Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
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Based Camp is a podcast focused on how humans process the world around them and the future of our species. That means we go into everything from human sexuality, to weird sub-cultures, dating markets, philosophy, and politics. Malcolm and Simone are a husband wife team of a neuroscientist and marketer turned entrepreneurs and authors. With graduate degrees from Stanford and Cambridge under their belts as well as five bestselling books, one of which topped out the WSJs nonfiction list, they are widely known (if infamous) intellectuals / provocateurs. If you want to dig into their ideas further or check citations on points they bring up check out their book series. Note: They all sell for a dollar or so and the money made from them goes to charity. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG basedcamppodcast.substack.com

  1. AI Gives Men X-Ray Glasses: How Will Women & Gender Roles Adapt?

    -8 Ч

    AI Gives Men X-Ray Glasses: How Will Women & Gender Roles Adapt?

    In this eye-opening Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into how advancing AI is poised to upend the world of sex work — from OnlyFans creators facing massive competition to the potential collapse of traditional porn industries. They explore real-world examples like sex workers switching to AI-generated content (and seeing 4x revenue jumps), Grok’s “undress” controversies, why AI porn could outperform live-action even for arousal, the decline in young people’s interest in real sex/vices, furry communities as early AI adopters, and what this means for women’s societal power, dating markets, and family formation. Topics include: personalized AI fantasies vs. real women, why high-earning OnlyFans accounts are often low-effort/impersonal, the “sex cliff” in younger generations, polygamy/polygyny normalization in pronatalist futures, artificial wombs, and wholesome(?) outcomes like women pivoting to homemaking/wifery as a career. Plus fun tangents: Amelia the propaganda goth girl becoming a right-wing icon, creating an AI Amelia OnlyFans account (RIP idea), their kids reinventing demons/exorcisms via the Basilisk, and why Batman is secretly an open secret among Gotham’s elite. If you’re interested in AI’s civilizational impact, pronatalism, gender economics, or the future of human intimacy — this one’s for you. Quick links for reference: * Amelia Companion: https://rfab.ai/share/companion/chat-with-amelia-pathways * Charlie’s Great Escape: https://rfab.ai/share/adventure/charlies-great-escape * RFab (our chatbot platform) is mostly stable: https://rfab.ai/ * Our Substack: https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/ * Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SimoneAndMalcolmCollins * Discord: https://discord.com/invite/EGFRjwwS92 * The School: https://parrhesia.io/student-signup * App to talk with kids: https://wizling.ai/ Also, here’s the title card I (Simone) created and liked most; putting it here as I hate to see it go to waste: Episode Transcript Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be doing a follow on to an episode we did recently. And what we’re gonna really dive deep into is what is going to happen to the world of sex work as AI continues to develop. Specifically, there’s been a number of controversies recently that make it, and this is like, civilizationally changing in terms of society. We live in a world today where if you’re talking about young women, 8% of young women in the United States get an income from OnlyFans. You know, like have an OnlyFans account. So about one in, one in 10 people you see, just walking around has an OnlyFans account, right? Simone Collins: Like beats door dashing. I mean, yeah, I, I think most men would be doing this if they could. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Would I do in OnlyFans if I could? I mean, I guess, not, not at this age, not at this like, level of public profile, but like, when I was younger I would have you know, so money, Simone Collins: money, dude. I mean, well, and when you, when people consider and they’re like, well, the, the indignity, the humiliation. [00:01:00] Have you looked at so many jobs, you know, have, have you considered working for the DMV? Like the things that people go through in respectable jobs? It it, but what they’re subject, look at what people are shouting at ICE agents, people who work for the US government. They’re taking out their seasonal depression disorder or whatever, seasonal affective disorder on these, these poor people like, no, of course you wanna be on OnlyFans. OnlyFans is, people are nice to you there. Okay. They may be asking you to take your shirt off, but they’re nice about it, you know? I mean it, they’re not Malcolm Collins: gonna try to run you over, you know? Yeah, they’re, Simone Collins: yeah. They’re not throwing frozen water bottles at you. That’s nice. They’re not protesting outside your hotel all night. Trying to keep you awake and calling them constantly, trying to get ‘em to throw you out into the snow. And that’s nice. Malcolm Collins: But so, so to continue from here the wider point being is if you look at stuff like, there’s obviously the controversy recently where grok can undress people, right? Like, you put your picture up on X and somebody else would say, [00:02:00] undress him, and then people complain. They’re like, this is horrible. So Elon’s like, okay, okay. Okay. I’ll put it behind a paywall. Um, God bless. I just, I love him. That’s fantastic. The way he handles things. ‘cause what a sad world if he had taken that away. I’ve actually never done it yet. I, I should do that. I wanna see how good it actually is. Well we haven’t even talked with Annie yet. The, oh yeah. I haven’t even tried their, well, because ours is just so much better. We do actually use, so our fad.ai, our chat bot engine mm-hmm. Does use grok as its main engine. But the reason we don’t do that on the grok site is if you do it on the grok site, the AI outputs aren’t as editable. They aren’t re rollable, they aren’t as modifiable with, well, they’re not, the Simone Collins: personality isn’t that fun. So, and it’s just, it’s just a couple characters and you’re stuck with those characters. So. Unless you’re some weird, dedicated fan of that character. What’s the point? ‘cause literally, oh, we need to make it Amelia. We need to make it Amelia. An Amelia. We have to, oh my God. Hold on. I’m Malcolm Collins: gonna make a thing here. [00:03:00] We Simone Collins: all, oh my got to. You have to. Malcolm Collins: I’m ex Oh, I’m so excited. Our F’s gonna have an Amelia. Okay. Sorry. Oh my God. Yes. We’re making an Amelia. Yeah. And, and we’ll make it so that you can do the so we have an audio chat feature that you can use on your phone. So you just press a button and talk. You can talk with her translation. She’ll Simone Collins: radicalize you watch out. Yeah. She’ll. Malcolm Collins: For people who don’t know, what we’re laughing about was Amelia, this game went viral, called pathways and Amelia, it was by the British government meant to like brainwash people. It was by, it was Simone Collins: by the propaganda arm of a, a UK city. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, no, no. It, there was a, a, not, not exactly. So the British government has a propaganda arm that they call an anti-terrorism arm. And then it was subcontracted by a city to make this game. Long story short they’re like showing it at schools and stuff, and this, this girl. Who has like, center right opinions about like, you know, preserving British culture and stuff like that is painted as a villain. But she’s like gothy, the cute goth girl with purple Simone Collins: [00:04:00] hair. Yeah. And people call Malcolm Collins: her an art slut. And I actually think that, that, this says something, and I’m gonna talk more about it in the episode that’s going to come before this that she has become a right wing figure. I think shows how the aesthetics of what the right thinks is attractive have changed and that you can now be hot on the right and just be a straight counterculture as well, right? Like, you don’t need to be the you know, overly dressed up traditional trad wife. I mean, look at my, my wife for example. She dresses like a. I, I don’t know a medieval woman that, that’s core lesbian. I do not think any cottage court lesbian dresses like that. You dress up much more like I, I read a lot of mahas, which, which take place. People know this, like my Korean villainous reborn stories that are like on, on mobile apps, delight. And you dress like a character from one of those. Yeah, I Simone Collins: mean, ‘cause I’m wearing like, under this apron, 16th, 17th, 16th [00:05:00] century stays, made in Ukraine or something. What I’m pointing out Malcolm Collins: is that’s like, that’s like eccentric, right? But what we’ll get to this separate episode. Yeah. The point I’m making here, and I, I actually think this is a really interesting thing to die into because the left is, is freaking out about this. A lot of sex workers are freaking out about this. Because you can create and there’s like, already sex workers with one particular instance that I found really interesting one SMEC worker she created, she moved from her real body and she was not like, unattractive or anything to completely AI generated stuff. And she said she saw a four x increase in revenue. Simone Collins: So we’re, well, she could probably increase her output significantly. And also like the images. That you make of yourself that are AI just look better. Like they’re, they’re just more flattering versions of you. Malcolm Collins: Well, and a lot of people can’t tell. And the big problem is that people think they can tell. And we’re now in a situation where and, and people will be like, well, it’s not as high quality and Simone Collins: Oh my God. All [00:06:00] the poop. All the poop. Malcolm Collins: Okay, so I’ll keep going. So. Plug a lot. People say, well, there’s always gonna be room for people who are like higher touch and putting in more effort and putting in, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Simone Collins: Sorry, I couldn’t hear you before. Now I can hear you. Malcolm Collins: So some people are gonna say that there’s always gonna be room for people who are higher touch and putting in more effort and for that personalized experience, right? Oh, sure. Yeah. Even if ai. I’d argue that’s probably not the case. And what I’d argue to point this out is a, a-list piece is that she did ages ago. That was just absolutely fascinating. We actually have an episode on this piece, and I think it’s one of our more interesting episodes where she wrote a piece where she decided to subscribe to one of the really high end account understand how they were making money. Oh, actua

    53 мин.
  2. Epstein & Us: Same Game, Different Teams? (Understanding the World of Elite Power Politics)

    -3 ДН.

