not realize how different, different American populationsPaul VanderKlay: are. That's exactly right. And that's exactly right. And part of the reason, so there's a, there's a thesis by a scholar named Mark Knoll, who was from the Christian reform church. I think went to Notre Dame has sucked up a lot of the Christian reform intelligentsia.And he basically had the frontier thesis in terms of American church. So what happens in the history of the United States is that of course, the British, the British really wanted to sort of contain the colonies so they wouldn't have Indian problems West of it. And a big part of the American revolution is.People wanted that land and they could sort of push out the Indians. And so, and so America has always been an [00:32:00] amalgamation of different tribes within it. And more recently, more American history books have, have looked at that. But part of what happened in terms of the church was the, the churches in the, in the colonies were the ones that came over from Europe.What happens when Americans went out is that family bonds are ruptured, all kinds of bonds are ruptured, and Americans sort of have to sort of make new bonds, and so it's a very open space where things can happen, and that's part of the reason why the Bible takes on such primary focus in American Evangelicalism, because the only thing they had in common was the Bible, not all these historic creeds and confessions of Europe.Well, similar things have been happening, and it's, and it's, For a while, when we had mass media, when there were three tv networks and we had a common culture And and partly also because at that time in the 60s and the 50s and 60s There was a great degree of attention of trying to bring catholics jews and african americans into this group[00:33:00] you know, so the hispanics sort of were Somewhat catholic but I mean and for that and now that the sort of the mass media has broken down People are just unfamiliar with people who are mostly familiar with screens are unfamiliar with their neighbors on less.They're from a community that has its own ways of deep connection. And so that's why, yeah, the, I often, I watched the woke stuff and I was thinking there's a certain class of African Americans who have sort of been brought up into the ruling class, but most of them, they watch this stuff and they just kind of.Because they've seen regime after regime go through and they're not believing much of it because they mostly believe what they know from their own lives, which is how most people do it. So back to your question about the deconversion. So you're right that this urban monoculture [00:34:00] took a lot of people out and the more and more of our, of our world is mediated by these images.That subtly frames expectations and incentive structures. And so that has really broken apart a lot of traditional white churches. But, you know, it's, to me, one of the more, one of the most interesting things that we're going to watch is going to be what happens with Islam in the West. Because I mean, again, all of these systems are far too complex for any of us to actually be able to accurately track.There's just way too many variables. But Islam is, you know, that's going to just be a fascinating thing. And that's mostly going to happen in Europe. In the United States, it's Latentum. And The history of, so I, I spent my first eight [00:35:00] years of seven years of professional ministry in Latin America doing missionary work.And so you begin to get a sense of, you go to that place and it's like. Yeah, a lot of people just fly down here to go to the beach, but if you live there, it's like, yeah, you know, culture is real and part of where I learned that is, again, I was growing up in a black community in a mostly black church in a white denomination in a, in Christian reform schools, which were sort of, you know, one of the things that I find so interesting about your project is that I have watched the Dutch try resisting cultural assimilation Yeah.All my life and fail. And right now my denomination is just sort of being completely pulled apart and assimilated in some of the larger things in our culture. But we had our own Christian schools. You didn't marry outside the Christian reform church. You know, we had, we had all of these enclaves and this has just been.Pulled apart. And so now [00:36:00] Hispanics, it's, we're in the middle of a crazy, crazy social experiment. And of course the internet is just gasoline on the fire.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I do.Paul VanderKlay: I want to pull on though, what you've said. This isn't the only time you've said it where like, if you got too big, especially too fast, that it would sort of destroy you and destroy the community.I mean, part of me, I want to push on that and understand why you believe that, because you've reached an amazing number of people. You've changed their lives. Like it's super clear that you've created a community online that is very, very real for these people. And you have found ways to make it participatory.I mean, Even as a pastor, you're in a one to many relationship. Like you can't speak one on one with absolutely everyone who shows up. And so even in person, there's a limit to your reach, but online, your reach is scaled in a way that's incredible. Can I understand a little bit more about why you think?Growing your [00:37:00] community online would be damaging because yeah, I just, I really, I'm not sure if I think that's true, but I would be open to you convincing me. Okay. Well, well, I'll say a few things. I, my, my main employment remains my local congregation and I've been with these people 26 years. A number of them are in the last few years of their life and all they really want is for their pastor to bury them.And I want to be able to do that for them. The number, so, you know, there's the Dunbar number, and how true that is, I don't know. And you're right, as a pastor, I'm used to one to many relationships. But I also, and for that reason, I have a sense of, you have to fairly quickly try to hand off people into other relationships, if the community is going to cohere.And it's a little bit of a dance because usually what happens and nothing at the internet hasn't changed this people come to my church [00:38:00] because maybe they saw a little thing online or, you know, maybe they just walked in and saw me on stage preaching and then something touched their heart and they say, wow, he touched my heart.I want to be friends with pastor Paul. Okay. How many friends can Pastor Paul have? Pastor Paul has five children. Pastor Paul has a wife. Pastor Paul has a job. Pastor Paul has all of these things. And so it's, it's sort of the pace at which things grow impacts what exactly you're going to have. And so I wanted things to grow at a rate where people could find each other and actually be able to build.Friendships with one another to scale away. One of the things that I noted is that just like with it, I mean, when we talk about getting it on the ground floor of, let's say a company or something, that's a real thing. And so as this little corner of the internet has grown a lot of, so [00:39:00] there's, let's say I'm at the top of a certain hierarchy, then there's a whole group of people who found me within the first month.That are right there at the second level. And now there's always a few anomalous people who sort of shoot up beyond themselves, but the whole community sort of grows together and there are very subtle ways in which these lieutenants are gatekeepers. And also part of it is what we have done in this little corner of the internet is not really premised around, let's say a doctrinal statement.This is a statement that we agree with. No, we, we, we're hard pressed to find a lot that we agree with. What we have is sort of a style of relationship. Now, I just gotta actually, I was late to this because I got a message from someone that said, Oh, yesterday's yesterday's live stream was ugly. They were calling you a liar.They were [00:40:00] saying you're not a leader and they were bad mouth. I know your thick skin and winsome, but and and so. But the thing is being pastor of a real live church is really good for those kinds of things. Because if you think people get mad at you for things you do online, try doing it in a real life church.That's where people really get mad. And so a lot of the stuff online is like, yeah, someone online is angry with me. They don't believe me.Malcolm Collins: Wait, wait, wait. A live stream? Was this like some random live stream was in your community where they decided to? And thisPaul VanderKlay: is part of the difficulty. Is that right now, in terms of this little community, it's funny because there's a sort of a fear and you see this with churches to there's a sort of this little fierce debate.Is this a real thing or not? They have all this philosophical ideas. So that's something they can chew on. And then is Paul our leader? What is a leader? A leader is someone who says yes and no. Now in the church, In an actual [00:41:00] organization and institution, there are things that I can say yes to and no to in ways I decide things that have consequence within the organizational structure.This isn't quite that. There's no organizational structure. There's no, yeah, there's, you know, there's a little bit of money going, moving around and memberships and YouTube AdSense and that kind of stuff. But I'm not paying anyone. I have zero employees. I can't hire and fire anyone. And we don't have a structure like we have in the church where someone might go under formal discipline for believing something or doing something, what have you, there's none of those things.And so part of what's happening is, you know, there's people, and there's another thing you learned as a pastor, people come to communities with their expectations and they don't even know what their expectations are, but you begin to discover them when certain. Expectations don't get met or fulfilled and then people get a little bit upset because I thought Paul was going to do this.And [00:42:00] the thing you also have to realize is that, you know, let's the AA people say, well, expectations are preconceived resentments.Malcolm Collins: Hold on. If you would mind indulging us, what are the expectations people are coming in with that are causing the conflicts?Paul VanderKlay: Oh, I really have, I don't have a very clear idea of it. Because they themselves don't have a clear idea of it. IMalcolm Collins: assume they want you to be more conservative or more progressive. Is that it?Like it's a political fight.Paul VanderKlay: It's a political, they they'd love for it. So about four years ago before COVID, when this thing sort of started taking on steam, people wanted me to found a 501 C three and to develop a board of directors and to basically institutionalize this thing. And so. Paul Vander Klee, anchor this little corner anchor estuary ink, something like this.And I said, no, that's it. Things are way too early. We don't even know what we're doing here. And in one of the [00:43:00] things, so before I did any of this, I was involved in church planting. And one of the things that you realize with church planting is that pace of growth and institutional structure Those these things sort of have to find themselves and sort of a rule of hand is don't start a structure until You really know you'll need it or at least anticipate needing it soon Because with the pace of change of change right now in our culture You'll almost always structure badly and it will hurt the sort of the organic growth of the thing.So I don't, you know, so people wanted me to start to start an organization and then people, you know, and then suddenly there'll be guidelines and boundary rules. And, and I said, first of all, I said, I don't have time to manage that. Second of all, I know myself well enough to know I'm not a great manager of those kinds of things.I run a small little church and even the tiny little bit of administration I have to do here, I really don't like. So if we're [00:44:00] actually going to do something like that, then suddenly I'm, I've got a board that I've got to deal with. I already have a church board. I have to deal with that. I'm going to, then I'm going to have to have a structure and I'm probably going to not be able to work in the church.And then I'm going to need a budget of. Somewhere probably about half a million to a million dollars a year. Then I'm going to raise that money. Then I'm going to be, and I said, I don't want to do any of these things. I would love to do what I can to facilitate community for people. But in my opinion, it's going to be fairly ad hoc.It's going to be fairly loosey goosey. And that's what I'm comfortable with right now. And that's what I can do right now. Well,Malcolm Collins: I imagine this is what people actually want. I mean, other than the people who are high within the status hierarchy, there's always different motivations, depending on where you are within the status hierarchy.One question, one final question I had for you, because this is something that you've mentioned on our videos, and I want to hear your thoughts on it. If you were going to give advice to someone today, to keep, and I know this is hard, and I know this is not something you do, but to keep their children within the tradition they grew up [00:45:00] in, What would that advice be?What are the biggest threats to our children? WhenPaul VanderKlay: I'm at wherever I'm at, whenever I'm asked for parenting advice, I say this, be who you want your children to become. Oh yeah. First of all, let's talk about human beings. We think we know what we are. We think we know ourselves. We really don't know ourselves very well. My children know me in a way that I don't know myself.My wife knows me in ways I don't know myself. My church people know me in ways I don't know myself. There's, I have a certain degree of delusion about myself that is really difficult to, to, to cure. So part of what is [00:46:00] happening right now is that. Traditions of almost every kind are being tremendously tested and most of them are, are, are found wanting.And this includes, now, every, all the Christians listening to this, I know a bunch of my people are going to find their way to your channel and listen to this. This includes the church, and what, so G. K. Chesterton talked about, I remember it was five or seven, but the five deaths of Christianity. He said basically Christianity has died five times, and I think that's true.And I think the church, as most of us have known it, which, again, generalizations are really tough, but many of us have known churches that are Fundamentally modernist institutions sort of created around modernist assumptions, including my own [00:47:00] denomination, many of these churches are going away and they are going away fast.Now, I, I continue to be a Christian, and I continue to believe in the church, but I think what we are going to see is churches continue to, there's going to be new kinds of churches that we cannot imagine yet. That's really hard for the church. Now, part of what's been interesting in this whole thing is that a lot of people have gone grown interested in orthodoxy and Catholicism, and I think there are real reasons for.people's desire for these very sacramental, very ancient churches with certain constructions. And I think that's because modernity as we've experienced it for the last 500 years, especially the last 200 years is receding quickly. And so people are looking for something old, [00:48:00] something reliable, something structured and something they can get their hands on like a sacrament.Yeah. I. think the people coming into those churches are going to change those churches in ways that many of the older people who are really excited about these new people coming in, they don't have any idea because the people cut themselves coming in, they don't have any idea. And so for this reason, I mean, I've seen it in, I've seen it in my own denomination.Like I said, the Christian Reformed Church, ostensibly Calvinist, which talked about divine election, did everything in their power to ensure that their children would maintain the faith. And I think the Christian Reformed Church Is probably in the top 10% of denominations that succeeded until the 1980s.I mean, Mm-Hmm. . The Christian Reform Church had a thick, yeah, thick culture, but it's basically been torn apart. The urban monoculture [00:49:00] has had its way with it. And what that means, not only is that churches that have sort of bought in completely to the urban monoculture, they're going the way of the main line.Yeah. The other side of churches has been like, duh, you know. Double down on having a bunker mentality. I don't have a lot of confidence in that path either. Yeah, because it's, you know, Rene Girard has this mimetic rivalry thing. If you decide the urban monoculture is your enemy, you are probably going to become a bizarro.alternate, you know, it's going to map on you. So in other, in other words, what, in other words, what you need to actually create a sustainable culture is something that has a different root from the opposition. It's going. And for that reason, people are looking for very old things. I think that's part of the reason people are so interested today in evolutionary psychology.Because it's the new natural laws, one of my friends just recently said. I,Malcolm Collins: I love [00:50:00] this interpretation. So today I spent, we have the longest episode we've ever done going live soon. It's going to be like two hours or something. I was working on it today. And it's, it's on this question and it focuses on a specific hypothesis or sort of conundrum where I was like, okay, my kids are like me, right?So if I'm going to understand why have I joined a traditionalist religion, I need to look at why my dad left. And the answer that he chose to leave Christianity was he got punished for questioning the Noah's Ark story. He was like, this does not seem logically plausible. Let's go through it. And he was like, I will not stay in a tradition that punish it.And people who know me, they're like, yeah, Malcolm would have done that too. Had he grown up in a, you know, a conservative Christian family. And so it's made me think, well, one of the problems that we have is that when we say we want to be looser about these kinds of stories, every option I have for my kids today, loosens [00:51:00] up on all the morality as well.When you loosen up on the stories, you loosen up on the morality. And for me, the question is, is there a way to reconstruct things that loosens up on the, the, the. scientific plausibility stories, but that doesn't loosen up on any of the moral restrictions. And that might be an absurd thing to try to create, but I do suspect that's what the winner of this.I don't think it's going to be necessarily what we're trying to build, but I think it's going to be. Whoever builds that successfully is going to be the person who wins.Paul VanderKlay: So, so, if there's something at the heart of sort of what has been happening with Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Pajot, John Verveke, it's the idea that John Verveke calls combinatorial explosiveness.Hmm. In that The world is too complex for any of us to manage. [00:52:00] When we talk about morality in a context that is being colonized by evolutionary psychology, the idea is, what practices, what do we say yes to, what do we say no to, that will finally achieve, what, in terms of a Darwinian process? Nobody can figure that out because there are far too many elements And this is part of the reason again to answer the jordan peterson question.Why do why are people now interested in religion? Ironically, it's because of darwinism that people have begun to and I don't think they know this intellectually yet Yeah. They have begun to sense that, huh, if I want to figure out how human beings work, I have to sort of look at an ancient record of track record, an ancient track record.And you know what? There is nothing that we have like religion [00:53:00] for providing that data. Yeah. And so the winners in religious competition are probably the best place to start to think about how should we live in the future. I mean, that's at the heart of, and Jordan didn't sort of say it directly that way.That's what's happening. And so when I saw your channel, I thought oh these people get it And and part of why you two are so fun. And this is why I love the estuary project So what I started doing in churches i've as i've told churches You need to have conversation groups where that little boy can go and say I think a worldwide flood is bunk and everybody says All right, cool.I mean it's tom holland's story. It's story of how many people because What happens? It used to be that the university was supposed to be a place where you could have open ideas, blah, blah, blah. That's done. Ironically, churches are places, potentially [00:54:00] some churches, perhaps where you can go and have an honest conversation.And so that's what I want for churches. I want them to be places where people can come in. And then the group. So we have this little process where the group Can have a conversation about what those people that they want to talk about. And that, again, I think back to this leadership thing that involves more modeling, you know, we've had people that say, we need to, we need to list the rules of this, like, well, usually by the time you have to list rules, something's already broken.So the longer you can put off listing rules, the more modeling you can do. Probably the further you'll get along.Malcolm Collins: Nice. Yeah. I really like this, this insight here. Yeah, this, that's great. Well, this conversation has been fantastic and I hope we can do something like this again. This will be one of our longer episodes, but we've started doing that with interviews recently.But this is fantastic. And I really do hope our listeners who are interested in, in what you're hearing from him, either check out his church. [00:55:00] In person, if you're in his area, or at least check out his YouTubePaul VanderKlay: channel. Come at 9am to the estuary meeting. So we have estuary at 9am and then we have the worship service at 11.Now, again, the worship services, some music, me preaching, it's a, you know, I've got an older church here. This is what they like. And, and, and I, I, I work for them, but at 9am we do estuary. That's where you'll have a much more open, free flowing conversation.Malcolm Collins: That's spectacular. And look, five kids, right? We gotta be working on this, people.This should be thePaul VanderKlay: norm. You won't know what your kids believe until they're in their 50s and 60s. Oh, maybe. Think about that. Maybe.Malcolm Collins: I hope I live long enough to have a wager with you guys.I think we're going to have little firebrands. You know, one of the people thatPaul VanderKlay: I agreeMalcolm Collins: with, one of the people coming on our show soon again is Ayla who came [00:56:00] from a cow. I don't know if you know, we're having her back on. She came from a Calvinist tradition and just, I think her dadAnd yeah, I we'll, we'll be doing no, I, I expect our kids will be that way too. I think if they're going to break away from whatever we're doing, they're going to do it loud and early. Yes.Paul VanderKlay: I'm going to say this. I would not be surprised. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I would not be at all surprised if Ayla.When she gets in her fifties and sixties, doesn't look a lot like her father.Malcolm Collins: I don't look a lot like him now. I think I know. I think she has an incredible amount in common with him. And if you read her writings, she has meditated on this recently where she's like, yeah, I actually am a lot like my dad. It's funny because she's like, why do you guys feel so close to me? And I'm like, Oh, we're like dissidents from the Calvinist cultural group. You're a dissident for you feel very similar to us [00:57:00] culturally. And she's like, she doesn't like, she, she gets it. Like she's friends with us, but I don't think she understands what we mean when we're like, Yeah.Like we're part of the same family, like we're, we're distant and we have different beliefs, but we're still part of the same larger family.Paul VanderKlay: Well, I, you know, again, part of what, what part of the beauty about an actual community, I remember some of the fire brands when I was growing up where the preacher's kids, see, my father was always very open.And so we didn't have a strict house at all. But the stricter the house, the worse the preacher's kid. And now that, you know, I just turned 60 and these people are about my age, they're just like their parents. It's an amazing trajectory to watch. Ah, I love it. I loveMalcolm Collins: it. Well, we'll, we'll recreate that for our kids and hopefully we have a lot.You know, you're on number four now. You're not at five yet, Simone. You got more work to do to catch up with Paul Vanderclay.Paul VanderKlay: True [00:58:00] story. Yeah. We deeply admire you and I'm so glad you came on the podcast. So thank you so much for joining us. Well, I'd very much like to continue talking with you guys because you're, you're so open and you're so smart.And I, I just enjoy people. I mean, I wouldn't be a pastor if I didn't enjoy people. And you two are, are really a breath. Like one person said after our. Conversation on my channel. Oh, what a breath of fresh air. And, and again, you'll, you'll get a lot of crap from a lot of other people for a lot of other reasons.That's just the internet, but you two are, you two are well used to that.Malcolm Collins: Oh, we utilize it to spread. We're not like you. I want to grow as fast as Jordan Peterson. I want to replace Jordan Peterson. That's our long term goal. I want a loving, happily married couple that respects each other to be the next Jordan Peterson.And I think with a lot of kids, not with like one or two measly kids. I think that that's how we, we save this whole system and that's what we're working on. And I told this [00:59:00] to one woman, she goes, can't we all work together? And I go, yes, but there can only be one best. And that's what we're working on.So there you have it,Paul VanderKlay: Paul. Now we have it. Yeah. You can always look to Brigham Young. I mean,Malcolm Collins: Hey, I like Brigham Young. I think Brigham Young is the true founder of Mormonism. I don't think Joseph Smith really founded what we today call Mormonism. I could go deep into Brigham Young. I think he's intellectually very sophisticated.I think a little less sophisticated than Orson Pratt. I, sorry, I don't wanna go too far into Mormonism here because we're gonna talk about this in some, yeah. Let's just sayPaul VanderKlay: the man has pizazz, you know? Yeah. Bring me Young is quite a very interesting guy. , I'll say that. Very interesting guy. . I know most of my, I know most of what I know about Mormonism from a very Mormon homeland homeless addict, and I've learned a ton from him.Interesting. Yeah. Addicts are. The homeless people are just an incredible source of learning [01:00:00] about the real world. They really are.Malcolm Collins: This is actually an interesting point that I want to point to people is historically people had multiple sources of information about the world. They had the media elite and they had their local pasture and their local pasture or.You know, rabbi or whatever, was always learning from homeless addicts as well as learning from their congregation. Whereas the media elite never had that connection to those flows of information. This is one of the reasons we become so dissociated as a population is because we disintermediated our pastors as a source of information.Paul VanderKlay: Yeah. And that's fairly recent as early as the fifties. Pastors, you know, if the government would do a panel, they'd always have a minister or two on it. And that's, that's, that, that went away.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, this has been fantastic. Yeah. Please come back on atPaul VanderKlay: some point we would. Oh, I'd love to know you guys.And, and I want to have, I want to, I want to continue. I keep watching your stuff [01:01:00] and Oh, great.Malcolm Collins: I'm really excited to hear if you do do a response to this that I was doing today. Cause I'm really. We go over every one of the major reasons that people leave the main traditional religions. Oh, really? And we try to come up with solutions for them.Yeah, like, I go through like the good God problem. This is how can I, and it's a lot of stuff where like, atheists pull at the wrong strings. Often they, they pull it nuances. The good God problem is actually a problem that drives people away from religion. The local revelation with miracles, but a universalizing religious tradition is also a big problem that we go into.We go into yeah, we just go into all of these, like, how can you have good answers to these when people attack them? Because I think about them in terms of my own kids. I think too often people in religious traditions, they say people left because they didn't like the rules. And I actually have almost never seen this.People usually leave because they're disappointed in the leadership. They don't understand the logic behind one of the [01:02:00] rules that they see as arbitrarily cruel or they see a logical inconsistency. Like those are the only three reasons people really leave. So if you can build a structure without those, you don't have to worry.We'll see.Paul VanderKlay: There's, there's all there's, there's almost always a lot of reasons. And even the ones who leave probably aren't fully aware of all of the reasons they're leaving. I mean, people are, people are just complex this way and you just never get around that. So we, we talk a good game, but you know, I think Jonathan Heitwood is the rider and the elephant.It's a strong point.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, by the way, if I was going to tell my listeners to start with one video by you, what would it be? Oh,Paul VanderKlay: good question. I'd say let the algorithm decide because, I mean, the algorithm for as flat footed as it can be sometimes, it knows. What you have watched and what other people [01:03:00] who are watching what you're watching.I mean, there's a reason our channels have a crossover.Malcolm Collins: True. Yeah. Cause we didn't have any initial audience crossover. Our initial crossover was all the evolution bros, i. e. mostly Jolly Heretic people, because we talk with him and we have a lot in common with him and a lot of crossover with the manosphere, like the red pill sphere and everything like that.Cause we've done a lot of stuff with Sandman. But like MGTOW and stuff like that. But you. That's totally new. Like there's no reason for us to have a viewer crossover and get viewers who we had reaching out to us in the early days. We're watching your channel before they were watchingPaul VanderKlay: ours. Right.And for that reason let the algorithm, even just because you watched this, you know, you guys are probably going to put me in the show notes or something. That algorithm is going to look at that and they're going to serve you up a video. From me. And, you know, 50, 70 percent you might be interested because the algorithm knows all the details.I put out [01:04:00] over 2000 videos and most of them are long. And so it's really hard to get a sense of, you know, what, what you'd be interested in, but veryMalcolm Collins: conversational and authentic, very different from ours. We try to make them memeable.Paul VanderKlay: Yeah, it's, see, and again, also for my channel, the videos that I think are most important are the ones that are most difficult to watch because they're usually conversations with random people and the way YouTube sort of functions.I mean, if I, I did a conversation with Jonathan Peugeot last week, and of course that one just shot right up because Jonathan Peugeot is an audience. And one of these days I'm sure, you know, I'll, I'll say, okay, Jordan, it's time. And then Jordan, Jordan Peterson and I'll do a conversation and that one will go crazy.But the most, the people, the most important people in your life are not the ones on the screens. They're the ones you share your home with and they're your children and they're your parents. Those are the most important people in your life. And actually that's what your channel isMalcolm Collins: about. [01:05:00] Yeah, well, I, I disagree.I'm the most important in all of our viewers life. I'm just going to have a kid's life. MalcolmPaul VanderKlay: goes, we all go. It's soMalcolm Collins: sad. I'm joking. Of course it's Simone. Who's the most important in your person. No, no, no,Paul VanderKlay: no, no. Jordan and Tammy, they have a, they have a, I believe those two have quite a fine relationship.And again, I think. Probably one of the most important thing about your channel is in fact, the way I hear you two talking about each other and you are modeling, you are modeling something in a relationship that I think is profoundly important and what's interesting about you two. I mean, Jordan and Tammy are about my age.You two are a lot younger and I can see the models of, I mean, you've, you've brought into your relationship a lot of the values of the urban monoculture. You defer to each other. You value each other. You very much are of this culture. That's true. Now you're also playing with [01:06:00] it. So .Malcolm Collins: Anyway, have a, a great one.Yes. Thank you again, Paul . Good to have you on. Alright. Yeah.Paul VanderKlay: The first of many recordingMalcolm Collins: thePaul VanderKlay: second of many.We are making bread and now we're adding ingredients. What's in here? What do you think? What's inside? Can you guess, Torsten?A kadu kuk? Oh, Octavian's opening it. What's that? It's salt. Salt! Yay! What is this? Can I see what it is? What do you think? Look at it. What do you think it is? It's like soap. It's like soap? What is it? What does it taste like? Ice! Ice? You think it's ice? Yeah. It's yummy. It's yummy? So what do you think it is?It's sugar. Sugar! Can [01:07:00] I put it in? Yeah, it's sugar. We're going to have to start putting it in. Okay? Okay. Okay. Yes! Absolutely. Yes. Yummy! Good. Are you jumping in, Torsten? Just a little bit right here. Wow. That's what we're gonna do. That was crazy, right? Yeah. Yeah.Yeah. Your sister said bad. Now, what's this, you guys? What do you think it is, qua? Good job. Now we need to put in 420 grams of it. Do you wanna help you? Very careful. Yeah. Ready? What does the scale say? You wanna do it too? All right, we're gonna let Torsten do a little egg. So did we do water? Yes. Did we do oil?Yes. Did we do salt? Yes! Did we do [01:08:00] sugar? Yes! Did we do flour? Yes! Now we have one more thing. Instant yeast. Do you know what instant yeast is? That's a close one. That was a close one? Yeah. We'll get that in five hours. All the things we need are in. So, hold this bucket, tell me, is it heavy?No, that goes all together into the machine, okay? I think all the settings are right now, so let's press the start button. Yeah, go ahead and press it. Oh, good job! What's going on with the things we put in? Bread is done. Are you excited? Does it smell good?Yep. Inside the bucket, [01:09:00] right? You just a little bit worried. Nope. You're a big worried. Yep. Why? Put some peanut butter on a bread. Take a bite and tell me what you think.Do you like the bread that you made?You do? Yay! You made bread! Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone discuss the shocking decline in fertility rates across Latin America, analyzing cultural causes and linking them to contraception access. They highlight the dire global trends threatening Hispanic and African cultures, which are often dismissed. The podcast explores the impact on education, assimilation, and cultural diversity, as well as the misconceptions about the immigration crisis in Latin America.

Malcolm and Simone analyze the symbolism in Disney's "Turning Red," where a girl turns into a red panda when she feels sexual urges during puberty. They argue the movie sends toxic messages like embracing sexuality too young, selling sexualized photos of yourself, and lying to parents. It could even be seen as promoting OnlyFans or sex work to minors. They compare to positive coming-of-age stories that handle themes of adolescence better.Some key points:* Panda is clearly meant to symbolize emerging sexuality* Sells panda pics to afford concert tickets* Lies to parents under guise of "mathletes club"* Ultimately rejects family wisdom on sexuality* Poor messages for girls on deceit, self-objectification* Better coming-of-age films handle themes with more care* Did creators consider implications of plot points?Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] It is not vague that this movie is about her sexuality and the panda represents her sexuality. So a lot of people got that.And they, they ended, how controversial the movie was at that. If that's what the movie was about, I would think it was a wholesome, good message. . And in one of the core things in the movie is she is breaking from that because she is accepting her sexuality at the end of the movie . She decides to not seal away her panda. She thinks that she needs to embrace her panda and make it a part of her.Everyday life. And this is to represent the traditional Chinese culture's rejection of sexuality and her embracing of sexuality. The core conflict of the plot is she wants to go see this boy band with her friends.But, she cannot afford to see this boy band with herSimone Collins: friends.Malcolm Collins: , so her friends get together and they advertise her panda to her panda to all the other young kids in the [00:01:00] school and the young kids pay to interact with her pandaOnly came to win the game, can't,Malcolm Collins: but.It's not that she has no scruples at all, there is one boy who is a dick, and she doesn't like this boy, . And so they have this boy pay an exorbitant amount to have the Panda be the main attractor at a party that he is hosting. . So it's saying one. Use this new sexuality you have found to pay for your lifestyle, IG only fans or whatever these days. Yes! Yes! If somebody is a jerk Restrict their access,but if they are paying a ton, yeah. Ah, that's where you really need to go all out with the pandaWould you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. So we are going to do an interesting video today because I really liked our Barbie video. Anyone who hasn't seen our video of Barbie being the most based movie ever made? [00:02:00] I genuinely believe that. It is an incredible movie. An insanely based movie. Like the point that Ken learned specifically, like, and I think it was an intentionally based movie, that Ken specifically learned about the patriarchy from a high school bookstore.They could have made it anything. They could have made it a regular bookstore. They could have made it TV. They chose to make it like what a conservative conspiracy theorist would make it. Like, why did they do that? But watch that if you want to see that. We're going to now talk about another video because people have been like, Oh, you should talk about this one.You should talk about this one. I'm going to talk about the show Turning Red, that time where Disney accidentally made a movie promoting Epstein like behavior. I'm going to have to keep finding euphemisms for what we're talking about here.Simone Collins: And a movie that genuinely terrifies our sons when they don't They don't flinch at Starship Troopers, Jurassic Park.Malcolm Collins: They ran out of the room at Turning Red.Simone Collins: Yeah, we were watching it again last night and our son [00:03:00] Octavian was like, I can't, I can't watch! And he runs out of the room. Because you know what? Female puberty is terrifying. Genuinely.Malcolm Collins: Genuinely. Few things that are scarier. So before we go further, I need to make a confession, Turning Red, if you haven't seen it, if you watched a bunch of people being like, oh, this is a woke movie or whatever, you shouldn't watch it because woke ism, and I don't watch movies because of woke ism, it's woke as hell.But it is a greatSimone Collins: movie. And let's just, for those who don't have a watching it but maybe still want to watch this, the gist of it is it's about a girl who hits puberty and happens to turn into a giant raccoon. When she feels sexual urges,Malcolm Collins: basically. Well, a red panda, which is technically a raccoon.Okay, yeah, a red,Simone Collins: fine, a red panda. Yes, a red panda. IMalcolm Collins: love that you mentioned the actual species name, because a lot of people don't know that red pandas are actually a subspecies of raccoon, but anyway, continue. Yeah. It's not [00:04:00] a tanuki, by the way. It's a red panda. But anyway. Yes.Simone Collins: So yeah, tanukis are super different.Come on. So, basically whenever she, she becomes emotionally aroused, but also sexually aroused. She, she turns into this panda. It turns out it's this hereditary family trait that she sort of her, her answer, her female ancestral line has supernaturally inherited. That it has, you know, great power, but with great power comes great responsibility and her traditional Chinese parents especially her traditional Chinese mother decides to be very, very protective of this young girl as she hits puberty and becomes a panda.But this young girl. With the help of her friends figures out a way to master it sufficiently to get a little bit more leeway from her mother, continue going to school, do after, after school activities.Malcolm Collins: You don't need to give the whole plot away. We're going to do that in our discussion. Okay.Okay. Plot describing here. But one thing I wanted to start with, which I think is really important, it's a [00:05:00] lot of people have this innate disgust or negative reaction to woke media. Okay. Okay. Okay. Where they see woke media and they think it woke media is toxic messages and they think nothing good can come from it.And I really take a different perspective than this. I actually think a lot of woke media can be both fantastic and have good messages now. Turning red, I think it's fantastic from an entertainment and setting perspective. For example, like it, it takes place in the 90s, like late 90s. If you grew up in the late 90s, it was such great nostalgia for me.The songs they have from boy bands in it, which are a major focus of the show, are just perfect. I almost wish there was a genre of like this style of boy band music that I could just go listen to tons and tons of songs of. Yeah, they'reSimone Collins: very cash in the 90s. But like boy band songs made for the movie.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, and they're great. They're really good renditions. Very [00:06:00] catchy. I could watch them over and over again, but it's not just turning red. It's like another show, for example. What's a few others that I absolutely love that are woke. The She Ra rework. Oh, I thought it was fantastic. Which is funny because.This is one of the shows that was constantly complained about by one of my favorite YouTube channels, which is clownfish TV, which does like takedowns of like woke comic book culture and comic book translations and stuff like that. And they hated the She Ra rework.Simone Collins: Oh, they did, didn't they? They eviscerated it.Malcolm Collins: She Ra. So She Ra is actually fantastic. I, I, I think the rework of She Ra is fantastic. I love the way they framed it.I love the pacing of it. I pretty much love it through to the end.I'm going to be honest, I even love the, the rework of the character design. A lot of people were complaining because some of the artists for the show before it launched were like, oh, we are going to de sexualize She Ra. We are going [00:07:00] to make an iteration of She Ra that's going to make men mad because it's going to be such an unsexy version of She Ra.And then they have, like, multiple lesbian makeout scenes throughout the show. It is way more sexually charged than the original. , as you can see from these images right here, , to show you how far the romance goes in the two shows, and how sexualized the characters are drawn in the two shows, with the more modern rework being much more sexual.Simone Collins: Why doesn't the woke stuff get to you when it got to them? Ugh.Malcolm Collins: Because there are woke, terrible shows like the new Star Wars and stuff like that. Where they make it woke and soulless and it just feels corporate.Simone Collins: And the next one's going to be so awful.Did you hear the interview with the director who was like, I love making men uncomfortable?Malcolm Collins: Oh, that's the director of the nextSimone Collins: one. Yeah. The next one.Malcolm Collins: It's going to be terrible. It's going to be terrible. It's going to be terrible. These are people without any [00:08:00] talent who are another show that is often considered extremely woke, that I actually think one has good messages, and otherwise a pretty entertaining show, if you take out the filler, is Steven Universe.Steven Universe is fantastic. I'm sorry. Like anyone who says like the songs in it are great and I'm going to post what I can of songs hereCan't you see that my relationship is stable? I can see you hate the way we intermingle. But I think you're just mad cause you're single . Everything they care about is what I am. I am their fury. I am their patience. I am their conversationMalcolm Collins: because I think like theDeep down, I know That I'm just a human But I know that I can draw my sword and fightMalcolm Collins: Do It For Her song is fantastic.With my short existence Good I can make a difference Yes, excellent I can be there for him I can be his knightMalcolm Collins: You actually started crying the first time I played that song for you [00:09:00] because you felt it was so personally relevant for you.Deep down, you know, you weren't built for fighting. But that doesn't mean you're not. Prepare to try What they don't know Is your real advantage When you live for someone You're prepared to dieMalcolm Collins: The Stronger Together song in the show. And we might do another episode on this.They treat this alien species, instead of marrying somebody or having a relationship with somebody, they combine into a single entity. And I think that that's very much like the way I think about our relationship.And that they show how, like, you can have toxic iterations of this entity,If I had someone to fuse with, I'd Huh? Come here, brat! Aw, don't fly off so soon. Lapis! Lapis, listen. Fuse with me. [00:10:00] What?Come on, just say yes. Lapis, don't do it.Huh? What?What are you doing? Now you're my prisoner, and I'm never letting you go! Lepus!Yikes. They are really bad for each other. I can't stop thinking about being fused as Malachite. How I used all my strength to hold her down in the ocean. How I was always battling against Jasper to keep her bound to me. But it's not like that anymore. You don't have to be with Jasper.That's [00:11:00] not it. I miss her. What? We were fused for so long. But she's terrible. I'm terrible. I did horrible things.. I thought I was a brute, but you You're a monster. Ilet's be Malachite again. Why would you want that? I was terrible to you. I liked taking everything out on you. I needed to, I I hated you. It was bad.It'll be better this time. I've changed. You've changed meMalcolm Collins: or you can have some individuals that try to form these really giant entities, but it causes some problems where, like, multiple of them combine. Everything like that. To me, it's a very good metaphor for relationships, and it does a lot to teach kids about positive and non positive relationships.Well, of course, biasing it towards same sex relationships, because that's what they're trying to push. But, because they're doing it through aliens[00:12:00] I don't think they have a real same sex relationship on the show. Like, humans have relationships on the show, but none of them are same sex. So what's funny is because it's aliens and these aliens don't really have gender in the way that we have gender, they're all females, they don't actually promote same sex relationships in, I think, the way that they think they're promoting same sex relationships.That hadn't occurredSimone Collins: to me, but you're totally right. That's really weird.Malcolm Collins: Another thing about the show that's really interesting is a lot of the fans hate the show because they don't like the Rose reveal. Users who are watching this aren't gonna care about this, but it is, if you know about the insider politics on this, it turns out that one of the main characters was basically manipulating all the characters and to an extent the audience through gaslighting them about her being a good person.Literally, she was always basically a selfish and manipulative person. This is so horrible. wouldn't have done this, you know, or everything like that. And I'm like, no, the show just did such a good job of showing you what a female gaslighting you and manipulating you into thinking that she was someone other than what she was, was [00:13:00] like that when the.And as soon as the reveal happened, you couldn't accept that this is the experience that many men have gone through. And many women have gone through over and over and over and over and over again throughout human history and throughout our society today. And so you just chose that it was bad writing when actually I think it was very good writing of what a manipulative, self centered, narcissistic person is like.Good grief.Actually, the show has a kind of pronatalist message to it at least insofar as pronatalism is defined against life extensionism as the goal of intergenerational improvement, in that this narcissistic character is So narcissistic and so self centered and so completely irredeemable as an individual that she can only redeem herself through her death and the creation of a new person who is her son, who is a redeeming character.And, [00:14:00] and because she's an alien and because they can't reproduce in the way that humans reproduce, when she reproduces as a human, what happens is she ends up reforming as herself as a son. And just to give you an idea of like, how bad of a person she is. She, for example, has a friend, who was made to keep her happy, who she leaves for millennium to rot on a planet because she gets bored of