    Epstein & Us: Same Game, Different Teams? (Understanding the World of Elite Power Politics)

    Malcolm and Simone Collins go deep into the newly released Epstein files and discover something uncomfortable: Epstein was obsessed with many of the same ideas they are — gene editing, artificial wombs, human genetic enhancement, AI, fertility maximization, alternate governance, and “playing to win” civilizationally. So why do they sound so similar on paper… yet feel morally opposite? In this episode the Collinses explain the real divide in elite power networks (it’s not left vs. right), why Epstein could never break into the Thiel/Musk/Schmidt circles, the two actual factions fighting for the future (space cowboys vs. hidden thrones), and why Epstein’s version of the game ended in baby-killing and microtransaction brainwashing while theirs is about open, transparent, high-fertility, high-agency humanity. Episode Transcript Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today is an episode. I have been so jonesing to do, so excited to do because as the Epstein files have continued to be comb through by people, a lot of people, what they are, noting is Epstein in terms of the world views he had in terms of some of the people who he rubbed shoulders with is very similar from an outside perspective, from a fuzzy, like a grease on the limbs perspective to us, Simone Collins: no Malcolm Collins: pedal. So just as a few examples here, so like if it, because Tim Poole had an episode where he did a very good job going over like the dark transhumanism of Epstein. And you know, they’re pointing out, obviously the one that a lot of people know about is the farm where he was gonna have impregnate 21 and they were just gonna have lots of his kids. Simone Collins: It wasn’t a farm, it was a large ranch compound in New Mexico. Malcolm Collins: Well it [00:01:00] sounds a lot like a human farm to me, Simone. Yeah, you can, you can call it what you want. You Simone Collins: didn’t know how to make things sound so charming, Malcolm Collins: That he was working on and funding. Human journaling, gene editing research editing human genetics. He was looking at how to upload human sentient to machines so that he could live longer. He was interested in alternate forms of governance structure. Simone Collins: Oh no, Malcolm Collins: he was interested in people who, who’ve known it. It broke from the guardian that we had we’re working on a plan to create a charter city essentially a independent region. Simone Collins: He did not really, Malcolm Collins: no. That we were going to not Oh, that we Simone Collins: were, yeah. We, Malcolm Collins: we were going to, we were, yes. But he was also working on similar ideas. Simone Collins: Oh. Malcolm Collins: That and with some people who even we’ve talked to that he was looking at. AI safety related stuff. My God. And how a, oh, he was [00:02:00] even working on ai sex bots. Which, you know, we’ve created with R Fab ai. So we look at these various projects. And PE people see this, right? And they go, you guys, you guys seem to work on a lot of the same stuff, like, what’s going on here? And before I go into the specifics, because I really wanna go into the, the specifics of what he actually said, not what people are saying about what he said, because I think a lot of the Epstein stuff goes through a bit of a game of telephone and you just get a vague idea of what was scandalous. Instead of you’re like, oh, this is what he was saying to Nick Bostrom, he knew Nick Bostrom. You know, you know, you’re like, okay, okay, okay. This is more I can, I can see where this conversation went this way. Oh boy. But before we get into that stuff, I wanna get into the broader claims here because I think that what we’re actually looking at is a lot of people. Who are blinded, by the way, [00:03:00] our society sort of functions in terms of the plebs as teams with it being the the right-leaning team and the left-leaning team, right? Mm-hmm. Like this is the two big teams that the pledge see, and what the plebs are unaware of, broadly speaking, is that that is not. The way things are actually divided in elite society. Those are not the actual two teams that are out there. Each team basically has their players and their players are distributed throughout each of the various ecosystems. Hmm. You know, this is why at a lot of people, I’ve always said, you know, Steve Bannon, he’s not on our side guys. He’s not on our side of the guys. And people at the beginning they were like, oh, you’re really undercounting Steve Bannon. It turns out he’s besties was Jeffey. Right. Like, and he worked really hard and spent a lot of money and time. I think there’s 22 hours of footage of him trying to create a [00:04:00] documentary to rehabilitate Epstein’s image after he was confirmed the underage, next trafficking Simone Collins: don’t do that. No. Malcolm Collins: Now with the point being is you look at these networks and you can see if you’re aware of the elite networks that like we are in Es, Epstein was almost sort of weirdly never able to successfully break into that side of the network. Mm-hmm. He was never really able to do anything with Peter Thiel. Never really able to do anything. Provable with Elon. He was never able to. By the way, fun, Epstein fact that’s come out recently is it looks like Donald Trump was actually one of the very first Epstein whistleblowers which has come out in some of the newer Epstein files, which people are being like, this is absolutely wild. And, and, and not only that, but remember how we keep saying it looks like Epstein, like genuinely hates Donald Trump and has been trying to ruin Donald Like that they were at point. Yeah, he said an for a Simone Collins: very Malcolm Collins: long time. Time. But for the vast majority of this [00:05:00] period, it has been Epstein. The reason why we know now it was because Epstein believed when the early arrest started happening and everything like that. That the, the process, the process that ended up with Epstein in jail and Unli began was Donald Trump going to authorities about him. Simone Collins: Really? So he was the, did, did Trump bringing things up actually ignite anything? Malcolm Collins: It appears to have been part of what got the ball rolling. ‘cause he was the first like super famous person to push on it. Simone Collins: Oh wow. Okay. Which I didn’t realize Malcolm Collins: he was, which is a wild timeline to be living in. No, I’m not saying that Trump didn’t do horrible sex stuff as well and the creepy comments he made about like the Miss Universe pageant and stuff like that. But the, but the point I’m making here. Broadly speaking is that there actually are elite networks, but the elite networks don’t operate the way that the average conspiracy theorist seems to [00:06:00] think that they operate. Hmm. In fact, the types of secret societies that you and I have, you know, provably been involved with Epstein was never invited to any of those. He never got into any of those. He was never able to infiltrate those. And the question is, is like, why? What’s going on here? Right? Like, that seems weird. He, did he Simone Collins: also never go to the bo? Well, I guess you wouldn’t be able to, Malcolm Collins: I don’t think, I do not think he ever got into the Bohemian grove. Actually, I’ll just double check this. Simone Collins: Curious. Malcolm Collins: No evidence at all. Yeah. He never got into the Bamian Grove. Now, you know, Epstein wanted to get into the Bohemian Grove Simone Collins: 100%. Malcolm Collins: You want that, know that he wanted to get into dialogue, you know, he want, which was this thing that Simone was managing director after a period you know, that he wanted to get into something like Renaissance Weekend again, an organization that he was never in you know, and Simone Collins: Clinton affiliated organization too, Malcolm Collins: you know, that he wanted to get into well, Schmid Futures programs where we managed like a secret society thing for them. But, you know, that he wanted to be [00:07:00] involved with what Schmidt Futures is doing. Eric schmidt’s org, right? Nothing. Right. So the question here is. And, and, and, and I’m, I’m explaining this to you guys, like the general public ‘cause you’re like, he seemed to have his fingers in everything. Yeah. But if you’re actually in the elite networks, what’s weirder is how much he didn’t have his fingers in. Yeah. It’s really that his fingers were in one side of the elite battle network, right? Mm-hmm. And, and this is gets really cool ‘cause we can take you guys into like a bit of the behind the scenes of what’s going on with actual elite power politics because we have a lot of background in that field. And and, and for people who are coming to this and are like, what background do you have? Quick thing. Simone used to be the managing director of Dialogue, which is the Secret Society set up by Peter Teel. We also go to Heretic Con, which is another secret society that has been set up by him. The New York Times leaked that we know. I can’t say anything more than that. Elon there has been, we were working on a secret society for [00:08:00] Schmidt Futures that ended up being shut down. But this was, you know, Eric Schmidt’s circle. We also the Vahe Grove. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been I have a lot of connections to management of that, but I try to I, I don’t know like what I’m allowed to say in DI wise around that. And in terms of what, what’s the other big one? Oh, yes, the Illuminati. Now this isn’t real, but supposedly I am the oldest male of the Collins Bloodline of the Illuminati, which is what the Joe Rogan crash out came from. But like, even in terms of like lore I’m supposed to be in with secret societies, but like, that’s actually been a part of our job. Like our career is partially secret societies. That was our fam

    1 ч. 23 мин.
  3. We Stopped Fearing Swamp Hags & Society Collapsed (A Historic Anthropology)

    -4 ДН.

    We Stopped Fearing Swamp Hags & Society Collapsed (A Historic Anthropology)

    In this eye-opening episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive deep into the ancient archetype of the “Swamp Hag” – those deranged, liminal women from folklore who live on the edges of society, brewing potions, keening like banshees, and disrupting the peace. Drawing from European, Eurasian, and global myths (think Baba Yaga, Banshees, and even Jewish Bal Shems), we explore how these figures warned communities about real threats: spiteful mutants, mystical outsiders, and unmoored individuals who could harm society if not isolated. But are swamp hags just insults, or do they reveal timeless truths about human genetics, physiognomy, and social roles? We discuss modern manifestations – from screaming protesters (hello, banshees like Greta Thunberg) to bureaucratic “Karens” in the deep state, Wiccans on Etsy, and even Disney’s evolving witch tropes (from villains in Snow White to mentors in Owl House). Why do cultures converge on these stories? How have we lost the plot by empowering liminal people in leadership? And what can we learn to protect our kids and rebuild prejudice against dangerous mystics? Plus, a fun tangent on family life, JD Vance’s fourth kid, and mystery curries. If you’re into folklore, cultural evolution, pronatalism, and unfiltered takes Episode Notes * Asmongold: * Regularly refers to deranged women at protests as swamp hags; he and his chat sometimes also realize, while watching clips of white women losing composure, that they’re basically banshees * He has pointed out that every major culture has some sort of trope or mythology around this archetype: * He has also mused over how these women are just born in the wrong time and place; that they’d probably be just fine off in a swamp somewhere selling mushrooms * And this had me thinking he’s on to something Swamp Hags The “swamp hag” or woods-dwelling old woman selling herbs and mushrooms is a modern variation of a very old European and Eurasian hag/crone figure: an aged, liminal woman at the edge of society and of the wild, who can be healer, monster, or initiatory guide. Deep roots of the hag * The English word hag comes from Old English hægtesse, a term for a witch or night spirit, later generalized to mean a wizened old woman associated with magic and malice * Across European folklore, hags and crones are depicted as ugly, elderly women living apart from the community and engaging in witchcraft, often as figures who threaten children, twist weather, or curse travelers. * At the same time, early hag figures also preserve traces of older wise-woman roles—midwives, healers, diviners, and nature spirits—whose powers later get demonized as witchcraft. Swamp hags * Swamps and bogs have long been imagined as uncanny spaces—places of rot, spirits, and monsters—so attaching the hag figure to swamps (rather than just generic woods) taps into older associations between wetlands, death, and dangerous female beings. * Specific “old woman of the swamps” or swamp crone figures appear in Native and global folklore as spirits born from decaying tools or matter, personifying swampy decay and moisture as an aunt or old woman who haunts wet lowlands. * Contemporary fantasy and horror (RPGs, video games, TV tropes) codify all this into the recognisable swamp/forest hag: a dirty, old woman in a shack or hut amid trees and bogs, trading herbs, fungi, and curses—directly inheriting the wise-woman healer, the cannibal witch (like Baba Yaga), and the land-crone goddess, but flattened into a stock “witch in the woods” character. Mythological forest hags * In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga is a classic forest hag: an ancient crone in a hut on chicken legs, deep in the woods, who may eat people or aid them, embodying both threat and rough mentorship. * Baba Yaga’s hut, bone fence, skull lanterns, and association with wild animals mark her as a guardian of the forest and of a boundary between worlds, not just a generic villain. * Scholars have linked Baba Yaga to older nature or underworld goddesses (sometimes compared to Persephone), emphasizing her role as a symbol of wild, transformative feminine power rather than pure evil. Celtic and North Atlantic crone goddesses * In Irish and Scottish tradition, the Cailleach is a hag-goddess of winter, weather, mountains, and sovereignty, imagined as an old woman who shapes the land and rules the harsh season. * Local hags such as Black Annis (a blue-faced, child-eating cave-dweller in Leicester) or the Hag of the Mist and Hag of Hell in Welsh lore are monstrous, weather-and-death-linked old women haunting marginal landscapes like caves, bogs, and foggy crossings. * These figures blur human witch, land spirit, and goddess: they can represent winter, storms, or death, while also preserving memory of powerful female beings who predate later male-dominated religious systems. Banshees * The Banshee is originally an Irish and Scottish “otherworld woman” who keens for the dead of particular families, and only later becomes a generalized screaming death‑ghost or attack monster in modern media.​ * The word banshee is from Irish bean sídhe or bean sí, meaning “woman of the (fairy) mounds” or “otherworldly woman,” * The banshee is part of a wider mythos of fairy beings tied to ancient hills and barrows. * Descriptions vary: in many Irish accounts she can appear as a beautiful young woman, a stately matron, or an old hag, sometimes with long unbound hair, red or green clothing, and eyes red from weeping. * Traditionally, the banshee is a familial spirit, attached to old Gaelic lineages (often O’ or Mac names), whose wail foretells the imminent death of a member of that family. * She is usually not malicious: her keening functions as mourning and warning, making her more a messenger or guardian than a killer, and some stories portray her as grieving deeply for the person who will die. * Very Greta Thunberg * Some accounts restrict banshees to a few ancient aristocratic families, while others extend them to a wider range of Irish surnames and even to diaspora descendants who claim a “family banshee.” * Reminds me of snark content creators and commentors * Historians often connect the banshee to real keeners (bean chaointe)—professional women who led funeral laments (caoineadh) in medieval and early modern Ireland. * Over time, tales arose that certain noble families had a supernatural keener, a fairy woman who would lament before a death, elevating the social role of human keeners into a mythic, otherworldly form. * In some folk explanations, a banshee is the spirit of a woman who was a keener in life and now continues her office imperfectly or as a form of penance, blending social practice with religious and supernatural imagery. How Hags, Crones, and Swamp Hags Lost Nuance and Became One Note * Outside the Celtic context, the banshee is frequently turned into a generic shrieking ghost or sonic-weapon monster whose scream harms people directly, stripping away her specific family and keening associations. * Historically, village “wise women” and herb-wives sold remedies, charms, and knowledge of plants and animals; later witchcraft accusations targeted many of these same practitioners, especially poor older women on the social margins.​ * Over time, the helpful herbalist/healer and the dangerous poisoner/witch merged in popular imagination, turning the solitary, aging woman in the woods from a community resource into a feared supernatural threat. * The hag/crone thus functions as an archetype of the post-reproductive woman excluded from respectable domestic roles, her age and liminality translated into both magical power and social suspicion. Common Characteristics of Historical Hags and Banshees * Often appearing in swamps or in liminal areas * Responsible only for themselves * Not moored to a husband, church, family, or children * Female * The male version of liminal, unmoored humans is: * Marauder / vagrant / outlaw / bandit * Hermit / wild man of the woods * Wizard * Trickster * Chaotic figures that, * When doing good: Provide warnings, cures, healing, medical care, and wisdom * When doing evil: Are loud and annoying, disrupt order, curse, poison, and kill Karens: The Modern Mythological Hags Karens and other forms of abrasive affluent white woman could be argued to just be modern versions of hags and banshees * Like these mythological figures, they disproportionately occupy swamps * I.e. large bureaucracies (“drain the swamp”) * Like these mythological figures, they’re disproportionately of European ancestry * One of our listeners proposed the concept of the concept of the Karen just being racism against European women * “I think the “Karen” thing is a brown people taking charge of culture thing.” * And to her point, The “Karen” as a named trope for an entitled, abrasive (usually white) woman emerged online in the 2010s and crystallized through Reddit and “Black Twitter” * She continued: Picture old German white women keeping everyone in line and making sure they obey the rules…”Karen” lets white women know they can’t be oppressive rule-enforcers anymore. * She told a story of a time when she and her husband were late for a plane in a South American country and the airline held it for them. “They made 300 people wait an extra five minutes or so for two irresponsible people. We didn’t think it was okay. We didn’t think they should wait for us. But that is the culture. “Be chill.” That’s also why they will never be rich or outcompete cultures that value not being chill....” * She also pointed out: “Studies have been done on preferences for quiet showing that the northern European genome strongly prefers quiet compared to southern.” How to Save the Karens Or Maybe the Problem is Us, Not Them? * One can imagine that in the past, if there were an abrasive woman living in town who harangued residents

    1 ч. 2 мин.
  4. How Influencers Became Strictly Better Than Journalists

    -5 ДН.