her, but lies to her and tells her that they're playing like a hide and seek gameI actually think the reason the fanbase took so much umbrage to this particular twist and began to sour on the show in general is they misunderstood what the show was about. One of the core themes of the show, which I really liked because I thought it was interesting and fresh, is what female cruelty looks like.So, often in shows today, the big bad is a male, or is cruel in a masculine, sort of [00:15:00] sadistic way, instead of in the, often, the way you are more likely to see in females, which is the narcissistic, self centered way, and the destructive relationship way. Here in the garden, let's play a game, I'll show you how it's done. Here in the garden, stand very still, this'll be So much fun. And then she smiled. That's what I'm after. The smile in her eyes. The sound of her laughter. HappyStanding alone As thousands of years go by Everly wondering, night after night Is this how it works? Am I doing it right? Something, finally news, about how the story [00:16:00] ends. Isn't that lovely?Isn't that cool? And isn't that cruel? And aren't I a fool to have Happily listenedSimone Collins: Let's get on to turning red,Malcolm Collins: turning red. Yeah. Well, we got to fill our runtime, you know, Simone, anyway, turning red, fantastic show in terms of just like the plot arc, the, the animation, everything like that. Although it's California bean mouse style, if you're familiar with that, but anyway I'm going to talk about how it actually is this.So in the show, Simone is right. They repeatedly set up that her turning into a panda is an analogy for her puberty. Yep. This is very well established in the show and not just her puberty, but her sexuality. So what you learn is that the previous women in her family have learned to seal what is the analogy of their sexuality independent, right?And then become good wives or good moms or whatever, right? Like just normal, [00:17:00] good people, female roles in society by sealing their sexuality was independent and having it no longer control them.Sorry, but what you also learn is that she, so, so this is the way it starts, right? You know, she's beginning to go through puberty and it's very clear that it's a purity. There's a number of period jokes, like her mom showing up at her school was like a tampon or something and waving it outside the window, like, obviously mortifying to her.You know, so there's a number of like, there, this is not vague. This is not our interpretation that the panda is supposed to represent when her sexuality into puberty. And keep in mind, sexuality is a very important part of this movie. And the way the, the core way it's represented is their desire to go see a boy band that they have regular sexual fantasies about, and one of the early scenes is of her, like.Drawing this boy band that she has like smooching them and stuff like that. Like, obviously they PG ify it, but it is not vague.Okay, his shoulders are [00:18:00] kinda nice. His eyes are Fine.Simone Collins: Isn't that what triggers her first conversion into giant red raccoon? Yes.Malcolm Collins: It is not vague that this movie is about her sexuality and the panda represents her sexuality. So a lot of people got that.And they, they ended, how controversial the movie was at that. Can you believe there's a Disney movie about periods? If that's what the movie was about, I would think it was a wholesome, good message. Yeah, or it'd beSimone Collins: kind ofMalcolm Collins: boring. That's not what happens in the movie. That's not the end of the representation of her sexuality.No, inSimone Collins: fact, it's, it's, it's like the, I almost find it kind of annoying. Cause I'm like, you know, it would be really nice if there were like a fun, playful movie [00:19:00] about female puberty. But this is only about one aspect of puberty, female puberty. And it's not even like, I would say the most common aspect.Malcolm Collins: So hold on, hold on, which is loss of emotional control, which they haven't talked about, but also horniness.But hold on, I got to go.Simone Collins: No, Malcolm, sorry. It's, it's a lot more than that. Like law, like for most. For many young women, okay, for me, fine, but like many young women, it has nothing to do with discovering sexuality. It has everything to do with periods, and pain, and being gross, and having pimples all over your face, and being depressed and hating your body.And, like, basically the only thing that happens to the female lead in this movie, Is she, her body changes? Yes, but in a way that as we will discuss further in just a second, people actually really find quite appealing. So her body is different, but it's as if she only just like grew giant tits. And that's what femaleMalcolm Collins: puberty is.Like the South Park episode, the baby's boobs episode. But anyway, hold on, I've got to go further with this, because this is actually So if [00:20:00] you take the plot assumption, which is, which is very accurate, the panda represents her sexuality. The rest of her family and traditional Chinese culture rejects female sexuality.And in one of the core things in the movie is she is breaking from that because she is accepting her sexuality at the end of the movie. And this is important to know at the beginning here. She decides to not seal away her panda. She thinks that she needs to embrace her panda and make it a part of her.Everyday life. And this is to represent the traditional Chinese culture's rejection of sexuality and her embracing of sexuality. But then, when you take this in mind and you look at the other things that happen in the plot, it gets really, really disgusting. So let's talk about the plot here. So the core conflict of the plot is she wants to go see this boy band with her friends.But, she cannot [00:21:00] afford to see this boy band with herSimone Collins: friends. Well, and this is after she attempted to get her parents to convince, like, well, convince her parents that it was okay, very professionally and very openly and honestly, to say, hey, mom and dad, can I go to this concert? They first said no. So, then she decided she, with her friends, was going to defy all their parents and they were going to somehow get the money themselves and sneakMalcolm Collins: out and see it.Yes, so so it starts with I'm gonna define my parents and do this thing related to my sexuality that they don't want me to do Which is very clearly this boy band thing. So how do you think she gets the money to do this? So she First is she has learned that all of the young girls at the school all the young boys at the schools who are sharing pics of her as a panda Pictures of her in panda form, i.e. her sexuality, have a strong desire to engage, to rub the soft fur, to hug, to take pictures with, [00:22:00] to share as a status symbol within their local high school, all. Her sexuality, so her friends get together and they advertise her panda to her panda to all the other young kids in the school and the young kids pay to interact with her panda, but.It's not that she has no scruples at all, there is one boy who is a dick, and she doesn't like this boy, and so they don't let this boy pay to interact with the panda, but then they realize that they are short for the money to go with. So. So. To this concert. And so they have this boy pay an exorbitant amount to have the Panda be the main attractor at a party that he is hosting.And he gets special access to this Panda. So it's saying one. Use this new sexuality you have found to pay for your lifestyle, [00:23:00] IG only fans or whatever these days. Yes! Yes! This is shared through the internet, right? If somebody is a jerk or you disagree with them ideologically, Restrict their access, as long as they're not paying a ton.But if they are paying a ton, yeah. Ah, that's where you really need to go all out with the panda. And her parents and her family are the core thing that is preventing her from selling herself to this boy, right? But she sneaks out late at night when nobody's paying attention because they all think she is a good girl.Simone Collins: Oh yeah, like, because in, in the, the after school time that she is doing this. activity, you know, selling pictures and time with classmates. Is the panda. She tells her parents believe that she and her friends are, have formed a mathletes club. And are doing math. SoMalcolm Collins: they have an elaborate system for hiding that she's selling her Panda, which her parents don't think is appropriate for anyone to even see, which of course, [00:24:00] that's the point of the analogy.But why does she sell it? Why is that how she makes the money? Why did Disney not realize what the image they were pushing with this was? Why do they not realize that selling panda pics is a problem when pandas are a representative of going through. For her sexual awakening and her embrace of her sexual awakening, but it gets worse and all that.It is so much worse, like every aspect of this movie is so internally depraved. It is a gas at me. So Simone, you were pointing out when the movie happened, she found a way to control the panda, right? Yeah,Simone Collins: and what's interesting, I didn't pick this up the first time we watched it, was that the way that she controls her panda isn't by Like what you would normally think of like meditating or thinking about her core values.It's, it's about [00:25:00] thinking about her social network and friends which is very, well, the approach is very actually female puberty. Right. Cause I mean, that's, that's what you're like hyper driven to focus on when you were a teenager is your peers.Malcolm Collins: Yes, it's social approval. It's all of her friends saying that you are okay the way you are and I appreciate that and she lies to her parents about this as well.She says to her parents that they are what she's using to control these, these outbreaks, but it's really social approval, which again, I think is actually a pretty good metaphor for puberty. But also maybe not a great message for young girls to, to push that another really interesting thing is over all within this and you, you, you keep seeing this, is that women in this movie lack emotional control.That is a core aspect of women. Women are, one, abusive to other women, like this is seen through her mother's interaction with her.Simone Collins: Or the fact that her friends pimp her out.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, for money. [00:26:00] She doesn't pay for her ticket. Sorry, I should make this clear. It's not that her friends have some other means of paying for this like their families.And it's just that her, because her family has rejected her, needs to pimp or sell to us to pay for her tickets. She has to pay for the tickets of every single one of her friends and her friends are pressuring her into selling herself so that they can buy tickets to the boy band.Simone Collins: Right. So her friends are toxic in that way.Her mother is way overprotective. I mean, her mother arguably is one of the reasons why she's doing all this in the first place when she pitched the idea of just going to the boy band concert to her parents. Originally her father was like, why not let her go? Like, this seems fine. This is a very well reasoned argument, you know, it's music, whatever.And her mother wasMalcolm Collins: basically abusive to the father. Like she scolded him. She was cruel, completely unnecessarily. The father throughout this is a paragon of what I would say fatherly masculinity is [00:27:00] like actually a very good masculine role model for people who are in this world of child masculinity, which is Andrew Tate masculinity, which is not the masculinity of a man who's in a married long term relationship.He is the rock of the family.Simone Collins: Which is interesting because if you're not paying attention, you just assume that he's the hapless father trope. Of just the like, well, I don't know that I'm just here. I'm just the dad. Like, don't mind me. You know, it's like that common trope, right? Where like the dad's kind of just like shoved off to the side.Whereas like in the end, he models the most responsible, empathetic, kind, and reasonable behavior.Malcolm Collins: Right. Well, and part of me wonders is why did a progressive write a man in this way in a world where like only women matter, only women have special abilities. This is, there's actually this scene that like really got me when it was talking about the beginning of how the panda came about.Right. And it said that all the men in the local community had died. Fighting to protect the community [00:28:00] and after that it was a mom and her daughters and she needed to find out how to protect her daughters and so then she started praying and then she got the panda powers and I'm like, why didn't she get the panda powers before all the men in the community died?Did every like, is that how disposable men are in your viewpoint that you just let? In this fake story that you made up, and you could have framed it any way you want. She could have saved her entire community. She could have had male and female children. No. She only had female children and all the men had already died trying to protect her before she decided to pray for these panda powers.And then she used them just to protect the daughters, right? Like, there is a deep level of misandry. Throughout the entire movie, men's lives don't matter, but even within this level of misandry, and I think you see this was in misandric communities, this man is still something that they dream of and wish existed and pine for.And [00:29:00] it's really sort of sad to see this representation, but also see even within their world, he is treated with such consistent and constant disrespect by his wife. The daughter clearly respects him, but the wife just has no respect for him. And they see this as just or ac I, I, I don't know, but it is, it is weird that they think that they are portraying a message where women are good.If anything, for a man watching this, this is why you should never get into a relationship. Women won't view your lives as mattering. They won't care that you died protecting the family. And that If you're a man, you'll just constantly be berated by your wife for being reasonable and trying to do what is, in every instance, the best thing for his daughter.Simone Collins: Also, maybe the film creators were just giving fair warning, you know? Nipping it at the bud. You will not be respected in your relationship. Don't bother.Actually, now that I think about it, Steven Universe is the same way. , Greg Universe, [00:30:00] Steven's dad in the show, is by far the most mentally stable and responsible human being who, in the, in the entire show. , which is really shocking, and, and, and what he is put through by all of the women in the show is really interesting as well.He, for example, , is made to be a single father he is forced to, it's implied heavily or maybe outright stated, that he has to pay for the living, arrangements, , and all of the stuff that all of the Crystal Gems are using.So he has to get a job They live separately from him, with his son, , and he has to pay for their lifestyle, and this entire time, he is nothing but just a great and, , decent human being.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But just throughout it, it's an interesting and twisted message. Sell your body, you know, of course, right? Like that's how you should lie to your parents.Sell your body. All social validation [00:31:00] comes from your, your network. And if you are selling your body, just make sure to not sell it for cheap if you're selling it to someone you hate or ideologically disagree with. That's where you really need to get those big bucks, make it rain. I got to do a little video scene in the song where they have the girl making it rain.Only came to win the game, can't you got it. I wanted it. I went for itMalcolm Collins: And If you are lying to your parents, the best way to do it is to pretend like you're doing something like mathletes or something like that. The way she gets her parents on board with the mathletes is saying that she doesn't have a diverse enoughSimone Collins: what's the word? That just getting into college on academics will not get her in.She needs to have extracurriculars as well to be rounded out.Malcolm Collins: Be manipulative. Be a snake. Yeah. And it's, it's not for a good thing. It's not like she's trying to save a family member. She's trying to see a boy band that she's horny for. Yeah. As one review said, it's one of the horniest movies I've ever seen.I won't say it's as horny as Baldur's Gate 3. [00:32:00] I said Baldur's Gate 3 was good. I actually take that back. Baldur's Gate 3, when I was playing it, it was just too aggressively horny, which is why I love Rogue Trader so much. The the Warhammer 40K game that I'm. I've been playing more now, but I, I stopped recently cause it gets kind of bad after Act 3.Too bad. But, sorry, I, I am a video game, anime, everything like that nerd. What are other woke shows that are actually surprisingly good? The, the reboot ofVoltron.Malcolm Collins: Is fantastic. For people who haven't seen that, it's on Netflix, it's great. It's woke, somebody's like gay in it, somebody's a girl and he's not in the original, it is great.What other woke things? Any other oppressively woke things that we really like?I totally forgot Owl House, which is fantastic. Sometimes someone gets so brainwashed they think the reason people hate woke media is they hate the groups that woke [00:33:00] media uses to deliver its indoctrination. This would be like if a wife found a bunch of lesbian porn on her husband's computer and got mad at him for it, and his takeaway was, Wow, my wife really hates lesbians. No, she does not hate lesbians. She hates the way you chose to use lesbians. People who say they hate the woke media really have a problem with just the quote unquote woke media. Not race swaps, overwhelming minority casting, or even underage lesbian relationships. With the three examples I am thinking of here that I have never seen chastisedwithin my online circles, being Into the Spider Verse was Miles Morales, Black Panther, or Owl House. Now you might say, Nuh uh, I can find an example of someone complaining about it. And like, sure, it's the internet, of course you can. I hang out in these types of online spaces, where people complain about woke shows, and I can guarantee you that if somebody started b******g about Into the Spider Verse, they're going to get their ass handed to them by the majority of the community.Side note before we go further, Owl House is an amazing show. [00:34:00] Yes, it has an underage lesbian relationship in it as a major plot point, but that is not in some effort to include seditious agenda. It is just because the individuals creating the show are so immersed in that culture, I do not think they could authentically write anything else.Which is a shame, because to my understanding, the studio, Disney, ended up shutting down the show early as a result. Even though I saw no significant blowback against it online when contrasted with things like the Castle in Kennedy projects Which are the bad soulless Advertisements for the urban monoculture kind of woke that people actually hate which keep getting greenlitIf you think the majority of people who complain about wokeness in media actually have any animosity towards minorities or the LGBT community, you have either been manipulated or simply refused to actually engage with these groups as human beings. There is a reason the urban monoculture makes a point of shunning anyone who is caught publicly talking to the quote unquote enemy.Because if they did, people might actually realize the groups that they are dehumanizing as deplorable rednecks are real humans, whose base [00:35:00] is often more socially and economically vulnerable than the other base, and who have real grievances, and most importantly, whose actual demands are sensible in measure.They hide this from you by only showing you the most egregious of what that group is saying and then shunning anyone who is seen talking to that group. So long as they can find one extra naughty tweet the person made. Which of course you're gonna find was pretty much anyone in this group because they do not engage online like they have Gestapo thought police living over their shoulders.To use an analogy we've used before, to think of those complaining about wokeness being inserted into media to spread the urban monoculture as having an actual beef with minorities or the LGBT community is a bit like a Gazan thinking Israelis have an actual beef with people in hospitals. If you don't get what I mean here, Think about the quote tied to the new Star Wars being produced.I love to make men uncomfortable with my work. Now this shows that she wants to make the work actively antagonistic to quote unquote men. By which of course she means [00:36:00] men who have a right leaning perspective. Now, if she decides to Put a ticket in it and make her lame and gay! Any diverse woman in it, make her gay! But Mrs. Kennedy, Bambi's a baby deer! F**k baby deer, put a chick in it, make her gay! Linguine and clam sauce. Uh, excuse me, I believe I asked you to put a chick in this and make her gay. Uh, yes, the chef was a little confused what you meant by that.It means put a chick in the linguine and make her f*****g gay! It's lame!Men within thatdemographic group are going to come off as sounding like they are mad at gay people when nothing of the sort is true.They are mad that somebody used gay people in an attempt to hurt them through meddling with a work that they personally identified with and that meant a lot to their personal self narrative. Maybe because it was important to them growing up or something like that.Simone Collins: I mean, I think a lot of media has become woke and [00:37:00] depending on what it is, like just woke in terms of like how it's cast and the types of roles and gravity falls woke. I don't think so. But like, I think how, how we define woke is it like sort of becomes overtly.Like it, it breaks the fourth wall enough where you like lose your suspension of disbelief because the, the woke is being shoved so vigorously down your throat that you'relike,Malcolm Collins: wait, I mean, this has ruined some recent project. A great example of this is one of my friends, Aaron Estevez anyway, so he was the show runner, the guy who created Avatar the Last Airbender. Great guy, really interesting. He was in the initial class when I was accepted into Stanford, but I delayed my acceptance for a few years, but I hung out with him and then I went to see him at Riot because he went to work for them for a while.For clarification, I haven't talked to him in years, especially since I started doing anything that was remotely controversial, so don't anyone, like, try to pull that connection there. Um, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Really great guy. Anyway, so he He then created a new show that just absolutely destroyed me. I [00:38:00] hated it. You watched it with me. It was terrible. It was, this world was like magic and dragons and stuff like that, but the thing that killed it is they did what I call race explosion, which is they had.Like, these mystical worlds, right, but, like, people of different ethnic groups were, like, exploded throughout them. So you would have, like, a medieval kingdom where, like, you'd have white people and black people and Asian people, and I was like, oh, how, how did this happen? How are they still distinct ethnicities if they don't have racism and they're all living amongst each other? It's this constant questioning that's going in my mind, right?Okay, here's how you solve it. You could say that because the world is magic, people are, regardless of their parents ethnicity, born into one of a few predefined ethnic groups. The problem with this is then their ethnicity doesn't have any real value within the world, and you are essentially erasing minority groups.Yeah, so it's not a great answer, but it could at [00:39:00] least plausibly allow this to happen. Also, you would have to arbitrarily choose which ethnic groups people can be born within. I guess they would be born at a rate that mirrors the rate of that ethnicity within a city like San Francisco. So this would allow for mixed race people to also be born in this world.I don't know. Clearly, I'm overthinking it. But I'm trying to figure out how you could have a world that for Thousands of years could have no racism and different races living alongside each other and yet still have a bunch of unique Ethnic groups that mirror those of a major u. s city right nowMalcolm Collins: Whereas I think his first work, Avatar the Last Airbender, did this really, really effectively. Yeah. Where yeah, there are different essence groups and even essence groups that are not often addressed in our society today, like, you know, Inuit people and stuff like that are really prominently featured in it.And then you have the Chinese group, and you have the Japanese group, and you have the Tibetan group. Like, those are the three groups. Tibetan, Japanese, Chinese. Anyway, so, you know, not at all like a white supporting show or [00:40:00] anything like that. Fantastic, because these groups are separate. They have unique cultures.I learned to understand them, and where these groups do mix, I understand how they've mixed, and how they've mixed intergenerationally. And it creates this extended lore that is interesting to me. This is the way you be woke efficaciously. You focus on ethnic groups that people haven't spent a lot of time focusing on, and you explain how a world where they are the dominant groups interacts with each other.Like it's almost sort of sci fi, right? Like it's taking a hypothesis. What if the world was divided into Chinese, Japanese, Inuit, and Tibetan? And these different groups had different powers that were associated with them, and they had to learn how to engage with each other. And accurately, racistly, I would almost say, the Japanese turned out to be the genocidal maniacs.And they tried to take over the world. No, really, what happens when the Japanese attack? Their country even looks like Japan. I can't get over this, right? But then in this other world, it's like racial [00:41:00] Explosion! It's like, that's boring. And you see this recently, and this is another thing I want to rail against, is the random ethnic casting in historical dramas that people think is okay.I don't like it. And I think it lowers Ethnic contributions to historical context. A great example, Catherine, the great, great show. It's on Hulu where they do like a modern funny rendition of Catholic, the great, but they do like a multi ethnic casting because they're like, well, we'll be, you know, we'll have a random like Indian and African.Cass in this historic context where they wouldn't have been, but here's where it really, I think, undermines the role of different ethnic groups is Catherine the Great actually interacted with real Indians, real Africans,Simone Collins: real people. So you have, you have trouble when, like, it's a, it's based in a real historical period where the nature of different racial and ethnic groups interacting was meaningful and very interesting.[00:42:00]Yeah,Malcolm Collins: they could have had meaningful scenes where an Indian person comes to court and they are engaging with this, or an African person comes to court, which really happened during Catherine's reign, and this is actually something where they would have these individuals come on to stage in the show, like an Indian person, or somebody of one of these Yeah.for Russian ethnic groups that is really quite distinct from the Russian main ethnic group. But I wasn't able to tell that these characters were meaningful or that their culture was meaningful because they had shotgunned random ethnicities into the core of her court. And so they were not able to, I highlight how these, these, these ethnic interactions were actually interesting and meaningful and highlight people who, if I was an Indian and I was watching this, I would have been like, Oh, this is how Indians engaged was and interacted with the, the, the cast from the great court.But instead I'm seeing an Indian actor and I'm like, obviously this person historically wasn't Indian. [00:43:00] I don't know. That reallySimone Collins: bothers me. Well, I just ignore it. And I, I mean, if like the, that show was meant to be a comedy, so I watched it for comedy and costumes And same with shows like Bridgerton that have this like really, really diverse cast and just like, whatever, like this is, this is about romance in the case of Bridgerton, this is about comedy in the case of, it's called the great, right?So like, whatever, I'm just not, I'm not going to worry about it, but yeah, I do, I do think that the takeaway though,Malcolm Collins: with this erasure of these actual communities.Simone Collins: Yeah, but that's what the urban monoculture is all about. The urban monoculture wants, as you say diversity in victims, but not in, in culture.So that, that wouldn't be aMalcolm Collins: problem. It erases diversity of victims. It erases the Indian minorities that were within the Russian empire and needed to petition to the Russian government. Right. No, but thatSimone Collins: they don't care about historicity. They care about. of humorous show. [00:44:00] They're trying to highlight that, oh, fancy people can be of all backgrounds because that's how we work in our society now.And that's it. Like they're, they're not thinking about historical accuracy and the move that the show wasn't historically accurate. It wasn't supposed to be historically accurate. It was supposed to be funny. And it had some genuinely very funny moments, a little too cringe for us, but like genuinely funny.Malcolm Collins: So I thought it was genuinely funny. I wouldn't even say cringe. It was good. The Great is great. Yeah. It'sSimone Collins: a good show. There youMalcolm Collins: go. But I would just say like a movie that she made that was a full movie that was also pretty good.Simone Collins: Oh. No, you're thinking about the No, you're It's, it's not obviously about Catherine the Great.It's about one of the No,Malcolm Collins: not Catherine the Great. The person who made Catherine the Great. She also made a movie that was a historic movie. And when I introduced Catherine the Great to you, I was like, You should check out this show that's like this movie you watched. And I think it was about like Queen Elizabeth and like a gay lover or something.OrSimone Collins: But we have to wrap up. So any final thoughts on turning red?[00:45:00]Malcolm Collins: Just a great show from an entertainment perspective. Not necessarily something I would show my kids all the way through because I think it has a bad message for young women. And it's interesting to me where like people end up in sorting messages into shows like that.This could have gotten greenlit that nobody said, wait, is the plot here that they're selling their bodies for sex? Like is, is that. Actually the plot, like did nobody that nobody thought through, they were so impressed that it was a plot that included female coming of age and puberty and periods that they didn't think to question the implications of the rest of the plot.Yeah,Simone Collins: which is amazing. Or maybe there is just some subtle campaign to get girls on OnlyFans earlier and earlier and earlier. So they can make money and become empowered. Don't you understand? Right!Malcolm Collins: So that they can pay for concert tickets.Simone Collins: Yeah, obviously.Malcolm Collins: Obviously.Simone Collins: Anyway, Malcolm, I love you so mu [00:46:00] yeah. I love you.Malcolm Collins: I love you too. We're gonna get some kids. I'm sorry.Simone Collins: I'll go with you. Let's go down together. You'reMalcolm Collins: so lovely.Simone Collins: We'll walk through the snow hand in hand.Oh no! It'sMalcolm Collins: going to be an Olympic!Simone Collins: I'm looking forward to it. Let's do it.Malcolm is the best, and I love him, Malcolm is so pretty, and so cool,Malcolm Collins: Malcolm makes every moment special. AndSimone Collins: we all love him. Don't be cruel. Don't you understandMalcolm Collins: that Malcolm's the best? WhySimone Collins: don't you all watch his YouTube channel? Don'tMalcolm Collins: be a loser and hit subscribe. Because Malcolm isSimone Collins: really,Malcolm Collins: really great.I need to put that at the end, don't I? I need to have some of you singing for the air. Can you do one of your songs? No, we're going toSimone Collins: go back to where we were. So they eviscerated She Ra. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone explain their system for New Year's resolutions using categories tied to biology (health/family), career (income streams), and mission (purpose/impact). They track past goals in a spreadsheet, highlight achievements, and set 1, 5, 10 year timelines. They share real examples like scheduling health scans, working on awareness campaigns, and Simone running for office. The key is choosing projects with upside potential where you can make an outsized impact over time.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Well, we put them in a spreadsheet and we, at the end of the year, highlight in green, orange, or red, the parts of each goal that we've either achieved or kind of achieved or not at all achieved. So it's really helpful to go back in time and sort of see where you are.Shooting a little too high or going a little too easy on yourself. So we've, we'veMalcolm Collins: done very well in the biology category this year, and we've done very well in the mission category this year, last year,Simone Collins: last year, last year, and then we did abysmally in the career category,Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. I am very excited. So a lot of people would be surprised. In the book, we said that we'd plan to have Future Day on New Year's Eve. Like, why haven't we done it? Or you see more Future Day stuff. It's because we actually decided to, this is the first year we're doing a full test run of this, you know, with all the decorations and [00:01:00] everything, and the kids being old enough to remember it, to push it back into later in January.Making a wholeSimone Collins: month thing. I mean, like Christmas. Basically, it's a whole month thing. You know, you get the decorations for a whole month or if not more, right? If this is our most important and favorite holiday, then it deserves some time.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So we wanted to give it a bit more time, but I think talking more about traditional new year's type things, traditional new year's resolutions and just sort of the way that we personally keep track of if we are where we want to be in life, because I think it's.And it is highly efficacious, and it's something that I was taught to do from a young age. And I think that you developed a very similar system completely in parallel to me. And it's played a large part in us being able to get to where we are in life.Simone Collins: Yeah, no, we've both been very systematic.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we'll also go over our own New Year's resolutions this year, while checking in on where we were last year.[00:02:00]So, the key to doing this, the key to handling New Year's resolutions, is to divide them into categories. And these categories are tied to well, I could just go through the three big categories we have of resolutions, which helps us think, you know, in a one year time frame, a five year time frame in a 10 year time frame where we want to be with each of these issues.Okay, 1 is what we call biology. This category is tied to our biological success. So this is health, this is relationships, and this is children. So the biology category, if you are in high school, for example, is likely going to be learning to date. Learning to interact with other people in a way that's going to be useful to you when you are looking for a spouse.And, and some level of health, but, like, you really don't need to go [00:03:00] overboard with the health aspect of this when you are young, so long as you aren't, like, addicted to something.Simone Collins: I don't know. Like when I was young, obviously I was starving myself to the point of like, Oh, she's probably going to die.So like my early biological goals and my spreadsheet, which I can see, cause I've been keeping track of this in a spreadsheet we're like, you know, maintain this healthy weight range. Please don't die. That kind of thing. And so there's, you know, it could be like if you have, you know, are trying, like you're a wrestler and you're trying to get into certain like weight classes or, you know, you're trying to be able to lift a certain amount of weight.Those are all very common. And I think this is among the most like mainstream of goals to have biological goals. Like I want to weigh this amount. I want to be able to run a marathon. I want to be able to play with my kids without being in pain. That kind of thing.Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind, a key thing about your biological goals is every biological goal that you have should have some level of utility and not be a vanity goal.So, when it comes to something like weight ranges, this can be very useful [00:04:00] for partner attraction, and this can be very useful for Long term health, you know, being able to achieve other goals. This is less true when it comes to something like, I want to work out more or something like that. Right?Like there is a level of exercise.Simone Collins: That's not like super measurable, right? So it's not perfect either. Well,Malcolm Collins: it is to some extent, but like, like the, the, the, the level to which a person is. working out. For example, there is some level of muscle, which is of utility in terms of attracting the partner, but it is a fairly low amount.Like as soon as you get above a fairly low threshold, at that point, you're really only getting an advantage with people with a specific fetish around this. Or at least a, a discernible advantage when compared to other tasks, which move you further towards your actual life goals,Simone Collins: weightlifting or any other exercise for.Health and longevity, like there are diminishing marginal returns and sometimes even growing liabilities after certain levels of excess.Malcolm Collins: But it also helps you with ideas like I want to have sex with this many [00:05:00] people. Like if you're a young person, you might think that could be a goal within this category, and that is likely not going to be of significant utility to you in finding a partner and may even decrease your possibility of securing a good partner.So everything you do as a youth in terms of this, this category of the goal should be in terms of, of, of training and approving, improving your quality on the marriage market and improving your ability to navigate the market of long term partners. So that's how we look at that. Now do you want to go over our goals this past year around health?Simone Collins: Sure.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, we'll go too deep, but I can, I can give you some examples here. So we had a kid, you know, we're be trying for another kid soon. But other ways you can, you can organize these goals is I want to get this many embryos extracted by this date. Yeah. LikeSimone Collins: definitely our past goals have been like bank this many embryos while we're this age that we can have the number of kids that we want to be able to have this year though.It's not just that it's, I mean, obviously it's [00:06:00] like have our fourth child. You know, safely and, you know, successfully, which involves investing and, you know, not doing unhealthy stuff right now and then investing in a newborn properly, but we're also planning on, we're turning to getting CT scans every other year we work with the company Ezra.They are great. We know the founder and they basically. Do so much more than like your typical general practitioner is going to doMalcolm Collins: to do this company. If you're listening to this half heartedly, pay attention to this part. It could save your life. Yeah,Simone Collins: actually we said, we know friends who've gotten CT scans for other purposes.And we're fortunate enough that the technician looking at like whatever was, you know, the primary issue, they got that prescribed and they were like, Oh, noticed. You know, weird blotch here. You should get this biopsy and then they end up in cancer treatment and they end up cancer free because it was detected really early.So the reason why people take these [00:07:00] preemptive and not covered by insurance, typically CT scans is what Ezra does, for example, is normally you get like a CT scan. The technician or doctor is only really going to look at like the one area they're supposed to look at you know, just to make sure, you know, they know what's going on and diagnose or prescribe whatever around that thing.What the Ezra team does is they get your CT scan, they do a detailed analysis, and then they tell you. all about what they see. And you know, they'll tell you innocuous stuff and they'll also tell you serious stuff. So, when they did my last one, they could tell that I was congested that day. They could tell that I just had egg retrieval procedure because they could see the like sort of ruptured like, I don't know the right word, like egg sacs, like around my ovaries.So like, I mean, the level of detail there, we don't tell them any of this, so they're looking literally at everything,Malcolm Collins: you know, inch range. So the most, yeah, the most common thing you're gonna get coming out of an Ezra scan. If you, if, if you're [00:08:00] lucky and you don't have any issue. Although say the luck of catching early stage cancer is extreme.Yeah. Catching early stage cancer is literally the difference between life and death for a lot of people. 100%. You go to an Ezra scan. One of the most common things is, and this has happened to because we suggest my brother and his wife did it and they did it as well and this happened to them, is they'll be like, Oh, you probably have a weird pain in your neck when you do this sometimes or something like that.And they'll say this like, Oh, you probably have a weird pain that occasionally happens here. And I'll be like, I've had that pain my entire life. Now I know exactly why. Now the most important thing about Ezra, because you've likely been hearing all this and are like, I can't afford this. Ezra scans are around 1, 500 if I remember correctly.Simone Collins: Yeah, I can double check that.Malcolm Collins: So, for, like, the base level scan, it's like 1500 dollars and the clinics for them exist in most major US cities. So, we are increasingly moving to a world where so much of our health care needs to be taken ourselves, like going to doctors. For us, [00:09:00] it has basically become pointless since AI has come out.We almost always get better advice from AI than we do from a doctor, and doctors are really just used to order tests and prescriptions at this point. If you are doing this sort of likeSimone Collins: Sorry, it's not a, it's not a CT scan. I mean, you can get a CT MRI. but an MRI because you don't want to do too much CT.They say it's a five minute low dose CT scan, but still like you don't want to do that. So it's actually 1950 for the full body CT scan. It does not include your lungs. So you have toMalcolm Collins: pay MRI scan, or you can choosing the words againSimone Collins: for a full body MRI. And then for the full body. MRI and CT scan that includes your lungs.It's 2, 500. So this is very, it's very expensive. But you can alsoMalcolm Collins: pay. You're talking like 1, 900 or something like that. And you're doing this once every five years or something. Especially when you're younger. ISimone Collins: mean, they encourage like, I mean, I want to do it once every year for both of us, once we hit 40.Or maybe 50, depending on where we are financially, because. You know, my [00:10:00] mom died of cancer and it was detected so late, that's why she died of it, you know, had she had access to something like this, it would have been found so early, it would have been taken care of, not an issue, you know, like.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so, so this is a, if you, if you got nothing from this, today's episode, do check out Ezra, have it on your, your radar if you're young, it's something to do once and then you may not need to do it again for another decade, but if you are older.It can make sense to invest in doing this more frequently. And when you talk about this cost, you know, Simone, you're looking at something and you're like, this is 1, 900. It's like, that's a lot. But the difference in terms of cost of medical care, when you look at how much medical care costs in this country is going to be astounding catching something early versus catching it late.I might evenSimone Collins: have a discount code link. If I do Malcolm, can I send it to you? And you can put it in the comments. Absolutely. Yeah. 10 percent off or something. They also have a couple's package. So I think the couple's package is an even deeper discount. So if you're married. Get that. And if [00:11:00] not, I think I have a discount link.Malcolm Collins: yOu know, you can always ask the founder. We know him and we're promoting him on an episode.Simone Collins: Yeah, no, I at least have a referral link for 150 off and I can ask him if he can give more. So yeah, we'll find out because like anything that takes money on this. All right.We did manage to wrangle you guys a discount code from him. , you can get 200 off with the discount code, , BASED, and that's all capitals, so B A S E D, , and then the letters 200, so 2 0 0. So it's B A S E D 2 0 0, and that should get you 200 off, which is a pretty decent discount.Malcolm Collins: So now that we're done promoting another product that we think has value.Sorry for like that, you know, we don't do ads, but if we can save somebody's life, who's one of our watchers, you know, that's a nice thing to do. Yeah.Simone Collins: No, seriously, we've introduced friends to this and they've been like, then they're telling everyone about it. Because it's, yeah. [00:12:00] And we also like have in our biological goal for this year to start doing that whole.Peter Tia thing where you get detailed blood work and then you start sort of adjusting your diet lifestyle and maybe supplement regimen based on that. Because I just, I've been so frustrated by doctors and general practitioners recently were like, if they're a specialist, obviously, like if you're being treated by, you know, an oncologist for a very specific thing, like, yes, they knew, they really know what they're doing.When I go into negativity section, you know, the people who are doing that work are just. stellar, you know, but then I'll hear from like a random nurse or a physician's assistant, you know, like, Oh, you know, I heard blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Oh, where did you hear that? Like, I'd love to look up a study.And they're like, nah, I heard it on this Facebook group for moms. And I'm like, Oh, you're treating me. You were just, you're just dozing with medicine. Oh my God. And, and just like missing really key things and. That you and I have found so many more [00:13:00] solutions through like use of chat GPT Than actual like doctor visitsMalcolm Collins: and this brings me to another lifesaver That might be a lifesaver to one of our audience members.So I I will mention it if any of you deal with addiction to alcohol look up the sinclair method it is it can be an absolute lifesaver. You don't need to quit alcohol To, to go off alcohol with it to go off like extreme amounts of alcohol which makes it very different from other mechanisms of quitting.And it, it is very, very, it's effective in 80 percent of people. Basically, it's, it appears to be effective in everyone. Who is addicted for purely biological reasons, as opposed to there's some sort of externality or lifestyle reason for the addictionSimone Collins: covering. We're not doctors. We're not giving medical advice.We're not givingMalcolm Collins: medical advices. And this method is next to illegal in the United States.Simone Collins: Yeah. Why is that? So, because naltrexone, the medication that accompanies it is known for being a little bit hard on the liver. And of [00:14:00] course, It was really at risk of having, you know, a liver that doesn't need any more stress.Well, alcoholics, right? You know, so doctors in the U. S. are typically like, well, I'm not going to give you medication. That is going to put your liver under more strain if you're already having trouble with drinking, which is like ridiculous because, okay, well, so they're going to drink themselves to death.They're like, you know,Malcolm Collins: yeah. And it also can work with things like porn addictions and stuff like that. If that's a major problem that you're dealing with the only type of addiction I know it really doesn't seem to work for is nicotine addictions. Because the pathway is a little different. For nicotine addictions.And it doesn't work on that pathway as well. Yeah.Simone Collins: ButMalcolm Collins: hypothetically, this may be a true thing.Simone Collins: What's the, what's the Amazon documentary? There's on Amazon prime. There's one little pill. Yeah. Check that out. Don't listen to us. Just watch that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So let's go to the next category of things that we focus on every year.This category is career. [00:15:00] Which you know, when you're younger, these are things like your grades this is school. This is getting into a good university when you're our age, it's about setting up income streams, but also about managing your investment portfolio. Everything tied to having a stable source of income and, and expanding that source of income.So this is just 100 percent like your broader. Income goals and this is really important for me to split out into its own category because in this world where everyone's like, well, your passion should be your job or something like that. Well, even if that's true, that is not a reason to stop focusing on your, your finances and stuff like that, as well as investments, debt, economic opportunities, separating this out at the beginning of every year and being like, what economic opportunities are available to me this year.Great. And these can be independent entrepreneurial endeavors. These can be tied to your personal investment portfolio. These can be even how you [00:16:00] engage with your community. Sometimes, you know, are really important. And it, and it matters. Another like branch of this when you have kids is how am I going to manage child care?Because, you know, this becomes a very important financial question. And one of the most important financial questions where it can be. There's many creative solutions to it. And I think the only realistic solutions for large families anymore are the creative solutions. One thing that we forgot to mention in the biology category child education also falls in the biology category for us.By that, what I mean is effective child education, i. e. are your children hitting their developmental milestones? Have you been checking that they're hitting their developmental milestones? Are you aware of what you broadly need to do to educate them and to help them to thrive? Like, or the kidney, yeah.Yeah, so this often involves just checking in, like, have I done the research on this, you know, and taking an inventory of all of these things can be very useful in terms of a, have I done the research recently? You know, where am I? Has time gotten away from me? But unlessSimone Collins: like really special emphasis is needed, we don't make.