    How Influencers Became Strictly Better Than Journalists

    The mainstream media is dying — and almost nobody is actually reading it anymore. In this episode, Malcolm & Simone Collins break down the shocking reality behind the Washington Post laying off a third of its staff, why legacy media has become irrelevant, and how a new decentralized information ecosystem (YouTubers, citizen journalists, Substack, and AI synthesis) is rapidly replacing it. Topics covered: * Why the Washington Post’s 13–14 person climate team was mostly cut * How our small channel has more real influence than dozens of NYT journalists * The hidden truth about newspaper readership and subscription signaling * The new media pyramid: original research → synthesis → commentary * Why citizen journalism is outperforming legacy war reporting * AI’s biggest emerging threat to information quality * How we’re returning to real gumshoe reporting in the cyber age If you want to understand where news is actually going in 2026 and beyond, this episode is essential. Watch until the end for our thoughts on AI harmonic patterns and the coming verification crisis. Drop a comment: Do you still read any legacy media outlets? Which ones? Episode Transcript Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re gonna be talking about the death of Legacy Media. Recently, the big story in the news tied to this right now is that the Washington Post laid off a third of their staff Simone Collins: and they’d be mad. Malcolm Collins: You were just complaining to me, you’re like, oh my God. I do not understand. When you see people protest like. These people were not generating value, they were not generating money anymore. The number that had been going around that I think is hilarious is they had 13 to 14 journalists as part of their climate team. Simone Collins: Just, just to cover climate change. Malcolm Collins: And they let, I think all of them go, Simone Collins: no, I think they kept one or two. One Malcolm Collins: or two to like, Simone Collins: which is one or two too many. You could have honestly, like anyone covering economics or politics or really any, I mean, climate change is one of those subjects that really only. Has context and importance in relation to another field like science, [00:01:00] like, ecosystems, like food, like any, anything on its own. It doesn’t matter. It only matters in the context of something else. So you don’t need a journalist for that. I can’t believe they ha How did they even end up with that mini, I mean, the way that Aspen Gold was talking about it was that like you just get one and they just hire more and more, like they just want more of themselves and they grow like a cancer. Malcolm Collins: No, it’s, Simone Collins: it Malcolm Collins: is just like a cancer. I mean, wokes and Wokes topics aren’t like a cancer within an organization. Yeah. And they spread from the, the, the start point. And it is you have to cut out the entire cancer. That’s the only way to, to keep the organization alive. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: And if you’re not willing to, and that’s the thing with giant bureaucracies, it becomes harder and harder and harder to do that. So giant bureaucracies perform less and less well. Mm-hmm. Which is why new companies are able to bubble up and do. New and cool things like our fab ai creating the best AI chat bots around. And they really are, we’re gonna start advertising. Like Simone Collins: actually yes. Malcolm Collins: Like actually, yeah, I’ve used the other bots, they’re not as good. And, and it’s just [00:02:00] because we’re using the top of the line models really, and everybody else tries to do some proprietary nonsense. But anyway, to keep going here if you get an idea, because I, I do not think people realize contrasted wiz, because what we’re gonna be talking about in today’s episode is. The phenomenon of media dying, but also the phenomenon of what’s replacing it, how you can gather information today, how people will gather information in the future. ‘cause a lot of people are like, well, when the media’s gone, how is information parsed? How do you get stories? How do you know what’s happening in the world? Mm-hmm. And I mean, the answer is obvious now. People are getting it from their information circles. You know, you were just talking about how I was learning about what happened to the Washington Post by watching as asthma gold. Don’t you all want a wife like that who genuinely is just like, what does, as asthma gold have to say? Say, yeah, God. I think a lot of guys are like, yeah, I want a wife who’s addicted to o asthma gold. But anyway I do not think people understand just how few people actually read [00:03:00] even the largest of media organizations. And we have an older episode where we go into the numbers on this. And in that episode, even when the channel was much smaller I was pointing out that if you look at, like, if you divide the show’s viewership by two, because there’s two of us working on it. Each of us is worth, I think it was seven full-time staff at the New York Times when you con we’re contrasting our viewership numbers. Was the average viewership numbers of the New York Times? Oh Simone Collins: no. Malcolm Collins: In terms of, yeah, it was bad. And I can try to find those numbers. I’ll add it in post here to give good idea of just how bad it was. So the average American when they click through to a newspaper is on that link for 1. 5 minutes actually a little less than that. So I’m inflating the numbers a bit. Okay. If you look at the New York Times, the New York Times gets around 385. 7 million clicks per month. That comes down to around 9, 642, 000 K hours now, [00:04:00] consider that they have 1, 700 journalists working there, and there are two of us. That means the number of people watching our content is equivalent for each one of us to 44 New York Times journalists. We have the same influence on the public as 44 New York Times journalist for each of us individually. 22 for the show in general, do you have any idea how much 44 people is? That’s like more people than could fit in our entire house. And we are not a particularly large YouTube channel either. Malcolm Collins: So Simone Collins: bad. Malcolm Collins: Bad. But to give you an idea, when you’re talking about New York Times pieces, because I’ll go through the major. Things because I think a lot of people, they’ll look at the total viewership on these platforms. Yeah. And they get confused because what they’re confusing is a few viral pieces versus how many people are reading the average piece. Right. How many [00:05:00] clickthroughs does the average piece get? Not the long tail piece. Right. So if you’re looking these days and you, and you do the math on this should I explain how. Views based on I’ll just, okay. Views based on 1.6 billion monthly page views, 7,000 articles, media media and adjusted full reads at 25 to 35% rate higher for long form EG 10 K views at or to 25% equals 2.5 k Engagement time is 30 to 45 seconds, which supports this. And with the New York Times. The way that we did that, by the way, is, is the average site time. It’s, I think 30 to 45 seconds, as I said, and then you’re looking at 1.6. Billion monthly page views. And so you’re like, okay, so how, what does that translate to in watch time versus what is our watch time? Simone Collins: Sure. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Which generally, like when we’re humming along, right now, I think we’re at around like 120,000, 130,000 hours a month. Simone Collins: Oh, that’s awesome. Wow. Malcolm Collins: And, and our norm when we get to like our peak, because we’ve hit this number a few different times, has been around 150,000. Yeah. We’ve gotten to around [00:06:00] 200,000 at points. So we’ll see if we can get to a norm of over 200,000 this year. But anyway. If you’re looking at the estimated medium viewers per story in the New York Times, you’re looking at 10,000 to 25,000. Simone Collins: But the amount of money that goes into each articles. Malcolm Collins: Is enormous. What? So you’re going to understand why this doesn’t make sense anymore. And the estimated number of people who read an average New York Times story to the end of the story is around 2,500 to 8,700. Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Malcolm Collins: Not a lot. So the average New York Times story is getting about the engagement as an average video on this channel. Simone Collins: Yes. With one small counterpoint. Which is, and I think this is a, a difference with. Old media that’s going to keep it alive a little bit longer than these dismal numbers would suggest. Yeah. Which is that a lot of people, and keep in mind in New York Times doesn’t make money based on views. It makes money based on subscriptions. [00:07:00] Mm-hmm. And people often get subscriptions to publications they do not read. I mean, obviously a lot of people do it out of. Inertia or it’s a, an institution or a publication or a doctor’s office or whatever, right? And they just get it because they’ve always got it and they always will get it. And so it’s gonna take a generation for that to end. Or you know, more institutional shakeups for an auditing team to be like, wait, why are you paying for this when no one’s using it? You know, more doge kind of stuff. ‘cause that happened a lot when Doge people were like, wait, no one has ever used this software. Ever. Why are we paying for it? But then there’s also the element that people buy. Like I think the New Yorkers a better example of this. They buy a subscription to it, so it sits in their house, and when people come over, they’re like, oh. You read The New Yorker no one reads the New Yorker. You know what I mean? Like five people read the New Yorker. But they, they have those just as a signaling thing. Most [00:08:00] people who received, and I remember whe

    59 мин.
  5. Are "Trad Wives" Just E-Girls?

    -6 ДН.

    Are "Trad Wives" Just E-Girls?

    Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive into the juicy scandals rocking the trad wife and trad husband movements. From Sarah Stock’s alleged affair with Elijah Schaeffer (while preaching purity and getting a papal blessing) to Schaeffer’s epic meltdown, we unpack the hypocrisy, grifts, and red flags in conservative influencer circles. We explore why these “moral police” often crash out, cultural differences in sexuality (Catholic vs. Protestant vibes), and tips for spotting authentic people vs. fakers. Plus, our take on why peacocking signals low investment in relationships and how to avoid dead bedrooms or unfaithful partners. If you love drama with a side of cultural analysis, this episode is a must-watch! Episode Transcript: Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be going over the tire fire that has become the trad wife movement, the trad husband movement recently with some big, big scandals in it that are very entertaining. I, I went into these scandals and I was like, Ooh, this is just so juicy. You know, you see people being bad and then the bad people get their come up ins and everything falls apart for them, and they go crazy, and you’re just loving every step of it because they were so inauthentic and terrible to begin with. Yeah. And then your, your friends come in the, the, the other weird random conservatives like Milo was inside gossip you know, still, still playing that role. And then you get even on the, base camp subreddit, one of the posts and I’ll, I’ll I’ll play it, is like showing what trad wives are actually like, and it’s like the, the,’ Speaker: Oh, thank you, brother. God bless you, dude. She’s the [00:01:00] real deal. Men of honor deserve women of virtue. She’s perfect, bro. Ugh, another easy. 600 trad queen’s got to eat so pure bro. Look at her prey hands. Sending 50 worth it. Three roses. She’ll notice me for sure. Where’s your heart, Jake? You’re such a gentleman. Y’all are such blessings. Back to the garden now. Trad wife cosplay. Every night across living rooms like this, young conservative men embark on a sacred ritual. Sipping their muse. A virtuous bread baking tread. Angel on livestream. Aw. Thank you brothers. Malcolm Collins: the trad wife influencers are often just really e thoughts that are dressing up like trad wives and manipulating men with fake personas no more than the, the, you know, girl who decides she’s gonna dress up like a goth and like bounce her tatas around to try to get donations, right? Simone Collins: Like it’s, and that’s what’s so funny is that people seem to think that women who engage in this is this form of very conspicuous signaling are are trad wifes. Like if, if you’re a trad wife, you’re someone who lives in very deep alignment with [00:02:00] their goals and is probably not very online. And someone who invests very heavily in signaling. Is, is is very much going against what it means to be a trad wife. And we talked about this a little bit in the peacocking episode. The TLDR of it is if someone is signaling or peacocking in a way where they’re really trying to show like, my appearance is expensive and, and, and like I’m trying to catch your attention as a reproductive mate, it’s typically because they expect to invest disproportionately a little in your relationship, in your child rearing. So you don’t wanna go after someone who’s very made up, who’s peacocking. Yeah. Because you’re not gonna be there for you. The very definition of a tra wife, I mean like functionally, is that a trad wife is someone who really shows up for the marriage. They’re going to be homeschooling the kid, they’re gonna be cooking all the dinners, they’re gonna be doing all the work. Possibly also while making an income. And I do think that people like Hannah Neman really are bringing everything to the relationship, Malcolm Collins: but I don’t think that she dressed like a trad wife when he met [00:03:00] her. I don’t think that she put on the trad wife persona when he met her. I think the, what I’ve seen of the women who become good trad wives is that they are not trad wives when their husbands start dating them. Yeah. They don’t present that way. They don’t act that way. Okay. It’s a persona they pick up later because they want to contribute to the relationship as much as they possibly can. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: So let’s get into the drama. Okay. Okay. Simone Collins: Yes. Mm. Malcolm Collins: So Will Secka lived a quiet life rooted in face and political activism until allegations against his wife Sarah Stock pulled him into a viral storm as claims of an affair was Elijah Schaefer spread online. Minnie began asking who he is and how he became central to this controversy. Sarah Stock and Elijah s Schiffer’s affair allegations have rocked not only turning points USA fans, but also brought her husband will seka into the spotlight. In conservative influencer spaces, image is everything. Faith, marriage, modesty, and traditional values often form the [00:04:00] backbone of personal branding. That is why the recent controversy surrounding stock now Cska has drawn such intense online attention. Allegations of an affair was conservative. Commentator Elijah Schafer have not only put her reputation under scrutiny, but have also pulled her husband will seka into the spotlight. He never sought as social media debates, hypocrisy, morality. Many are asking the simpler question. Who is will Seka the man at the center of the storm created by claims about his wife’s past actions. All right, so a whirlwind romance went viral. Sarah Stock and Will SKAs engagement in August, 2025 was widely shared across social media. Sarah posted pictures of her ring in fields of flowers while speaking about purity, waiting for marriage and traditional courtship. The wedding in January, 2026 gained even more attention when the couple shared photographs from the Vatican after receiving Papal blessing from Pope [00:05:00] Leo the 14th. There’s Latin numbers there dressed in bridal attire. The images quickly spread online, and here they have a post from Milo where he says, let’s start with Sarah Stock. So he’s releasing private images of messages he had with her Simone Collins: wait right after she got married. Malcolm Collins: And so he says if your husband doesn’t know, now is the time. I understand you won’t see it like this for a long time, but as you can see from above, it is better for everyone that things come out in one burst today instead of metastasizing over weeks. Don’t let him find out from, it’s somebody else. So first, I like that Milo has the chill correct take on this. You, you, you cheated. Tell your husband now make, make this a thing between you guys and stop this. Right? But no, she wanted to keep cheating is basically what we learned. And if she told him, she wouldn’t be able to. So, and [00:06:00] also Milo was a bro and not releasing all of this until after all of this goes viral, right? Like after it’s all public. He kept your secret for a long time. So he goes on to say, in February, 2025, Sarah Stock and Elijah Schaeffer began sleeping together. The affair entered on the day she got engaged about six months later. In that time, they experienced multiple pregnancy scares. It’s alleged by one former acquaintance that Sarah got at least one abortion. Oh my God, Simone Collins: this Malcolm Collins: is horrible. I’m telling Catholic sarah captioned one post saying she highly recommended, getting a marriage blessed by the Pope. At the time, the images were praised as a symbol of devotion and face in hindsight’s. Critics now view the timing of these posts through a very different lens when she’s still sleeping with other other guy. Okay, so a lith chauffeur and Sure. Stocks scandal, all allegation shock. The internet. The controversy erupted after claims circulated online that Sarah had a months long [00:07:00] affair with Eliza Chauffeur, her former boss at RIF tv. The claims are amplified by Post Michael Opolis. Yeah, her boss. Simone Collins: Oh, Malcolm Collins: how Chad, right. Simone Collins: Oh. Malcolm Collins: And the claims were amplified by posts from Milo Gianopoulos, who alleged that their relationship began in early 2025 and overlaps with her courtship of will. He says, Milo says here, I’m in touch with Elijah. I told him to get off the internet for a couple weeks and go to rehab. It’s better for everyone to just rip the bandaid off. So I’ll share with you over the next few hours the info doing the rounds in private, at least what I’ve been able to confirm. So I’m getting the full images here so we can get the full text here. I’ve seen a dossier, someone put together. Everything is coming out. My advice is to check yourself into as a facility sooner rather than later. There may be a life for you after this, but it’s going to depend on being totally honest about all the details and it’s going to require sympathy. As far as I [00:08:00] can see, drug addiction is the only card you have left to play. If I were you, I would go out of my way to be a generous and decent with the wife and kids. This cross filing in other states for divorce is insultingly, childish and stupid. He also, by the way, crashed out on his wife. Observers will be asking, haven’t you put the poor B through enough? The investors don’t matter. If they met you and still wrote a check that’s on them, I’m sure it’ll be a while before you are ready to start putting your life back together, but when you are, I will be there to help you. I’ve been trying to signal to you for the past year or so to cut off the BS and talk to me. I was hoping everybody could avoid this. You may wish to be offline for the next week or two. And he goes, what do you mean cease and desisting people right now? But I got m

    1 ч. 37 мин.
  6. Epstein Might Be Alive: What Everyone Is Missing

    9 ФЕВР.