[00:17:00] Goals into those, like the reasons why we have Ezra scans blood work on, on our goals for this year is that there are things that we are, they're not part of our routine now that these are new additions that we want to make routine. So I would look at it that way. Like, obviously every day of your life, you should be working on these like major aspects that we're discussing in terms of goal categories.But when it comes to setting like New Year's resolutions, like a new goal for the year, it should be, how are you going to augment that particular sphere ofMalcolm Collins: your life? Yeah, and that's the point of resolutions. And that's the point of approaching goal setting like this. It is an opportunity where if you build a ritual around this, you know, as we do with Future Day Era, as some people do with some forms of New Year celebrations then you force yourself to revisit your daily habits because so much of life can just become a, a, A chain of daily habits, and we can remember, oh, I need to [00:18:00] interrupt this habit because it is specifically negative in this way, or I need to interrupt this habit because it has this effect.Right? So we can become overly focused on specific daily habits while forgetting to take inventory of all of the different categories of daily habits that we need to revisit. Which is, which is really important. And it's why we structure things this way as well as to think about where do, where do I end up in five years of I'm keeping these daily habits and with career, this can be really important.You know, if you're working at something like a large company you can predict, are you actually going to get a promotion? If you're doing what you're doing today, every day for the next. Five years. If not, then you may need to rethink, you know, keeping a job, for example, can be a bad habit in a way it can prevent you from looking for other economic opportunities.Simone Collins: Well, yeah, you have to think about how likely you are to be laid off layoffs of even very high qualified. Like, you know, you would think high value people are more common today than ever, it seemsMalcolm Collins: [00:19:00] so. Yeah. And with the career pathway, we always sort of divide our career in, I think, into three categories.One is sort of the investment and investment opportunity category which we treat pretty uniquely because sometimes we will use investments to secure the second category, which is stable long term income. And this can be surprising to people, stable long term income. They're like, what do you mean by that?Well, sometimes if you do, for example, an early stage venture capital investment in somebody that venture capital investment isn't just to ensure that you know, the, the, the actual capital I have in their company expands but it is also to open the door in terms of getting a job at that company if, if you know, should ever hits the fan for us.And we, we do this a lot with individuals where I will make an investment in something they're working on. Both in order to gain some equity, but also to keep the door open a bit in case I need a career path of air or introductions there. So that's, that's 1 [00:20:00] thing to think about in terms of how you make investments.This can also be relevant. So, so in, in terms of like child rearing or something like that, you know, in terms of investing in setting up your own school or setting up your own daycare as a way to. Ultimately lower the overall cost of childcare or investing in helping somebody else set that up. Now the second category is, is, is sort of stable income streams.These are going to be, you know, your office job or other terms of stable income streams. And I do believe that a person should always have at least one stable income stream for family units. And then the final one is moonshots and moonshots are entrepreneurial ventures or other things that could have a huge outsize impact.And I think when you're dealing with a couple you should have your stable thing and then some sort of outside thing operating or, or being attempted at all times. And then if you were going to Create a final category that work for some people and we do this sometime. I would call them hustles.So these are short term opportunities. Like, 1 area where we're looking at potentially [00:21:00] getting involved this year is helping investing in a friend and helping with sort of the online part of this for him buying used cars and then doing them up like van life cars and flipping them. Because, you know, interesting economic opportunity right now.And, and, yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's how I would handle it. Anything else you talk about in terms of the, the career side of things?Simone Collins: Well, because it has to do with stable income, just, and you mentioned investment savings can also be a part of that, which is also a really common form of new year's resolution.Malcolm Collins: So, and insurance, I'd say the important part of this to revisit when you go through this savingsSimone Collins: insurance, like maxing out tax deductible savings accounts, that kind of thing. Definitely. If it's not part of your existing habits, that Something you might want to add and then the next category, probably the nextMalcolm Collins: category is potentially the most important one.And this is mission. This is what, how will my life matter? Like what, like, am I living in a way that is [00:22:00] efficacious and will have whatever sort of impact I value. So if you go back to like our pragmatist guide to life series the very first book that we wrote, you know, we take a very disinterested.We're like, you know, you get to choose why you exist as an individual. You know, now we have more firm beliefs about this. But if we're just even going back to this sort of broad, very, very open idea around this, right, if you have chosen why you exist, like, if you have chosen why it matters to continue existing into tomorrow, then you have some reason for being.And this reason for being should be a big part of what you're doing every year. I'd say it should be about a third of what you're doing every year. Now, for some people, they're blessed enough to be able to loop that into income streams for them. We have never taken that pathway. I've always thought that that's really dangerous to do and it can lead to perversion of a person's mission where when their mission Also becomes their source of income.Then, you know, whether it's donors or other sorts of funders begins to corrupt and [00:23:00] pervert an individual's mission. And you can get much more, you know, audience capture as they call it. Right? But not just audience capture, but all sorts of like, and then you begin to convince yourself that whatever you need to do for your economic.Situation is what you actually believe. And then it begins to really corrupt your internal ideology. Like when outside capital is corrupting individuals like that. It'sSimone Collins: like a really big bugaboo of ours that like many people are like, Oh, I want to start a nonprofit. And we're like, Oh, you know, like how much are you raising and what are you raising for?They're like, Oh, you know, just enough to like cover my salary. So it's like, Oh, so, so you want. You want someone to pay for you to do this thing that you care about. But you're gonna have to be focused entirely on getting people to pay you to do that again when the money runs out. And then you're going to become focused on that and not on actually solving the problem that you care about.It's becauseMalcolm Collins: raising money is actually pretty hard. It is, it is easier to have a, a, I would say a side entrepreneurial venture that makes money than it is to go out and beg for money. AndSimone Collins: then just [00:24:00] donate to your own.Malcolm Collins: It's just a different mindset around this. Not that we, you know, wouldn't benefit from donations and we don't have donations in our nonprofit, but we, for example, to give an idea of how much we care about our mission.This was actually recorded in the telegraph piece on us. Because they looked at our finances to confirm this or. 45 percent of our yearly income goes to our nonprofit or at least that year it did. So we, we put a lot of our personal money into our philanthropic, I guess you could call it, I call it mission based.I don't like philanthropy because philanthropy is often used for personal vanity whereas we believe, you know, we have a reason to exist in something that gives our lives purpose that they wouldn't have if we were not spending. a huge chunk of our internal effort on these goals. And you guys, this channel, right here, that you are watching, you know, the reason you're getting an episode every weekday of this is because that is how important this mission is to us, reaching this community is to us.And, and, but it's the same, [00:25:00] you know, it's not just this. You know, we're also working on the school really hard. It's really coming together. Anybody who wants to play any sort of help in that you know, something that we could really use on the school is people who have domain expertise to review those parts of the skill tree.Although it's mostly firmed up at this point, so you wouldn't have as much impact as you would have before. The other thing that we're working on is Improving the channels quality. You might have noticed that the video quality. I think it's hopefully going to get a bit better. It turned out it wasn't the cameras problem.It was the computers problem. So we switched out computers. So we're, we're always working. Like, where can we improve this? The other area is press. So we do a ton of press outreach. 1 of the things I'm trying to commit to this year is to do more op eds. You know, we've done some op eds before. I think Wall Street, I can't remember where we did an op ed.Post. I mean, we're going to do one for anyway. Yeah. So we do, we do op eds and stuff. So I want to do more of that. I also want to try to get some sort of feature links thing done on us this past year. We spent about half the year trying to get a documentary made about us. Not us, like we were in [00:26:00] contracts with a documentary team that was pitching us to various studios.They had some bites, but they ran into issues. And so we're looking at potentially switching out the team that we're working on. Basically,Simone Collins: the more coverage we can get. For demographic collapse and pronatalism. And also like demographic collapse and for natalism in a context that we don't think is toxic is really, really, really important to us because so many of the other solutions, like we keep saying, or just like, oh, so let's just either like insert super impractical solution.It's not going to work here or like, let's remove people's reproductive rights or let's just, you know, stop educating women and take away their rights. It's like, it just. The solutions that are otherwise being posed are terrible. And we really, really, really want to contribute to like people's understanding of the problem and solutions that work.So that is another really big goal. Yeah. Like our two really big mission driven goals are. Raise awareness about demographical apps and realistic [00:27:00] solutions to demographical apps. And get the school live in incrementalMalcolm Collins: bits. Building a realistic alternative to the public education system. And then we have the final big project of the year, which is you running for office.Which is for us, you know, a large part of it is about understanding how the process really works which will allow us to more competently interact with it in the future, because it is something that we're going to have to be able to manipulate and push in specific directions to achieve our goals around demographic diversity.Collapse and around the educational system.Simone Collins: Yeah, like our odds of winning in the district we're in are actually pretty low because it leans pretty democratic and I'm running as a Republican, but we'll learn so much that we can then scale to other people's campaigns or maybe be running for office someday.Malcolm Collins: I think, well, I think that we could go either way. It really depends on what's happening on the, on the top ticket. I think it's, it's, it's almost out of our control. It's, it's but we'll, we'll put the effort in because everybody knows we always go overboard [00:28:00] whenever we're doing something like people who have gone to the skill tree I've made for the school.They're like, whoa, this is so much more in depth and so much larger than I had any expectation of what you were creating. Like, this is actually an outline of like. Okay. All human knowledge, period. And I'm like, yes, that was my goal. A big web of all human knowledge that can help our kids improve. So this is another area where, you know, we're helping our kids improve, but also hopefully making a really high quality education system accessible to people at a dramatically lower cost than you would see otherwise.So if you don't know, like, in terms of a mission, if you like, are like, I don't know why I'm alive, right? Like. Read the pragmatist guide to life. It really doesn't try to push you in any one direction. If you look at us, you know, we have some crazy ideas about things. It doesn't include any of that. Except that, you know, you should likely structure your life around whatever you think has value.But I think that that's something that would be pretty obvious to most people. So it can help you there. If you're like, I know what [00:29:00] has value in life, but I don't know how I can contribute it, then I would suggest some blue sky thinking, particularly with somebody who you trust. So this means, you know, sit down.And think what are the areas where I could contribute the most to the difference I want to see in the world with an understanding that the way that you apply yourself was in these areas has arbitrage by that what I mean is even if you think like environmentalism is a big issue in the environment is a big issue.Everyone's doing that. Like, in fact I say if you think like 90 percent the world's problem in the future is the environment, 10 percent the world's problem in the future is pronatalism if you look at the amount of funding and the amount of, of, of competent manpower going into pronatalism versus going into the environment you would probably still be better off going into pronatalism as a cause area.And people have come to us. They're like, I value perinatalism. Like, what can I do? I'm like, literally, it's wide open. Like, 1 person was like a student. I was like, you can create a network of student groups in this area. Like, try to create a group on your local college campus and then spread that [00:30:00] network out.No, one's doing that right now. We, we help people that you didn't decide to do it because a lot of people, when they say, like, I want to do something in a space, what they really mean is, I don't know. They just want to be validated or something. They don't mean I actually want to take on some big task. But that's really what, what unfortunately is needed with a lot of these things is actually taking on these tests.But what's beneficial, especially if you're a male, but, but I think to a lesser extent, if you're a female is when you're younger, you're like, well, I don't want to be focusing on this stuff right now when I need to be out there finding a wife, when I need to be out there getting a girlfriend. It is the things that you believe have value in this world that you dedicate yourself to and you have passion for that will secure you a high quality partner.Yeah, totally. I'd say just always, when I found a really high quality woman who was interested in me you know, they are. The women who just like want to go out there and sleep with people and then end up who they're marrying because it was somebody they wanted to sleep with are generally not the type of women who you want to end up [00:31:00] marrying.The women who are like, you are doing something that I personally find inspirational and I want to be a part of, and I want to be a part of your life because of the things that you're working on and because of the passion you have for them. Those are the women who become really, really great wives.And it's the same with men. You know, if you're a woman and you're working on something that has a lot of passion, however, I often see the opposite here, which is really interesting. And it's just a phenomenon you often see where, when I see high potentiality women who don't have a partner yet and I'm like, well, you know, you could go out there and work on all these sorts of cause areas they're often like, but.I'm going to be honest here. I really just want to find a guy who inspires me was whatever he's working on. So I can dedicate myself to that. And a lot of women feel this way. And I think that a lot of guys when they're out there and they're using like these red pill tactics or whatever they are.Missing this. They are entirely missing that there's this giant pool of girls out there desperate for a guy that just inspires them so that they can put all of this effort that they had toward wanting to do something meaningful with [00:32:00] their lives towards bolstering that other person's mission, but no one has come to them selling them a mission.Guys have come to them selling them their body or selling them, I don't know, nagging or something like that, right? Or selling them dominance. When that's not What they're interested in, what they're interested in is a mission that they can help contribute to. And historically, everybody knew that this is how you dated.Like, if you go, if you go historically, that mission was often like their religion or their, their you know, a cultural way of life or something like that. But yeah, it's obvious. Historically speaking, we just forgot about this because a lot of people have been optimizing how they secure long term partners with how they off of off of, Techniques that are effective in securing short term, often sexual partners, because those techniques are easier to test and easier to see in efficacious scenarios because these partners, this is just something that happens much easier, and it's a much lower barrier to succeed in.So that is how we divide up our yearly goals and, and any parting words you would have, Simone?Simone Collins: Well, we also put them in a [00:33:00] spreadsheet and we, at the end of the year, highlight in green, orange, or red, the parts of each goal that we've either achieved or kind of achieved or not at all achieved. So it's really helpful to go back in time and sort of see where you are.Shooting a little too high or going a little too easy on yourself. So we've, we'veMalcolm Collins: done very well in the biology category this year, and we've done very well in the mission category this year, last year,Simone Collins: last year, last year, and then we did abysmally in the career category,Malcolm Collins: which is interesting. So, you know, this helps us think about where we reset things, where we think more about how we can do better in those areas.Simone Collins: Yep. And then I would also add that I, so these are like our shared goals independently and personally, I have also a behavioral goal every year and a lifestyle goal every year. That is just totally for me and not [00:34:00] related to that. You'reMalcolm Collins: talking about that because people don't understand what youSimone Collins: mean by that.Yeah. So behavioral goals is like, well, what is a habit that you want to start? And acting behaviorably behaviorally, like what is. What is something that you do, or a way that you react to things that is not optimal, or what is something you wish you did, or a way that you wish you reactedMalcolm Collins: to things?What's your behavioral goal this year?Simone Collins: My behavioral goal is to focus, instead of on like, things that stress me out on making you and the kids happy. So, like every, every week to do something nice.Malcolm Collins: You're doing a spectacular job. You've got this horrible flu right now. She is barely alive right now and yet she putsSimone Collins: on day 8 of pneumonia fever.And I feel like I'm going to die. Which is not good. But yeah, like so, but I think focusing instead on How can I make you and the kids happy has actually made this an easier period of intense and very painful sickness. [00:35:00] So, I think that's a good goal so far. And then in terms of lifestyle, that's much more like aesthetic and hedonistic like, you know, like one of my lifestyle goals from like a long time ago was like get my own bedroom.Like I just wanted my own bedroom so badly. And I did and another one was like, when we really hated living in Miami was, you know, get our headquarters moved out of Miami to anywhere, anywhere. And we did so, this year it is to get rid of stuff, something every week, to like have something non trivial that I've removed from our house every week, because with three and soon four kids, the amount of accumulation of stuff that we have is deeply disturbing, deeplyMalcolm Collins: disturbing.You, you I love how ordered you are about all this, and I would encourage anyone who's doing this to do it on a 1, 5, and [00:36:00] Lifetime timescale. You can also add a 10 year timescale in there in terms of thinking about how the various projects you're looking at will play out where you were like,Simone Collins: I have like, anticipated goals for the future.I do. Yeah. Like where, you know, like, like, you know, have, have kid five, have, you know, frozen embryo transfer, kid five, have kid five, you know, move like biannual CT scans. To, or sorry, MRIs to annual MRIs all sorts of things like that. Like get colonoscopy screening screenings when we're, when we're older, you know, like, like these are things that we, there are goals that are appropriate for certain times in life.And they are definitely changes in our habits that we should remember to not forget. Cause I think a lot of people like they hit age, like for example, whatever age you hit where you're supposed to start getting an annual colonoscopy and people miss that and then they don't do it and then it becomes a big thing.And yeah, anyway, so yeah, I would say definitely keep a record of all your past goals, but then [00:37:00] like. Outline anticipated future goals. And the really cool thing is if you're like, yeah, in 10 years, like I want to start my own business or I want to be, you know, this kind of person, you know, you can, you can set that as a milestone for that year and then it'll get you thinking like, well then what do I have to achieve?In the years leading up to that to get there and it may help you get more inspiration for your imminent goalsMalcolm Collins: One goal I would love to have for my brother is I'd love his his little app to take off So if anyone is interested you can get it on the chrome web extension store. It's called bun box like bunny box bun box b u n box and it has an ai that Automatically summarizes your emails and can automatically reply to your emails.And it's free and you just need to remember to, after you install the widget, to click it and activate it. And anyway, Simone I've had a fantastic day talking to you.Simone Collins: Love you, Malcolm. Love youMalcolm Collins: too. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone explain why they intentionally court controversy to spread awareness of demographic collapse, even though it can be costly. Controversy acts as "human clickbait" to draw attention, then their genuine wholesomeness converts people to the cause. They share examples of how negativity actually validates ideas to conservative/moderate audiences. Though they lose friends and receive hate, demographic collapse is now mainstream. Using themselves as "meme fodder" pierces bubbles, like how Trump used media bias through controversy. Spreading ideas through hate is effective, but know the personal reputation costs. In the end, saving humanity is worth some family sacrifice.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Now, this issue, because it counters the mainstream narratives around what people should care about, is considered a right wing issue.That's, that's not, I think, necessarily because it's a right wing issue, it's because the left control all centers of power today, so if you are saying anything that challenges the dominant narrative within society, you are considered a far right activist within today's, informational ecosystem. So we're like, okay, we can use this to our advantage. In fact, negativity, the press shows us in a way that's us with conservative and moderate. Audiences, they see skepticism about reasonable causes as validation of those causes, realism, efficacy, and, and grassroots natureWould you like to know more?Simone Collins: You look like you're actually in some kind of equivalent of a man cave, just like sitting there in the darkness. And like, here I am with my candles over there and the, you know, windows and like, there you are. It looks likeMalcolm Collins: it's two different times [00:01:00] a day in our two areas. We're in differentSimone Collins: time zones.Malcolm Collins: But I do like my man caves. You know that. I love the dark.Simone Collins: Yeah, you love the darkness. And like defensible corners, you know? Like, Yes, yes. You gotta knowMalcolm Collins: defensibility is important to me in terms of being comfortable in a room. Yeah, even if we'reSimone Collins: like sitting down at a restaurant, you're gonna want the defensibleMalcolm Collins: seat.Well, you know, that's what so much of feng shui really is. It's just defensibility.Simone Collins: Hmm. AndMalcolm Collins: that's why it feels like it works for people because what they're really sensing is how defensible is the space I'm looking at. I mean, I think a lot of aesthetics fall into this category as well. That is a very interesting take.When people are like, I like this view and it's like, well, what type of views do you like? You know, it's like, well, I like a view where I can see a long way. And there's water, like streams present so it's like, oh, so what you like is a freshwater supply in a highly defensible area where you're on some sort of high ground, [00:02:00] right?And they're like, no, no, no, no, I also like other views, like, I love views of the ocean. It's like, oh, okay. So you love views of an area where you have you know, a lot of food and, and likely you know, so much of human aesthetics and human pre programming, it's just around defensibility and the things that would haveSimone Collins: caused Will I survive here?And Yeah. Yeah, that includes both, will I survive if someone tries to attack me, and also, are there natural resources here that will sustain me? And that's beautiful. Hooray!Malcolm Collins: But we want to talk about something else today, not about human evolution, which is one of our big things!Simone Collins: But instead, we will talk about one of the things that has been most controversial about our general strategy.With our non profit very, very controversial.Malcolm Collins: Which is being intentionally courting controversy. Yeah. Intentionally courting controversy. So why, why do we do this? Why do we intentionally court [00:03:00] controversy? Because a lot of people see this. We've been called, what it was, that Sony documentary on us. It was like, they're human memes or something?Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, like walkingMalcolm Collins: A lot of people just, just for a bit of a background, if you're watching this channel and you're looking at the subscriber count and you're like, you know, I feel like I see these people in the news a lot. Why isn't their subscriber count higher? It's because this channel was dormant when most of our media coverage happened.So obviously if you look at this channel, you'll see stuff from like 15 years ago, right? Simone used this a lot when she was younger. We had a period where we revived it for a bit, but it hadn't been used in like three or four years. Yeah. When we were, you know, whether it was on Piers Morgan or whether it was on Chris Williamson or whether it was, you know, had the front page piece on us and in the Telegraph or the front page piece on us in the National Post or that big viral insider piece or the elite couple breeding to save mankind piece.All of that happened when this channel was dormant. If this channel had been active during that period, we would have caught all of that. And this got us to a stance where we're like, [00:04:00] okay, well, we need to reactivate the channel again so we can catch all of that. But we have had, multiple periods where to an extent for different ends, we needed to court a level of controversy to promote something that was of short term utility to us.The first time we really went viral that a lot of people are familiar with is the Reddit proposal. Which what was the, the old internet magazine that ran it at the most romantic moment of the year? Oh yeah, that was nice. This was Upward? Up?Simone Collins: I don't know, one of the many bankrupt internet magazines out there.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: it was whatever the main one was back then. And, you know, No, the Daily Dot did a piece on us. Mashable did a piece on us. PC Magazine did a piece on us. But this was Anyway, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. This is when we were proposing, and I didn't boast because I know Simone while she doesn't like personally interacting with people or humans in public, she doesn't mind human [00:05:00] attention on the internet.And so that was my I wantedSimone Collins: a grand public display, but I also didn't want to be in public. So you nailed it, Malcolm. But it wasMalcolm Collins: also something that I could use to leverage the launch of our first company, Art Corgi, which went through 500 startups. And, you know, we, we, we, we got VC funding for it. It didn't end up working out, but we didn't ever raise that much for us.So we didn't put too many people out. But that was something where we were like, okay, and that was also in part an experiment for us because we had somebody who had told us before as people know, we go to a bunch of secret society things. And at one, I was like, well, you can intentionally create a viral event.And they go, no, you can't. This person was a marketing expert. They were seen as one of the world experts in marketing. And I was like no, you absolutely can. And they're like, no, you don't understand. I'm one of the world experts in marketing and you're just some idiot kid who's in graduate school right now.Right. And I was like, screw you. I'm going to do it. But there was an element of pride in doing that as well. This is [00:06:00] allSimone Collins: because someone told you you couldn't do a thing.Malcolm Collins: What you don't, you got to learn that with our kids, Simone, don't tell them they can't do things. Okay. Because they will desperately try to do all of those things.But then there's the second thing, which is this second, more recent pronatalist virality that we've had. And I'd point out that literally the human being on earth. With the largest platform, the largest platform of any human on earth, more wealth, more power than probably any human has had in human history, Elon Musk, has been pushing for people caring about birth rates long before we did.Okay? He created almost no sustained buzz around this. People were like, oh, it's weird that he's talking about this and a VC here or there began to care about it, but it did not enter the mainstream narrative. We came at this in where we created a website around this. And we're like so a lot of people don't know how [00:07:00] the website actually came to be.We had this one year where we're like, okay, we are going to blue sky how we can change the world in a positive direction. And what we were looking for was arbitrage areas. So we were looking for areas where. We could do a project where no competent people were working, but that were either like real big and real, like severe human problems or yeah, that was it.And we came up with So weSimone Collins: created our list of like, here are the things that we know are existential threats to humanity. Obviously, Demographical Ops was on there ever since he worked in South Korea. There were a bunch of other things, though, too.Malcolm Collins: There were lots of other things. The other one that was on there was education reform.That no competent person was working in education reform. Oh yeah, where weSimone Collins: didn't find, yeah, anyone else working on it. And thenMalcolm Collins: the final one that didn't end up becoming a big project of ours was the panspermia initiative. So this was, I was like, okay, if you care about, like, nature and the environment, All right.So what [00:08:00] makes nature in the environment good? Like diversity, right? Like it's the diversity of ecology that gives it this intrinsic value. When people are like, I'm mad that species are going extinct there. I mean, there's idiots who are like, I want to freeze all species in their place in the world today, right now.And nothing can ever change or evolve. But for the group, that'sSimone Collins: naturalMalcolm Collins: retarded.Everybody knows you never go full retard. You ain't full retard, man. Never go full retard.Malcolm Collins: Are we allowed to say retarded again? ISimone Collins: don't know. I think, I think, yeah, the hard, the hard R is coming back.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. People who aren't retarded because nobody uses it to mean people with like mental disabilities anymore.No, it just means like who are retarded.We are really trying to understand this. How is it that you boys think referring to gay people as fags in today's world is acceptable? Because we're not referring to gay people. You can be gay and not be a fag. Yeah, a lot of fags aren't gay. [00:09:00] I happen to be gay, boys. Do you think I'm a fag? Do you ride a big loud Harley and go up and down the streets ruining everyone's nice time?No. Then you're not a fag. So what if a guy is gay and rides a Harley? Then he's a gay fag! I mean, is this really this hard? I don't know. This is f*****g ridiculous. Alright, look, you're driving in your car, okay? And you're waiting to make a left at a traffic signal. The light turns yellow, should be your turn to go, but the traffic coming at you just keeps coming.And even when the light turns red, a guy in a BMW runs the red light so you can't make your left turn. What goes through your mind? Fag. Right! But you're not thinking, oh, he's a homosexual. You're thinking, oh, he's an inconsiderate douchebag like a Harley rider. This, this is making insanely good sense to me.Simone Collins: Right. Oh God, there'sMalcolm Collins: So what they actually care about is. Ecological diversity was like, well, how do you long term maximize ecological diversity is you exceed new planets was life, right?Like that would do much more because each new [00:10:00] planet you see was life is an entirely new biome. That's evolving. This is equally rich as Earth's biomes, like almost nothing we do on Earth would be meaningful. In contrast to that, you save one pitiful species, one. Pitiful ecosystem, we've created an entire new biome.And so we looked at the cost of doing this and because you can get little capsules on satellites, you can pay like 50, 000 to get a capsule on a satellite, which is most of the cost of doing it. Then you can use a serial evolution chamber. This is a chamber where you're. Incrementally changing the conditions within the, the chamber to create, you know, a form of bacteria or a form of fungus.It's resistant to like the type of radiation you would see on Mars by slowly changing the amount of radiation that it's facing. Slowly changing the heat variation that it's, that it's exposed to. So I'm just quickly breeding organics. And then you put it in one of these, you send it to one of these planets you can seed them.And then this seeding would eventually lead to, no. What we lead to a whole biome growing there. Now, what would be better? And one of the reasons why I went against doing this is if we had more funding to do this, and the amount that we would [00:11:00] probably be looking at is doing this is we could probably do seeding with gene engineered organisms instead of just serially evolved organisms and through that seed biomes with bacteria, fungus, whatever it is, it turns out to work best that are programmed to create an atmosphere that humans can live within.And if we do it with something that's not programmed to create that, then you're going to get, like, local optimization beforehand and then if you tried to later seed it with something that was optimized around doing that, it wouldn't be successful and that would Put our species back. The thing that to us matters most.I mean, our long term goal is an intergalactic human empire. Whatever becomes of humanity. Not like, you know, again, just like the environment. There's no point in freezing humans in a revolution that somewhat defeats the purpose of what makes humanity great. So. That was the one project that didn't, but we had created pronatalist.org and we were basically like seeding it. We had reached out to a few reporters, but nothing really came of it. And then the piece came of us[00:12:00] because of our embryo selection. And that was actually promoted by one of the companies that we were working with and that got us a platform. And then that platform was picked up by the Insider article.And then that created the initial virality around this. Now that was very useful to us because After that, we, we sort of became the faces of perinatalism and we're like, okay, like, this actually is an existential issue for our species. Let's move forwards in how we address this. And you guys are getting like a way too honest history of how we got into this, but it is useful in terms of understanding so then we begin to do some experimentation around this and how we engaged with reporters.Like, do we edge the reporters with controversy or do we actually try to convince the reporters that this isn't a controversial issue? When we did that, we got a piece on us in the third most read newspaper in Canada, the National Post. It was a front page piece on us. It was very popular.Simone Collins: Demographical apps.And it was a very balanced, very positive on perinatalism. And our advocacyMalcolm Collins: [00:13:00] literally got like seven Twitter followers. Like if you're, if you're measuring like how much people liked this from Twitter,Simone Collins: I don't even know if we got any Twitter followers on that or if anyone really got in. Like the, what, what I'm looking at when I look at, like, is one of our articles here is success.I'm looking at like, is there, are people talking about this online? Is there engagement with the article? Like are people encountering this and actually learning about the problem and discovering that this is an issue and then maybe changing their behavior about it, or maybe they'll change their voting patterns because of this.And yeah, that got me no interaction. And, and then in contrast. The first article about us that kind of framed us as pronatalist that, as Malcolm said, framed us in that way because of previous coverage we got because we worked with the company Genomic Prediction on Polygenic Risk or Selection, which we just we did that press for them or like we did an interview for them.With Bloomberg because we really were excited about their tech. Like that was like, this is [00:14:00] great. We wanted to shout this from the hilltops. No one else is willing to talk about it. So, okay, fine. We will. But yeah, this, so this paywalled insider article. About pronatalism and us that like most people couldn't even access, got tons of engagement and was really like many people's first encounter with the concept of pronatalism, like outside of just religious groups not beingMalcolm Collins: Well it was literally the first public push for pronatalism other than Elon Musk.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. When the thing is like when Elon Musk talks about anything, it could be immigration, it could be prenatalism, it could be cats. Someone is going to cover it because he's like Malcolm said, the most powerful person out there. So like, yeah, again, like what we want to see is can advocates in the space get people talking about it independent of a, a person or independent of what this person has to carry everything.Malcolm Collins: And so what we realized pretty quickly was that the controversial pieces were actually the pieces that were doing well. [00:15:00] Specifically it, and this is our thesis. When we look at the internet today, I mean, I consider myself a terminally on, I am a child of the internet, you know, the Bain speech,Oh, you think darkness is your ally. You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man. By then it was nothing to me but blight.The shadows betray you. Because they belong to me.Malcolm Collins: I was raised. The first generation raised was in these ultra online spaces. I made all of my early friends through the internet. This was in an age where this was considered an insane thing to do, to like, reach out to random people on the internet to make all your friends. [00:16:00] So, I understand this culture, I think much more intuitively and innately than most people was in my generation.And through that, I am able to engage and, and, and direct the currents where I want them to go much, much more easily than the, the mainstream iterations of, of our group. And what I've realized is that, If you unironically say that I support something was in online spaces these days, like if you're on four chan or something where like actual internet culture happens and you're like, I unironically support this, you are a shill.You're just seen as a shill like people, it doesn't matter if you really mean to support it or not. You cannot unironically support a thing within online spaces anymore boring. And, and have that thing go viral or have that thing take off. It just hasn't happened. Yeah. When you look at right-leaning influencers that have taken off in the last.10 years every single conservative or right leaning or even moderate online influencer that has gained prominence in the last half decade to decade has [00:17:00] done so through specifically controversy.You know, you look at Andrew Tate, you look at Jordan Peterson, all of these individuals, it was their controversy, it was their fight with the media that rose them to prominence. Now, this issue, because it counters the mainstream narratives around what people should care about, is considered a right wing issue.That's, that's not, I think, necessarily because it's a right wing issue, it's because the left control all centers of power today, so if you are saying anything that challenges the dominant narrative within society, you are considered a far right activist within today's, informational ecosystem. So we're like, okay, we can use this to our advantage.And we began to push this narrative of us as human clickbait, you know, being as juicy of a story as possible for these individuals who wanted to create these memable, shareable stories. And a lot of people then look at this and they're like, no, That's just people laughing at you, not laughing with you.That's not you, you [00:18:00] know, the know your meme page about the elite couple breeding to save mankind. And it's like, this is just objectively not true. We see this both from our follower count from the people who positively reach out to us about funding things that we're doing to the people like they almost always hear about us from negative articles.In fact, negativity, the press shows us in a way that's us with conservative and moderate. Audiences, they see skepticism about reasonable causes as validation of those causes, realism, efficacy, and, and grassroots nature.Simone Collins: Mean, I will add, I will add just like as a sanity test, if you read something like a clearly negative and against someone article about them, you're probably not going to think that anything positive that you think about them. Was untrue like if there are still some things that you like about them It's not gonna be because someone was writing a puff piece and you fell for it You know, it's because you yourself decided that [00:19:00] despite all these bad things about them There are some things about what they're doing or who they are that you kind of like And that's, that's why, like you, you can't trust anything that's positive because there are so many lies.There's so much inflation, like no one's face is real online. No one's anything is real online anymore. It seems like everything's fake. And so only unflattering and negative stuff. Like again, like if you see an unflattering photo of someone online. That looks bad. You're more likely to be like, oh yeah, that's, that's really them.But like they, they actually look pretty good, you know, but it has to be an unflattering.Malcolm Collins: So for example, so people will think, okay, this works with right wing people, but it doesn't work on converting left leaning people to your ideas. Wrong. So you will get peace. So here's an example of an email we got from someone.Hello. I first discovered the two of you from your quote, meet the elite couples breeding to save mankind in quote article that went viral. I laughed it off at the time, but soon I started to feel miserable for the nihilism and general depressive [00:20:00] nature of the anti natalist. thinking that seems so pervasive everywhere.I remembered your article and started digging into your philosophy a bit more. I've listened to most of your podcast episodes and have read the Pragmatist Guide to Life, and I plan to read more of your books. I really like your approach to life and to the future of humanity. I like that you are hopeful and optimistic about building a better world for your children, and I want to be part of that better world also.And, and this is something that we see all the time, you know, this is not like an isolated type of outreach we get from somebody the idea of genuine, like, just being a genuinely wholesome, positive person, one of the things that I always say that I'm trying to be, that I got from a review of one of our books is that we were like the mirror world, you people know, like the mirror world,Live long and prosper.[00:21:00]Ship! Take I mean, there's an entire galaxy out there for us to conquer, and we are here with these petty inter human fights right now over teeny things like nationality and ethnicity when existential threats likely loom in our future that we're going to need to band together to fight. Fight and to fix or at least those of us humans who still have agency and aren't attempting to drag down our species into a silent death or a violent barbarism mr. Marsh, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? we have to take matters into our own hands.We're trying to turn everyone gay so that there are no future humans. Present day America, number one.Malcolm Collins: From like Star Trek, where like everyone has mustaches and is evil, we try to be like mirror [00:22:00] world, Mr.Rogers, right, like try to be as and, almost oppressively wholesome as possible in the way we approach things, while still constantly edging on controversy. And through that confirmation confluence, the controversy pushes people in, and then they see who we really are, and they're like, Why is no one else I listen to like an actually healthily, happily married couple?Why is no one else I'm listening to like actually optimistic about the future of the world and happy and working to try and create the world a better place instead of running around with a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off and yelling and trying to build random followings? It is, you use, you create, you bait the trap.With the ridiculousness and you reel them in with the wholesomeness. That is the way that we exercise everything. And, and the idea of baiting political [00:23:00] traps was something that I personally really learned from Trump. This wasn't something that I had always seen as a really effective strategy. What he would constantly do is say things that were uniquely controversial.To the media, like the media would see this and be like, how could anyone ever say that? Because they were so leftist, they were so in a bubble that they were brainwashed that they didn't understand that your average citizen hearing this would be like, Oh, of course. And so they then signal boosts those things and through signal boosting them, but with the negative context attached to them they.endeared people to him. A great example of this that I always use is when he was like, well, we don't want to be like those shitty countries in Africa. And the media was like, how dare he say, we don't want to be like shitty countries in Africa. And your average person is like, I mean, but I don't want to, would you attack me if I said that?Does this mean that I'm against you? Does this mean that I'm not part of this cultural group that I thought it was? Does this mean that Trump? Is telling the truth about things, and [00:24:00] this is something that Trump constantly did very effectively in the early days. I I, you know, I'm not like a full Trumpist or anything like that.I definitely have my consternations with this moral character and some of the directions he takes things. I just think he was a pretty good president.Simone Collins: But I do, I do want to point something really important out because basically what we're saying here is like, Oh, just like allow yourself to be made fun of, have, have unflattering stuff about yourself float around online.You know, have, you know, be court controversy, et cetera. And then, and then of course people will just see the truth. And then they'll, they'll disproportionately, you know, come over to your side or like, no, no. So really what this does is. Still tons of people make fun of you. Tons of people still hate you.Tons of people think you're absolute monsters. And then like the few, well, basically we had this earlier philosophy that I think this came out of, which was it's good to be completely transparent about who you are, because if someone is, is going to [00:25:00] like you, then they're going to like you sooner. And if someone was never going to like you anyway, like why would hiding that thing that you knew they wouldn't like?Like you're, you're just prolonging the inevitable. They're never going to be on your side. So basically we're, we're, we're definitely never going to be liked by a lot of people. And now a whole lot more people who didn't know we exist now just don't like us because they were never going to like us. And this has had a genuine cost.There are people who, and I think a lot of people are now, and this is fair because I think a lot of people don't have the same kind of autistic thick skins that we do. Like we just really don't. Care especially about the opinions of people who we think are being completely illogical. So, and that is actuallyMalcolm Collins: really rebut them in email today.She got this really, really bad antinatalist argument and it just angered her so much. Well, it'sSimone Collins: just when, when an argument is that bad, I, I, yeah, I can't help myself, but like, I, I don't care if people are like, Oh, you're evil and, and whatever, and ugly and all the other things people say. I'm like, yeah, sure.