    Epstein Might Be Alive: What Everyone Is Missing

    This is the episode’s “smoking gun,” and it’s legitimately intriguing. The post—made around 40 minutes before Epstein’s death was publicly announced—describes him being wheeled out in a wheelchair after a 4:15 a.m. inmate count, with an unauthorized van arriving and no real hospital interaction. The files confirm the poster was Roberto Grijalva, a lieutenant corrections officer at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) on duty that night. Subpoenas to 4chan, Apple, AT&T, and Citibank traced it back to him via bank and IP records. What’s wild: * Grijalva wasn’t some random troll; he was actively doing his job, as evidenced by his August 12, 2019, memo to the warden noting Epstein needed a cellmate (per suicide risk protocols) after his previous one (Efrain Reyes) was transferred out the day before. * The feds went all-in to ID him (grand jury probe the day after Epstein’s death), but there’s no record of follow-up interviews, charges, or discipline tied to the post. It just... stops. If this was a genuine investigation into leaks or irregularities, why drop it once they found a credible insider? * Counterfactuals here make sense: If it was a cover-up, they’d want to silence potential witnesses. Grijalva continued at MCC until its 2021 closure but hasn’t worked since—could be a payout, retirement, or something else. No freak accidents reported, at least. This raises real questions about MCC negligence (or worse). Official probes (2023 DOJ IG report) blamed guards for falsifying logs and sleeping, but the lack of scrutiny on Grijalva feels off. It’s not “bulletproof” proof Epstein’s alive, but it screams active suppression of info. Props to the hosts for spotlighting this—it’s under-discussed compared to flashier theories.[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re going to be talking about Epstein and if he is actually dead, as well as some other updates from the Epstein files that we didn’t cover in our last video. And again, it’s a case of I decided to go into this. I decided to research this, and the claims and evidence I have seen pushed around for him not being dead, like the popular conspiracy theories, the tattoo one, the Fortnite one they’re generally pretty bad as as, as far as evidence goes. Oh. However I found a new one, or it’s not entirely new, but it’s mostly something that it’s not focused on that I think is, is near Bulletproof. Maybe not that he’s not dead, but that there is an active coverup of something tied to his death. And I would start by by going into that one. Yeah. But before I get to that, I also just wanted to briefly cover. One thing that’s really been annoying me is people keep being like, well, Stephen [00:01:00] Hawkings in the Epstein files. And it’s like, no, Stephen Hawkings went to Epstein Island for like a big scientist conference thing. It, there is no evidence at all that he was involved in anything sexual there. And like, how do you even broach that with Stephen Hawking, like, Simone Collins: yeah, in the rig? How do you do it? Malcolm Collins: Even if you are interested in trying to entrap people and stuff like that, if you get Stephen Hawking to come to your island, just use it for the clout and don’t, you know, risk him because you can’t disappear Stephen Hawking if he turns out to like, not be into this. Right. Like, Simone Collins: not be into it. Malcolm Collins: The, I I, I see no evidence there. Where I do see very strong evidence is Steve Bannon. And if we have time at the end of this, I’ll go into Steve Bannon more. Simone Collins: Okay. Malcolm Collins: Because wow. And I’ve always said that he was a complete swamp creature. And some people were like, oh, Malcolm, you should be nicer. He’s done a lot for the conservative movement. And I’m like, no. He, he functionally hasn’t, he’s actually done a lot of damage to the conservative movement. He’s, he’s probably about as bad as Ben [00:02:00] Shapiro if not a little worse because he has actively prevented some political things from getting done. Yeah. Just to play his, his swamp game. And he’s Simone Collins: swamp game. Malcolm Collins: He seems to be a less ethical person than Ben Shapiro, which is saying a lot. Ben Shapiro, I think is just sort of a weasel, but he doesn’t seem to be like, actively, like, I’m gonna go out and do evil things. Whereas Steve Bannon is more like in the latter category, and we can get to that on the Steve Bannon parts of this. Simone Collins: So Malcolm Collins: we Simone Collins: stopped trying to be nice to people, apparently. Malcolm Collins: Well, he is never done anything for us, and we’ve been on the scene for a while at this point. You know, I, I don’t, don’t try to rehabilitate, you know, Epstein after you know everything he’s done. How about that? But let’s, let’s go into this, right? So I’m gonna go into the really. Smoking evidence here. Okay. Simone Collins: Okay. Yes. Malcolm Collins: So, there is documented evidence of a specific anonymous post, which originated on four chan shortly after Epstein’s death on August [00:03:00] 10th, 2019. Okay? It describes him as being wheeled out of his cell in a medical wheelchair after 4:15 AM inmate count. Front cuffed handcuffs in the front was a nurse presented, but no triage nurses claiming to have spoken to him, followed up by an unauthorized trip van arriving. The post implies this happened before the official medical discovery of his body at around six 30 suggesting a possible covert extraction or body switch and no meaningful hospital interaction upon arrival. So you hear this and your initial thought as is. Simone Collins: Yeah. You’re saying people are, people say he was wheeled out before his dead body was discovered. Malcolm Collins: Hold on. We’re just laying out the initial piece of evidence here. Simone Collins: Okay. Malcolm Collins: Somebody anonymously on four chan before he died. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Said he was wheeled out before he died. Yeah. Now you hear this and you say, okay, it is [00:04:00] weird that somebody knew about this before this was all made public, but Simone Collins: oh, you’re saying the time they posted it? Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Malcolm Collins: Hold on, hold on. But it’s still just an anonymous four chan post. Simone Collins: Right. But, but literally before he died, like chronologically in the time of our universe. On the day he died two hours before he died. Hold on. So for clarification, this was after he had died, but before that was made public. Simone Collins: Okay. Go on. Go on. Malcolm Collins: Okay, so the full text as archived, because I wanna get to this. Mm-hmm. Not saying anything after this, please do not try to dox me. But last night after 0 4 1 5 count, they took him Epstein to medical in a wheelchair front, cuffed, but not one triage nurse says she spoke to him. Next thing we know, a trip van shows up. We do not do medical trips. They take inmates to Monte Friar’s, Rikers North Infirmary, intubate, doubt it. Dead on arrival [00:05:00] equals DOA hospitals do not release information to correction officers in quote. Okay. And so this appeared on the four chan board at, around the time of his death which was about 40 minutes before the public announcement. But again, that turns out to be irrelevant. So you hear this and you’re like, okay, this could be any of a thousand things until the declassified Epstein files, and this is where this becomes an enormous smoking gun. Simone Collins: Oh. Malcolm Collins: So, and this was as of 2026. We now have this information. Simone Collins: Okay. Malcolm Collins: The identity of the person who posted this is Roberto Gal, a Lieutenant Corrections officer at the Metropolitans Correction Center, the MC where Epstein was held. Oh, Simone Collins: didn’t wanna be doxed, I feel bad, Malcolm Collins: right? The files include a subpoena issued by the US attorney, Jeffrey Berman, of the SDNY, the day after Epstein’s death, targeting four Chan, apple, at and t and others to trace the [00:06:00] IP and identify the source investigators subpoenaed AL’S banking and communication records confirming his involvement. This gives the claim so. Hold on. So what do we now know? Okay. We now know the person who posted this Simone Collins: mm-hmm. Malcolm Collins: Worked as a corrections officer in that facility. Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Malcolm Collins: So what else do we know? He is a real individual. Mm-hmm. Who worked at that facility at the, at the MC. Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Malcolm Collins: In New York City. The federal Joe Jeffrey Epstein was held and died in August, 2019. Mm-hmm. Not only that, but he was on duty during the relevant time period. Mm-hmm. Including the night leading up to Epstein’s death. Mm. But hold on, that becomes more important in just a second. Simone Collins: Well, we also, because the government freaked out. Right. And then we’re like, who posted this? No. Malcolm Collins: Right. Right. But it becomes more interesting. That’s what we haven’t even gotten to, why this is so fascinating and why it’s smoking. Simone Collins: I’m interested already. Malcolm Collins: [00:07:00] Now here’s an even crazier thing, Simone Collins: okay? Malcolm Collins: So we do from the Epstein files. Get some additional context on this guy. Simone Collins: Okay? Malcolm Collins: So he provided statements as part of the MCCs internal investigation into Epstein’s desk, eg. On guard protocols and events that night, which were released in the 2026 dump. There is, and here’s a really important part, but we’ll get to why it’s important in just a second. There’s no public record of him facing charges. Discipline or further legal action related to the post officials seem to have treated it as part of the broader probe into leads and

    1 ч. 14 мин.
  7. Cuba: Biggest Crisis Since The Revolution (Fixing Substack's Podcast Listing Error Bug Regular Users Ignore Duplicate)

    7 ФЕВР.