[00:26:00] But. There we have, people are very sensitive about their reputations online. A lot of people won't even act like be online or show their face online or be themselves online, like their real names and their real faces because they're so concerned about their reputations. And that means that we have lost a decent number of friends who just don't want to be associated with us, who literally do not want to be seen with us because we are controversial and because they fear.That any association with us is going to tarnish their reputations. They're, they're,Malcolm Collins: they're interested in personal vanity. They're interested in a reputation of as an un a wholesome totally good person who because they see our wholesomeness and they're attracted to us because of that. But when they see that the public, not everyone in the public sees it.They want to utilize, they're like, Oh, I like that aspect of you. Like, I like who you really are as a person, but I don't like how that Could affect my reputation. And I understand this, you know, a lot of people [00:27:00] live for personal vanity. And so of course, if they are living primarily for personal vanity, rather than the betterment of the human species, rather than to save a species that a perilous point in our history they're not going to understand why we do things that lead to, because there's an instinctual human drive to not have the tribe reject you or anything like that, that this can be utilized to slingshot you.You know, it's a bit like. In the current context, that famous Apollo mission where they utilize the moon gravity to slingshot them back to earth because they didn't have enough fuel to get back on their own. We're utilizing that to slingshot us is to them an anathema and against the natural order.And they're like, no, I just care about, you know, and I get it, I get it. And it, and so it has had a cost to us, but I also believe that we are well on track. So this is one thing that's really important. As I pointed out at the start, Elon Musk has been hampering on this issue forever. He has infinitely more power and money than we do, and yet he was unable to pierce the mainstream veil with this.This year, New York [00:28:00] Times did a front page piece on demographic collapse. This is something that when I talked to your average citizen on the street about, they now have an opinion about. We Pierced the mains. We didn't just pierce it. We popped the bubble. Like it is out now. This is part of Trump's reelection campaign.It's like one of his core platforms where he's like, Oh, you men, you're going to have so much sex now because of me because he's going to put it in such prenatalist policies. And this was due to us using. Meme ability to pierce that veil, because that, what is meme ability? It's a viral idea. It's an idea that spreads on its own.When you start spreading this idea, your idiots hear it, they hear the elite couple breeding to save mankind, and they laugh. Ah, ha, ha, ha, let's make memes about this. But then other people are like, wait, What do you mean the elite? That's an absurd thing to say. Who would say that? Why would they say that?And then they look into this and they're like, Oh, they seem weirdly wholesome or they seem like [00:29:00] demographic collapse. When I look at the numbers, it seems like a real issue. Why have I lookedSimone Collins: into this? The important thing is to like, to properly make fun of us. You kind of also have to understand what.We're fighting for which means you kind of have to understand demographical apps, which is why now a lot of people are like, oh, yeah, let's have this conversation. Plus, you know, like, so I think the big takeaways we should share is. One courting controversy, definitely, I mean, and this is a known tactic, like, people have written PR books on how, like, hate spreads faster than love, now that, you know, Vice has gone bankrupt, a lot of people who were previously, like, held to all these non disclosure statements have just decided to break them, and they're like, oh, yeah, Vice would tell me to, like, Send my story to someone who is like clearly opposed to it and have them make fun of it because they knew that the hate Shares would be way more effective at driving clicks than hate Mm hmm.And so so one yes hate is is very effective if you want to raise awareness about something doing so through controversy [00:30:00] through unflattering Angles through all sorts of stuff like that that that is are getting your enemies to cover it You're the enemies of that cause the opposition to cover it is very effective.However, there is a real cost, especially if you're using yourself as the conduit for that. So just keep that in mind, but that, you know, at least this explains why, like we, we get so many more people. Who would never otherwise engage with this idea to engage with the idea of perinatalism and demographic collapse by, by throwing ourselves under the bus.So, that's why. WeMalcolm Collins: started this movement like less than a year after we started this movement. front page piece in the New York Times and a conference being held that we didn't put together on the concept of, of pronatalism, like, like our iteration of pronatalism, not like the religious kind that existed before us and stuff like that.The amount of success I think we've had is undeniable within the public sphere. And it [00:31:00] is, it's, it's working. Like, this could be, if you look at how big a problem demographic collapse is, this could be what saves our frigging species from going extinct. It is worth sacrificing one family on the altar of memeability, especially when that family doesn't mind so much.Simone Collins: Yeah, there you go. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for, you know, walking through hell with me, Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: No, I'm the one who pulled you into this. I'm too autistic to care. I mean, itI am so glad that you have taken the risks you did with me, that you have worked to keep this movement one of positivity, to keep it from going in the ethnocentric direction that we've seen with the European iteration of this movement and I think that we can spread this to something that can really pierce the veil of a lot of people who have had reality and the statistical reality of the world we live in hidden from them by both the academic system It was so funny, we were talking to a reporter [00:32:00] recently.Sorry, I know I gotta go get the kids. But I gotta relay this anecdote. And she was like, I have talked to a lot of demographers, and all of them say it is impossible to predict demography long term. So there's no reason to prepare for any changes. And I was like, All of the leading indicators suggest decline relates of religiosity.I can ask a gen alpha. I can ask Gen C. How many kids do you plan on having? I can, do you plan on having kids at all? All of them are worse numbers than before. And she's like, yeah, but it's what the academics say. And it's like, there's this class. It's just diluted, completely diluted into seeing reality.Anyway, love you to death.Simone Collins: Love you too, gorgeous. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We analyze new stats showing China's births plummeting by 37% in a decade, despite government pleas for more kids. Women don't want "Chad" husbands offering no partnership while still expecting housework and caretaking. Male sexual strategies that incorporate porn personas rather than earning respect backfire in marriage.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone! We are here again with. More shocking stats on how quickly fertility rates are falling in some parts of the world. The latest ones that really got me, and honestly, whenever I look at the Chinese numbers, I'm always just flabbergasted at how bad things are.And I should point out here, just so people are under no illusions here, because there is this popular myth, Chinese fertility rates are falling because of the one child policy. This is a myth. Okay Chinese fertility rates are not, they are falling much faster now than under the one child policy.They are much lower now than they were under the one child policy. They did not fall because of the one child policy. They fell due to a few issues that we are going to be discussing that are actually very similar. Similar to some of the issues that Korea and Japan have with their fertility rates.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: And in a way are tied to being too conservative which is really interesting and goes [00:01:00] back to this Aryababu study that we've mentioned before, which shows that in Europe, the more conservative a country is on average, the lower their fertility rate. While the more conservative a population group was in a country is, the higher their fertility rate, which goes against what a lot of people will assume is, is, is the case.So this shocking statistic that I saw that really got to me and, was that over the past 10 years, so from 2022 back to 2012, , the number of babies born in China per year dropped. from 16 million all the way down to only 10 million over a 10 year period.That is a 37. 5 percent decline. That is stunning and shocking. LikeWow. Wow. But it gets more interesting than this. Like, it's not like China isn't trying to prevent [00:02:00] this decline right now and why this is all relevant is I actually think it's very relevant to the United States and it's very relevant to some of the reproductive strategies men have decided to reactively begin to attempt and I think due to the rise of feminism and an overcorrection for that.And I think That it is these strategies that we see mirrored sort of what happens to the populations that adopt them. We see that in what's going on in China right now, in what's going on in Korea right now. So, Simone, you had read an article. I'd love you to go into this. Yeah,Simone Collins: I mean, what got me thinking about this was I got a Google Alert, We have a demographic collapse Google Alert, of course for an article.On Business Insider India, so totally random, titled Chinese women are fed up with Xi Jinping's attempts to make them have more and more kids. And the article talks about how basically the CCP has had, like they've had, they've made [00:03:00] speeches. They've said, we need to create a new trend of family. And they're trying to create.Matchmaking events and getting, get more people to get married. And she said he wants the Chinese people to quote, actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing to strengthen guidance on young people's view on marriage, childbirth, and family. And then. That the article talks about it basically like Chinese women aren't having it.But Chinese women are pushing back. I can't afford to take care of anything else aside from my parents and work. Molly Chen told the wall street journal. So. There's just basically like women to a great extent are like, they're hearing what the government is saying. They're also like, well aware that their access to reproductive choices being removed.But they're just not. They're not going to comply. I think this is going to be another lying flat issue. And the, the article does note also that there has been a meaningful decline, not just in births, but in registered marriages. [00:04:00] So they fell from 13 million to 2013 to 6. 8 million in 2022,Malcolm Collins: 13 million to 6.8 million. How far apart were those two numbers?Simone Collins: 10 years? So yeah, 2013. 13 million. 2022, 6. 8 million. So, almost falling in half. Like cutting in half. Holy s**t.Malcolm Collins: And I was looking to see with all of China's efforts to try to get their fertility rate up again. I couldn't find this year's statistics because Well, here's the name of an article.China deletes leaked stats showing plunging birth rate for 2023. Cause like how, how bad they do in 2023. Apparently so bad that China is now trying to scrub the internet of how bad they're doing in 2023. I mean We have talked about some things that lead to this in China. Right. One of the things that we've talked about that leads to this in China is just a lack of hope.You know, like why does Israel have a high fertility rate? Despite you know, it's economic prosperity when, when [00:05:00] Israelis are pressuring other Israelis to have kids. It's not so that the, the entrenched power structure of their country can maintain their, their wealth. It's because they believe they're in an existential battle for their survival.When the Chinese CCP government tells your average Chinese, you know, teen go have kids that person is like, what? So you can keep. More power and more money, and my family has no real chance of moving up within our society. No, screw you. There is a, no, no, it's true, and, and that is one thing that's causing this.And another thing that's causing this is a genuine lack of belief that there's hope for the future of the country within China. Which always depresses the country's fertility rate. Another thing that's causing this is the lack of diversity within China. As we've said, you know, the less diversity you have within an area, typically, the lower the fertility rate's going to be.Especially if you have some conflict within these, these diverse populations, because that spikes fertility rates, because it gives people an understanding of this is who I am, this is who they are, and we are in some form of, of hopefully friendly competition. Yeah, you have a team to root for, whatever.Yeah, a [00:06:00] team to root for, right? You know, that's how you get people to go crazy at the sports games and everything. So, okay, all that being the case. There is another area where China is really failing, and where South Korea is really failing, and where Japan is really failing, that weSimone Collins: really need to Well, and arguably the United States and Europe are failing too.Malcolm Collins: Beginning to, yes, not quite as bad. Yeah, no, it's notSimone Collins: nearly as bad, but I We need to go there.Malcolm Collins: It is the conservative attitude with which men are approaching the marriage marketplaces. And when I say conservative attitude, I don't mean conservative, like doing things the way they used to be done. It's conservative in not seating.Any of the rights that men had historically as they are gaining additional privileges that they wouldn't have had in a historic context. So what do we mean by this? As women [00:07:00] have been able to make their own money, have been able to enter the job market. Particularly within countries like China and South Korea, the men are not letting them out of any housework.They are not contributing to childcare. They are putting on this, what in the U. S. I think is defined by this ultra Chad aesthetic that to an extent is pushed by individuals like Andrew Tate and stuff like that. And women, when they go out and they want to date and they see the lifestyle that they're going to have with these people, They're just like, no, f**k it.It's better toSimone Collins: be single. Yeah, why would you, like, voluntarily Become someone's servant for the rest of your life while you still have to work. Well, and while you still have to take care of your parents in China too, like, you know, like screw that. Like I 100 percent I would not, I would not even consider it.Like I haven't picked up anything from a Chinese culture or even Korean culture [00:08:00] around marriage, though. I would say that the Korean couples that you and I know. are like really awesome share of the burden, but they're also very modern and then they work together. Um, you know, that's very rare for Korea.Yeah. Right. They're like the, the only ones we know are like extremely unusual and they're also happy but they're unusual, but I mean, but like, but the, but the typical guy, right. The typical South Korean, the typical Japanese guy, the typical Chinese guy is going to, yeah, just totally not. Like, I, I, I just, I've never seen examples of them being like, yeah, I'll help around the house.Yeah. I mean like in animes, there are examples of these, like this is romanticized, right? Of like the dad really helping out with a ton of stuff, but I haven't seen it inMalcolm Collins: reality. And it's worse than that as well. The deal that you are getting as a woman in these countries is even worse than that. So one thing that's really, really common in these cultures.Is I don't know what word I'd use for it, but whorey. I, when I was working in South Korea was on a number of occasions invited to brothels with [00:09:00] other men. And, and I like, I have a wife and they're like, what does that have to do with anything? They're like, come on, this is like a group bonding exercise.And I never ended up going. It was a gross to me. I'm like, I don't. I don't find and I've mentioned this before. I have a really high aversion to women with a high body count. Like it's, it wasn't even just a loyalty to my wife.Simone Collins: Not even aversion to that. You, you lived in the brothel area because it was cheaper.You don't like, not as it just, you wouldn't want to sleep with. No,Malcolm Collins: no, no, but I mean a sexual aversion, like I find them very unattractive, no matter how like attractive on their face they are, it's just to me a gross idea, even outside of any loyalty I have to my wife. Within the West, you wouldn't do that.At a, at a VC firm you would not like approach people at another VC firm and say like, hey, let's go cheat on our wives. Like, even if people cheat in Silicon Valley, even if there are these sex parties and sex parties exist for people in explicitly open relationships, which is common in Silicon Valley, or they [00:10:00] are seen as sort of like a naughty thing that you shouldn't be doing, not like a formalized part of the culture.And this is so as a woman, you're getting so, so, so little when you marry in these cultures. Really, all you're getting is kids and maybe getting your parents off your back. In fact, that's another really interesting thing was in these cultures, is a huge motivator for marriage and kids is the externality of the parents asking for the grandkids.And That is something that is not as common in the United States, and I actually think it increases our marriage rate. And people might be like, wait, why would not being constantly pressured by your parents to do something increase the rate at which it happens? And the answer is, imagine if your parents, you know, every week were asking you, are you having enough sex?Are you having enough sex? Like, have you had sex yet? You'd probably not have sex for a really long time just out of obstinance to your parents. You know, the stage at which you need to do this is the stage that humans have this [00:11:00] natural, biological instinct to rebel, it just sort of distance themselves from their family and build their own life.I mean, so parents pushing that at that age can cause people to build an additional amount of questioning around this, especially when it's also coming from the government as well. But this also comes to our own country. Right. So many guys are looking at the ways that the marriage market is breaking.And instead of going out there and saying, okay, well, then I need to find these rare women who are still high quality marriageable material. I am just going to act in this way that is totally degrading of all women. And as we've pointed out many times, it is not that this. Act will not get you sexual partners, it will but it will get you the type of sexual partner, the type of woman who would sleep with a guy who she met randomly because he turned her on, which is generally not the type of woman you want to marry.The type of woman you want to [00:12:00] marry, and these women are out there because we talk to them, you know, we see them they are the women who desperately want to get involved in some sort of world changing project, but they want that project to be whatever their husband is interested in, and they're looking for a guy that inspires them.And they're not finding these men anymore. Men who have this huge ambition or level of integrity to make society a better place. And I think this comes because we have forgotten what the actual American Chad was. If you go, and I've been reading a lot of family history recently, a lot of, you know, books about early family members or, or stuff like that, right?Like about what the men were like, you know, going into World War II, what men were like on the frontier, what their lives were like and the way that their wives interacted and thought about them. And these were men that had earned their wives admiration. There are men today who think that the reason, [00:13:00] historically, their ancestors, women, admired their husbands, were because they had to.Because they were forced to by society. It was the rules. And it's not that this never happened. But these were the families of the abusive drunkards who like everybody looked down on, right? Like,Simone Collins: yeah, these were seen as like the low class dysfunctional families or the, the husbands were victims of like literal serial killers who would just find ways to poison them.Which happened,Malcolm Collins: right? What are you talking about? I don'tSimone Collins: understand. I, I'm saying thatMalcolm Collins: like, are you referring to a specific incidentSimone Collins: or? Yeah, well, I'm talking about that female serial killer. I don't remember her name. Do you want me to look her up?Malcolm Collins: I, I, I'm just saying. I'll pull it up and add it in editing.But yeah, no. So, so you, yeah, you would get these, these like really low class men who were like abusive and demanded respect for their wives, but this was seen as a low class thing. Like nobody respected these individuals. [00:14:00] This is something like weird within our generation. This is what people would call like trailer trash or something like that.Right. Actual your, your average. Woman who respected her husband, if you're talking like pre WWII period, American colonial period American frontierist period. This was because the man had earned it, through the enormous hardships he went through, that you as a person living in this era, Cannot like, like they're not going to be foisted upon you.You, you have to seek them out. You have to seek out the trials of making mankind great. And through seeking out those trials, you will attract women. I think a lot of people, when I talk about you know, my early sexual history and stuff like that. One of the things, like, like, just I had enormous sexual success.You know, high school, college, etc. And people are like, how did this, how did this happen? You know, you do not look like I expect, like, the mega Chad guy to look. But I have always had, like, an intense burning [00:15:00] passion to try to fix society. And, and make the world a better place and plans around how to do that.And those were the things that attracted women. Now guys are like, Oh, great. Now, how do I fake that? And the problem is, is that if you fake this in order to get women, it won't work. They won't be interested in you. Like they can see through this immediately. You have to actually find something that's meaningful to you and dedicate your life to it.And, and this also works, you know, if you're dedicating your life to a religious cause or to a, something like that, but It's so funny, you know, people talk about monk mode and stuff these days, right? And, and what they mean when they're talking about this is abstention from things like, you know, whether it's pornography or, or certain types of like fun like video games, stuff like that, right?And they're just gonna work on a project. Whereas often the projects that they dedicate themselves to are self aggrandizing projects. Which. Defeat the whole purpose of all of this, because that is not what attracts women, is [00:16:00] men who are working on self aggrandizing projects. They are attracted to men who are working on projects for the betterment of society, or for the betterment of a cause that that man truly believes in.And that you don't need to go monk mode. What you need to do where you need to be superhuman is in your ambition and your confidence and your ability to play a role in that ambitious goal. And this is what defined the early settlers. You know, when you were, you know, reading these old journals of my family, of the, you know, going out into the West, being in these, these environments where everything was against you, you could die at any moment.Everyone around you was dying all the time. And the amount of mental and moral fortitude each individual had to have. But it led to things like the quote I read before, where he was talking about his mom because my mom always regarded my dad is her personal hero. And that's the thing is men today think that women submitted Out of submission, out of this like instinctual [00:17:00] sexual desire.Oh yeah.Simone Collins: Like it's, it is their nature. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like a, like a, I don't know, a bird flocking into a certain formation. Like, oh, they formed the V because of the streamline and, and like, oh, well the women form submission because it's the, their woman brains, you know, like. OhMalcolm Collins: yeah. Which, which I will say women do do that disproportionately within a sexual context.But you as a guy have to remember the things that turn you on are not the things that affect like what job? Hold on You take or, or, no.Simone Collins: That doesn't change it though. So like, okay, you can be turned on. By someone being dominant. Just like you could be turned on by someone having giant breasts. But guess what?If a woman doesn't have giant breasts, is she going to turn you on?Malcolm Collins: That makes no sense to me, what you just said. A man can be turned on by large boobs, but if a woman doesn't have large boobs, it doesn't turn them on. How does that connect to what you're talking about? It doesn'tSimone Collins: turn on the man. Well, if, if man isn't really dominant, if man isn't dominant in the way that actually makes a woman feel like she could be comfortable [00:18:00] around him and surrender to him completely.Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay, so what you're saying is these men aren't actually dominant. Okay, I disagree with you here. Strongly, I actually disagree with you.Simone Collins: So you think women can be turned on by fakeMalcolm Collins: dominance? No, I think that women, the reason why your average woman is turned on by a certain type of dominance, right?And this is turned on within a sexual context because the women who weren't when their village was raided and all of the men were killed ended up being killed themselves. But this is a completely sexual Thing like this is something that you can do like play in the bedroom or something like that.But it is not that tied to the way they look for long term partners. That is a different category of what we call dominance in society. So, and we'll talk about this and where I argue that within males and females are sort of 2 different sexualities. That I think apply to both genders. Like, the things that turn a guy on in porn are not the things that they would necessarily be most turned on by doing with their wife.[00:19:00] And that is because Historically, you know, humans had two sets of evolutionary pressures on the way that they related to their partners. One set of evolutionary pressures was, if I'm raiding a village, am I making sure to impregnate as many people as possible because I'm raiding the village, right?And women, if I'm in a village that's being raided, am I making sure I'm not putting up too much of a fight and so I actually live? But that sexual optimization is completely different from a this is my approved wife within my community these are my legitimate children within my community and I need to make sure that they are seen as respected and empowered so that I can, you know, intergenerationally move up within status within my community.These are two completely different sets of selective freshers. And we'll do a full video on this, this. Elsewhere in the evidence for it. But the point being is that men recognize accurately that this sort of like [00:20:00] Raider dominance is something that they can use to get women they meet at bars to sleep with them.But the. Women who are interested in this form of dominance and who will submit sexually and be like, I'm interested in you as a stranger to, like, just have sex because of this form of dominance are very, very, very bad marriage candidates. And these are exactly the women who will screw you over.And who will divorce grape you? And the reason that is, is because you are selecting for the type of woman who was the type of woman who would have betrayed her village when it was raided. So of course she betrays you. Of course she goes out and cheats with you when she meets some, you know, dominant acting pool boy or plumber or something like that.Who's coming over and visiting your house. Like. Of course, that is how you selected her. But then there's the other type of woman who's using a completely different sexual strategy, where she is looking for a hero. Which is, yes, dominant to her in one way, but it is not [00:21:00] necessarily a dominance that is like, immediately turning her on.Like, some women are immediately turned on by this, but no, this is a woman who's looking for someone To sort of set up shop, as I say you're not a woman, you don't get to, like, set up shop in somebody else's life if your life is failing. I mean, it's not like he's a hot girl. He can't just bail on his life and set up shop in someone else's.Malcolm Collins: But a lot of women actually honeThemselves as, like, a tool to be a great tool within somebody else's life.As I say, like, within our relationship, one of the ways that we often talked about our relationship early on was is sort of sword and wielder relationship, right, where Simone had worked to hone herself in to the perfect instrument of my will on the world and, and it was through wielding her that my Thank you.I wanted to accomplish was in society was possible, but a blade is not going to be interested in a feckless master who only uses it for his own self aggrandizement. It, it, it, [00:22:00] if, if a human being was that thing, if a human being was this sentient blade, they are, they know what their purpose is, which is to help somebody else make them better.big impact on society, but when a guy's like, oh, blades, I just use those things, right? The blade's like, no, I don't want somebody, I don't want some barbarian I don't want somebody who just uses me to satisfy their own whims. I want somebody who has a righteous mission. And that's, that is what creates the bond and allows the blade to not turn on its wielder.Whereas or, or, or if the wielder chooses a barbarian blade. Like, you don't want a barbarian blade. A barbarian blade gains its power through, through, through being sharpened at its hilt. It cuts both ways. And so in society, you can go out and look, look for a wife like this, and a lot of men are out there, the women who are looking for, sorry, the women who are looking for these righteous men, they are not finding them.[00:23:00] And I am seeing this and I'm even seeing this was men that I talked to, you know, a lot of these men, they say, well, I'm going to wait until I'm like extra wealthy. Then I'm going to go out and find a good wife. But that's not looking for a wife who's helping you make your wealth. That's not looking for a wife who's on this journey together with you.That is saying that once I have this ultra high level of status, I'm going to use it to get a supplicant. And those supplicant wives are really low quality wives the ideal relationship. Yeah and I just keep seeing this from a lot of guys who I think are otherwise like sane and know that they should be going out there and then of course there's like the black pill guys that are just like, there's no women out there that are like this.There's no women out there that won't betray you. And that's just Like, objectively not true. There are lots of women who have been in long term, stable relationships with somebody. It, it, it may be increasingly true if you're older. Like, if you wait to find a wife until, like, your late 20s. Yeah, okay, that might be true.But, you know, I guess in society today, somebody's like, But doesn't everybody [00:24:00] wait to find a wife until their late 20s? Not the smart, good men. Those men are laughing at the women long before that because they understand the game.Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess one, one strategy that could work for men who are older is to get like right on the rebound divorces, like women whose first marriage didn't work out for whatever reason, becauseMalcolm Collins: they, maybe I'd be aiming for widows, widows only for me.Simone Collins: Yeah, I don't know. But I do, I think it's, it's a, it's a two way street. So, I mean, while I am saying. Like guys out there are not delivering something that's worth the hassle for women. Like, why would they bother? Especially like in the U S too, with, with sperm donation. Like, it's just so easy. Like, even if a woman wants to have her own kids, it's super easy to have your own kids as a woman in the U S and be a single mother.I mean, no, it's, it's, it's hard to be a single mother. Right. But like you can do it. And frankly, with a lot of the men out there. It would, [00:25:00] it seems a lot easier to do that and not deal with the baggage of the guy,Malcolm Collins: right? But also, I mean, keep in mind, so I say this as guys, women are human beings too. Like, they want their lives to matter.Very few humans they're at least with any sort of genetic stock that I would be interested in marrying, are going to be genuinely satisfied being a servant to another human. Just to be a servant to another human, human beings who, who gain satisfaction from serving another person, gain it because they believe in that person's mission.Like ultimately they're serving that person's mission, not that person themselves. Whereas a lot of this sort of I'd say over red pilled mindset thinks that you can get a good wife, like an actual, like really high quality woman. To sacrifice her entire life just in service of you and your vanities.And a lot of these missions are just vanities. Like, if it's just a company for a company's sake, that's a personal vanity. If it's your, [00:26:00] you know, honing your body for its own sake, that's a personal vanity. And, and you are not going to get the highest quality of women if you are still focused on individual vanity.And monk mode itself can be a form of vanity if it's not being. Sharpened and focused into some mission.Simone Collins: Totally. I always sort of took monk mode to be like the male equivalent of like, I'm in my spa detox month or whatever. Like we're like, I'm just taking, this is self care. I have no time for friends right now.I'm just going to be watching movies. and eating clean and doing Pilates and like, it's just, yeah. What does that mean for the world? And it, I actually do recall now, like, yeah, you, you didn't try to sell me on yourself on our first date. You sold me on your vision for the world. And what we initially came in aligned on was a vision, not on like.You know, Oh, I thinkMalcolm Collins: I sat you down. I said, I'm looking for a [00:27:00] wife. Here's what I want to do. Like, here's, here's the problems I think the world is facing and how I can resolve.Simone Collins: Yeah. And so I think when nations are looking at demographical apps, it's, we always hammer home this, like it's culture. You have to fix culture.But a big part of that culture is creating young men and women. Who are worth marrying, who are reallyMalcolm Collins: worth marrying and belief in their agency on society. So the problem you have in an environment like China or South Korea is a lot of young men are raised to believe that no matter what they do, they can only be a tool of the system.When you completely castrate and defang young men you create men that women don't want to marry.Simone Collins: But beyond that, I think, you know, in China, frankly, I think a lot of women would get married even to men who don't have visions, even if it just, if they weren't. If they weren't a******s and if they actually pulled their weight and if they brought something to the table.And again, I'm thinking back to like those 1950s, like 1940s [00:28:00] to 1960s guides to life that I'm so obsessed with those little cornet films, instructional videos that they used to show to high school kids. In the dating and relationship videos, a very common theme is like, remember, no one's going to care about you unless you bring your thing to the table.You know, and for women, it's like, here's how to be a good housekeeper. Here's how to manage the family finances. Here's how to fix clothes. Here's how to make sure the family has the right nutrition. You know, here's how to, and then like for men, it's, it's like, here's, you know, here's how to be polite.Here's how to budget well. Here's how to You know, be kind to your wife. Here's how to support your family. And like each person was raised culturally to understand that like you have this burden of responsibility to bring something to your relationship. And right now the perspective is totally flipped.It's well, what about me? What is, what's in it for me? Yeah. What am I getting out of this? And like, no one is thinking, what can I give? What can I give?Malcolm Collins: So often from, from these men, these like total black piled men who are like all negative on relationships. And like, [00:29:00] it's only about divorce, grape. It's only about et cetera.And they're like, what do I, as a man get out of marrying a woman? And it's like the moment, like, like, and when, as soon as somebody says that I'm like, I understand why you were graped. Now I get why you got divorced. Because you're the type of person who would see the world like that because you are the type of person who asks how the other person is benefiting you personally, rather than looking for somebody on a combined mission.And then this is what I'm saying, like, well, how do you know she won't, like, betray you? Because of her, like, instincts, or her womanliness will lead her to betray you, or her self motivation, it's like, bro, like, we're on the same mission, we're on the same quest, there is no reason to betray me so long as I am competently moving towards that quest, there is no temptation for betrayal so long as we are on this mission together her entire life is in service to this mission, like, why would she, like, Betray somebody else who is competently fighting for the same [00:30:00] goal.It's when you structure yourself as somebody who's asking what do I get out of this? Okay, what, what do I get out of this arrangement? That means the people who you're in an arrangement with are thinking the same thing. What do I get out of this? Because that is a way that you have framed the construction of a relationship, which historically was not what relationships were about.You did not get into a relationship thinking, what do I get out of this? And so many men today think that. They're like. What do I get? And then, and then they use it for this weird, like, masculine self validation, where they raise themselves up within their own instincts of what it means to be masculine, through the denigration.Of the women in their lives and their wives. Whereas anything I think that you do to your wife, you should be comfortable having done to your daughter. And if you would not enthusiastically encourage Another man to treat your daughter that way, then you should not be treating your wife that way, because that is the way that your daughters will expect to be treated in their [00:31:00] relationships.And, and I think a lot of people are like, aren't you worried about when your daughters start dating? Not at all, not at, I mean, if they're out there dating and looking for somebody to change the world with, that's great, you know, do whatever you want with my daughter, if you're working effectively together to, to enact some goal and vision you have for the world.But the reason why these guys are afraid of people dating their daughters is they're afraid that people will see their daughters the way that they saw their wives, as sexual conquests that are, that's primary utility is how they augment their own status. And, and that branch of humanity if it doesn't die off, will enter the barbarian classes.As, as, when I talk about the barbarian classes, as people know, we talk about the, the enemies of prenatalism. You have the urban monoculture, which is one of the enemies, but then you have the future problem, which is that most of the high fertility cultural groups these days are technophobic low economically productive.Like that's how they get their fertility rates high by artificially lowering their income. And very, very xenophobic.[00:32:00] And these are the. future enemy of most of the perinatalist cultures because these are not going to be economically or technologically meaningful groups within the human future. And they just hinder us and or a threat to us.The, the humans that will one day populate the galaxy. And, and so when I talk about somebody descending to the, the barbarians, you know, that's, that's, they're the people who will be left on Earth as, as the humans that were technologically engaged and economically productive and populating the stars.There you have it. Anyway, that's why you shouldn't be a Chad. You should be the 1920s, 1910s version of a Chad. Love you to death, Simone.Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: Or the brave heart chat. That's a good one.Simone Collins: Yeah. Brave heart chat that works. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We analyze whether a crypto tied to real estate could become a widespread default currency. Benefits could include transparency and minimizing money extraction by institutions. Risks include incentivizing overdevelopment and mispricing assets. We explore impacts on society, investing prospects, and probability of mainstream adoption.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I hope that this talk has helped listeners who don't understand like what VCs are actually thinking or what's going on in the world of like people who are pricing assets or deploying capital how they think about things.And and how they think about the future because I think this has been a good like educate to give like a broader picture on this. And I think it might be something that I might do, you know, if it does well, or if people like it recurringly just sort of analyze ideas in sort of a critical way that can help the average person understand what's actually going on with all thisWould you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello!It is wonderful to be with you here today. We have a guest today who was actually a fan of the show Chris Lehman, who reached out. You know, a very typical profile of a lot of the fans when we meet them, which is smart entrepreneur, you know, Harvard grad, like, working on a cool project. And we were talking about the project he was working on and it got me thinking oh, sorry, before I go any further, I do, I do need to point out why is Simone not with us [00:01:00] today? She has pneumonia and she is pregnant which means she can't do all the normal medications you would do if you got pneumonia. And so she's just been laid out, you know, in and out of the hospital recently, but you know, fingers crossed she's fine.But I'm able to do this, this wonderful interview. So, so we were talking about his project is in the crypto space. And I was like, well, you know what I could do, what everybody does in the crypto space these days is there's all these shows that like shill projects in the crypto space, right? Like they're like, Oh, this is so cool.And everything like that. And I was like, you know what I think our audience would prefer, which is like a really. Sort of, critical dive into one, the project, and I'm going to look at it from a few angles. Um, you know, will it make the world a better place? Which I think is always something you're sort of thinking of when you're talking about Web3 technology.Two, is it a good immediate investment? Like if you had capital, like me as a former VC would I invest in it? And three, what is the probability of it achieving its long term [00:02:00] objective? And so that's what we're going to go over. So, maybe the audience is like this, maybe the audience won't, but I'd love you to start by talking a little bit.And I, I always want to promote, you know, when I have audience members who are working on stuff, I always want to do what I can to promote that stuff so long as I think it's, it's like broadly in line with, with what we're doing that the community is doing. So start by going over what your project is.Chris Lehman: Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for the kind words and hope someone feels better soon. Definitely wouldn't want the, the kids go kid gloves treatment here on the podcast. Uh, um, but yeah, so, so I guess to start briefly before I go into the, I guess, full pitch and envision groma, which is my current project is a real estate and fintech company here in boston, about three years old and has the long term goal of launching a real estate backed cryptocurrency will go into significant detail.I expect about. Why that's actually a good thing. Or you know, people can decide on on the merits of that. But you know, I think fundamentally, the [00:03:00] project is motivated by the idea that society works best when financial gains are coupled with actual economic productivity. And in a lot of ways today, society is really not geared that way in ways that cause people to behave in ways that while they individually optimal are societally suboptimal.And so we think that by fixing two of the biggest institutions in society today, money and housing. You, you can actually fix a lot of those incentive misalignments. And so the long term goal talking, you know, decade plus out is actually having a fully operational scaled real estate backed cryptocurrency, but there are a lot of.intermediate steps that we're working on today to actually scale up and scaffold sustainably to get there. Yeah. SoMalcolm Collins: I want to hear your hypothesis on the three core areas that I was thinking of as an investment. I guess we'll start with short term prospects as an investment. And keep in mind, like this is, we're not trying to get people to like give money to a crypto project or something like this is only [00:04:00] accredited investors.It's like at the VC stage now. So this is all hypothetical from the perspective of our audience, but I think it will help our audience who haven't experienced what it's like to work in venture capital, especially mission driven venture capital, like the way they're going to think about things. So first, let's think just as an investment, like, what are your thoughts on, you know, Three, four year time horizon, why it would do well, why it would do poorly.Chris Lehman: Yeah. A good, great question. And, and I'll, I guess start by clarifying one thing about the organizational structure here, which is that we have a pretty classic op co prop co structure. And what that means is that we have one side of the company, which is the operating company where all the actual employees work that's kind of the VC funded tech company model, right?So we closed our series a midway through last year, raised 30 million for that. You know, that's. VC high net worth you know, very much the standard raise for that kind of thing. And that's where you expect kind of the high risk, high return, typical VC profile. BeforeMalcolm Collins: you go further, I'm going to explain [00:05:00] a few of these words to listeners, because I think this is just great for listeners to learn about like what's going on in the world of VC.Yeah. Opco PropCo model is a model that is used by any. Venture capital company. And venture capital is a high risk investments, which makes it different from private equity, which is typically looking for lower risk investments. So on average, only one in every 13 venture capital investments makes capital, like, like makes cash positive or is really a Financially relevant to affirm, but that means that these companies that are need to do astoundingly well, like they need to be like hundreds of times larger than they were when you invested in them off it, you know, and what this means from the perspective of property is property can almost never do that.It's a high capex asset. So if a VC, when I am going to people and I am raising money, those people are called my LPs or limited partners. Those limited partners will give me money for me to deploy in this specific high risk, high reward [00:06:00] model. Unfortunately, what that means is if a company is doing something that sort of like has a lot of real estate or otherwise capital assets associated with it I can't invest in that given what I promised my LPs, the people who gave me all this money.And so what a company will do is it will do something called the opco propco model, which is it basically creates an umbrella under it, which is a separate company, which raises money that is either debt, which is often used for real estate investing because that's easy to get on a real estate asset.Cause you have sort of a hard asset or it's raising money from like typical real estate investors. Which are often different from both VCs and private equity investors. It's something, now we said classic OpCo, PropCo model. The truth is, is to my understanding, because I looked at doing something in the OpCo, PropCo space almost no one has successfully done an OpCo, PropCo raise.Most of the OpCo, PropCo raises that you're familiar with, the PropCo, the property company, was actually either family money, A [00:07:00] company they had previously worked for, or they had worked at the firm that ended up doing the investment because it's actually fairly hard to get a real estate investor to invest in this, my guess is that you use some sort of like crypto investor who also invests in real estate.Or did you get like a pure real estate investor to invest?Chris Lehman: Great, great question. So, so, on the, on the series a side, you know, again, combination of, of BC and high net worth on the real estate side. We, we, it was a pretty I guess. Eclectic array of people tending to skew again towards the high net worth individuals for the first fund.And there are a few different funds that we're currently managing, though. The one that's do you hold on?Malcolm Collins: I'm going to go back and talk about a few of the other words you used here because, you know, we have a lot of people who watch this and they're yelling and it's really hard to learn about this. You know, if you're outside of the Stanford, if you're in the Stanford Harvard ecosystem, you hear this stuff, you immediately know what he's talking about when he's talking about a series a let's talk a bit about what a series a is, and I'm going to use this to dissect a lot of these broader concepts so that when [00:08:00] people come into this, they can one understand how they do this sort of thing themselves and what's going on in this world.Finance. So series of a is often the second or third round that a VC fund is raising. You typically have if you're talking like rounds of VC, you have angel round, you have seed round, then you have series a, b, c, d, e, etcetera. Right. And this is just like the chain of of raises. It used to be series a was the first round, but series a kept inflating in value.Right now, if somebody tells you that they've raised a series a Typically, if they're in now, now keep in mind, these, these rounds actually mean different things in different cities. If you are in Boston slash New York slash Silicon Valley series, a, I'm going to guess means that he raised between one and 5 million.Well, if you're in Boston, right, you're in Boston. Was this awesome? Yeah. Yeah, so that means it's probably a raise, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, but between one and five million to [00:09:00] up to ten million whereas seed rounds these days are typically between half a million to three million, and angel rounds typically don't go above a million unless you're like a hotshot.Would you say that's AboutChris Lehman: right. So we had kind of an atypical story here in large part because my co founder Seth Prebatch, who had previously founded Level Up and then went on to run most of Grubhub had a big exit. And so he basically did kind of an informal angel slash seed round and funded the company up until we got to the Series A.At which point we were at a significant enough scale that we were able to do a 30 million series A.Malcolm Collins: A 30 million series A. That's not unusual. So that is on the high end for a series A, but it's not like. And this is why, because a lot of people, they hear series A, they're like, oh, that's the first round, it must be like 10, 000, 500, 000, and then they hear, what, 30 million?And typically you wouldn't be raising a series A unless you had people who had recently had an exit.[00:10:00] And keep in mind that this is also important to think about the information that you just heard if you were thinking about something like this as an investment. So that means that the company was founded by people who have had a previous success in the past.And another thing is if you look at their resumes, I mentioned, like, for example, he went to Harvard. That also makes it less likely that he's going to lie to you as a project like this. And this came up to me once. It was the people are like, why would you say that? Right. It's because it can lead to things like if you like get arrested or something, like if you're actually doing like fraudulent work and you have a big public reputation that's tied to something like a Harvard or Stanford degree.You don't want to tarnish that. Like, like you sort of get a foot in the door with your career, with a lot of things. And so doing something like a rug pull, a rug pull in the crypto world means like running away with all the money or something like that becomes very, or much less likely. Also, he's raising money from traditional investors which also makes something like a rug pull less likely because they're often going to [00:11:00] put things in place that prevent him from doing that.And he's, and he's raising incrementally. Now, if you go straight to like a Sam Baikman Freed style thing, like FTX you know, he got so big so quickly he was able to really do whatever he wanted to. The crypto world doesn't work like that anymore. If he's raising from VCs, they're going to have a lot of financial controls on whatever he's doing.Anyway, continue with where you were going here, right?Chris Lehman: For sure. Yeah. So, so, so, so all of that is describing you know, applies to some degree, both to the VC model op co as well as the prop co. And yeah, you're, you're, you're spot on, you know, a lot of the early investors, both in the series a and in the initial real estate funds were previous investors with Seth at, during the level up days during the grubhub days.Yeah. And so, you know. Lots of skin in the game, both socially and professionally there. So. While the series A is closed and, you know, we're likely not doing a series B until 2025, I would say and that's again going to be, you know, really large dollar checks [00:12:00] from likely mostly VCs, high net worth institutions, et cetera.We are also offering a bunch of different funds in the real estate side, where, as you were saying, the risk return profile is very different, right? You're not going to get. Insane to the moon returns of the sort that you get either with a VC investment or with some of the you know, more Mimi volatile crypto coins out there that, you know, we're very popular over the past few years because it is real estate, right?Real estate tends not to go to the moon. It tends not to go to zero either. And, you know, obviously there's variation within real estate. You know, the Sun Belt looks very different from somewhere like Boston or New York or SF and meeting in Boston. It tends to be a much more stable market, but but also the corollary there is you're not going to see.Insane growth, like you might have seen and say, like, damn, you're over the past few years. But the, the real estate investment vehicle that's most applicable to probably most of your listeners is the, the REIT. And so REIT stands for real estate investment trust. It's a pretty [00:13:00] well established model for real estate investment.If you're familiar with an ETF, an exchange traded fund, it's basically an ETF, but for real estate, right? So you have a diversified. Profile of real estate based on some thesis that can be very broad or very narrow. I could be, you know, broad, you know, all residential real estate in the U S it could be something much more narrow, which is where we are now that we expect to be broader as we scale.Malcolm Collins: So I'm going to take an aside here and explain why he immediately went into ETFs and REITs and stuff like this. So when he first was talking to me, this was my first question and it's going to be most investors first question, which is how is this any different from a REIT? Right, because I'm an investor, right?I want to put capital in real estate in liquid. easily divisible shares. Right now, the standard way I would do that would be to buy into an ETF or a REIT. Right? He's allowing somebody to do this with crypto. And my immediate question was, well, [00:14:00] differentially, where is the value here when contrasting this with an ETF or a REIT?So that's why he's going into what this is. SoChris Lehman: continue, right? Yeah. Good, good, good clarification. So today as an investor in the REIT, Your performance is, is really not going to be massively affected by the fact that we are by the fact that we're doing this on crypto rails. So, you know, today, basically, and I'll get more into why this is relevant.Later. We have both the reach shares that you can own and the properties that are owned by the rate. Represented both in blockchain formats and also in traditional financial and legal modes. So, for the REIT shares, that means they're held by a transfer agent, which is a specific type of financial institution that actually holds I don't think peopleMalcolm Collins: care about this.What they care about, how is it different? Like, talk about it from the perspective of your average person, how is this different from putting it in a REIT? Like if I want to invest capital in real estate, why am I using this system instead of a REIT? Right. So, [00:15:00]Chris Lehman: so today, one of the big advantages that we have over a REIT is the level of transparency you get from the fact that we're recording all of the data about our properties on blockchain, publishing it on our website.And and providing much more disclosure than is typical for reach down to the individual property level. This is something that you might expect would be standard for REITs, but it's really not. And this is to a large part driven by the fact that Most REITs are interested in big institutional investors, whether those are pension funds, whether those are banks, whether those are you know, other entities that are going to spend you know, tens, hundreds of millions of dollars at a time.And when they do that you know, they're not going on the website and downloading a PDF that has, you know, quarterly earnings and a list of all the properties. They're calling someone up and they're saying, hey, like. Can I grab an hour, two hours of your time, talk to some analysts, talk to some, you know, MDs or whatever, and, and really get the full you know, in the no spiel of what you're investing in.And [00:16:00] so, because that's where almost all of their money comes from. So REITs tend not to put a lot of effort into the kind of transparency and disclosure that that an individual retail investorMalcolm Collins: might want. So I'm going to quickly break this down, like my interpretation, right? If I was looking at this I would say that's, that's interesting.And some investors may differentially value that. So, so you have a core asset, right? You have real estate. This is the asset that is, you're buying tokens of basically. Now. The way that that asset is treated by a portfolio manager can modify whether that asset is worth more or less within that portfolio than it is if it was broken up and sold on the open market.So, and then, you know, he'd point out which you might have a thesis like individually. A thesis could be more transparency will either lead to more value within this asset, more value retention within this asset, or more predictability of value retention within this asset, or [00:17:00] this asset will track the thing I think it's tracking better.And that last one can actually be really important especially when you're talking about the crypto space. So, A core tragedy would be you think you've invested in one thing, something that's going to go up when real estate goes up. And there was a huge thing when the crypto market crashed and a bunch of people thought they owned a specific type of I forgot what it was called, a specific type of crypto stock that would increase in value as the stock of crypto overall decreased in value.But it was set up in a way where that didn't end up happening. And actually the opposite ended up happening if crypto was decreasing as fast as it was decreasing. So this is important. Like this is one area where you could get some sort of like marginal additional value here. However, the truth, like if you're saying like to me, the truth is an investor, the core value of this asset.Like if I was to say, why would I put my money here? Like, why am I going to get any sort of differential value in this project versus just putting REIT? It would be because of the branding of [00:18:00] crypto which is not as strong as it used to be, but that can be of utility if you are the only person and this is the only project, there are some other, at least to my understanding, there are some other crypto real estate projects, but there's none that are totally where the, the asset itself is really treated more like a REIT instead of you buying into individual real estate properties.So. Uh, crypto as a brand can cause some individuals to be more interested in it and can cause some individuals to over inflate it as an asset for a few reasons. One is, is they may see it as like, a great example of this is WeWork, right? So, WeWork became huge as a company, but they weren't actually, am I, am I thinking of the right company?This is, yeah, yeah, they're not, yeah, we're not yeah. Yeah, like marginal office spaces, right? So, they were doing something that a lot of like private equity, very simple companies had done before and they really hadn't changed the model in any meaningful way, but they branded themselves as a tech [00:19:00] company and the other companies had them.Branded themselves as private equity, real estate plays. Private equity, real estate plays have one way of valuing them. Typically, you're valuing them based on the EBITDA they have, which basically think of it as like the amount of cash they spit out. And then you apply a multiplier to that tech companies, especially venture capital tech companies are often valued on their top line revenue.So that means the total amount of revenue that they're generating, which is the Often, especially with a real estate project like rework hundreds of times more than the equivalent companies that were trading on the market before that. And that's just a branding difference. So you can see this was in the crypto space sometimes making a project like this particular.Now, there's another reason why crypto may differentially flow into this to one is that they've created A believable story about how they're going to make the world a better place and how this is the line was like the goals of web three and so web three people who believe in this often have sort of libertarian ideas [00:20:00] about things may put more of their capital in this because you know, they've made a bunch of capital in bitcoin or something like that.Right? Two it could be that it's easier to transfer money or they're doing something fishy with their money. And it's easier to keep money within crypto projects than it is to take it out of crypto and then redeploy it on the traditional stock market. Although This is increasingly becoming less of a reason to keep money in crypto as the financial institutions become more savvy into how money is moved around crypto.So the first thing I would say is, is just as a basic bet, like if I could get in on this round of it, right, I would say. And it's not costing me that much more than doing a traditional real estate play. I'd say, yeah, it's probably worth the marginal upside. Like I'm just thinking as a VC right now, but, but the longterm, that's where I have more, more questions, but continue with where you're going with this.Chris Lehman: Yeah. So, so definitely agree with everything you've said and, you know, I, I would agree that the value that the REIT shares gain from being you know, [00:21:00] structured off of blockchain today to the actual investors today is marginal, right? And you should be much more concerned if you're looking at those REIT shares at the actual real estate thesis that Grom was running off of, which I can talk at length about and I can do a brief treatment of it.I assume we probably don't want to getMalcolm Collins: too deep. People don't care about that. They care about the long term vision. How is this going to change society now? Let's talk about that angle of things. Where where do you see this going long term? And why do you see this having a disproportionate amount of value long term or changing society long term?Let's talk about this long term objective here.Chris Lehman: So, so I'll go through the I guess vision that I alluded to earlier, which is that society works well. When more people have an ownership stake in it and when financial incentives and financial rewards are aligned with what people actually contribute to it.And so, money is obviously a core part of that architecture, right? What money is, how it's exchanged, who controls the supply of money has a big impact on the sorts of people, sorts of [00:22:00] decisions people make to earn money. And then aside from that, housing is most people's biggest asset in the world.And therefore has a pretty, the way that rules around housing work and the way in which ownership of housing is structured has a big impact on how people behave and make decisions around the investment of their wealth. So I'll start with the money side of things. Fiat money has some advantages.Obviously, there's a reason why it's kind of the dominant model of money today. You know, depending on, you know, across developed and developing world fiat's what you do. But obviously there are some pretty major problems with it most prominently over the past few years is the potential for inflation and happy to go on any segues you want here in terms of the no, IMalcolm Collins: mean, I'm happy to just talk about what I think about money really quickly.Because people have some interesting ideas about money these days or interesting ideas about fiat. You know, I'll talk to a lot of people and they'll be like, I don't want to invest my capital right now, so I'm keeping it in cash. And that's a really [00:23:00] bad way to think about any capital that you have.Keeping your money in cash is an investment in whatever currency that you have decided to keep that money in. Now, currency markets fluctuate, but on average, it's one of the only markets in the world that you could pretty much bet is going to go down over time. Now the question is, why does it go down on average over time?I think a lot of people have wrong answers about this, especially when you're talking about the U. S. They think it's like generic inflation, like inflation, i. e. the government's being greedy and printing more money than it actually needs and stuff like that. I think this is an incorrect understanding of what's happening with fiat.Fiat is a very unique system for trading money because it's quite different than the back systems. You know, you can have like a gold back system, which we used to have historically, or you could have a real estate back system, or you could have a system backed on any sort of a Bitcoin back system.For example, you have a Set asset. And that is set asset in a world where the population is increasing exponentially, which we've historically been living in anything that has [00:24:00] a scarcity divisibility and trade ability is going to increase in value over time and be a good store of of. Value if you want your value to increase now, typically as a state, you don't want the default unit of trade to be something like that to be something deflationary at the state level.And we're talking about cash. We use the term deflationary, but as an investor, you would say something that has good investment potential that is that is increasing on average, because when you have something of good investment potential, you don't trade it. You, you, you hoard it, you keep it, right? Like you're much less likely to be trading it because you see it as this valuable asset.However, if I have cash and I know, and even my wife and I, you know, we talked about this recently. We've been spending cash a bit more recently now being like, well, we got to buy this stuff before this money's worthless. Given the, the high fight. amount of inflation that we're seeing in our society right now.And I think general economic degradation in society. And so people can look at that and think that [00:25:00] this is an accident. It's not an asset. The thing that makes Fiat at the core level different than all other types of currency assets. Is it the state can manipulate it in order to maintain a healthy economy with the only other asset that really has any comparability to this being state debt which they also manipulate those terms to maintain a healthy state economy and often the small amount of inflation that if the system is working well, you're getting every year is intentional historically, whatever you would have an economic crisis you would intentionally create a slightly higher amount of inflation because that would bring more people to work.The more inflation you have, typically the higher employment you have, and the less inflation you have, typically the higher unemployment you have. I'm not going to get into all the specifics of that, but a lot of people, they just learn that like fiat degrades over time, and they think that this is some government conspiracy against them rather than like a critical part of how modern economies work.[00:26:00]Continue.Chris Lehman: Yeah, no, all of that's accurate, but, you know It is important to note the distribution, the reasons why governments do that, right? You know, it's some combination of both of those things, right? It helps the economy run more smoothly. It can be used in recessions, et cetera. But it does have important distributional impacts.There's something called the Cantillon effect, which basically refers to the order in which newly issued money you know, in quantitative easing by the fed trickles down through the economy. The people who get that money first tend to be large financial institutions. They're spending it at the pre inflation price level, which means they're getting the full benefit of new dollars, whereas by the time it circulates all the way through the economy, down to people who are lower on the socioeconomic ladder.They're getting it after the price level has been able to adjust by the issuance of new money. And so it effectively represents a transfer of wealth from people who are lower socioeconomic status towards people who are higher socioeconomic status. And, you know, you have to weigh that, of course, against some of the benefits that you mentioned, but it is something that.You [00:27:00] know, we think, and many other people in crypto think should be taken into account by people who are deciding where they're going to store their wealth. And if you don't want that to happen with your wealth, then you, you may want to consider some other way to store it than just cash. Right? And so, this is the other side of it then too, which is people who have lower net worths tend to keep a higher percentage of their net worth in cash because they need to have quick access to that cash in order to cover.You know, unexpected expenses. Whereas, you know, if your net worth is 10 million and you're, you know, say you keep 10, 000 in cash or something lower than that, right? It's a tiny portion of your net worth. And yet it can still cover any unexpected expense, more or less. And so the. Impact of inflation broadly, even taking aside the asymmetry of the impact of inflation impacts people more, the more cash theyMalcolm Collins: hold.Yes. So I want to pull back because you're assuming that you've said something that I think you forgot to say. The long term goal is can we make this a [00:28:00] standard currency? With the idea being what he just said, if we can make this a standard currency, a standard thing that people trade for things, like instead of Bitcoin or dollars, you're trading crypto shares of real estate, right, like you're literally directly trading an ETF.And this is something you couldn't do with ETFs as they're structured now. I could not use, easily, shares of an ETF. As a current just financially, it's not really structured that way. And it would be very cumbersome and have big tax implications. If I tried to do that, he's saying with our system, you could do that.And it, and, and then he's saying a benefit is if people started doing this. Is it your average poor person? I'm going to say poor person here, okay? I'm offensive, right? Base camp. Your average poor person is going to, if you can accomplish this, disproportionately have more of their wealth stored in well, so, so it's a question of defaults is really what you're looking at here.You know, if you do something like, if [00:29:00] you're giving someone an organ donation thing that they're filling out when they are Getting a driver's license, right? And you have that box pre checked and they have to uncheck it versus unchecked and pre check it. It's a difference of like 70 percent sign up to like 30 percent sign up.What you are doing with whatever the default, like. The tradeable asset is in society is you are making that an asset that a person is going to have disproportionately more of on hand at any point in time. And so he's arguing two things. One, this is a smarter investment asset to have more of your wealth concentrated in at any time.And two, or, or at least a more honest asset which is to say, even if it goes up and down more than currency typically goes up and down, which real estate does at least you like really have some like tangible thing that is backing your money. And two, that it's not being peeled off by all of these institutions that are getting the value at different levels.Like, [00:30:00] Carving off bits of value at different levels. I'm going to disagree on two. I'm going to say, okay, suppose you made this a core asset in society right now. Well, it was with fiat that the game, the way that people are profiting off of the system is getting like early shares of fiat as you're talking about with this, that the game is being a real estate developer and making more real estate in a way that can then go to the currency.If those real estate developers are profiting off of that, which they. Almost axiomatically are going to be, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. Then they are now taking the role of the person getting the first cut within the system. How do you see this as different? Is it because they're producing something of value?Chris Lehman: I think, yeah, I mean, I think that you, you basically nailed it, right? You know, when you expand the supply of dollars, no actual new asset that's usable has been created aside from the exchange value of the dollars. Whereas if you're creating new real estate, suddenly people have new places to live or to work or to learn or whatever they're doing with it.Right. And you know, in many parts of the U [00:31:00] S most big Metro areas, there's a pretty dire shortage of real estate. So something that incentivizes a developer to add more. Real estate with the expectation that it will then be incorporated into the REIT and used as the backing for currency is a virtuous societal effect at this point.And obviously, you know, we can talk about long term. How does that change with the equilibrium? But today, and, you know, for, I think, the foreseeable future next few decades, we're still going to be in a situation where the demand for that kind of real estate significantly exceeds the supply.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, okay.So here I'm going to talk a little bit about my views on a few, one is I think like internally I'm going through, you know, as somebody thinking, how does this change the future? So the core thing that you would be doing with this is you would be like, like, how does this actually change what's, what's happening in society?Like the, the actions of people. Well, because of the power of defaults, more people would hold this type of investment, real estate investments, then hold it in today's [00:32:00] society which is applying an externality on the valuation of real estate which is causing real estate to be more valued than it would be just as a place to live.That's the core thing that would happen here. Now, this is going to have. Two effects. One effect is it will cause people to build more real estate than you currently have, because now you're getting this other reason to build real estate. But the other negative of, this is my perception, and you can argue against me here, like this is, this is what I think would happen is it would lead to real estate being valued More, i.e. having a higher price than it should have as just a place that people live because now it has this externality attached to it. And I would argue, and when I brought up your idea to my wife, Simone, she immediately goes, but what about China? This is basically already the system in China. So for people who aren't familiar, in China real estate is 70 percent of all investments in terms of like, like individual household investments.Which is very different from the U. S. In [00:33:00] the U. S. We have trust that when we put money on the stock market, it's gonna grow on average. They don't have that same trust in their local stock market in China. Get this much more manipulated. So real estate and we have a whole other video on like what we think of the future of China and how screw China is.You can go watch that where we talk much more about the real estate situation in China. But they began to use real estate as the core, almost sort of alternate token to currency. So much so that they begin to build these giant Cities that no one was ever meant to live in. Right now, the over building state in China, that means if you housed every homeless person in China in one of the buildings right now how many could they fill?It's 200%. There are literally three buildings in China for every household. Empty buildings. And that's because real estate has begun to become this tokenized asset. And, and that has And, and worse, all real estate in China is much more expensive for your average person than it is in other countries.It costs, I'd say. Four or five times as much as it does in the U. S. And it's [00:34:00] begun to leak into other markets. Now, this whole system in China is about to pop right now. That's beside the point. I'm just using China as a model of what happens when you apply an externality to real estate in terms of, like, it becomes the default investment in the society.That's the externality we're implying here. I'm wondering how you think things would play out differently in this scenario, or if you think that there's some hidden advantages to this. I'm not seeing. Yeah,Chris Lehman: so so answers to a few different parts of that question. Yeah. The first portion is, I guess, dealing with the pre equilibrium state of how the existence of this currency and demand for it would impact real estate, right?So we're talking about before it is either the default or one of the default currencies essentially, you know, if people are valuing the currency more highly than the value of the underlying real estate, right? There's some additional use value that increases the demand past the real estate. In it of itself, that essentially just feeds into the growth of the ecosystem, right?You have more money coming in and it accelerates that rate and you can [00:35:00] grow, you can acquire more real estate, increase the supply of the currency to accommodate that demand. And that all serves to push towards the long term equilibrium, which is the second point, right? And so once you get to the point where people are socialized on the idea of a real estate backed currency, and it is one major you know, Default currency that people use for transactions or as a store of wealth.Whether or not you have. The value of the currency exceeding the value of the underlying real estate is basically a question of whether senior age exists, right? . So se senior age is essentially when the issuer of a currency gains value that exceeds the val the cost of issuing the currency, right?And this is something that in our equilibrium, we really hope is, is minimized, right? We, we don't think that senior age is broadly a desirable feature of monetary ecosystems. And we think that the, the healthiest equilibrium would be one in which. Groma coins are competing against a wide basket of other currencies, whether it's, you [00:36:00] know, fiat, traditional crypto, other asset backed currencies, whether it's backed by something like energy or health care or other core inputs to the economy, such that, you know, if the price of groma coins.We're sufficiently in excess of the value of the underlying real estate, you would see people begin to sell the groma coins to take advantage of that gap and put their money into the other currencies until you have those even out and the senior level of each of those currencies is minimized.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I want I want to take a bit and dissect what he's saying here.So. The point he's making here is actually the argument here, and I think this is likely right. The reason why you get this over evaluation of real estate in China is not because real estate is the default investment mechanism, but because it's a mechanism that fuels the CCP, that's the governing party of China, and therefore they have a, Manipulate the markets to ensure that it's always growing in value outside of its core floating value.So you cannot get [00:37:00] this arbitrage opportunity that he's talking about. This arbitrage opportunity, you'll see whatever you get like one fund that's holding something pegged to a floating market. So, one of the most famous example of this is I want to say it's called like the gray scale trust metric grayChris Lehman: scale Bitcoin trust.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, yeah, but there's a word where it's like a, the percent on it or something. But anyway, one of the core metrics that a lot of people look at is how much we, so grayscale Bitcoin trust is basically like an ETF. Like we've been talking about this concept, think of it like a basket of Bitcoin.That you buy shares in with dollars, with fiat. In the same way within his system you are buying shares in a basket of real estate with, with crypto or dollars or whatever you're, you're buying with. Well, the grayscale Bitcoin trust there's a percentage where the value of the Bitcoin in that trust is either over or undervalued.When contrasted with the all of the individual bitcoins within it, [00:38:00] and you can use this because it's almost never exactly the same. Like people would think that this arbitrage is almost exactly the same. It's almost never exactly the same. This can be used to determine like where you think markets are going and stuff like that.And it's an indicator that a lot of these quant guys who are like trying to play the market pay attention to. So, yeah, okay. I'll buy that. Another thing I'd note, which is a utility of this that he hasn't mentioned, but is, is worth noting. So, people who aren't familiar with the concept of a DAO, this is like a governing system or company that runs using Web3 or like, Crypto architecture as its engine.One of the things that his system would allow for is DAOs to use his tokens, these Gromo tokens for rewards or various other things. I. e. you might want to DAO that for specific reasons, rewarded specific decisions are used within its internal machinery. The value of real estate was in specific areas.An example [00:39:00] of this okay. People might be like, what, what the heck is he talking about here? Suppose I wrote, created a Dow to run a charter city. And one of the factors within that Dow was all of the, all the real estate in the charter city was sold proportionally like his is being sold.I could create a mechanism where. When it, like, over inflates or it's growing over a period of time certain types of voters within that ecosystem, their vote matters less. So for example, within this ecosystem, I could divide voting power where you get voting power dependent on how much you're paying in taxes.But I could Divide this voting power amongst a few classes. For example, I could say that real estate owners their voting power is, is, is considered like, has one multiplier attached to it. And people who are paying like generic income tax, their voting power has a different multiplier attached to it.These multipliers could be changed when real estate is going up versus when real [00:40:00] estate is going down. to motivate different investment behaviors within this new charter city. And there's lots of reasons why having a tool like that is really valuable within a DAO. But most DAOs today are, from my perspective, you know, having read the Practices Guide to Governance, which is used a lot within the DAO community very simplistic and don't, Utilize mechanisms like this, but he's creating a core tool that would allow mechanisms like this to be developed on top of it.But anyway, continue with what you're sayingChris Lehman: about the senior age and the China comparison. I want to hear. IMalcolm Collins: mean, you can say, is there anything about sort of your thesis that I missed in my summary there about why this wouldn't cause the same effect of real estate getting an externality associated with this value?Chris Lehman: So, yeah, I mean, On the China side, I mean, I, I think you, you alluded to this, but to provide somewhat more detail, right? There was just massive. I guess government interference in all kinds of markets. And as you said, there's really little faith [00:41:00] in the reliability, stability of kind of traditional equities markets, which led into this kind of pseudo tokenization of real estate.And that was really the only way that people could get any yield on their savings, you know, not just equity markets, but also savings account, I think had caps on the amount of interest they could yield. And so it's artificially forced. Money into real estate and created demand for relay state in excess of the native organic demand for living space.Whereas in the U S you know, it's a market system. We're not going to put, you know, a mega city in the middle of say, Nebraska, South Dakota, we're, we're going to put it you know, in a decentralized fashion where the demand is highest, where developers think they're actually going to get people who are willing to pay the most for it based on its utility as living space.And, you know, we we've also seen, you know, China. With you know, in the past few years under, she has had kind of the legs cut out from under the real estate industry by, by cutting off their access to credit. You know, you, you, you also had, I think, in the. Proceeding years, there were [00:42:00] actual floors on the prices of real estate in a lot of these cities where people were clamoring for their investments to maintain their value in excess of the organic demand and vandalized developing offices when they were considering cutting prices.And it's only been recently that. Municipalities have allowed developers to cut real estate, radically different situation from what we have in the U. S. today, where, you know, it's the opposite, right? People are asking about rent control or, you know, other artificial price controls to suppress the value of real estate.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I want to talk about real estate as an asset here more broadly, really quick. You know, for followers who have less right now, when we talk about this exogenous factor that causes people within the Chinese cultural system right now to overvalue real estate, this has bled over into a lot of markets that have a lot of Chinese immigrants or China has easy capital to when Chinese people come from, from, from China and [00:43:00] are, are trying to hide their money outside of China.Or are trying to move their money outside of China. The first place they often invested is real estate because that's the asset that they're familiar with. And so this can lead to overinflated real estate markets within environments like San Francisco or like, a lot in Canada, you know, pretty much all of Canada is overinflated specifically because of this Chinese money.If the Chinese bubble pops, this overinflation is going to decrease. Now, if you're talking about being a viewer of our channel one of the things you're most likely thinking of is these guys are pronatalists. They notice more than anyone, you know, the falling fertility rate issue, the falling population issue.Why would real estate be a good store of value in a world with falling fertility rates? In fact, why is real estate going up still at all? Like on average, real estate seems to be going up. What the? Well, the answer is the core reason why real estate still goes up in the U. S. right now is twofold. One [00:44:00] is you have the atomization of the family unit.And so this means that houses that previously, you know, you would have had a married couple living in with a bunch of kids. You know, now that people aren't getting married anymore at the same rate, they're needing to buy two the separate houses. And this is a, a, you know, and you, you see this over and over again.So, so, and this is why one of the biggest for a long time growing sectors of the real estate market. And I actually expect that this is probably the sector that you're going to get into as multifamily housing units. Am I right in assuming that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's primarily what we're doing. Okay. So.People who don't know what multifamily housing investment is. If you go to a city and you know, those giant units where you have like 50 people, like not 50 hundreds, hundreds of people, like, like just condos, I guess you'd call them right. Like that's multifamily housing.Chris Lehman: Yeah, I mean, I would say it's a bit broader than that, right?Like kind of the archetypal multifamily housing is one of these multi hundred unit buildings, you know, whether it's condos or rentals, I think more of actually tend to be rentals. You know, you have kind of large multifamily on one side, which is traditionally what real estate [00:45:00] investors think about when you say multifamily.What Groma actually focuses on is a different segment, which is small multifamily. And so this is 2 to 20 unit buildings that typically were built, you know, 100 ish years ago. Before real estate investment was institutionalized. And so, you, you, you have a lot of say, like triple deckers in Boston, you know, walkups in New York you know, similar archetypes and say like San Francisco, Philadelphia, et cetera.And you know, those again can either be condos or rentals. But, but there's obviously a huge amount of that stock here.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and so how long this is going to have an effect on the real estate market is for you to decide as an investor yourself. Me personally, like if you're talking about Simone and I, you might be like, Oh, he's really negative on real estate.We have a well over 50 percent of our portfolio in real estate. And so, we won't forever, but we do for now. And, and another question is, is then why, why, if the number of people is declining and that's going to have an effect on real estate, why would you keep so much of your personal net worth in real estate?And the answer then comes to, well, there aren't a lot of other f*****g options right now. If China collapses, yes, that's [00:46:00] going to have an effect on us real estate markets, but a much, much bigger effect that it's going to have is one going to be on the developing world. Cause if you look at like South America, you know, anywhere you're, you're, or Africa, anywhere you're carrying Investments that's in the developing world is going to be massively hit when China pops and China is going to pop before population pops before the things tied to population pop in the world.So, so that's destroys a lot of developing country stocks, which a lot of people think are safe. They're like, I'll get my money outside the U. S. In fact, when China pops the most protected place in the world is going to be the U. S. And then the question is, is it U. S. companies or is it U. S. real estate?Well, I think U. S. agricultural real estate is probably the best bet right now. If you were going to make an anti China bet. But then the other thing is that also the huge effect on any sort of a commodity, specifically commodities like. Minerals, mines the stuff that they are using to build these buildings, you know, whether it's copper or gold or anything like that, anything that's used in construction[00:47:00] is, is overinflated right now, I would argue and so then that means, okay, well, then where am I storing assets, right?Like that doesn't leave a lot of other options. Okay. You can't really go outside the US. You could go to Europe. The problem is, is Europe's going to collapse so much faster than the US. Like they're an absolute s**t show right now. Both population rate wise, but also the way the government's reacting to all of these situations.The, the, the Europe doesn't have. a real future as far as I see it. The one place I might invest in outside of this is Israel. Israel is obviously going to do well. They're doing well right now and they have a high population rate. Like if I was going to get some additional real estate myself, I'd probably get some real estate in Israel.So yeah, those are my thoughts on real estate more broadly. I'm happy to have you provide any counter thoughts or arguments against that.Chris Lehman: Yeah, super interesting points. And I think I agree directionally with most of that. I think it's also important to clarify what the time scales are that we're talking about here.You know, when you're talking about, say, the collapse of the Chinese asset bubble and whatever demand for raw materials or real estate that [00:48:00] probably happens over the next decade or two, probably shorter end of that. Whereas if you're talking about like, Okay. Total or even just U. S. Population growth. And when that stalls out, we're talking about the 20 eighties, I think, is where the projections currently are, right?Both globally and for the U. S. Those are when population growth turns negative. So we've got several decades before that actually starts to obviously, you know,Malcolm Collins: just just to clarify for people, they're like, why would it be so long if fertility rates are so low in the U. S. And this is because high immigration and increasing rates of how long people are living.Chris Lehman: Right. Yeah, great points. So, you know, that's important to consider when you're thinking about what is the trajectory and projections forward of real estate value. I think what you said about kind of the retreat to to quality and the safest places is important to keep in mind. Right? You know, not only is you're talking about.China having its own internal stability problems, but just in general, you know, as we've seen over the past few years in the world [00:49:00] is the US kind of steps back from its role is kind of maintainer of order from a security perspective in the world, you know, lots of places that are, you know, have tons of immediate neighbors that don't always get along.Are going to see significant decreases in their stability. Whereas the U. S. Like, you know, yes, there's tensions on the southern border for sure. Northern border is pretty good. And then we've got these massive oceans that keep everyone else away. So we really have, you know, a huge amount of control over what happens in terms of our own physical security.And the the natural resources here are phenomenal to write not only in terms of agricultural productivity, but the river systems you know, the well,Malcolm Collins: we have our own. So, so just, you know, to talk about the natural resources we have here, because I think this is often undersold for people, there is not a single other large major power in the power player in the world other than Russia that has its own oil and its own food.