    Cuba: Biggest Crisis Since The Revolution (Fixing Substack's Podcast Listing Error Bug Regular Users Ignore Duplicate)

    [00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about something that is wildly under-discussed in the news right now, which is that Cuba is about to collapse. And when I say about to collapse, you may think that I am exaggerating. They have literally at this point, 14 to 19 days of oil left. They have had no tanker arrivals since January 9th. The, the tankers that were being sent from Venezuela have been cut off and their last lifeline, which was Mexico, has also been cut off. Why than that? Trump negotiations. So, NAFT is about to, is about to be renegotiated and oh Trump put a lot of pressure on Mexico to cut off. Also, it’s costing Mexico a lot. They spent 3 billion basically in free oil for Venezuela. Over the past just few years I think. Since Why started this person’s administration? Well, Cuba was giving them their slave [00:01:00] doctors for people who don’t know Google. Oh yeah. UBA basically enslaves their, their doctors and was giving them to Mexico as like an exchange. But they did the Venezuela was an also interesting situation ‘cause we’re seeing more and more, venezuela had given Cuba in terms of like loans that Cuba would never pay back, very obviously and stuff like that. $18 billion. And if we look at the elite guard that was killed during the raid, we know that 32 of them, so almost all of the people who died were actually Cubans. So it appeared that Cuba basically controlled like the. The, the, the accusations that Cuba had basically subjugated Venezuela and was just extracting resources from it were accurate. They basically controlled the entire elite guard of the country and most of the major military petitions. Oh. And this is being systemically reversed right now. Mm-hmm. And I note here that another thing you’re not seeing if you’re watching mainstream news right now is that Venezuela has actually made pretty. Big changes. Not only have they stopped sending [00:02:00] money and oil to Cuba but they have started releasing hundreds. I think now we’re at 300, but it shows no signs of slowing down political prisoners. So we are actually seeing change in Venezuela. It’s just Simone Collins: alright, Malcolm Collins: Trump can. Dunk on it too much. Mm-hmm. Or it would look bad for the woman who’s in power now. Right. You know, we have to be very nice about all of our political wins that we’re making in Venezuela and very graceful about it because Yeah. Simone Collins: Yeah. Malcolm Collins: You don’t want too many people asking. Did she cooperate with you guys to get rid of Maduro? Simone Collins: Yeah, like sad. You wanna look a little matchy matchy? That would not be good. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You know, you don’t wanna look too matchy. Matchy. So she constantly complains. But in terms of what we actually wanna see happen in Venezuela, that’s what we’re seeing right now. Simone Collins: Wow. Malcolm Collins: And I note here that how bad things have gotten in Cuba is, is not a, like this is happening completely out of nowhere scenario. So, Simone Collins: well I have to ask. Do they not have oil reserves? We have oil reserves. By the way, if you’re [00:03:00] wondering if Cuba has oil deposit somewhere, , they do. But, , in 20 12, 3 deep water, more than 300 meters of water exploration wells were drilled by Italian platform Scarborough nine. , And, , none of the three found commercial quality of oil or gas, which jeopardized Cuba’s hopes to find hydrocarbons to boost its economy. So basically they, they technically have some around the island, , but , none of the commercial explorations have ever found a way to reach them in a cash positive manner. Malcolm Collins: Cuba is a little island. Simone? No. Cuba Simone Collins: doesn’t have one. Can have some kind of, I don’t know, tank. This is my out of touch. I I have to ask the out of touch questions that everyone else is asking. ‘cause I’m not the only out of touch person here. Malcolm Collins: No, they’re completely out. So their economy last year, 20% was the tourism industry. And this is despite the fact that tourism has been crashing for them. So things have been getting much, much worse for them. Simone Collins: Oh, so the world. Top destination for male sex workers is going out of faith. Oh, [00:04:00] this is because the younger people aren’t having sex anymore. Malcolm Collins: That’s a, Simone Collins: so what kind of woman wants to go to Cuba anymore? Malcolm Collins: There’s been a combinations of factors that hit their tourism industry. One was Trump reinstated distinctions that Obama had lifted. Two Simone Collins: was, now we actually know this, when, when we ran our travel agency, we used to have a decent amount of traffic to Cuba. Yeah. And then after a while flights got kind of weird. And it was harder to get people there. The visa situation got very complicated and then we started having banking problems like, oh, do you do any business with Cuba? And then like we, we got shut out of various things. Like we as a travel agency were strongly disincentivized from. Facilitating travel to Cuba, even if we’re talking like a student trip. At one point we helped to facilitate a student trip, like a tour to Cuba for, you know, cultural reasons and stuff. So I can totally see why tourism is down, not just because of sanctions and stuff, but because the very operators and companies [00:05:00] facilitating that travel were really. There were a lot of friction was added to the process. Well, Malcolm Collins: it’s not just that. There was basically to give a bit of history of what happened is Obama opened everything. And much like when apartheid in it in South Africa, a bunch of people went in thinking, oh my God, look at this opportunity. Look at these green fields. Simone Collins: Oh, but you go, and the only thing that’s. Cool is the male sex workers and everything else is crappy. Malcolm Collins: We’ll get to that. But, so a lot of travel started happening to Cuba and a lot of people said, oh, we’ll invest in it. So it was all subsidized and sort of over the top of what the economy could actually handle. Oh, even before the new sanctions came in, many of the travel providers that we were operating with that had been set up during that boom period were already about to go bankrupt or had already gone bankrupt before Trump sanctions. It’s just not that many people actually wanted to go to Cuba. Is, is what we really learned. And really the only reason people reliably went to Cuba, which as Simone said, was male sex workers. That was the core thing. So it was mostly older, like [00:06:00] middle-aged women and gay men. That’s, that’s who was going for male Cuban sex workers. Simone Collins: This one is down in my head. Malcolm Collins: Right. And but to give you an idea of how bad things have been in Cuba since 2021, did you know that around 10%, this is only since 2021, we’re talking five years, 10% of the Cuban population has immigrated out of the country. Simone Collins: Okay. So they haven’t made it impossible to escape. I thought it was mostly a get on a raft and hope for the best kind of situation. So it’s not Malcolm Collins: well, having 10% of your population leave. And keep in mind the population that leaves has almost been entirely under 40. So what is their working population? Cuba has a worse TFR than the United States. They’re around 1.5 to 1.3 from what I’ve seen in various studies. They are extremely effed on that point. But you were saying like, do they have reserves of oil? The reason I was emphasizing the importance of their tourism industry is that even with the urist industry being like their lifeline right now, sure. The hotels regularly go with blackouts. Yeah. So no [00:07:00] power. They go, we Simone Collins: had issues with that. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Without running water. Mm-hmm. They go without, so, so even like their key industry, and you’ve gotta understand if you’re like, what does it mean to run out of oil in a matter of days at this point? What this means is you have. No factories operate almost all of Cuba’s energy is made with gas. Mm-hmm. So you have no light, no electricity. Your farming equipment doesn’t work. Simone Collins: So, wait, they, they’re electrical grid you think is based on, Malcolm Collins: it is based like 70% oil gas? Yeah. Simone Collins: No. Okay. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: And the reason they built it that way is ‘cause they were getting free gas from Venezuela. Simone Collins: That helps. Malcolm Collins: So they, they have no electricity, no farming equipment, no way to get from one place to another like this. God. Simone Collins: And those old cars aren’t exactly fuel efficient. Oh, no. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: The scale of the badness is very, very, very bad. Simone Collins: This is not good. Okay. Malcolm Collins: And so we’ve Simone Collins: gotta No, no. [00:08:00] And then let’s say that this happens and then a bunch of people. In, in pretty dire straits actually hop on more rafts and float over to Miami, and then ICE just takes them, I don’t know, flies them to Somalia. This is not gonna be good. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It is, it is not, well, it could be good depending on the outcome. So I really think we have never seen a president so well positioned to end this. Simone Collins: Okay. Malcolm Collins: And we see that from the way that he’s done. Bo is he gonna Simone Collins: port to Rico, Malcolm Collins: With Greenland, which has been really, really impressive. No. As well as the, what he did was Venezuela and the subsequent deal afterwards. So, what, what, I’ll get to this. So what we, is Simone Collins: he gonna be throwing toilet paper rolls at them next? Malcolm Collins: Did he throw toilet paper rolls at Simone Collins: somebody in Puerto Rico? Don’t you remember when he was like Puerto Rico

    54 мин.
  8. Why Female Leaders Abuse Their Power (The Science)

    5 ФЕВР.