[00:50:00]Everyone else needs either oil or food from somebody else to survive.Chris Lehman: Right. Yeah. Yeah. China. Massive importer. I think of both definitely at least of both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, after that, right, you know, is there another really me? I mean, India, I guess probably also importer of energy. And you know, obviously not quite Europe, bigMalcolm Collins: importer of energy,Chris Lehman: right?For sure. And then obviously, you know, there's the degree to which can Europe even get, right. Sufficient coordination to be considered a like security power in the world. But so, yeah, I mean, as other parts of the world become less stable, even if the native fertility rate of the U. S. is decreasing and is below replacement, you're still going to see significant demand for the U.S. because it is stable because it can be self sufficient in so many ways. And also, you know, when s**t really hits the fan, the U. S. can choose to invest more in protecting at minimum its own trade routes, which. Which means that any of the assets that are tied to the US you know, geographically, whether it's our equities, whether it's our real [00:51:00] estate, whether it's the raw materials are going to be in demand.And I think that holds for the foreseeable future. Now, you know, when, when you get into the far out future, right, once population growth actually is negative, you then have to ask the question, okay, population growth is negative. So that definitely is a downward impact on demand for real estate. But does that mean economic growth is negative?And I think you see pretty different. Answers there, right? You know, you could conceivably see a scenario where we just don't know. And there's so many technological, I think, primarily question marks in terms of like, can decreasing network effects of humans be overcome by AI or, you know, other technologies that allowMalcolm Collins: multipliers.Yeah, so AI would be the core way that you fix this. But then the problem is, is if AI is the core way you fix this, then the default asset moves from being real estate to shares of energy. That's, you know, AI food and housing or server space, which would be interesting. AndChris Lehman: and those were both both energy and processing power or server space, you [00:52:00] know, whatever, you know, tech adjacent input you're talking about here were things we considered when we were thinking about, you know, what is the ideal asset backing?You know, we knew it had to be a core input to the economy and obviously different trajectories coming up over the future on those things. But, you know, even as demand for those things increases, we do think that it's Inputs or the, the cost of producing a lot of those things is probably going to decrease even faster, right?You're, you're, you're going to see massive increases in. The efficiency of generating energy, and then it also transforming that energy into the actual, you know, flux that that machines use on. So, you know what? While I think those are really good basis for currency at some point in the future, just because the use value is going to be so high.It doesn't necessarily mean that they are a good store of value given that the degree to which producing them becomes more efficient decreases their actual price on the market. Whereas with real [00:53:00] estate you know, large terraforming projects aside, it is a bit scarcer, right? In terms of the actual land underneath it.Now, you obviously, you want to build up and there's, you know, lots of different levers affecting how. I have toMalcolm Collins: hop off in just a minute here, but yeah, it is, it has been great to have you on. And I hope that this talk has helped listeners who don't understand like what VCs are actually thinking or what's going on in the world of like people who are pricing assets or deploying capital how they think about things.And and how they think about the future because I think this has been a good like educate to give like a broader picture on this. And I think it might be something that I might do, you know, if it does well, or if people like it recurringly just sort of analyze ideas in sort of a critical way that can help the average person understand what's actually going on with all this.Chris Lehman: Yeah, thanks, Malcolm. This has been really fun. And, and you know, obviously really appreciate the the, the context for that and help people understand. Yeah. Have a good one. All right, you too. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We discuss Malcolm's theory that men have two overlapping sexual strategies evolutionarily encoded - a "raider" sexuality activated by porn/hookups and a "homesteader" one for long-term partners. By better understanding this bifurcation, men can avoid incorporating unhealthy Raider aspects as their identity. Roleplaying with a wife may satisfy the Raider side but risks altering her pair bonding.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] there are two major sexual events or strategies that a male can undertake. They can overlap and both be successful within the same individual. That means is that there was likely a push for both strategies to develop within men simultaneously. Yeah. And this leads to my hypothesis that the average man has a Raider sexuality and a homesteader sexuality. And, and so the things that turn them on most when they do with their long term partner may be actually entirely divorced from the things that turn them on most when.What would activate our Raider sexuality most within the modern world would be pornography. These are women that you have no emotional connection to, you see as entirely disposable. This can cause a lot of problems if a man, when he is young when he's learning what his sexuality is He begins to think that his sexuality is only [00:01:00] comprised of the type of pornography that he's consuming.If you can genuinely convince a woman's body that she's sleeping with a bunch of different people through this sort of role play, you might be actually triggering the same biological change that happens with her actually sleeping with a lot of people.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: requires some major mental caliber, which only, only menMalcolm Collins: have. Savona's pointing out that some of our audience doesn't like when we're on the wrong side. ISimone Collins: see the comments. I hear you people. And I made sure that weMalcolm Collins: This is, this is the problem with attracting a disproportionately autistic audience.Is they get annoyed when we're on the wrong side. Well, youSimone Collins: know what? ButMalcolm Collins: I want to talk about a concept that we have developed since writing The Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality. So all of our theories of human sexuality, this is actually not in the book and we haven't done a test on this yet. When I am done with important projects I'm working on now, I may one day run a test on it or when we have Ayla next on, because we're [00:02:00] booking that now I may try to compel her to include this in one of her future studies.But it is a concept that I think is really worth discussing on the channel in detail in sort of a dedicated episode as the what do we call it? The dual sexual strategy hypothesis. Okay, yeah, that's a good word for it. Which is to say that, Humans can have multiple sexual strategies pre programmed into them that exist alongside each other.So, one iteration of this that we do argue for in the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality. It's how this works in women. So in women, we argue that when a woman goes out there and sleeps with a ton of people, her body undergoes something called a polymorphic change. So polymorphic changes happen in animals.The quintessential example of this is the grasshopper changing into a locust. If you, so in nature, this happens when it's When it gets over a certain population density but it can be simulated in a lab [00:03:00] by rubbing its hind leg with a Q tip and it leads to a behavioral change. It starts this swarming behavior.It also changes its color, shape, and size. So, pretty big change. But in primates, we see this in baboons, depending on like the resources the baboons have versus the troop size. They will change their social structure. So, I think it's like in, in resource dense areas it, it, it, versus resource scarce areas, they switch between larger social groups that are matriarchal versus large, smaller social groups that are patriarchal or some inverse of that.But it's a pretty significant change in how they structure themselves. Well, in humans human females specifically, what we argue in the book, and I believe Pretty strongly is that the more a human woman sleeps around the lower, like there were some studies done on this, the lower amounts of oxytocin she will produce with every first time new sexual partner, meaning that she is less likely.To have an automatic bond to that sexual partner which [00:04:00] is very useful in a monogamous society meaning that they basically automatically fall in love with the first person they have sex with to, to some small extent, and then to a smaller, you know, the second person, third person, but once they're on like person five, this effect no longer happens at all.And it's going to have a lot of problems in the dating market when women expect men that they are sleeping with, like on guy 10, to ever be able to recapture the spark they had with their first few p Romantic partners, which is often just impossible with women, not always. I mean, obviously, you know, most men are born being attracted to the female body shape, but some men are born being attracted to the male body shape, you know, as in women, some women don't have this effect happen to them, but I think it happens with the majority of women.And this is actually a very useful thing from a biological context. So it meant that if you were a woman and you were in a monogamous culture, you would be optimized for the monogamous lifestyle. If you were in a culture where you were being passed around, i. e. your village had been raided, or you were raided.ex slave of some sort then you [00:05:00] would be biologically optimized for that circumstance. However, this is a trend I've noticed that we didn't mention in the book with the dual female hypothesis. I have noticed that women who sleep around more seem to be more in to what I would call the category of arousal patterns that I call violent submission.This is things like choking, spanking, degradation, stuff like that. Anyone must haveSimone Collins: data on this because I think she tracks body count plus, of course, things that turn people on.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So this is something that we could look at to see if there's a correlation there, but I'm. Fairly certain you're going to end up finding a correlation there with the more partners a woman is sleeping with, the more they are turned on because they are beginning to be optimized, like biologically, for being a slave.That's what they think they are. They think they are an ex slave that is being passed around some group that has raided and captured her village. This is something that happened very, very, frequently [00:06:00] in a historical context. So frequently in, if you read the pragmatist guide to sexuality, we talk about all the places you see this in behavioral patterns.So you can see it's pretty deeply carved into our DNA. But Simone, do you want to speak to this at all? No, well,Simone Collins: this is all stuff we've talked about before. So I'm more interested in hearing you go over the male side of this, which is not in the pragmatist guide to sexuality in which you have.Malcolm Collins: Come up with.Well, no, something we haven't talked about it before is the hypothesis that women who sleep around more are going to be more turned on by a violent degradation. I don't, I don'tSimone Collins: predict that with the same confidence that you do.Malcolm Collins: The next hypothesis is I was thinking like if evolution was going to. Like for something, there are two major sexual events or strategies that a male can undertake.And it's very important to understand that males can undertake both simultaneously and historically the successful males almost always undertook both simultaneously. [00:07:00] Okay. So a lot of people see like, okay, so there's two different strategies. You as a guy can go out and do a bunch of great being as a warrior, like going out and, and.Conquering areas go a Viking in a historic context or in Rome, like go out with legions. Right. And end up impregnating a bunch of people within the areas that you conquer. And that can lead to, you know, famously King is gone, right? Like, tons and tons and tons and tons of offspring. But then the other strategy and the, the often more default, like it's almost sort of like a overlapping K and R selecting strategy.K versus R selecting is, are you investing a lot of time in your offspring? Are you investing a little time in your offspring? Well, the same legionary may have a wife back at home, you know, think about the movie gladiator or whatever, right? Like, he would still have his plot back at home where he had eight kids on the farm and he would be working to help that family.Well, the fact that these two sexual strategies in men can overlap was in the same successful male. And this is true, like going a [00:08:00] Viking, like if I'm going a Viking and I'm out there and I. have an impulse which causes me to impregnate people when I am raiding a village in northern England, right? I would need a completely different set of impulses to ensure that I both find a, a high quality partner for, who is my stable partner, who's keeping my farm running, who's providing me with food when I get back from a biking, that is taking care of the kids that are going to inherit my family name and everything like that, right?You have two strategies here. They can overlap and both be successful within the same individual. That means is that there was likely a push for both strategies to develop within men simultaneously. Yeah. And this leads to my hypothesis that men have, your average man, obviously, you know, as I said, some men are gay, so there's all sorts of like little weird ways a guy can be programmed.Maybe a guy only has one of these appear in him. But I think that the average man has a [00:09:00] Raider sexuality and a homesteader sexuality. And, and so the things that turn them on most when they do with their long term partner may be actually entirely divorced from the things that turn them on most when.What would activate our Raider sexuality most within the modern world would be pornography. These are women that you have no emotional connection to, you see as entirely disposable. And it would explain why in pornography you see such violent slash hardcore pornography appearing. Because that pornography is, is always, or pornography more generally, is always appealing to the Raider side of a male sexuality.Interesting. Ciao. This can cause a lot of problems if a man, when he is young and is not sexually successful because he, he doesn't get any, you know, long term partners, he doesn't get any women who he's sleeping with that he respects and a part [00:10:00] of his brain sees as homesteader sexuality. So, when he's learning what his sexuality is He begins to think that his sexuality is only comprised of the type of pornography that he's consuming.And this leads to men beginning to personally identify and build into their personal narrative of who they are as a person. This violent sexual raider personality. Instead of what they actually are, which is a bifurcation of two sexual personalities with one sexual personality actually be actually being much more optimized for like the good stay at home wife that they should be looking for.Simone Collins: So basically like arbitrarily. limiting themselves because they see the thing X turns them on and they're totally not realizing that thing Y can also be like a major source of satisfaction for them. But because it's not really in the material that they consume freely and easily online, [00:11:00] they just assume that that's not for them or they don't even know that it's an option.Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot harder to market that kind of fantasy to men. I mean, it's, it's certainly not like immediately satisfying, right? It's this slow burn. It's a, it's a different.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I think a lot of men who, when they're younger, find themselves turned on by radar sexuality type stuff might be surprised how gross that stuff would feel doing with their long term partner.No, it is, it is interesting. Because I think that they just assume, Oh, this is all stuff I would always. Enjoy doing. And, and then they get it. Well, and so men can high simulate Raider sexuality was long term partners through scene changes. And this is an interesting thing that you see within BDSM and stuff like that.So what's happening there is they are learning to think of their partner as somebody disposable was in the context of a micro scene that disconnects them [00:12:00] from who they are.Simone Collins: So you're no longer my wife. You're now this victim and I'm,Malcolm Collins: you know, you're now like a nurse. You're now a, you know, whatever, but that would actually be an authority mindset.So that's actually the inverse of what I'm talking about here. But this is role play. Like we are role playing a scenario in which you aren't who you are. And I am not who I am so that we can both carry out something that masturbates this. Part of our sexuality that is not being fully masturbated was in the normal sort of sexual relationship I would have with somebody I know that I'm married to.Right. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Because like, no, no man would really want to see violent and bad things happen to his wife or like, you know, a, a coercive scenario take place. I mean, unless he's really weird. Yeah. But like, but most husbands would be like, no, not my wife, but they may still be turned on by that scenario.So they would needMalcolm Collins: to like disassociate. Relationship. They're like, how do I simulate both of the women who historically I would have [00:13:00] been pillaging their village and also simulate the loving relationship I have at a home. Well, let's do it with scene changes, set changes and pretend because humans can pretend.Right. And they can trigger different aspects of their personality by appearing in very different one, like costumes using different words. Like this is something that you often, you know, we talk about humans having different parts of their personality overlaid on each other that are brought out. Like when I'm at work, one aspect of my personality is out when I'm at home, one aspect of my personality is out.And when people go back to their families, I think they often find a more juvenile aspect of their personality is drawn out, even if they don't intend for it to be because it's the scene and the context of the people that are around reactivate. This, this earlier optimization that they had in life.Well, I think within sexuality, we have different ones as well and that they can be activated by very specific context. The problem is, is that when people begin to internalize, this is something we constantly emphasize within the pragmatist guide to sexuality. And it's really important to [00:14:00] note is that the things that arbitrarily turn you on.Are not who you are, like they are not a reflection of your personality or anything like that. They are random realitySimone Collins: or what you want to have happen or what you endorse. Yeah. Anything. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: A woman who gets turned on by, you know, the course of sex. Yeah. Coercive sex. That doesn't mean that she wants a surprise sex, right?There is a difference between something turning you on and you wanting it in the real world. There's also a difference between something randomly turning you on and it being an aspect of your identity. Now, I know that this is A horrifying and offensive thing for me to say was in this world of alphabet soup identities, right?That just because something turns you on doesn't mean you need to incorporate it into your identity or you need to act on it. But I think that actually, the rise of the alphabet soup mentality has led [00:15:00] to many men who may not agree, like, like, like, they are otherwise normal straight men, to begin to accidentally Incorporate a lot of this Raider sexuality into their personality because they're not getting laid when they're developing their sexual identity.And so they're seeing all women in this way. By the way, a clip I really wanted to use about the alphabet soup group because I you know, going extinct because they're not going to be a long term group. Like the populations that are really, really accepting of them have incredibly low fertility rates.Mr. Marsh, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? We have to take matters into our own hands.We're trying to turn everyone gay so that there are no future humans. Present day America, number one. And it, it reminds me because I'm like, that's basically what many of the anti natalists are doing is a, is a big gay orgy to prevent humanity or at least their sect of humanity from existing in the future.Malcolm Collins: And that is historically also why many cultures. Shame these sorts of relationships is it's not that these relationships are intrinsically immoral and I believe very strongly that like gay relationships are not [00:16:00] intrinsically immoral, but I also believe that groups that are accepting of them to have lower fertility rates and thus get outcompeted by groups that are not.And that is why pretty much wherever you go, if you're looking at a successful, like, long lived widespread cultural group, it's going to have some undertone of homophobia. Because those iterations of cultures outcompete other iterations of cultures intergenerationally. And, and only within our debauched modern context do you see anything else.But I mean, equally debauched is succumbing to or identifying with this raider sexuality. Just because something turns you on doesn't mean you need to incorporate it into your identity. And Or that it's a good thing.Simone Collins: Like you have to think about your morals and your values and what you want for society and yourself and others.And then you need to think about what turns you on and maybe, maybe parse thoseMalcolm Collins: out. Well, I know what I mean. Some men they may think, or women may have such a strong desire to exercise this aspect of their sexuality that was hard coded in BOSE. It makes sense to do BOSE within a relationship, to have your BDSM play and your regular sexual [00:17:00] relationship or vanilla sexual relationship.That may make sense to overlap. To lower incidence of marital dissatisfaction which might lower the chance of your wife cheating on you with somebody outside of your relationship because you are taking on both roles in this artificial context for them. And that is a really interesting phenomenon that that may be a successful way to structure things for some communities.Why? I don't think that that works. Why? Why do you think? I don't think that that'll work long term.Simone Collins: Because it's an unsustainable power dynamic?Malcolm Collins: No, because I don't see it in any long lived cultural group in the world. Hmm. I am aware of no cult, long lived religious tradition or long lived cultural tradition that has a bifurcation of how they treat their partners.And i. e. we have both the, the homestead relationship and the raider relationship. And the reason I think that you don't see [00:18:00] this is because I think that once you begin to treat women in this raider fashion, they are likely going to have the same biological reaction that they have from being passed around between a ton of guys.Okay, so they'llstartSimone Collins: devaluing the relationship. As well,Malcolm Collins: they'll biologically begin to transform. If you can genuinely convince a woman's body that she's sleeping with a bunch of different people through this sort of role play, you might be actually triggering the same biological change that happens with her actually sleeping with a lot of people.It could be. I mean, peopleSimone Collins: get into, like, really into character. Like. Totally, yeah, I, I, wow, I wonder if it could, yeah, trigger the sort of hormonal process, is it?Malcolm Collins: So that's why I suspect we don't see this in long lived cultural groups, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense within a modern relationship.If you are with a woman who has not, who has, sorry, you're with a woman who has slept around a lot, this might be the only way. to maintain her happily was in a long term monogamous relationship. [00:19:00] Because she has already undergone this polymorphic transformation. And I don't know if there's a way to transform women back.Okay, butSimone Collins: here's the thing, and I think this is important to note, is that relationships are not just sex. Like true, there's a lot more that's going on. There's, there's economic burden sharing, there's building households, there's raising kids. Yeah, I think a lot of people get married, especially when they're more mature and of course there are many exceptions here.Independent of sex because they want to do specific things like it. And there are many, probably totally sexless marriages out there where couples have just come together because they knew that that configuration would help them achieve their lifestyleMalcolm Collins: goals. Well, yeah, I mean, and I think we largely as a society right now overvalue sex within marriages and The reason we overvalue sex was in marriages is because when we are thinking about marriage partners within our existing Sociotechnological framework [00:20:00] people vet marriage partners through casual sex and so Your quality as a marriage partner is in part seen as your value is in sexual marketplaces.And so people then confuse that as being a core aspect of a marriage when in reality, I, and I, and I think, you know, we had this video on how girl defined ruined a generation of men. There's a takeoff on the house, Scott Pilgrim ruined a generation of men.PVD and Ecstasy conceded with no self-esteem. She's a teammate dream if you hate yourselF.enough flowers and fell So impacted,Hollywood It's sad to picture someone's daughter Like a lamb to the slaughterMalcolm Collins: In that they convinced conservatives that the point of marriage was sex, but that the way you got the very [00:21:00] best sex and the very goodest of good sex went through abstinence until marriage when that missed the point, abstinence until marriage was a value because sex is just not that important at all before a marriage or after a marriage in terms of our own kids.And you can watch our video on how we would you know, teach our kids about sexuality. I, I do think that sex can be used as a tool within a modern context to you know, get followers and help and stuff like that. I mean, who knows how I would have done in college without all the women who helped me with my homework and studying that were primarily doing that because I was having sex with them.Like, there, there, there are men and women who use sex as a resource to reach certain goals that they have. It's just better if our kids grow up understanding the costs and the benefits of that. Now, fortunately, it's been Maybe at least for me, fortunately, not always, because you know, you could accidentally get a woman pregnant or something like that.But the costs, at least at a long term psychological level, seem to be lower than the cost to women. A [00:22:00] really interesting study I was looking at recently was looking at, and I'll put the statistics on screen here, how many sexual partners a woman had had before she got married and the likelihood that the marriage would end a divorce.And a woman A woman who hadn't had any sexual partners, there was only a 20 percent chance it would end in divorce. And a woman who had had, I think, over 15 sexual partners or over 12 sexual partners, there was only a 20 percent chance the marriage would stay. And this is a huge difference. This is a huge difference.Simone Collins: Oh, I think most women like when I think about Ayla's live Twitter polls, so like, you know, we actually had the opportunity to see people sort themselves by number of sexual partners. It seemed like most women in Ayla's live Twitter polls sorted themselves into the. three to eight range. So,Malcolm Collins: you know, Yeah.Well, so in the oxytocin studies, that would be pretty much already near the floor of oxytocin you get from new partners. That seems to happen after [00:23:00] three. So once you've done three partners, you're pretty much spent on the oxytocin category but you would still see a decline in the probability that a marriage continues.And I should note these oxytocin studies. I remember very clearly going over them. I remember them being controversial. Like it was talked about them being controversial, but they were there and I went over them. Now, if you look for them online, you won't find them anywhere. And what's funny is all of the old sex researchers remember them.You know, when we're talking with Diana Fleischman, she remembers these studies existing. You can't find them anywhere anymore. I do not know what happened to them. Lev will remember them existing at some point. Just gone now, scrubbed from the internet. Which I think shows the power of The, the, the leftist distortion field when something doesn't agree with their narrative or leads to unpleasant implications, it must be destroyed which to me is interesting in that it shows that this war that we have as a war of truth and integrity and fighting for what is real and fighting for this society wide distortion field that is meant to [00:24:00] protect the illusion that everyone can live in this, this happy world.In fact, it, it reminds me a lot of this book I read growing up called The Giver. I don't know if you read that one, where basically they'd even removed colors from society and they'd removed everything. So you took a drug that made it so you didn't feel emotions, you didn't see colors, you didn't Anything like that, because all of that stuff could lead to potential discomfort in some individuals, and the goal of society is to remove all potential discomfort.And, and we are beginning to see that, this expanding distortion field, but fortunately we're also seeing them be incredibly low fertility, and so they really can only survive by taking children from nearby healthy demographic groups. So, you know, And then people are like, well, why is all this sex?Why do you look so hard at sex? Like, why is it so important to you to understand, right? Sexuality right now is one of the core ways that the mind virus is utilizing to peel kids out from your healthy demographic groups. If you ignore human sexual diversity or real human sexuality, [00:25:00] then you put your group at risk of having kids peeled out of it.If you do stupid things like banning pornography within a modern context, like, of course pornography was a good idea to ban in a historic context. When You know, people the first person they married, what, the first person they had sex with was who they married and porn just lowered the amount of sex they were having with their partner, right?Like, yeah, of course that made sense. But if you look within a modern context, there's pretty much a direct correlation geographically with how religious, i. e. how banned porn is in an area and how much porn is consumed. Banning porn has the exact opposite effect at a cultural level that you would expect, which means we need to understand human sexuality to learn how we can adapt our cultures Cheers.to better prevent sexuality as being a wedge that the left can use or the, the, the mind virus can use to take our children from us. And I think being sexually accepting while also being sexually honest, the cool thing about what the left has done is they've created such a distortion field. It's really [00:26:00] clear when you talk to people about how human sexuality actually works, the, and you look at our book, like the pragmatist guide to sexuality, which would be very offensive from a leftist perspective.They are getting a truer understanding of sexuality than the left is selling because the left, as we talked about in the beginning of that book, it has to sell this iteration of sexuality where gayness is like a meaningful sexual subtype, right? And we pointed out that if gayness probably doesn't really meaningfully exist, it's better to think of what specific genital configurations humans are most attracted to, because we point out that it's actually pretty common for straight men to be repulsed by something like vagina.It's actually pretty common for men to be attracted to, like, a female body shape, like, secondary sex characteristics, but male primary sex characteristics, which within the online sphere is known as, like, FUDA it's, it's, within women, you see similar sort of mismatch between, like, primary and secondary sex characteristics, first attraction to the extent where, like Categorizing people into this, like, holistically, I am attracted to the opposite [00:27:00] same category is really only useful in a macro behavioral pattern perspective, i.e., who are they dating? Which itSimone Collins: is useful Well, almost even more relevant from a cultural standpoint, really.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're groups that built an identity because they were This is communicated from society for a similar rule violation, but this led for something like gay people to be in the same community as trans people, when in reality they have almost nothing in common in that they, other than that they were both isolated from mainstream society for violating sexual norms or gender norms and it really makes no sense for these two communities to be allies at all, other than for a while their goals overlapped, which I do not think that they do anymore.I guessSimone Collins: allied in, you know, oppression or minority status.Malcolm Collins: Well, no, they were allied in how they were separated from society, which led to them. Any group that is separated from society in any way is going to begin to develop new cultural norms. And those cultural norms begin to develop an [00:28:00] intercommunity identity.And so they begin to. Develop a culture around the reason they were excommunicated from society, which then meant the reason that they were excommunicated from society ended up becoming like their highest order of identity. But it didn't exist in a meaningful, like when you actually look at the data, it's actually like far more nuanced than that.Like the Kinsey scale is completely garbage. Read the pragmatist guide to sexuality or see our video on this. Like it. That is not the way human sexuality works at all. But and again, we're not saying that there aren't a huge portion of men who are also attracted to men or women who are also attracted to women.I would say that within bisexual populations, when you actually look at the data like on dating platforms, they actually like will overwhelmingly prefer to date. Just one gender. And this may be a very strong preference you're seeing within the bisexual population, or it may mean that a lot of the attacks on the bisexual population are actually accurate.But it typically, for example, within men, only 20 percent of bisexuals actually, like, do that, whereas in women it's something like 35%, so it's actually unmeaningful. I was actually surprised within women, [00:29:00] so many bisexual women are actually really just only dating one gender or the other gender. Which you can see, but apparently they switch up as well, which men don't do as much.Like, they're really persistent on which their preferable gender is. Although you do see within the bisexual community, interesting, a lot of them leaving around the age where they might be getting scared that they're not going to be able to have kids. Um, so, so you have all that, but this has led to this leftist distortion field around how they're able to do sexual research, which means that you and me and, and, and within things like the pragmatist guide to sexuality we are able to have discussions.That are truer. And obviously truer to young people than the discussions that are happening in the left. And when they see that, that completely prevents the left from being able to use sexuality as a wedge to take them out of our cultural groups. But this requires actually engaging with sexuality and understanding why we had some of these historic practices, like the denigration of porn.Asking why we would study this stuff so diligently or [00:30:00] spend so much time researching it is like asking a prisoner why they would spend so much time researching the bars of their cage. If we are trapped in these fleshy prisons that enforce Emotions and desires upon us we did not ask for. It is in part our duty to study and understand them so that we can better escape them and better prevent them from controlling and influencing our actions. If you were trapped in a room with a wild, dangerous animal, the goal of any righteous individual is to ensure that this wild animal This lower part of themselves doesn't become the core focus of their lives and identity, but there are multiple paths towards achieving that, for example, you can spend every waking moment attempting to tame and control the beast, or you can learn to feed it just enough to keep it from bothering you.and through better understanding the Beast, we can better understand how to deprioritize it in terms of [00:31:00] our daily thoughts and actions.Malcolm Collins: Now that the left You know, tracer butt scandal. Gamergate has seeded male sexuality. We are insane for not picking that up. They said anything that turns on males is intrinsically immoral basically. And now we can go scoop up the, the remains of that, which is a large part of the, the, the male community, right?Because they don't like. Being denigrated for what turns them on and incorporate that was more traditional frameworks in a way that these two things can work together and they can work together, but they work together because it is true that going out and sleeping with a lot of people is probably not in your best interest.When you look at the data and, and that's, that's the great thing about all of this is that because what we're fighting for is truth, truth is always on our side. Convenient. Convenient. Very convenient. Well, no, I mean, if they only were fighting with integrity and for actually protecting people, then truce would be on their side as well, but they're not.Yeah, but I mean,Simone Collins: it [00:32:00] also gives us flexibility that other groups don't have, which is to say if we get better evidence, we get to just say, oh, sorry, we were wrong. And, and then pursue what we understand to be right given the evidence. So I think the greatest thing about the fighting for truth stance is that it's okay to be wrong.It's actually really important to learn when you're wrong so that you can be less wrong and more right going forward. And then no matter how. You know, imperfect. Our knowledge is we can always try to do a little bit better and get closer to the truth, whereas other groups are just kind of stuck with their stances.But I'm really, really glad you shared this theory with me. I do. I don't know. I wonder like how societies could change culturally in a way that would prepare men to understand this bifurcation because there's a lot of things like we discussed in another conversation recently. Yeah, How like both men and women really aren't really taught to bring anything to the table.So is it no wonder that [00:33:00] even with all these different government incentives and programs, men and women are being still completely disinterested in getting married. And it's easy to, you know, sort of through propaganda, education, et cetera, explain again and again, you here's what you can bring to the table.Always keep in mind what you need to bring to the table. But how would you train people around this? How would you prepare young men? aroundMalcolm Collins: this. Just make them aware of this truth. The thing that turns them on with porn is not necessarily what's going to turn them on with a long term partner. It's kind of a sex ed thing.You shouldn't incorporate those things into your identity and also keep in mind that the things that seduce women in bars are not the things that seduce the good long term partner that you want to be married to for the rest of your life. These are two different sexual optimization functions. And if you waste a bunch of time optimizing around the wrong one, you will get divorce scraped.Hmm.Simone Collins: All right. Good. Solid advice. [00:34:00] I love you. Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: I love you too, Simone. You're an amazing woman and I am desperately lucky that I married somebody so clear headed and intelligent and that helps me see the world more clearly every day. And so thank you for that.Simone Collins: Hopefully more so when I don't have a fever anymore, thanks for taking care of me.You're the best. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We explain the strategic reason we celebrate Jewish holidays and are exposing our kids to Judaism. It's so they have a productive, moral backup culture if they reject our unusual views, not the urban monoculture. We believe multiple conservative religions like Judaism and Mormonism have validity from our "Tesseract God" perspective. Other options lack community today but we aim to build our own.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] if we want to give our kids the best shot in life it, you know, you want to look at.Yeah. Religious traditions that have favorable outcomes.it's doing something quite cruel to a kid to be putting them and raising them in a new cultural group that you have created yourself and raise them feeling like you won't appreciate them if they do anything other than this really insane, weird thing you set up for them.Malcolm Collins: And a lot of people, when we present our cultural group, they're like, why don't you just go to Our group, right? Like, this is what we constantly hear. They're like, our group is traditional, our group has done this a long time. And the answer is likely, and I don't mean to say this harshly, but it's probably because your group is failing.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to talk about a fairly interesting and nuanced topic. Yeah. Which is this year, one of the things we did is we celebrated Hanukkah as a family for the first time. Yeah. And a lot of people are really [00:01:00] surprised by the fact that we raise our kids with the option to be Jewish.And they're like, what, why would you do that? We're like, why would you think you'd be accepted? Like, this is a weird thing to do. Especially given all of your religious beliefs. So this requires much enumeration on our part. At the end of this video, I'll play the little, you know, menorah lighting with the kids and everything.They were really into it this year. Yeah, I'mSimone Collins: sure we did it extremely wrong, but I will say that our oldest son, Octavian, got super into it. And we don't know how, like we let them watch. Stuff on their iPads for like a little bit every night. Well, not an iPad. It's actually really cheap Android devices, but they don't knowMalcolm Collins: the difference.We call them iPads. They don't know the difference.Simone Collins: Well, no, Torsten calls them his hot puss. Thank you very much. Hot puss.Malcolm Collins: OhSimone Collins: gosh. They're under a hundred dollars. Somehow, and we don't know how our son Octavian like found a bunch of, and he's, Four years old videos on YouTube about Hanukkah for kids.And [00:02:00] he just was like watching them on repeat. And then each night he was like, Oh, like let's, let's do it. Let's learn. Let's light the menorah. And then like, after it was over. There were like at least three nights of great disappointment when there were no more candles to light.Malcolm Collins: We didn't even do presents or anything.We just did the readings. No, yeah. No, yeah. He'd always say after a reading, he'd go, Mom, what does thatSimone Collins: even mean? What does that even mean? Every time I would finish, I would finish part of like the recital. Like both the kids would be like, yeah. Like after each, you know, like. You know, so, you know, the Lord encourages us to like light the menorah and the Lord performed these miracles and they're like, yeah, but they have no idea, no idea what it actually meant.But anyway, so like they were actuallyMalcolm Collins: really into it. Why are we doing this? Right. Like, like one is. So there's there's sort of two large strategic reasons for doing this. We believe really heavily that one of the big problems with a lot of conservative [00:03:00] tradition families today is that they raise their kids believing.That the, the alternative to following the culture that they are outlining for the kids is the urban monoculture. The only and default alternative. Whereas we are trying to raise our kids with a choice between two conservative extremes. where they feel that the alternative in the way that they are raised to be sort of intergenerational in the way they think about things is going to be the Jewish community.So one is why do we think we'd be accepted by that community in terms of how we do this? Well, the answer is actually pretty Interesting and unique to us, and I've mentioned this on other things, is that we found out, I, well, maybe a bit before we first met each other, but I certainly didn't know it until after we were dating, is that Simone is matrilineally Jewish, and within conservative Jewish communities, that makes her And our [00:04:00] kids, so I would say technically Jewish, whereas to them it's just fully Jewish.Simone Collins: Yeah, whenever we say to like at least some Jewish people that like, oh yeah, we're technically Jewish, they're like, what do you mean? And then we're like, well, yeah, our kids are matrilineally Jewish. And they're like, no, no, no. So they're Jewish. And we're like, I mean. LikeMalcolm Collins: we, I don't feel like cheating if you're from any other cultural group.Yeah. It goes toSimone Collins: also, we did not know until like maybe a couple of years ago and no, like two years ago. Yeah. A couple of years ago that, that literally like that was the requirement. We thought that there were, we heard, you know, about like, you know, people trying to convert your, your sister tried to convert, you know, turned away multiple times, like a ton of like studying and work.And so we're like, well, okay. So, I mean, to be Jewish, then you have to put in. A ton of work and at least like even for like non hard to convert to religions, good religions that like if we, you know, in 30 seconds wanted to convert, we could be welcomed with open arms. You're still really not [00:05:00] considered that, like a part of that religion, unless you're like leaning into it, you identify with it, you signal, you go to church, you know, or at least you say certain things and we hadn't done any of that.So it felt really weird and it's a very weird technicality. ButMalcolm Collins: it's also like an option to us. So when we are raising kids within our weird religion and cultural framework, if we are preventing, or if we are presenting one other backup for them to turn to, other than our weird version of Christianity, you know, what is that backup going to be?And a lot of people, when we present our cultural group, they're like, why don't you just go to Our group, right? Like, this is what we constantly hear. They're like, our group is traditional, our group has done this a long time. And the answer is likely, and I don't mean to say this harshly, but it's probably because your group is failing.If I could choose what cultural group my kids go in, and Jew is an option let's just [00:06:00] like, look at what the other alternatives are.Now, before we go into this, it's important to remember that we are not arguing against the truth of these religious systems. We believe that every one of the religious systems, I mean, this is why we are considering them, is true from the perspective of a Tesseract God. But, and this is a concept we go into in another video, where we believe that trying to follow the conservative revelation of specific JudeoChristian. religious traditions, which are direct revelations from God, is God's will for certain groups of people.So when we're choosing between these traditions, what we are choosing is the one that most realistically, if we had as a backup for our kids, we think that kids would choose that over the urban monoculture, if they do not choose the tradition that we are raising them in, so that means that these are the traditions that we can , most logically convince somebody of our cultural group to join that said a lot of people will look at this and they're like Oh, well, this is too analytical a way to [00:07:00] approach religion You know, can't you just approach religion with faith When you are choosing between religious traditions saying just how faith doesn't work just how faith only works when you are choosing between , a religious tradition and no religious tradition or a religious tradition and a weaker, less conservative iteration of that religious tradition, because you can have faith in any individual religious tradition.And then an individual might say, well, just pray to God and have him tell you which one is the correct answer. And then the problem is, yeah, but. People of all of these traditions have already done that, and clearly God has returned to them that their tradition is the correct. And if he didn't return that answer to them, then there's somebody like Joseph Smith or something, and then everyone will say, Oh, he started a cult, you know., which, you know, you could say that that's what we've done in our way. We prayed to God, said what's the correct answer, and he gave us this really weird answer. So, I, I don't think that, , that, that is effective to us either. So keep in mind there is a reason why we are approaching this logically. It is because we care for the fate of our [00:08:00] children's soul, and we need to choose a tradition that we think is one both true, but also is easy to logically argue to our kids that they should choose if they don't choose our own.Malcolm Collins: I could go for a conservative Catholic group. The average fertility rate in a majority Catholic country in Europe right now is 1. 3. It is desperately low. And, and, and culturally it just is, is probably the biggest mismatch with us possible.In terms of our extremely anti authority mindset.And, and, and to keep in mind when we point out how like distant we are, if you look at like my, my family background, like. I'm a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell, like very, very far from that cultural group.Yeah.Now, before I go further with this, I need to really clearly say that this is not me arguing against Catholicism as a true representation of God within this Tesseract God framework I am simply going over why I personally could [00:09:00] not get behind it.And I do not think it would be a good system for me to raise as a backup system for my own children.Also, logically, I have trouble with Catholicism versus other Christian traditions. Specifically, it differentiates itself by saying we have this system for choosing the one individual who is the key representative of God on Earth, the Pope. however, I brought up the Cadaver Synod flippantly earlier, and I really don't take it flippantly when I'm looking at Catholicism from a logical consistency standpoint. In this incident, one Pope dug up the body of another dead Pope, predecessor, put him on trial saying that he was both immoral and that the system had inaccurately put him in the papacy, and then threw his body in the river. Then after that Pope was assassinated by his own clergy, He then had his own actions repudiated by the next [00:10:00] Pope. So this is not like me as an outsider saying by whatever outside moral standards I have that the papacy has been a bad system at choosing God's core representative It is God's core representative on Earth as chosen by this system, saying it's a bad system for choosing God's core representative on Earth.I just can't logically get around that.Now, of course, the standard Catholic response to this is none of this situation happened ex cathedra. So ex cathedra is a special set of circumstances that's required for something a pope says or writes to be considered the direct word of God or directly inspired by God.​The problem I have with this counter is that X Cathedral was not a concept when this trial was happening. .was not fully delineated until almost a millennium after this trial. at the First Vatican Council. So, [00:11:00] when the Great Schism happened, in which the Patriarch of Rome claimed that his system for choosing a Patriarch was innately and categorically superior to the systems all of the other Patriarchs were using, , and he then excommunicated some of these other patriarchs, potentially damning their souls to hell.He was doing that with all of the power invested in him that was invested in the popes during the cadaver syndrome, which was before , Ex Cathedra had been developed. And keep in mind, Ex Cathedra was developed with all of these events in mind. This would be like saying, Oh, me as an investor, my investment decisions are ordained by God. You can see by how good they've turned out and then somebody comes to me and they're like, look, you've objectively lost tons of money on the stock market.And then I go, oh, no, no, no, no. You see, it turns out that all of the decisions I made on Tuesdays and Wednesdays don't count. Now I am making this carve out [00:12:00] after knowing that those days were my bad trading days. That is not a compelling argument for this being a good system or for me being a good trader.However, this ex cathedra argument, which, again, we don't think is very compelling, did not even exist during the time of the Great Schism as a concept.where it had to differentiate its system as being innately superior to the Orthodox system. And this then, Comes to another problem, which is all of the events of the cadaver Synod had actually happened fairly recently before the Great Schism. So when the patriarch of Rome is telling all of the other patriarchs, my system is innately superior to all of your systems recently, within their memory is the cadaver synod.And I mean, look.If God actually intended us to use this system to choose his representative on Earth, then he would not have allowed this to happen.However, if he was trying to tell us don't [00:13:00] choose this system, choose another,and God wanted to send a very loud signal to anyone who was investigating it, that it is not his voice on Earth, this seems like the way he would have signaled something like that.In addition to that though, and as we've talked about before, Aesthetically, Catholicism does not seem to be a representation of true word of God as laid out in the Christian Bible as I understand it.Which one is it? You must choose. But choose wisely. For as the true grail will bring you life, the false grail will take it from you.I'm not a historian. I have no idea what it looks like. Which one is it? Let me choose.It's more beautiful than I'd ever imagined.This certainly is the cup of [00:14:00] the king of kings. Is happening to me? He chose poor.Be made out of gold. That's the cup of a carpenter.you have chosen wisely. So, when coming at this choice of what system would be a good backup system for my own kids, Causalicism is the one I can easily rule out. Like, it seems like the obviously wrong choice,Hello Drew[00:15:00]um, but that doesn't mean that it is the wrong choice for other people. . So, for example, Catholicism might be a uniquely good and powerful system for any familythat is really moved by ritual, and really moved by grandeur, and really moved by authority, instead of repelled by things like ritual and grandeur.Malcolm Collins: You could go with Orthodox, I, I think that Orthodox is the original Christianity. I think the Orthodox groups of Christians are the original Christianity, if you're like, I want to be original OG Christian. Like higherSimone Collins: fidelity to theMalcolm Collins: Higher fidelity to the original church, and we can do another video on this, because a lot of people think that's the Catholics, and it really isn't the Catholics, it's the Orthodox.But, I mean, because, I mean, in the early days, if you look at the early church, if you look at the church writings, it was a group of heads of various cities who would meet with each other and were broadly equals. The idea of one person being above all the others really only came into play when Rome, [00:16:00] like, really began to dominate the, the, the political scene.And then, you know, after Constantine made it the Roman Empire, they were like, okay, this one city is more important than the other cities, but that doesn't really flow as like the original intentionality of the church. So they, they have the most claim, but I have no cultural connection to them. Like not, it would be so weird to convert to Orthodox Christianity.We have no genetic connection, no cultural connection andSimone Collins: well, I mean, technically my Jewish ancestors converted to Orthodox Christianity because they were renting their upper apartment to the SS.Malcolm Collins: So that's how they hit it.Simone Collins: Yeah, so we do have a family connection, but yeah, not nothing realistic. Yeah.Yeah.We also run into the same aesthetic problem that we've run into with Catholicism when we're dealing with the Orthodox traditions For context here, Vladimir I of Kievan Rus, the guy who [00:17:00] basically sort of founded the Russian Orthodox Church, he chose Orthodoxism over other iterations of Christianity because he was so impressed with how beautiful the Hagia Sophia was, or at least that's the legend.In the same vein, I also think I would have a hard time if I had to try to convince my kids. To believe that there was any sort of theological import to things like relics, which from my tradition was iconoclasm, , that's basically worshipping.A corpse someone took a bedazzle or two.Introducing the VDazzler, , transform your ordinary blue jeans into an expensive designer look. Be the envy of your friends.Be creative. Bedazzle your socks, mitts and gloves. Hats and scarves.Malcolm Collins: So then the protestant groups, right? Like, I like the protestant groups. I see them as broadly right if you believe that the Bible is the only and total revelation.But, you know, obviously we've talked about [00:18:00] on other podcasts, we don't believe that. We don't even believe that the Bible really states that. It, it notes there's going to be future revelations.So the advantage of things like the Orthodox tradition and the Catholic tradition is they have systems in place that allow adherence to those traditions to easily identify how God's word is elucidated upon or added to with additional prophets because they have these central hierarchies which allow them to say this is an accurate prophet, this is an inaccurate prophet, and through that the traditions can evolve with God's continuing revelation.And as to why we believe God has a continuing revelation, it's because that's what the Bible says. Jesus says there are going to be prophets after me. Whereas within Protestantism, you have no system for doing that, or within the traditional Protestant faith, which means you're sort of frozen in time at the point when the Bible was written., Which to me seems incongruous was what I [00:19:00] think God would want. Like I don't think God would have given his whole incomplete revelation to an obscure group 2, 000 years ago and that that message wouldn't reach a huge portion of the world's population for like a thousand years after it was delivered., so to me, I think God has always been trying to as holistically as he can, reveal himself in the way that every group is meant to understand him. , but, that being the case, it means that we have no system if we go as a traditional Protestant tra strand of determining these additional revelations.And since our family's existing faith is essentially Protestant plus additional revelations, there is no advantage to having a traditional form of Protestantism as a backup to it. That stuff is already encompassed in what we teach our children.Malcolm Collins: And like, so, so when we're looking at things and it offers us no advantage, like. If you look at the Protestant cultural groups in the world today, they are some of the most [00:20:00] underperforming of the Christian cultural groups.Yeah, and like, whatSimone Collins: cultural amenities are they offering? Like, at least Mormons have like this amazing community and lifestyle and, youMalcolm Collins: know. All that up.And then people will say things like, well, then why don't you go back to your ancestral tradition? You know, the Calvinist tradition, and that's because the Calvinist group that exists within any population today in America is almost the antithesis of the historical Calvinist group. You know, they're evangelical hardliners like Ayla's dad, for example, which doesn't lead to good outcomes in today's society.Whereas you look at the iteration of the Calvinist group, that is our actual. It's the one that, Scott Alexander slash star slate codex wrote about when he wrote the Puritan spotting checklist. And we would almost appear to be an offensive stereotype of this group. You know, for the things he gets points foratheist DS free thinker, wrote a book about their heterodox religious views, invented a new [00:21:00] religion, invented a new Christian heresy, obsessed with religious tolerance, founded their own school, had really weird names, had a bunch of kids,wrote a list of virtues, had a plan to em Ize. The estuan social reformer waged a crusade against an abstract concept. Ideals that were utopian, yet racist. And I don't think our views are racist, but we get accused of racism all the time. Abolitionists, my family famously very involved in the abolition movement and fighting for, uh, African-American rights, famously involved in philanthropy.We were also involved in the prohibition movement. I love it. Rabidly, anti-war. Yet rabidly supports every specific war that happened. , so you can see that like, this is clearly the group we're from. We're not even acting out of line with this group's cultural traditions. And yet, they have no community for us to go back to.And even what we're doing with the religion we're creating for our family is very much something somebody from this group would do. So we haven't left this group in terms of our [00:22:00] primary religious system.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so the core real choices for us to raise as an alternative for our kids are Jews and Mormons. That they both produce competent individuals.They seem like they're going to be major players in the future of humanity and theologically I think they both have a claim to being total and complete revelations from God.Jews, because, well, pretty much every group in the Judeo Christian tree says that Jewish texts have some real importance or weight to them, which is not something we can say for virtually any other religious system. In addition to that, it's a religion that seems to be able to continue evolving and continue updating itself.And as you know, as we think, we don't think any religion that is ever frozen in time, or any theological structure that's ever frozen in time, can be theologically correct as It would be impossible for God to give a full revelation to people, you know, early, early, early in human history, and yet it would be capricious and evil for him to give those people no revelation at [00:23:00] all, so when we're looking for a true religion, we're looking for an evolving religious system, with Mormons, it's because they believe that they can continue to get revelations up to today, and, you They don't really take super hard stances on almost anything, , in terms of a metaphysical understanding of the universe because of this continued revelation framework, which really fits with our framework for how we think things likely actually work theologically.Malcolm Collins: So when I'm looking at those two groups Jews just seem to have their act together a lot more right now.Simone Collins: Yeah. I would say they are an appreciating asset showing signs of like, these guys are doing it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I think that's whatSimone Collins: people need to be asking themselves. And I, again, I want to emphasize how meaningful your observation is that like, The, the facto option that hardline conservative religious families are giving to their kids are either follow our specific religion or join the progressive urban [00:24:00] monoculture.Yeah. Like, and like, if you really care about your children's mental wellbeing, thriving as humans, like both like economic, social and mental and spiritual wellbeing. Do you really want their other option to be completely like religiously, morally, like mentally bankrupt? Or do you want to like, at least give them a shot at thriving?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and so an interesting thing is a lot of people will see what we're doing and they'll be like, yeah, but even if you send them to like Chabad summer camps and stuff like that, even if you do the Jewish, They're never going to be full, like, ultra Orthodox Jews, right? And I'm like, yeah, that's the point.The idea here is not that if they don't like what we're doing, they convert to ultra Orthodox Judaism. They convert to some form of, like, modern Orthodox Judaism. You know, they, they maybe follow the traditions, but they do not play in the ultra Orthodox status games, which are involved around, you know, having to study all the time.Like, they really [00:25:00] require a level of investment that you need to be committed to 100 percent from birth. And not birth, but you know, young teamSimone Collins: would be really hard. Yeah. I would be very, very hard forMalcolm Collins: joining the Olympics, but like starting to train for it when you're in late high school, likeSimone Collins: joining a group of like, you know, Russian Olympic gymnasts who've been likeMalcolm Collins: training since, you know, exposing them to that community.So long as they like that community, then they go down the regular Orthodox pathway was in Judaism or, you know, we would call like secular Orthodox Judaism Particularly the one in the U S or Israel, which gives them a network of spouses, which gives them a network of business partners, you know, people that are willing to help them and everything like that.Of course we're providing them with an advantage there. If, if they decide to take that path, but what we're also trying to do and, and, you know, we have our lifetimes to do this is to, for our own weird philosophical and religious framework that we're building up is to build [00:26:00] enough of a community of disparate groups that are vaguely connected.Was this that they also, if they go that route, have a network where they can get spouses, business connections, everything like that. Like we basically have our lifetimes. To try to build a network that competes with Judaism for business connections, spousal attainment, and moral what's the word I'm looking for here?Like a moral spine. And a lot of people can be like, that is a fool's errand to attempt that. That is the sign of grandiose fantasy to think that you could do that. And yet I think that we are well on our way.Simone Collins: We're not cowards. Also, we strongly believe in, in. The power that competition has to enable you to achieve things you never thought you could achieve and the, the power of exposure to extremely accomplished peers.If you raise a kid surrounded by very accomplished friends and peers, they're going to. Ultimately, I think, [00:27:00] end up, even if they, like, just are lower caliber in general, they're gonna end up higher than if they were with peers of their own level, you know? Like, we're still sharpening ourselves here.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I mean, we've worked really hard to do this, to ensure that even at a young age, the families that they are socializing with are the you know, one was in our cultural network and two, like absolutely impressive in setting their expectations really, really high in terms of what's expected of them.Simone Collins: And it's showing up already in what way I'm just like in the confidence that our kids show about their convictions and. their judgments.Malcolm Collins: Well, this also comes from how we raise them in our parenting style, this idea of stroking their will rather than breaking their will. Everything about our parenting style is meant to increase the strength of their will.Like that is the core thing that we can do. And I think that that's the core thing that we should focus on when they disagree with us or something like that. The last thing I want to do is to break them like a wild horse, [00:28:00] right? You want to make it. difficult for them. You want to strengthen them. You don't want them to just be able to do whatever they want, like a spoiled brat.You want them to understand the moral responsibility of being somebody who lives by their own will while also strengthening and testing that will as much as possible to make it as strong as possible. And, and that's something that we, you know, are consistently focused on within our parenting techniques.But I also want to be clear that we may fail. And the best backup network we see right now in the world is the Jewish community. Like I think pretty obviously, and I think for a lot of people, I if, if they were like, okay, if my kids weren't of my culture and I had to choose one other culture as a backup culture and I was accepted by that culture, who are you gonna choose?Mormons are a close second, I'd say. Like, I really like the Mormon community. Yeah, same. But their fertility rates are falling. And they're the, the, the thing that most [00:29:00] distances me from the Mormon community is when they're overly nice. Like that just doesn't follow my, my No, see that'sSimone Collins: my bigger problem with it actually is that like most of the Mormon content that I get that even makes me love the church is from people who Have left the church and are very openly publicly salty about it.Like it's, it's bad if your major, like online brand ambassadors are your detractors.So, what we mean by this is, when we want to intellectually engage with a community, that means we want to see people from within that community, you know, nitpick every little nuance in terms of how different groups in that community are different, how different people in the community see things differently, and all of the theological debates within the community, what they don't like about the community, what they do like within the community.Now, you can understand. This is something we get in spades within the Jewish community, but almost not at all within the Mormon community, which makes it [00:30:00] very dispositionally hard for us to engage with the community outside of people who have left the community and are willing to, like, drop the T.Malcolm Collins: Well, the best brand ambassadors, because I think culturally when somebody is raised within the Mormon community, they're typically very good at social things. If you look at like the leaders of like the new ACS community, they're really disproportionately ex Mos.Yeah. AndSimone Collins: one, I think, I think maybe the problem is that there are also many practicing Mormon influencers. But they don't, you don't realize they're not talking about their religion.Malcolm Collins: No, I don't think that's it is that they don't engage with metaphysical debates as much as I would find like mentally stimulating to me.Like to me, the, the Mormons have a sophisticated metaphysical system. Which is interesting to me. And we've talked about this in our Mormon video. But there is a denial within the Mormon community of the diversity of beliefs within the Mormon community. And that denial makes interesting debate within, within the community, at least from the perspective of an outsider.[00:31:00]Much rarer than it is within the ultra Orthodox Jewish community where like metaphysical debate is the core of the community, like the absolute core of the community, which is going to engender me like, or the next iteration of me, probably more to that community if I'm trying to build an alternative to that.And if you're here as an outsider thinking like, yeah, but you should be choosing which religion you want at the back of religion, just based on which one is most likely to be true. You've got to see our video on the Tesseract God concept. We believe Some, not all, but some of the Judeo Christian tree of revelations to be holy and complete revelations that are simultaneously 100 percent true.And if you follow a conservative interpretation of those traditions, you are following God's will for you, and now, you know, people would be like, yeah, but aren't you worried that your kids might be studying like religious texts by studying [00:32:00] Jewish texts that are antithetical to your belief system.And it's like, no, because of the way we view these different religious systems, one of our kids studying Jewish texts are studying like real non heretical information. In the same way, I think most Christian groups would feel the same way about Jewish texts.Malcolm Collins: And the second is, is, is if Mormons. Had successfully created a deseret state or a, a strong desert isolated community. I would be much more like considering Mormonism as, as the alternative we raise our kids with. But they haven't done that. There is no Mormon Israel yet. Oh. And I think that's very, very important, having these sort of isolated communities, where the world's headed, where we're looking at this vast economic collapse and the primary asset in the future, being high fertility, high competence, high agency groups, you're just not seeing that Mormons have the potential to create something like thatLike, it's very obviously in the [00:33:00] DNA of Mormonism to attempt to do something like that, as that was very much how they were founded. They just need to move back in that direction, maybe create a settlement somewhere else, maybe somewhere outside the U. S.Malcolm Collins: Catholics could as well but they'd have to create some sort of a new exclusive order that allowed priests to breed, and that's Unlikely.I can see Catholics creating like isolated communities in the U. S. that do this. That could be very interesting. ThereSimone Collins: may already be someMalcolm Collins: that we just don't know about. Yeah, there already might be some that we just don't know about. That, that could be interesting to look at.Would it not be fascinating if a Catholic group converted some of these, you know, you increasingly see these old monasteries getting abandoned or sold off by the church, converted one of these into a residential child focused community. That would be, that would be interesting.Malcolm Collins: Same with, same with Orthodox communities.Although Orthodox are just getting absolutely rammed right now.Simone Collins: Yeah, you don't hear about them thriving. [00:34:00] IMalcolm Collins: mean, they do well in the United States. But they don't have awesome fertility rates and they haven't done a good job of maintaining intergenerational fidelity. And by that, what I mean is they have a really high bleed rate.Like they do not keep people in their religion at high rates. After Mormons, probably the next group I would choose for our kids, if I had to choose a group would be some form of Anabaptist.Simone Collins: Interesting. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, yeah, yeah. Mennonites, Mennonites are superMalcolm Collins: cool. They're great.I like, like, like out of all of the groups, I feel some like cultural distance when I engage with the Orthodox Jewish community. I'm like, yeah, I can see that. Like we get along. I can see like why my ancestors did business because typically Calvinists traditionally did a lot of business with the Jewish community.Even my grandfather, like he was a big advocate for the community and like it's something that just they're known for you know, well, your great, great, great uncle George Washington, you know, when he took over the [00:35:00] country, he, he did a lot of stuff with the community. So it's, it's a really well known thing that they engaged really heavily with the community.But. They, they still feel different from me. And Mormons still feel different from me. They're, they're a little too kind hearted. Yeah, I'm all Mormon. In their world perspective, in a way that just doesn't fit with my world. And you'll see this in this big debate, not debate, but like conversation we have with like Carl Youngbud and the other transhumanist Mormons.Is, is there. You know, they're unwilling to see, for example, God as an uncompassionate entity. Whereas, from our perspective, God is just so obviously not compassionate. Like, unless you define good as the thing that God does, God is a A moral entity from the perspective of our existing humanity. Oh yeah, man.I'mSimone Collins: going through the old Testament again and it's like, Oh, whoa. I mean like humans aren't great either, but like,Malcolm Collins: Oh, but [00:36:00] that's just God made man in his own image judging him by these standards. But when you use words like compassion or love to describe God, my perspective, you are miss. You, you are manipulating people, intentionally manipulating people because you, you, you mean words differently than what humans mean when they say compassionSimone Collins: or love.Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I thinkMalcolm Collins: when we were speaking, just saying, you know, like, an unknowable unknown thing that we can't even begin to comprehend it's morale, it's morality or it's moral core. ButSimone Collins: I think, I think Lincoln and Carl were. When we were discussing this with them, like their Mormon definition of compassion was, Oh, but God is giving humans the potential and the opportunity to achieve so much more.And that was their definition of compassion rather than like, look at all the suffering that God is permitting.Malcolm Collins: It was more like, yeah, yeah, yeah. God allows us to improve through suffering, compassion, but we don't read in tooth and claw, like death [00:37:00] and intergenerational improvement and, and, and. Horrifying, horrifying means, you know, I look at nature, I look at this idea of red and tooth and claw, and I think that that is the, the, the gift that God has given us that allows us to improve which is the ability to suffer and die and improve intergenerationally.But that is not, like, from the perspective of the zebra that's being eaten alive by a lion or something, or eaten alive by a bear, it's a bear that's eaten alive more, lions don't eat alive a lot, but the deer that's being eaten alive by a bear, or the human. thE human child that's being eaten alive by a bear, because that has happened many times.That does not seem like what I consider compassion from a human perspective. And I think this is where we differ most from them, because within the Calvinist framework, you're not going to be like, God is compassionate in the way that humans use the word compassion. Don't f**k with me. Right. Um. But Mennonites, when I talk with Mennonites, I really get them.Like, they just seem culturally very, very, very close to me. I feel almost [00:38:00] no difference between myself and Mennonites, or even Amish. And, and they're, they're in our local communities and stuff like that. I, I remember, you know, I was watching a video, a great video of, of, of Amish people talking about it.And they were b******g about the money they got from the government for having additional kids. And they were like, oh, there's these child subsidies. Disgusting that the government is giving us money for this. But I mean, of course we're going to take it if they're handing it to us. And I just felt such a I was like, yes, I really get you guys, you know, But you feel like a disconnect between what's going on here and what's going on out there? I would. I would too. I definitely would say so. Okay, so this last year I'm not troubled by it. No, it's, it's a way of life for us. So this last year, COVID, all the craziness that's gone on with the politics, you're not even The worst part of it for us was the annoyance of having to wear a mask everywhere.She travels more than I would. I'm happy at home. My husband is very happy at home. He grew up on a farm. We live on a fruit farm. [00:39:00] And he just likes raising fruit, and that's what he does.He has a really small world. Coming out here is about as hard as he's ever been. Trying to give him fruit, give him pie. Yeah, that's right. He's good to go.So I call your attention to a few things in these conversations that I find really interesting. And I would suggest you go check out this guy's channel and his other stuff on Amish and Mennonite communities if you want to experience more of what those communities are like, because he does, I think, a very good job of portraying them.The first is how insularly focused the community is, and how they status signal within the community. through their humility in terms of how they relate to each other. The way that they are flexing , is through humbleness, which is really in accord with the way that we often try to flex, you know, when we're talking about anime or the lower arts, we are doing that to flex how unpretentious we are in the things that we signal [00:40:00] liking. The second thing that you see within these communities, Is while men and women have different roles, , in systemically different roles based on, , biological gender differences, women are not treated as lesser than men at all. and this is really interesting.I mean, like, conversationally, ideologically, like, women may not have a place in the church because of what the Bible says, but in terms of how they're treated in general conversations, there isn't. They talk over men, they share their ideas, and their ideas are respected, and this is something that I really notice when I'm around different groups is the way that they relate between the two genders, and I just find this aligns much more with it.My cultural heritage, , and the way that I would want my kids to be treated, you know, a hundred years from now, they end up going down some different cultural pathway. Now, what we're going to go to next is a clip of them talking about technology use, because I think it also shows how [00:41:00] clear headed they are.Well, we'll also give you an opportunity to look to see if you can notice some of the things I was just mentioning.So, I have a smartphone. Yep. I do not have a browser on my smartphone. So I have a, I erased the browser and it's intentional. Okay. Um, I took the browser off. I have a smartphone so that I can call and text.Yep. Otherwise, I don't have access. I've got maps. But I don't have access to the internet on my smartphone now, you know, see what he has to say I talked about it today. Tell us quickly. Okay, so I have a smartphone as well And I have a blocker on here that blocks all pornographic and all you know, all of that stuff Okay, but and I can customize it to what apps I can have Like, I would have YouTube.Mm hmm. I would have that. But then, uh, it's just, it's up to the individual then, and then I have a blocker on here, and we have accountability groups in our [00:42:00] church. And I'm accountable to what I use on my phone too. Two other brother from the church. Okay. What about you ladies? My phone. I have the same. I have the same thing.Josh has Okay, and you're my phone. I have a flip phone. I'm actually not sure why is that And mine doesn't have any data on it My husband shut off all the data and so what I can do with my phone is I can call And I can text but like I cannot receive any pictures or even group messages Because all the data is cut off.He shut yours off, do you shut his off? He didn't, he shut his off too, yeah. We're on the same page. Do you guys like, regulate each other? No, we don't have any internet access on the phone. So, and we actually don't have any internet at all at our house, or anything. You're offline completely. We're offline.By ourselves, we choose to live that way because We enjoy being simple and I don't know. We see a lot of dangers. We see a lot of dangers in having it.Malcolm Collins: So I think that [00:43:00] that's, that's where I have the least cultural distance.But the problem is, is that they're not economically productive and that's really, really important to me. And in being able to join in a high economic productivity group, if you're going to be one of the people who gets off planet, like our goal for our kids. Like if you're like, what are you really aiming for with your kids?Yeah. Cultural fidelity is nice, but I want them to be part of that group, part of that movement in, in, in through we, how we improve them and through how we create this intergenerational improvement. Whether that means going to another cultural group or some improved iteration of our own that is taking to the stars that is conquering the universe.It is creating the imperial of man. This, this vast human empire you know, future days coming up and we have these projectors on our ceilings of, of galaxies, right? And we talk about their place in the universe. And when we point to this, we're like You know, Simba and the at the beginning of the Lion King, everything you see is, is your domain.Look, Simba. Everything the light touches [00:44:00] is our kingdom. Wow. A king's time as ruler rises and falls like the sun. One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here. And will rise with you as the new king. And this will all be mine? Everything. Everything the light touches.Malcolm Collins: That's what we're doing when we are engaging them with this galaxy. This galaxy that you see, you know, in, in some future days, we're going to take them, I was talking to Simone about this, to the woods, so they can see the, the stars. You know, they can see all the, the stars in the sky. This is. Fastness of the universe.This is for you to conquer. This is your domain. This is your manifest destiny. This was given to you by God as something that, that is your duty and your responsibility to make humanities. And that, that is a, a deeply vast and, and should be humbling responsibility. And [00:45:00] you are starting so early, you know, we haven't even conquered one planet yet.You know, we're starting so early in this cycle and I hope that they play a role in, in that vast future for humanity. And if we unfortunately use Mennonites as our backup culture very unlikely that that's going to happen.Simone Collins: No. Well, I, I think we're like very, very clearly too technophilic to ever reallyMalcolm Collins: pass.Although there could be an interesting version of like, AI safety, Mennonitism. What do you mean? Well, they never develop, they basically freeze civilizational development at our current stage. Instead of at another stage, then they, they kill everyone else and they ensure that we never develop AI any further.And they're just like, right now, this is when we need to stop. Like for them, it was buttons. For Eliezer Yukowsky, it's AI. It's, it's one of the things that famous Douglas Adams quote, you know, the guy, he wrote just like his guide to the galaxy that was so [00:46:00] prophetic that the moment when the average member of the EA community turned over 30, or it wouldn't even say the average leading member.Like basically, as soon as Ellie Iser turned over 30 the EA movement became rabidly a Luddite cult and, what he said is anything invented after the age of 30 for you is, is wrong and must be destroyed. Right? Like that's how humans relate to technology. And I'll put the full quote on the screen here.Cause it's brilliant that he had this insight.He said anything that's invented between when you're born and when you turn 30, that's, that's like something you're going to get a job in.That's interesting technology. And isn't that what they were with crypto and stuff like that? They loved all that. But then they're like, but, but anything after I'm 30 is like a, an abomination and must be destroyed. So, you know, you could see something like that. But no, I think the reality is that our best shot with AI is to merge with AI to do what humanity has always done, which is to be a merger of the biological and synthetic.When I say merge, I do not be downloaded into AI. I [00:47:00] mean, Upgrade themselves with AI and technology and continue to advance as a species until in the words of when would read we as humans can become something that if explained to us today, we would not understand in the same way that if we explained electricity to the, the savage, they would not understand that we will become you, you pure radiant beings of which now we cannot even conceive Which is, you know, what we see is the, the pages of providence within our religious system.But this is why we raise our kids partially Jewish. It's just the one, the best bet. And two, I think one of the most logically consistent religious frameworks. Well,Simone Collins: but also like healthy, if we want to give our kids the best shot in life it, you know, you want to look at.Yeah. Religious traditions that have favorable outcomes. And,Malcolm Collins: and Christians will say things like, well, yeah, but Jews predicted a future Messiah, which then was clearly happened. Like they predicted a future prophet, which then [00:48:00] clearly happened and they ignored. And then I'd say, yeah. Yes. And if you read the Christian Bible, it also clearly predicts future profits, which you have ignored.So I, you know, if I'm going to be like, let's go back to one of these systems of ignoring future profits. Okay. We'll go to. The Jewish system,Basically, we're taking the position that the Judeo Christian tree is almost certainly the correct one, and if it isn't the correct one, then why did God allow the timeline to play out as it played out, you know, if he's from one of the other traditions? , he really messed up with this planet. , so if we take the position that Judeo Christian tradition is the correct tradition, , we can either say, Okay, we accept no additional profits, , there, there just no profits, only the legalistic system and the community,And the way that legalistic system and community evolve in a secular context is God's will and God's revelation. in which case we are Jewish, or we take all additional profits, in which case we're in our position. Another huge [00:49:00] advantage of Judaism from our perspective is it gets around the problem that we keep mentioning of Why would God give a revelation that is meant for everyone to people in one? Isolated part of the world and not allow that message which is required for salvation To not reach most of the world for a thousand years or so, you know ie Jesus is in historic Israel and yet That message can't reach the Americas for about a millennium. That strikes me as logically inconsistent to the level where I would have trouble convincing my kids of this. However, with Judaism, I don't have the same problem because Judaism is not all encompassing. Judaism doesn't say Oh, this message is meant for everyone.It says, oh, it's meant for this specific population group. Which fixes this hole in the logic when I'm trying to convince my kids of this system. Another advantage here is the good and evil problem Judaism, the Old Testament god, is [00:50:00] a god that is very clearly not a good. entity from the perspective of people living today.It's only a good entity insofar as you define everything done by God as good. And I think that that's also a much more Easy and realistic God to convince kids of, then a all powerful, all good entity actually created the world that we live in today. There is, suffering to exist that no positives come out of. And I think it's, it's pretty objectively true that that type of suffering does exist in the world we live in. And this is one of the problems that we had when we were in the, uh, debate with the Mormon transhumanists, where they're like, well, God is compassionate.And I'm like, very clearly. Not by what we as humans mean when we say the word compassionate. , and they're like, well that's true, and then it's like, well then you, Why would you even use that word? Why would you even say that if you're just defining compassionate as the things that God does? And here I should note, when I say that God is not good from the way that we, like, normal people define good, I [00:51:00] think God is better than that.But I think that that's because the way that we as normal humans define good is bad, and we should study God's will to try to understand it better, and that that will is much more red in tooth and claw than we would , pretend in the kumbaya world.Simone Collins: I will add one more note though, which is that it's, it's not just that we're only going to expose our children to Jewish traditions.Now, we're not going to go like, take our kids to like, Easter mass or something like we're not going to practice other forms of religion. I think unless our kids like really want to have a go at it, you know, they're willing to organizeMalcolm Collins: the holiday. Yeah. They're like, I'll, I'll handleSimone Collins: it. Yeah. All the organization.I'll, I'll do the research. I'll have us, you know, I'll redo the recitals or whatever. But we do want our children to be educated in every major religious tradition. We want them to understand the stories, the philosophy they should have read. You know, at least excerpts from, I mean, certainly they should have read the whole, like, [00:52:00] Old and New Testament, clearly.But then also, like, no excerpts from major religious books from other traditions as well, and also understand, like, the moral and metaphysical frameworks of these other religions. And so, You know, I think it's also important for that to be made clear. Cause otherwise it just seems like, well, Oh, I, they're just going to like doMalcolm Collins: Judaism.Maybe when I also say like, when it comes to that, if you look at the skill tree we're building out in our, our education system, you know, one religion we focus a lot on within it is Islam. And I think today a lot of people are really sleeping on Islam as a religious tradition because, and we'll do another video talking about this, but if you look at Muslims today, You're essentially looking at what would be the equivalent of you know, Europeans in the dark age.You are looking at a collapsed former empire. You, we right now are in the Muslim dark age. They had a, a, a shining empire that was so magnificent that when [00:53:00] Europeans would write. Books on chemistry or physics, they would write them under fake Muslim sounding pseudonyms because nothing else was taken seriously in the world of academia.That is how dominant they were as intellectuals, as people moving civilization forwards during their bright period. But they just flamed out more recently and are right now in a dark age, which leads to many people looking at them and looking. And I will agree with this, you know, in our show, we're often like, when we talk about the future enemies of prenatalism, we talk about you, you have right now the urban monoculture, but you also have groups that are antagonistic to anyone other than them existing in the world.Right. And a lot of these groups right now, like the most populous of these groups in terms of fertility rates right now in the world or not even fertility rates, total population right now are some Muslim groups. But these, these groups they do not represent what is actually in [00:54:00] the Qur'an.And and then a lot of people are like, well, we need to be antagonistic. I'm like, even like Jews, right? Like Jews need to understand that the United States is withdrawing from the Middle East. The Middle East is no longer relevant to the United States. That means your future key allies are going to be Saudi Arabia and the UAE.They're going to be Muslim groups. Okay. So, so, so be aware that a lot of these mindsets we have towards Muslims today are going to need to evolve and really understand that there are multiple groups that wear the mask of Islam. Yeah. When you have to look at monsters where it doesn't mean that everyone who wears it is the monster.100%.Simone Collins: We're not sophisticated. The questions to ask also when looking at like, not just which groups will be present in the future, but which groups will have power in the future is who is able to maintain at least a stable or ideally higher birth rate and is technophilic. So I think [00:55:00] what the problem is, is a lot of people are looking at really high birth rate groups from many different ethnic and religious traditions.And they're like, Oh my God, look, they're like reproducing like crazy. They're going to be the only people in the future. But these people are not employed. These people are not very educated. These people are committing a lot of crime. These people are like, basically like they're anti society agents and they're not going to build.They're only going to destroy at their like current societal trends. So what you need to look at is any groups that are building, that are both having kids and contributing to culture, following and creating laws designing things, building enterprises, building businesses, and, and those, yeah, totally the ones to watch and the ones to ally with.Malcolm Collins: Well, to use as backups. And I think this all comes down to something from our cultural groups perspective, which is for your kids, if you're of a conservative tradition, I would have a backup [00:56:00] tradition for your kids. And so you might think all of our religious nonsense here, if you're like, actually, that kind of sounds like a good idea.This is future day stuff and stuff like that, that could make for a good backup tradition for you. In terms of at least,Simone Collins: this is like a, why not Zoidberg moment?