    Why Female Leaders Abuse Their Power (The Science)

    Dive into a provocative discussion with Malcolm and Simone Collins as they debunk two major myths: the idea that female-led societies are inherently peaceful, and the romanticized view of bonobos as gentle, utopian apes. Drawing from their book The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality and fresh data from studies (including 2024 research on bonobo aggression), they explore how matriarchal structures—both in history and among bonobos—often lead to more violence, coercion, and hierarchy than expected. From evolutionary psychology on women’s submission fantasies to historical queens waging wars, this episode challenges progressive narratives about “natural” societies and argues for building better futures through pragmatism, not nostalgia. Key highlights: * Why bonobo society is a nightmare of sexual coercion and aggression. * Data showing female rulers are more likely to start wars (27% higher in historical Europe). * Evolutionary insights into gender dynamics and power. * A rant on rejecting “hidden utopias” and advancing civilization. If you enjoy data-driven takes on culture, evolution, and society, subscribe for more episodes from Based Camp! Check out our books and join the conversation.Episode Transcript: Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be going over two persistent myths in society, dissecting them, looking at the actual data to show that no. One female led societies historically are, and actually in modern times because we’re gonna be going into new data, not just the old data that we had in our book, the Pragma Guide to Sexuality are, are more violent than non-female led society. Simone Collins: Oh yeah, sure, of course Malcolm Collins: that makes sense. But also the myth of the peaceful bonobo is where we are going to start because Bonobo society is actually. Horrifying. Simone Collins: I don’t understand why people have this vision of the Gentle Ape. All, all apes and monkeys terrify me more than Pelicans, and there’s nothing scarier than a pelican. Malcolm Collins: So we’re just gonna go over a bunch of data, mostly drawing from a chapter from the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality about why. You shouldn’t let women run [00:01:00] things. And not just that, but how the progressive movement and the progressive part of the academic movement has this tendency to create these con conflation or confabulation of, unique examples or cherry picked data to try to say that we should go back to some earlier way of doing things or some earlier way is natural. Simone Collins: Ah, the Malcolm Collins: old sapien argument, fix it Dawn. Where they’re like, well, our ancestors were polyamorous. Look at the gentle bonobo. Look at the tribal they are. And I’m like, well. First of all, that’s not true of all tribal groups, and it’s certainly not true of the more successful ones. You just chose one that fit the society that you wanted. You’re like, okay, where’s the most communist, the most matriarchal, the most? Okay. We will say, this is the model for early humans. Yeah. When that’s not actually the predominant evidence that we have, and we can do a separate episode on that. But it’s the same with you know, with with [00:02:00] Bonobos. They go, oh, what, what? There was a period where like some researchers really romanticized Bonobos. And now we know that they basically made a mistake and they created, it is true that Bonobos do have a matriarchal society. It’s just not true that it’s a benevolent, matriarchal society. So let’s go into this. All right. Simone Collins: I wonder. Yeah, and I, I, I’m very curious to, to know when in history women were seen to be. Nice. I, I’m thinking maybe certainly with the Victorian era, this, there was this picture of like, the woman is being the moral anchor of the household, but yeah, I’m, this is gonna be fascinating. Malcolm Collins: Some of our readers may be wondering at this point why we have not referred to Bonobos. It has become popular to cite Bonobo behavior as evidence that humans in their natural state would be free loving, polyamorous, matriarchal communities. This view of Bonobos has been aggressively pushed by those whose political agenda benefits from the belief that our distant ancestors lived in this kind of [00:03:00] utopia. First, we would point to the fact that women tend towards submissive sexual fantasies much more than men. That this tendency does not appear to be socialized. And male humans almost certainly have an infanticide impulse. This serves as fairly concrete evidence indicating that early humans did not interact like Bonobos, or at least how people believe Bonobos interact. Matriarchal utopias do not create evolutionary pressures, nudging women to become turned on by violence against themselves, or sexually aroused by men stomping on babies like lucy McGillicutty stomping in a great vat. A 2015 psychology study of 1000. This is not from the guide. I’m just sort of adding this for people who don’t know because in the guide I just citation, citation, citation, citation is, I’m just gonna go into some of this, right? A 2015 Psychology Today Review of 1,516 participants found 52% of women fantasized about forced sex verse lower male rates for submission, often weekly [00:04:00] linked to implicit associations of sex with surrender rather than cultural norms. A 2006 sex role study confirmed women’s non-conscious sex submission link predicted lower arousal, if not acted on suggesting an innate component. So I want pull out what both of those studies are saying. It’s saying that if a woman has a. Forced submission fetish, and she engages in vanilla sex. She will not become as aroused during that vanilla sex. As a woman. It’s not like it’s just an additive to her arousal. It is a necessary component of her arousal. To reach a, a, a full arousal state. Mm-hmm. And, and in terms of this 52%, when you get to 52% of women fantasizing about forced sex, that means that it’s the normal thing to do. That means that, well, it’s not by a huge amount. It means that the women who don’t fantasize about this are the weird ones. Simone Collins: It also just says something really sad about our evolutionary [00:05:00] history. Throwing that out Malcolm Collins: there. Yeah, it does. It does. It does because it there, I mean, clearly there was an evolutionary pressure to be turned on by that, right? Like Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Malcolm Collins: Interestingly here, high resource women, eg. Executives report even more forceful submission fantasies as per a 2009 Journal of six research analysis. Simone Collins: Hmm. Malcolm Collins: That is important to note. The reason why we need to bring this up that a woman’s desire to be subjugated goes up as she reaches higher levels of status and power within society is that means if you put a woman at the top of an organization or say a country, she will have a desire for. Not just her, but everything associated with her to be subjugated as a result of that. Now, obviously we don’t always act on our desires, and obviously not all women, right? You know, Margaret Thatcher was a goat leader, right? But it does mean that. [00:06:00] On average, you’re going to get this tendency, and I can think that this might be why a lot of women politically hold views that lead to a culture or a country to end up in a position of subjugation if they feel like they are overly lauded or overly high status within that culture or country three. Malcolm Collins: And the reason I point all that out is Simone Collins: the stronger your survival instinct perhaps. Malcolm Collins: If we lived in a, like if the forces that shaped our arousal pathways Simone Collins: mm-hmm. Malcolm Collins: Came from environmental pressures and those environmental pressures and those environmental structures looked like the imagined social se say it up of, of Bon Nobo, there would be no reason to see this pattern. Yeah. So basically we know. Even if they were right about Bonobos they would not be right about us living in that. Simone Collins: We don’t have a matriarchal evolutionary history Malcolm Collins: Exactly. Simone Collins: No, no, no. Malcolm Collins: To continue further. [00:07:00] The concept of peaceful hypersexual, matriarchal, polyamorous, bonobo is complete pseudoscience motivated by political fringe groups read The Naked Bonobo. For a more in-depth review of the scientific literature about this species, it bucks the mainstream narrative. Though it certainly has its own acts to grind, real bonobo behavior is far more interesting than the myth and no less a living nightmare than the situation we propose for early human social structures. . Some examples here. There have been instances of female bonobos holding other females, infants, lives hostage in exchange for sex. Imagine a woman picking up an infant by the head and threatening to ring its neck unless it’s unpopular. Mother went down on her. This is a, a, a real and repeatedly observed phenomenon among Bonobos, so yes. Women are in charge in the most [00:08:00] horrifying way you could conceivably imagine. I would point out that this is not a behavior that we have ever observed in male chimpanzees. So male chimpanzees when they’re in charge do not do this to other female chimpanzees. Infants in exchange for sexual favors, female bonobos Do. Although, I will admit this is a bit of a cop out because male chimpanzees practice infanticide, so they wouldn’t be in a situation in which the female would have another male chimpanzees or an unpopular male chimpanzees kid, and they wanted sexual access to her. Malcolm Collins: To go further here, but this isn’t in the book, but just to add some color. A 2018 study on infant handling at the University of Oregons Bon Nova Enclosure found that adolescents, females unquote, carry away infants after grooming. Mothers, sometimes leading

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Based Camp is a podcast focused on how humans process the world around them and the future of our species. That means we go into everything from human sexuality, to weird sub-cultures, dating markets, philosophy, and politics. Malcolm and Simone are a husband wife team of a neuroscientist and marketer turned entrepreneurs and authors. With graduate degrees from Stanford and Cambridge under their belts as well as five bestselling books, one of which topped out the WSJs nonfiction list, they are widely known (if infamous) intellectuals / provocateurs. If you want to dig into their ideas further or check citations on points they bring up check out their book series. Note: They all sell for a dollar or so and the money made from them goes to charity. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG basedcamppodcast.substack.com

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    Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
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