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. At least having a, a backup that's not the urban monoculture. No,Simone Collins: well. No, but seriously, I actually, we we are beginning to celebrate really seriously for the first time because our kids can get it one of our major holidaysMalcolm Collins: biggest holiday.Our religionSimone Collins: is like the biggest one future day. I mean, like, I'm really excited to celebrate lemon week this year too, but like, yeah, future day is like the one. We splurged on the decor. We're getting our, like our kids ramped up for it where we're starting the music and the movies and like, it's, you know, it's a fun religion.So,Malcolm Collins: well, there's not many other religions. You get terminators, a holiday movie and stuff. Well, there's notSimone Collins: many religions [00:57:00] that get, they got to like. develop holiday decorations in a post like projector post Tesla coil world. It's also kind of cool. I love it. I love it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I love you. And I really am blessed.And if you talk about the agents of Providence that I happened to marry somebody who somehow let me into the Jewish cultural club. Oh yeah.Simone Collins: Without knowing it. Cause I didn't know that ruleMalcolm Collins: existed. But I knew, yeah. And you didn't. particularly care or identify was the group when I met you. I probably cared more about Judaism than you did.I was like, oh, cool, cheat code. And you were like, oh so, so I, I, I think that these things are interesting.Another way to think about why we raise our kids with a backup culture is somebody can look at everything we're doing, you know, especially given all the work we're putting into, like, building up this religious and cultural system for our kids, And think, oh, that must mean that they really want the kids to feel indebted, like they're definitely going to pick this up because of all the work and sacrifice that we've put [00:58:00] into this, when if anything, it's quite the opposite.I mean, it's doing something quite cruel to a kid to be putting them and raising them in a new cultural group that you have created yourself and raise them feeling like you won't appreciate them if they do anything other than this really insane, weird thing you set up for them. It would be, yeah. I mean, it's just, to me, it's obviously would be a cruel thing to do to our kids.So to give them another option, outside of just the urban monoculture, , that they feel that they were to some extent raised within is very important to us.Malcolm Collins: Another thing I'd, I'd add. To the end of this for any of our listeners who are interested is the school system that we're developing is about to reach a next critical stage. Any of you who are open to helping with it, reviewing it right now what we really need is Eyes on the big skill tree that we've built.So if you have domain expertise in any area, like [00:59:00] physics, chemistry, something like that, and you could review a skill tree, like think of a video game skill tree and be like, is this an accurate representation of how I would build this out from my field of domain expertise? You know, do you email us, let us know.And we will talk to you guys and send you a copy and you can be like, Hey, this is how I changed this. That's how I changed this. Because that can, that can help us a lot in making this as high quality as possible. You know, when I, when this launches, I want this to be a full skill tree, basically of all human knowledge.Simone Collins: It's already so cool. You guys, like I'm insanely proud of what Malcolm has put together. And I don't think, you know, I mean, You are combining an incredibly sweeping knowledge base on your own personal front with the help of AI which is just like super powered this in a way where it gets me really excited about, I want to go through it personally because it, the most important thing about the skill tree isn't.Like the knowns that it will show you like, you're like, Oh, grammar and English is there, but like [01:00:00] the unknowns, you're like, wait, I didn't even know I could learn this. What is this? This is insane. Like, and, and school I'm learning schools, universities, even the very best, the most elite institutions, the most big institutions.Do not have the capacity to teach you everything. They just don't have, they don't have the money.Malcolm Collins: Here's the course on aquaculture pharmacology. You know? I mean, andSimone Collins: I'm sure there, there are like three universities that have good programs for that, but like, you know, usually you don't have access to that.And this is like, Oh, game changer. So guys, you have to reach out to Malcolm about this.Malcolm Collins: Cause it's kind of a big, it, .Simone Collins: we do look at the comments and we tried. To read allMalcolm Collins: that. But I do, I, we do always go through the comments and we really appreciate it.And we feel like we do have a personal relationship with our, with our fans that is much stronger than the personal relationship we have with our fans. Because you guys don't force us to meet you or talk to you like, Oh my God, what a blessing. What a blessing to have a friend that [01:01:00] is, I don't need to talk to or meet with, but it's like.Intelligent and well considered and often says nice things.Simone Collins: It does get even better when we get to meet them, though. Like, we've met, some of, some of you who are watching, we've met in person. Hey guys and it's been really great to meet you. And I'm looking forward to meeting, to meeting, I, weirdly, because I don't, I hate meeting people in person, but somehow, like, the people who watch are Podcasts are really cool.at Least someone's capable of also meeting in person, I guess. So yeah, anyway, thanks to all of you for watching, but I'm also extremely glad to be hidden away in our little farmhouse just with you, Malcolm. You're my number one main squeeze.Malcolm Collins: I love you too. And it's funny. One of the things that Simone has always said that has made her most resistant to joining a religious community is having to engage with other people.I mean, if our kids are as autistic as us, they'll just. Be like, screw all other people. I mean, just, you know, one of the things we're going to do for our kids. Like if you guys are like, well, what would it look like to be like ancillary flirting with this cultural group for [01:02:00] our kids, we'll probably be putting together like some sort of a summer camp for kids so that our kids can meet other people.So thatSimone Collins: eventually I think we're going to do like a, an illustrated like holiday book with weird holidays. So, you know, like we're going to outline stuff like there will be. yoU know, if you want to understand our holidays and what we do we will eventually provide materials, but we're playtesting first.Okay. Got to get to testing. Yeah. Speaking of which we need to return to our movie lineup for future day. We're going to continue watching hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.You know, so let'sMalcolm Collins: I love you to death Simone, best wife that. Anyone could ever hope for, and you clearly were meant for me, because I don't think anyone else would tolerate you.I don't think anyone else would tolerate me. Like, we are so uniquely, like, just love everything that's weird about each other. Well, but here's the thing, youSimone Collins: made me into who I am, but also that person was who I wanted [01:03:00] to be. I'm your Pygmalion, but I wanted to be that person, so thank you for that. Thank you for making everything so perfect and wonderful.And I love youMalcolm Collins: and let me go give you a hug. Like a weird, if you die, one of our friends, wife's died recently. I don't know, which breaks my heart. I mean, we probably I'd go to the channel. I'd be like, Ooh, just looking for a husband and it's okay. It was like four or five kids from another wife because I'm not going to go out there and date again.F**k that. Good luck. I also don't want my kids to grow up without a mom. Oh, well. Okay, I'll try not to die. So be careful. This is why I always put you in the safe car. This is why I'm always, you know, even when it takes me toSimone Collins: death. I need to be a little less clumsy,Malcolm Collins: so let's try that. You promise to not carry so much when you go up and down the stairs?Ugh, but there's so much to carry. Just give it to me. I'll handle it. All right, thanks. I love you, Malcolm. I love you too.Simone Collins: You're so sweet to me. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We discuss the differing experiences of men and women as they age, using the analogy of youth being a fresh caught tuna that must get "sold" before it rots. Women are anxious to preserve their youth yet often end up just showing it off. Men don't face the same ticking clock. We must fight this by venerating motherhood, not telling women to "feel good" about decay.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] if you didn't achieve, like I did achieve many of the things I was sort of. program to achieve at different parts of my life, right? But like, suppose you didn't get to sleep around a lot when you were younger. Right. If you then try to do that when you are middle aged or an old person. Which aSimone Collins: lot of people try to do.Malcolm Collins: You will not get the validation or the happiness or the satisfaction you would have gotten. It is really important to understand declaring bankruptcy on stages of your life and moving to the next stage of your life. It is like thatSimone Collins: declaring bankruptcy on certain life stages. It just wasn't going to happen.Malcolm Collins: And then you can find new ways to optimize. There are new ways to optimize and still live a life of value. If you realize that you're middle aged or you're old and you never had kids and you never had a family, there are new ways you can Fill the role of an older mentor in your community and stuff like that.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Oh God. Yeah. When like, everyone was like, you can see every single pore that I have. Everything's horrible. When I [00:01:00] realized what we can do to fix my eyes is I just need to buy those like Naruto contact lenses or just like cinematic contact lenses, like just the just total black, you know, they're just completely black So for anybody wondering what she was talking about there my wife is wearing sunglasses right now because what's that thing that happened? You had like a bud Bessel burst in your eye. Not becauseSimone Collins: I look gnarly and disgusting. I mean more gnarly andMalcolm Collins: disgusting than normal. I think you look beautiful, but this brings us to our topic today.My wife has been Recently, you know, I was talking to her and she's like, I really do not like that. I feel like I'm beginning to look middle aged, you know, I am just my body. Yeah. And I was, it really sort of shocked me that this is still something that would be so concerning to her. The analogy I posted to Facebook, cause it got.a bunch of angry comments, as people can guess. And I think that they're really indicative of where we are as a [00:02:00] society. So what I said is, My wife has been getting worried about beginning to look middle aged.A woman pregnant with her fourth kid complaining about how her body looks to a devoted husband is like a fisherman with a pile of fish on the dock complaining about not having any worms. And of course people were like, and you know, some of my trans friends were like, Oh my gosh, you know, it really does matter that you're okay with your body.And here I am like, no. No, it doesn't matter that you're okay with your body. F**k your body. Your body is a tool that is meant to be used. And, and if you use it well, this is a really interesting thing. And I think it's an analogy I will use for my daughters for their bodies, right? The terrible,Young women in our society, it's like we as parents are giving them this really nice fish we caught like a tuna or something like that, we're like, go to the [00:03:00] market and get the best price you can for this fish.And you know, some women just come back with cum all over their tuna and then nobody wants to buy it. You know, nobody, nobody wants a tuna that, that people have had an orgy on, but that's not the only way you can I feel like the metaphorSimone Collins: is falling apart if that's what people areMalcolm Collins: That's not the core way or the only way you can f**k up this little routine.Okay? Okay. You go to the market and a lot of girls are coming back to their parents with a rotting tuna and saying, nobody wanted to give me a price that I thought it was worth, but look, I still got my tuna. The problem is, is that the tuna rots if you don't sell it. It is increasing in value with every second you haven't sold it.And this is the tragedy. Like, men go out there and they're all like, men have it so hard in our society. And I'm not gonna lie about all the unfairnesses of being a man. But [00:04:00] you're not dealing with this same ticking clock that women are dealing with.Simone Collins: Yeah, and it's not, it's not just appearance. It's, it's biology too.Like if one does want to have children. So even if one is totally like, yeah, appearance should be nothing. There's still this other functional limiting factor, which sucks.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And it creates this, this environment where we tell girls protect the tuna, protect the tuna, protect the tuna to the point where they forget the point.Was that the tuna was supposed to set them up for the next stage of life. They sell the tuna, then they open the fish store or whatever it is they're doing next. Right? The tuna wasn't the point. They're just supposed to protect the tuna on the way to the market. Sorry, you hate this analogy. Become a,Simone Collins: yeah, because everyone's goal is to become a fishmonger.Yeah, I mean, yeah, I, I, I hear you though. Yeah. And I, rotting fish is definitely a. A strong analogy when it comesMalcolm Collins: to yeah, I thought it had a certain. Well, and I also like the worm analogy, like being bemoaning that you don't have the [00:05:00] worm when you have the greater prize that the worm was meant to catch.And so a lot of people are like, well, my wife life, like my life as a woman is not about. Having kids, right? I'll come to you with this, I'll say. So therefore, well therefore what? You're going to get old no matter what you do. Right? And you do have certain advantages within many environments. Whether it's your workplace, or whether it's your you know, anything.Even just like generically, socially often, if you're an attractive woman. Now there are downsides to it. It actually can hurt you in female environments. And women will do things to hurt attractive women more. This is like... You've been shown in a bunch of studies, but generally you have an arbitrage opportunity.So then, as you age, regardless of whether or not you've sort of dedicated your life to the intergenerational game of building a family or anything else you can ask yourself, did I make use of this asset while it was available [00:06:00] to me? And if you did, then great! Okay, you, you did something that I think was pointless, but at least you did it well, you know, at least you actually utilized the asset while you had access to it.But what is completely feckless is not utilizing the asset at all in spending your entire life in veneration of a decaying asset. And how does this happen in a secular society? Why in our secular world do we end up venerating these decaying assets? Okay, okay, okay.Simone Collins: So let's, let's move to this fishmonger world, right?Okay. This is, this is a world then where on every social media platform, it is just people holding their freshly caught, shining, glittering, untouched tuna fish. And That's what people are rewarded for. And there are no, there's no glorification of being a fishmonger. There's no glorification of, of all of that [00:07:00] part of life.And so people will do everything they can to try to look like they've just caught a fresh tuna and some people will take their tuna and rather than sell it. They will have it turned into taxidermy and they'll walk around with their taxidermy tuna and hope that people don't realize that it's not there.And I can't blame them, right? Because you know, that that's, that's what society rewards. And some people will look at the taxidermy tuna and be like, wow, look at them. You know, like we'll have their, you know, they'll post their taxidermy tuna on social media and people will be like, I don't know. They seem.It's, I don't know. It doesn't look quite right, you know, but, you know, but they still try, you know,Malcolm Collins: and they still get attention. I love this taxidermy tuna because now I'm imagining these horrified taxidermy tumors with like the fake eyes and everything. Well, it's, it'sSimone Collins: not. And that's, that's what it looks like when you try to look like a 22 year old woman and you're 55 or you're 38 or whatever, if you're, you're 32 really.But, but then, you know, you're on the other side of this, which is where I'm sitting. I'm sitting at the fish monger desk. All right. [00:08:00] I don't have any tuna. And I'm looking out and I'm watching, you know, all these people walk by with their giant tuna glittering in the sun and I'm like, well, yeah, don't have, don't have any tuna.I don't.Malcolm Collins: Well, so this is the world and I, I like how you've gone deeper with this crazy analogy because I want to go deeper.Simone Collins: You're freaking it out. So I'm going to just.Malcolm Collins: Okay, so we live in fishmonger world, right? When you go on an online environment, when you go in, in, in secular media, you are in the fishmonger world.It's not just the people who are trying to sell tuna that are showing it off. It's the people who just bought tuna that are showing it off. It's, Oh, look at this fresh tuna I just bought with my life savings. Flapping around the tuna taking pictures of the tuna and then they begin to forget the purpose of the tuna marketplaceSimone Collins: Yeah, we just didn'tMalcolm Collins: friggin have a meal was to buy and sell the tuna, right?Yeah,Simone Collins: well and to eat tuna presumably, you know, it's a goodMalcolm Collins: thing about buying and selling women's body Yeah, it's to eventually [00:09:00] eat the tuna, right? Yeah, um Uh, what we, what we, what we are saying is in the same way that you can have a marketplace, like a marketplace for employees. Like there are human marketplaces all the time in our society.There is nothing vulgar about a, a human marketplace. What's interesting about the marriage marketplace is that you are trying to sell yourself a tunam for an equivalent, let's say something else, puppy. Or something, right? You are, you are trying to trade it for a specific other thing, which is a male of equivalent value to you.Well,Simone Collins: and, and more importantly, what you're trying to explain too, is that, Like, the human body is meant to be used, you know, the human body is meant for you know, doing different things at different phases of life. And we are sometimes more strong and sometimes more wise and sometimes, you know, various things in, in, in trying to do the same thing with that body all the time, but basically using your body is a good thing.You know, if you are aging. Because you are [00:10:00] having kids and raising them and whatnot, that's not something to be ashamed of, that means you're actually using your body for what it's meant for, right?Malcolm Collins: Yes and I would say that we live in this, like, the world around us, once you are successful in the...Fishmonger game. Once you have sold your fish and then gone home with the person you sold it to to eat it together, right? Like, ThisisSimone Collins: a weird world where someone buys your tuna and then you're It's a weird world, but I like the analogy, okay? With them for the rest of your life, then you start a fish shop together.You're thenMalcolm Collins: no longer Flogging fish, you no longer have the motivation to be showing how great your fish is. You no longer have the motivation to be showing how great a fish you just bought is. So you are no longer signaling into the world. So then if you look out your window, everyone is still shouting about fish, right?Because they're all desperately trying to sell theirs and it can create a world. And this is the core problem that we're dealing with where. How shiny a fish you just bought or how shiny a fish you just have you have is a [00:11:00] status symbol, right? And you begin to think, Oh, this is how status is judged in society.Because when I go and I buy a movie, right? Or when I look at ads, I'm going to see big shiny fish. And the reason why these fish are big and shiny on ads and in movies and everything like that is me as a guy, you know, this is seen. Throughout surveys on guys, most guys prefer a woman who's 23. Like, if you look, it's really funny women generally prefer a guy who's like a couple years older than them and then about their age and a little bit younger than them if they get older.Men, if you look, it's like always 23. No matter how old they are,23 is the age that they want. It's so simple, right?Simone Collins: It's so comforting.Malcolm Collins: Well, it's simple, but what it means is, that's because that's where, for a guy, you're gonna have the largest biological window to have as many kids as possible. Like, if you died, in my biology, and I was like, master of a tribe, or something like that, and I could choose any woman I wanted to, to be my next wife I would be evolutionarily rewarded for choosing a woman, near the beginning of her [00:12:00] reproductive window instead of a woman around my age, right?So my body is programmed to spend a little extra time staring at those and stuff like that. And so when people in the secular world, whether it's in movies or in ads or anything like that, utilize these they can very easily draw people's eyes much more than they can with women that have moved on to this next stage of their life, that have kids, that are being a good wife, etc.And, the reason I keep saying secular world, people might be like, what do you mean secular world versus religious world? Because some religions succumb to this after a while, but... Only the new, like, really soft iterations. The historic religions, which are usually, like, a religious and cultural tradition, typically have prohibitions against this, and typically venerate women for entering the motherhood phases of their life.Why do they do this and the secular world doesn't? It's because the secular world doesn't have any intergenerational reward mechanism, rewarding and punishing iterations of it. [00:13:00] I mean, it does now, they have very low fertility rates and it's going to disappear soon, but I mean, like, in a historic context, whereas most religious cultural traditions, the ones overly venerated youth that didn't venerate mothers, women wouldn't want to become mothers at the same rates as other cultural traditions around them, and therefore they were out competed and eventually stamped out so it's not like a moral reason why the religious cultural traditions venerate mothers and venerate this, this transition, but they do do it and it is useful.And it's something that I really worry about where you even, I mean, you are a sane woman and I, I think a totally logical woman. Well, and I'm also,Simone Collins: I, one thing that's important to note too, is I was never Someone whose attribute was beauty, right? So like I never I think this is uniquely hard for people who grew up being the beautiful one And who grew up having that as a currency and then they lose it So like this is not even something that i'm experiencing [00:14:00] Is severely because I never felt like I was the pretty one and I never was the pretty one Oh, you you always wanted to be old too.I always wanted to be old I always like my real age is 63 and that's when I will ultimately feel comfortable with myself maybe 62 but Yeah. So like, I think it's even harder, but even me, so even though I don't care about this s**t, even though I really look forward to being older and looking older.And even though I never was celebrated for looks or youth or beauty in the first place, I still regret all the little signs of aging that I see. And that's really crazy to me.Malcolm Collins: So, I wonder, how much of this do you think is a biological thing, like you just want to hide this so you can, I don't know, not visit yourSimone Collins: partner?Oh yeah, so some kind of instinct is kicking in because my body is saying, Whoa, lady, if you don't look youthful, your tribe is way more likely to kick you out if times get lean, right? Yeah, soMalcolm Collins: how much do you think is that versus how much do you think is sort of social conditioning and brainwashing?That's a good,Simone Collins: I mean, I, I, gosh, [00:15:00] it just never occurred to me before you brought it up that this might be a separate evolutionary thing,Malcolm Collins: but Oh, oh, final, final option. First, how much do you think is some genuine doubt that I will continue to find you attractive and desirable? Like, like, real logical doubt.Oh,Simone Collins: I, I think it's, I, I never thought about the evolutionary aspect of it, but I'm assuming that that has to be something at play here. Because if I Genuinely look forward to looking older, right? Like that's the look that I like. And I never felt beautiful, like beautiful and youthful in the first place.Then it has to be something more than that. So like, it's so tempting to just blame society to be like, well, despite all this, everything I see on Instagram is beautiful people and blah, blah, blah. But. In the end, maybe you're right. And so maybe it is like 80%, I would say 80%, um, evolutionary and then 20% [00:16:00] social, and then 0% concern about you.Because if we have, you know, three, almost four kids together, like we're pretty committed, we're pretty happy with each other. And also we have a relationship in which, frankly, if you found me unattractive and gross, like you would. Be super welcome to look for fun elsewhere, right? Like, so in the end, like, we have solutions for this that don't even threaten the relationship.So that's not a threat to me, though. It is, you know, disappointing. But it's not something that drives my action.Malcolm Collins: So this is interesting. With it being partially a biological instinct, that means we'll have to work extra hard to create an environment that helps our daughters fight this in themselves.This shame of aging. Doesn't itSimone Collins: only become an issue when people are older?Malcolm Collins: But they'll need to, I mean, I don't want my daughters to be racked with mental guilt. Like I think that some religious cultures do a good job of venerating mothers. Yeah. So much that it. [00:17:00] Overrides the biological sort of shame ofSimone Collins: aging.Right. Because if, if one is constantly reassured that like, this is a good thing, this is a good thing, this is a good thing, then you think that there's less risk.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I really have to treat my wife well, I suppose, which is one of these reasons why these fertility strategies that some you know, pronatalists pursue, which I think do not venerate the women who are having their children are going to be unsuccessful.There, there is one iteration of them which can be successful, which is the men who just use a surrogate and then raise the kid entirely, and I know some men who do this and whatever, right? Like, that can work. But then there's others Where they'll have a number of, of serial partners and that, that can, I think, cause daughters to be less interested and then sons to do something that, that pushes their daughters out of the cultural group, which isn't a great thing.Yeah, ISimone Collins: mean, that kind of culture basically [00:18:00] says, like, I am not going to, to women, it says, I'm not going to be. Invested in as a long term asset. I'm going to be dropped as soon as I age. So either I'm not allowed to look like I'm aging or I shouldn't bother investing in men at all. And what we were just looking at some other unrelated to this data that really demonstrated even more.So the extent to which women are really the bottlenecks on how many kids a family has that it's, it's more like the upbringing and exposure that young women get throughout their lives that influences how many kids they have, whereas like men. Their experiences. It doesn't really matter. I think it really comes down to who they marry.It's so weird.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I've even seen this one. And I think the vanity of women is especially important. I know a number of families where the man went into the relationship planning to have like five kids, the woman got to like kid number three and said, I'm stopping now. And that's the most horrifying thing.I canSimone Collins: imagine. Yeah. Also like these are marriages where the women came [00:19:00] in saying, yeah, I also want five kids. Yeah. And they're like, it's hard. Yeah, so this is not one in which the women hadn't signed up for that to begin with, which also happens, right? There are many marriages where like there's, there are mismatched expectations and because couples didn't communicate, that's a problem.But these are ones in which literally people entered the marriage of like, I'm going to have seven, I'm going to have five.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. .No, but like you shouldn't be shaming somebody for focusing on their body and feeling comfortable with their body, right? And feeling happy with their body. anD this just really got to me because we absolutely should be shaming that. I mean, secular society doesn't shame that because the, the urban monoculture, right?It tells people do whatever you want, whenever you want and be affirmed for whoever you want to be. And that's how it attracts people. So of course, within its set of cultural values, it's not going to tell people that they should ever really feel bad about any decision they make about themselves or about any.You know, a way they want to perceive themselves. However it's doing really bad fertility rate [00:20:00] rise, and it's doing really bad if you look at rates of mental health issues, like horrible mental health issues that do not exist in the more conservative culture. You know, there's the famous statistic of what is it, progressive white women under the age of 30, like over half of them have a serious mental health issue.This is not great. Like this is not a culture that is functioning. And what I would ask is, is I do not think there is a logical basis for your body not being something that you were meant to spend. By that, what I mean is God gifted you your body to play a part in this intergenerational cycle, right?Like, be fruitful and multiply, right? Like, that was a commandment if you're taking this from a religious perspective. And very few religions, due to cultural evolution, are going to say that that is not the purpose of, of One's body, but then evolution, suppose you're being totally secular about this, well, evolution also wants you to have the maximum number of surviving offspring, and it gave you all of the signals to show your youth.To signal to [00:21:00] potential partners with the goal of having kids eating the fish, right? It's not about just showing people the fish, but this is so interesting when I think about the fish analogy in this context, because It reminds me of the way we now relate to food as a society, where there's so many stores, you know, and especially in cultures that are deeper in the social media abyss than our own, like Japan or Korea or stuff like that, where you can go and like the restaurants are really optimized around being able to take pictures and post them to social media.Ah,Simone Collins: right. Well, even in the United States, totallyMalcolm Collins: in the United States. There's some restaurants that do this more than the food itself, right? More than the experience of eating. And this is because Our society has become warped like this. You know, a lot of young people, they will spend more time bragging or trying to put into the world, you know, how great they are at sex or whatever, than actually being good and getting partners and everything [00:22:00] like that.Right? We see this perversion throughout a society in which our value is, To some extent signal to others and thus in part to ourselves through what we can communicate within environments in which there is no validation happening. By that what I mean is historically, it was harder to do this. You know, you could like, uh, say, Oh, look at this lovely snack I'm having, but other people could go to the same restaurant and be like, that place is gross, right?But in an online environment. It's much harder to do that. And so people begin to genuinely believe the signal itself is what is worth living their life for. So that's, that's one area of corruption. But then the other area of corruption comes from being too deep within the urban monoculture and actually believing what it tells you, that if you live a life doing whatever makes you happy and, and being validated for whoever you desire to be and however you desire to perceive [00:23:00] yourself, that if you do that, you will achieve mental health and happiness.Even, I think, if you take like an objective secular perspective, and you're just looking at the psychological research, you would immediately be like, Oh, this is like a perfect way to, like, psychologically f**k someone up. Telling them, just chase whatever makes you happy in the moment, all the time, and be affirmed for however you want to see yourself.Simone Collins: Well, but aren't you also saying that you would encourage cultures that make people feel affirmed for not looking like they're 23 years old when they're no longer 23 years old? Yeah! It's okay to feel good about how you look. And I mean, part of me, when I look at comments like that, I think, well, yeah, but it's going to be a lot easier to feel good about how you look when you're not trying to pull something off that you can't pull off.One thing I wanted to ask you though, is do you feel any. Like, qualms or concerns [00:24:00] about aging? I mean, you look better every day. I will be clear about that. It's deeply unfair. However, you are getting more gray hairs. You know, there, there, there are signsMalcolm Collins: of aging. This is a really interesting thing because it's how I relate to nostalgia.I'll often think about things I used to do, you know, back in the day when I used to sleep around a lot or you know, the little games I played back then. Think about sleeping with women. Like when I look back and I am nostalgic about things I did in the past, it is not the sex I'm nostalgic about. It's the courting process,Simone Collins: but that was also really hard and stressful.So what'sMalcolm Collins: hard and stressful in a fun way, you would go on a date and you wouldn't know how things were going. And there was, and I reflect on this, like when I'm watching anime, we're like young love is courting and everything like that, but I look at this through the lens and was a. Pleat comfort was the fact that that was part of a previous stage of my life.Oh, so justSimone Collins: that it's over. Like the fact that it's over is what makes you feel nostalgic.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, to put it another way, it would be silly to be [00:25:00] nostalgic about, you know, trying to pierce the egg when I was a sperm. Right. Or the egg being pierced when I was an egg, right? Like I was basically a completely different type of biological entity back then.My entire optimization function, the way my, the things that made me happy were different. The stage of my life was different. Everything was different and I can. Take solace in the things I did get to experience during those stages of life, and the things I didn't get to experience. There were types of rebellion that I decided not to indulge in, because I thought they were too risky to my long term goals.And I can see people in movie engage in those types of rebellion, whether it's tattoos, or drugs, or whatever. And I mean, I did do, I guess, a lot of drugs, but not Specific drugs that were addictive. So, I never really indulged in that sort of stuff, and in that culture in a way where I can go back to that.Like, as an adult, if I went and tried that stuff, it just wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be that experience of, of genuinely doing this in an [00:26:00] experimental time of my life. And I think that nostalgia for previous life states can be a positive emotion when you understand that those are things that you'll never get to experience again.And it can be a negative emotion when you try to recreate them. Well,Simone Collins: I think it's also a problem when, when you actually really didn't enjoy that thing and you couldn't do it anymore. Like let's say that you really enjoyed something really, really super athletic and then you aged and you couldn't. Do it anymore because literally your body couldn't take that kind of wear and tear.Although here's the thing is I don't feel that, that, that that kind of nostalgia, regret, whatever is not what I feel as I age, because first off, like if I actually were super crazy attractive and if people gave me a lot of attention for that, I would feel one deeply uncomfortable because I don't want the attention and two, like.I would also very much not respect the people who were attracted to me, because if someone just likes [00:27:00] me because I'm pretty, that's gross. Like, I just, I would find that pretty aversive, and it would make me very deeply uncomfortable. Like, I was just listening to someone talking about host clubs in Japan where you have, Either a male or female like professional essentially fawning over you and being like, Oh, you're so pretty.Oh, you're so smart. And I was thinking, Oh my God, I would like pay money to not do that. So it's also not that I regret not being able to have that experience. So there is really something different going on with women.Malcolm Collins: And what do you want to be affirmed for?Simone Collins: For achieving things for, for getting stuff done.Like remember when, when, when I first sort of taught you how to compliment me in a way that would make me really happy, it was never to say something like, Oh, you're pretty, or you're so smart. So never to be like, Oh, you are so attribute, but rather, Oh, X thing that you did was so clever, or I see you worked really hard on that.And it's amazing how this is paying off that kind of thing. So like compliment actions and moments rather than. apparent fundamental attributes. But I do think that if we were to get to the bottom of [00:28:00] like, let's just solving societal problems with women not being comfortable with aging. I don't even think it's about like reigning praise on them being beautiful and wonderful in whatever life stage they are like affirming them in their current body position because I don't even think that's it.And I don't really know.Malcolm Collins: Well, okay. So here's what I think it is. Okay. You were talking about how, well, you've got to affirm women for different life stages and optimizing them. Yeah.When I was younger, there were multiple optimizations I, I looked for in a woman, whether it's like the perfect goth woman or nerd woman or like artsy chic, like there are different ways a woman can optimize even within that youthful state to look. Yeah. Breedable, I guess you could say. What's the word these days?That must have been breedable, right? Like, what I was interested in. And I think that there are optimization functions that are valid within our society as a person ages. I think that's what we're seeing with cottagecore, right? Like, cottagecore is thirst trap, but not thirsting over a [00:29:00] woman's body, but over the environment she has created around her.Oh. So, cottagecore is thirst trap Martha Stewart. Yeah. It is. An environment where a woman is cultivated you know, of a house and everything like that, or a family. And then I'd also say there's like, PrepCore, right? Which might be closer to, but we're like a cross between Cottagecore and PrepCore, right?Where you have these like, Christmas photos and stuff like that. Where, when you share these, I mean, if People go to your Instagram account, what's it handles? Simone H. Collins? Yeah.Simone Collins: I haven't posted there recently. I need to.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it's basically a thirst trap account, but it's a thirst trap account for like loving your husband and having kids.What were you saying, Simone? For wholesomeness. Right? anD, and it's not going to get as many likes because, you know, you're not appealing to the same audience, but I do think that you are signaling an ideal that you have achieved at this stage of your life that one [00:30:00] day you are going to have to let go as well.You know, one day it will be grandmother core and I'm sure people will come up with like granny core and stuff like that in the future. One really funny thing is I was, I've been watching adventure time with my kids. And there's this one character on it. I mean, I've seen it before, but I never contextualized astree trucks, who's like this old sweet lady, but who's also like always talking about her former, like basically sexual escapades and stuff like that. My adventurous side Instincts tell me to seduce that tentacle critter with my womanly charms and elephant prowess. What are you doing here, Tree Trunks? I'm helping you by tempting this guy with my body. It's not a guy, Tree Trunks! It's a snake armed ruby brain beast! Even Brain Beasts get lonely, Finn. Jake! You were supposed to watch her! She got past me, man. I tried to stop her, but she overpowered me. I did it! I helped! I'm the sexiest adventurer [00:31:00] in the world.Mr. Fire Duty? Yes, Captain Tree Trunks. Mr. Fire Duty, pick up that mop, you bug.Captain Tree Trunks! We're approaching a ship off the port bow! Good! Drown all but the tightest man.Uh, I'm Wyatt, your new secretary. These flowers are from Robot Body Mo. Uh, again? Throw those in the trash.I'm sorry I didn't trust you. I just know you've had a lot of adventures in the past, and things are kind of boring now. It's true, I sometimes miss those wild times, but back then I couldn't even tell the difference between a good adventure and a bad one. I was just a leaf in the wind, blown about by my whims, but now I'm on solid [00:32:00] ground.Malcolm Collins: And that's, associated with old age and I suspect our kids will grow up associating that with old age because so much of the future generations I think are going to move away from that lifestyle and only will this like broken older generation be these 80 year olds talking about all the sex they used to have whereas Gen Z today I think is just looking for a wholesome relationship.A lot of them at least the ones that I see that look like they're going to have kids. A final thing I know when I'm talking about life stages and like just being able to recognize and appreciate that I cannot relive those things and I just need to be happy for the game I was playing when I was playing it, I'd almost argue it's like a post game where like the game is switching the score that it's judging you on.Yeah. Is that if you didn't achieve, like I did achieve many of the things I was sort of. program to achieve at different parts of my life, right? But like, suppose you didn't get to sleep around a lot when you were younger. Right. If you then try to do that when you are middle aged or an old person. Which aSimone Collins: lot of people try to do.Malcolm Collins: You [00:33:00] will not get the validation or the happiness or the satisfaction you would have gotten. It is really important to understand declaring bankruptcy on stages of your life and moving to the next stage of your life. It is like thatSimone Collins: declaring bankruptcy on certain life stages. It just wasn't going to happen.Malcolm Collins: And then you can find new ways to optimize. There are new ways to optimize and still live a life of value. If you realize that you're middle aged or you're old and you never had kids and you never had a family, there are new ways you can. Fill the role of an older mentor in your community and stuff like that.No, it's important that you understand, and this is especially important with the older mentor role is that. Your goal is to actually be useful within your community and not masturbate the feeling of being an older mentor, which some people I remember when I was young, I'd get these people who would like, try to like, forcefully mentor me by that.I mean, it's like, give me advice that like, clearly had they hadn't. thought about whether that advice was still useful in the world, or how to deliver it to a young person, or [00:34:00] how to help the young person in their goals just sort of masturbating this self image as an older mentor. So it's important within any of these life stages, it's the same with being a parent.Like, you could do the wholesome preppy prepcore, right, where you are using your children to feel like you are... The perfect parent. And so you are focused on how they appear in pictures, how they appear in et cetera, right? Like how you're thought of by your community, rather than remembering that this is just as hollow as walking around with that rotting fish or taxidermying that fish.The point of the fish is to be eaten. The point of being a parent is to give your kids a good childhood and raise them to be emotionally healthy and efficacious adults. It is not. To look like a good parent, the purpose of being a mentor is not to think of yourself as a mentor or by seen by your community as a mentor, it's to help young people, right?Always remember that there is the taxidermy iteration of life, and there is the actual iteration of life, [00:35:00] the actual being an efficacious member of your community, and your biology will reward you for the true version, and it will punish you for the incorrect version. What I mean is you may be venerated by your community.You may be. liked by a lot of people on Tik Tok or whatever, but the happiness you gain from that will always be hollow and evanescent and eat at your soul. You know, a soul burns on a bonfire of vanity. And that is true.Simone Collins: I think another thing too, in terms of like giving Encouraging our family, kids, daughters, especially to have healthy views about this is I think the way that we'll say like tropes of warriors in the past talked about battle scars is probably a really good way to look at things like you don't see warriors in a lot of like, and again, these are all just character tropes.This isn't like a sample of real people that I know about. But you don't see them complaining about like, oh, you [00:36:00] know, like. My face is all scarred or like my like pinky fingers gone, you know, it's like, Oh, I lost this on this thing, you know, like it shows signs of achievement and maybe if we instead encourage or contextualize, I shouldn't say encourage if we actually contextualize.Signs of aging as signs of a life lived properly and well, and also values well aligned, like not investing money in plastic surgery when you could invest in your children's education or something like that that, that, that being seen as something to be proud of the same way that a warrior shows off his battleMalcolm Collins: scars.Well, and I can't imagine, I mean, imagine being the type of person who invests in plastic surgery rather than your children's education.Simone Collins: A lot of people do when you consider how much these procedures cost. There are many, many, many, many parents who are, you know, implicitly, because they're not putting that money towards something else.[00:37:00] investing in their looks over that. And often it doesn't look good in the end. Often it gets botched in the end and they have to take fillers and get dissolved, get them dissolvedMalcolm Collins: to get rid of them. Taxidermy looks like taxidermy, right? You, you don't have your actual dog, you know, yeah. Reminds me of that Dumb and Dumber scene.Sold my dead bird to a blind kid? Lloyd! Lloyd! What are you? Petey didn't even have a head!Harry, I took care of it.Pretty bird. Yeah, can you say pretty bird? Pretty bird. Yes, pretty bird. Pretty bird.Tomorrow on A Current Affair, inside the home of the Menendez Brothers attorney. And next, we'll be back in a minute with the heartbreaking story of the blind Rhode Island boy who was duped into buying [00:38:00] a dead parakeet. I just thought he was real quiet.Malcolm Collins: That's not a bird, right? That is the weird thingSimone Collins: about plastic surgery is like, there are some plastic surgery looks that I now associate with age because I only like old people use it. And only old people have that kind of facial structure, like the puffy cheeks, the puffy lips.Like I associate it with. A sign of, of, of middle age or being elderly, which is super interesting. YouMalcolm Collins: know what I love is when we get plastic surgery that makes you look better at being your age. Like when you're 60, if you don't look like the perfect granny, you're like, no, no, no, no. I want, I don't want to look younger.I want to look like aSimone Collins: cooler granny. Yeah, like I will, I will probably bleach my hair to make it all white. Instead of just having gray hair,Malcolm Collins: perfect example of the correct way to alter your appearance toSimone Collins: lean into it. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I I can't wait for my white hair. My family has a great genetic trait where we get pure white hair at [00:39:00] a pretty young age.So jealous. You've seen it, and our hair doesn't, like, we don't decrease the amount of hair we have. Yeah, it staysSimone Collins: thick and full, and it just gets gorgeous and white, and I hate you. I hate you so much. It's not fair.Malcolm Collins: Hey, I'm looking forward to you being a granny, because I know you're going to be the sassiest mo f*****g granny ever,Simone Collins: and I love it.I am going to love it. Maybe it's this awkward transition. I loveMalcolm Collins: who you were when I met you, and I love who you're going to be when you're an 80 year old woman, and don't you forget that. I'm never going to say, like, Oh, Simone, I'm so worried about these changes that are happening to your body because of fourth kid that you know, you're producing extra blood and you got this blood vessel pop.And you're like,Simone Collins: no, I was just listening about some Korean divorce in which the husband would get sex workers who looked like the younger version of the wife. And oh man, like that hurts, you know, like, I don't even know if that hurts. That's kind of sweet. I don't know. I don't know. It'sMalcolm Collins: I, he didn't leave the wife and he still liked the idea of [00:40:00] banging a younger version of her.He probably, this is the thing that you're forgetting. He probably was imagining the people he was banging other than his wife were hisSimone Collins: wife. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess that's sweeter than going for a completely different look. But still I,Malcolm Collins: I understand. Also, you got to keep in mind that aging happens differently for different ethnicities.With white people, it's more of a, gradual change as they get older, whereas with Asian people, they often undergo especially Asian women's sort of sudden transformations between life stages, which I think is a blessing because you know what life stage you're at.Are you at Asian granny stage or are you at Asian vixen stage?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, andSimone Collins: like vixen stage somehow lasts forever and thenMalcolm Collins: Oh, it lasts forever and then immediately you transform into like a short granny. Yeah, I don't, ISimone Collins: really wonder what's going on with that phenomenon. Of like, you [00:41:00] really don't see this other transition. You don't see middle age. It's, I, I don't understand it.I don't understand it.Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I'm fine with it. But, but, but it, I, I mean, except, and it might make it easier for them to accept when they're granny.Simone Collins: Yeah. To just be like, oh yeah. Cause yeah, I think it's that, it's that, that weird interstitial period where you don't really. You, you can't pull off any look.You can't pull off old and you can't pull off young. So what are you anymore? Well,Malcolm Collins: I think a core thing that you can do is look forward to who you're going to be next. Look forward to being the old lady, which you do. Yeah, I do. But you just never look forward to being the mom. And because of that, you're sort of struggling with this stage transition because you didn't know it was one of the stages to look forward to.Simone Collins: Well, I only ever knew my mom in her middle age, like she died before she could get old and I never knew her when she was super young, so I only ever knew her hating her body because she hated her middle aged [00:42:00] body just like I do. And. Yeah. So maybe I just like, see, this is like some permanent purgatory, but it will end, it will end and then I'll, and then I'll get old and wrinkly and then I'll be so happy.It'll be great.Malcolm Collins: ISimone Collins: love you so much. I love you too, Malcolm. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe