How Did It Become Cool to Belittle Your Husband？ (An Anthropology of Sassy)
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per Minute
188.02037
Summary
Malcolm and Kaya discuss how Hollywood wives treat their husbands, how they treat their partners, and the ways they treat each other in general. They discuss how the media has created a culture that normalizes and normalizes sassy behavior towards their spouses, and how we can all work together to stop it.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, Malcolm. I'm so excited to be speaking with you today because you didn't leave me after
00:00:04.820
I did a bunch of toxic things when we were first married and dating. And that actually is pretty
00:00:11.280
big because it was one of the biggest points of conflict in our lives. And I wanted to actually
00:00:16.600
do a podcast on it because you spent years deprogramming me. Well, so what the podcast
00:00:22.080
theme is going to be on is we are going to be digging into how normalized and sort of praised
00:00:29.420
sassy behavior is in wives towards husbands. And sassy is the word I'd use, but there's other
00:00:34.620
words that you can use to, you know, behavior that is designed to put the husband down in front of
00:00:40.820
other people. And everybody sort of knows that this was normalized by media. We went through this as
00:00:46.960
kids. But now there's a phenomenon where a bunch of celebrities, like big celebrities ranging from
00:00:53.380
like Obama to like, you know, Will Smith to like, we'll go over them all. And, and this would brought
00:00:59.980
to our plate because we saw this, Brett Cooper was covering this. And I was like, when I saw the clips
00:01:05.040
she had found, because like, obviously I don't watch what celebrities are doing. I was shocked at the
00:01:11.480
degree to which these women actively and intentionally were degrading their husbands.
00:01:17.720
Yeah. If you want to watch this, it's called ranking the top four worst Hollywood wives.
00:01:23.000
And right here from, from what it, I'll put the feet clip right here because that one is like,
00:01:28.860
Oh, it's, it's bad. He crazy eyes. Like look at the end there. Like look at his face there at the
00:01:35.340
very end as he is rubbing her feet. He is like, Oh, this is what my life has come to. But I mean,
00:01:40.800
and what I want to explore in addition to exploring some of these examples and like kind of poking into what
00:01:45.960
is going on here. I also want to look into what has caused this to become programmed because
00:01:52.000
actually there's, there's a longer history behind all of this. And there's a really interesting
00:01:55.980
tipping point. And I want to get into it because I think getting to the heart at what is causing this
00:02:01.060
problem is going to, to play a key role in helping both men and women systemically dismantle it from
00:02:07.240
their lives. Cause you and I struggled with this as a couple.
00:02:10.400
Well, hold on. You and I did not struggle with it. You struggled with it. And I put the Kaya
00:02:17.080
collar on you. Oh, well, where are you struggled was how exactly to communicate to me to, to get me
00:02:33.220
in a way that got me to stop. Cause I knew what I was doing was bad. And it took years for you to
00:02:40.040
figure out the right way to message to me, to get me to stop doing years of dating before you,
00:02:45.140
I think it took more than that. I think it took five to seven years. Well, maybe not seven,
00:02:49.800
not five. I'm going to say five. Yeah. You haven't done it in at least three years, I would say.
00:02:54.860
But we've been together for 12 or 13 years now. So. Yeah. But what's interesting about this is,
00:03:00.740
you know, you grew up in San Francisco, you grew up surrounded in the heart of the urban monoculture,
00:03:05.880
progressive culture, and you grew up even starting dating me internalized this sort of mindset.
00:03:12.840
But no, no, no. This is not an urban monoculture thing or even it's not a progressive thing. This
00:03:18.940
is a pervasive, deep, heavy thing. I think it has to do with a lot of, we'll, we'll parse into it when
00:03:25.220
we go into the history, but let's start with the salacious celebrity gossip because it's so horrible
00:03:30.820
and amazing. And so I, there's obviously the examples that were highlighted by Brett Cooper in
00:03:38.900
her ranking, the top four worst Hollywood wives video. She talks about Hilaria Baldwin and Arik
00:03:44.540
Baldwin. And she also talks about Jada Pickett-Smith and Will Smith. So with Hilaria Baldwin, who Malcolm
00:03:51.560
highlighted at the beginning of this, it's not just the social media clips that she posts of Alec Baldwin,
00:03:58.460
who really comes across almost like a captured animal. I mean, look at this photo. We don't even
00:04:05.600
know what is going on here. And yet you have her playing chess, smoking a pipe. And somehow she was
00:04:11.600
able to convince Alec Baldwin. See, this is now where I feel bad for him. I feel guilty. He's wearing a maid
00:04:17.540
outfit with a little cap and he's bringing bunny slippers. Like, is this how bad his career has
00:04:23.120
gotten that? Yeah, no, he, oh God. Yeah. I was, I was so, I I'll send you a link. I literally would
00:04:28.420
rather be Kaya than, than Alec Baldwin. No, I would, I would rather be Kaya than Eric Baldwin right now.
00:04:33.420
Like I, I swear it's not because like, so Brett Cooper surfaced a bunch of the really worst, most
00:04:39.240
egregious things that Hilaria had posted on her Instagram. However, if you just scroll through there
00:04:45.840
in general, she's just using him as a shill for her really stupid vanity projects, like dancing with
00:04:52.500
the stars. And it's like hostage videos where he's like, text X to this number to vote for Hilaria
00:04:59.580
Baldwin on dancing with the star. Like he looks like a hostage who's being forced to read off of a script
00:05:06.080
to do her bidding. And it, it just everything, everything where she uses his face just feels like
00:05:12.540
he, he is being parasitized by this woman. Whoa. They have eight children. Yeah. They're
00:05:19.080
actually doing that. Seven with her and one with someone else. I know it's, it's, that's the thing
00:05:23.240
that's, that's, that's really, you know, but I mean, maybe that's one of the reasons why he's so,
00:05:28.260
he is a man is taking all this from her because something that I've seen from many men who have a
00:05:34.720
lot of kids with a woman is when she's had a lot of kids, they're like, listen, I love my kids.
00:05:41.780
Like I am so grateful for my kids that I will endure a lot. And I think that might be a factor
00:05:48.640
for why he's tolerating this. But the thing that I found most egregious, even if you went crazy like
00:05:54.520
this, if I had had seven kids with you at that point, I'd be like, whatever, man. But the thing
00:05:59.380
that got me the very most was the red carpet scene, which I also just sent you on WhatsApp that it's so
00:06:05.720
horrible. Alec Baldwin is standing with his wife, Hilaria on the red carpet, praising her.
00:06:11.220
And she says, Oh my God, when I'm talking, you're not talking when I'm talking, you're not talking.
00:06:16.200
This is why we need to cut him out of the shot. Like she is, she just cuts him off and acts like
00:06:21.100
the most ungrateful, horrible person. I don't think you make it more silly than it is. I actually feel,
00:06:29.440
I feel no, no, we just, we just cut all that part out. Cut me out. Cut you out when you're trying to
00:06:34.860
make it silly. I don't care if this is your husband or a colleague or a stranger on the street.
00:06:39.840
It just came across as so disrespectful. So I think it's a really strong starting point.
00:06:45.400
Well, I guess some people are going to be hearing this and they're going to be like, well, why do I
00:06:49.360
have to respect my husband? Right? And the answer is a few fold. First of all, you shouldn't have
00:06:54.880
married somebody who you don't respect, right? Like that's a personal failing on your part.
00:06:59.520
Totally. But then in, in, in addition to that, like Alec Baldwin, even if I have like political
00:07:04.740
differences with him or something like that, do something, Alec Barrett. The global warming and
00:07:11.780
corporate America. Like he's actually done stuff with his life. Like, I don't know what this woman
00:07:18.460
has done, right? Like nothing but marry a guy who's like dancing with the stars. Like, like she should
00:07:25.740
be treating him with respect because he is better than her. And that's a big, I mean, with these
00:07:30.120
prominent celebrity tiffs in the majority of cases that are really egregious and that have gone viral,
00:07:37.560
there's also a power distance. I mean, there, there are other instances of just toxic celebrity
00:07:43.320
couples like Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, where it just, it's clear that everyone's a complete
00:07:49.340
psychopath. And, you know, it's not about men versus women. It's just about crazy people being
00:07:54.520
crazy and irredeemable. But yeah, the, the, the issue of these, these, these women who like really
00:08:00.360
are no position to be complaining because they've married into wealth. Like, do you know how many
00:08:05.940
people would kill to be in that position who would gladly be beaten daily just to be in that position?
00:08:12.040
I mean, it's not PC to say that, but that's just how it is. Another prominent example that
00:08:18.260
Brett Cooper highlighted, which, which deserves honorable mention is indeed Jada Pickett Smith and
00:08:23.240
Will Smith. Everyone of course is really familiar with Will Smith completely flying off the handle
00:08:27.800
at the Oscars and slapping. It was Chris Rock, right? In 2022. But the, the most egregious scene
00:08:37.340
that Brett Cooper highlighted, and that's just so insane is Jada Pickett Smith having Will Smith on
00:08:44.400
her podcast called The Red Table, where she just in front of him actively talks about her entanglement
00:08:52.360
with being with her son's friend. Just disgusting. And she knew that, she's like, well, you know,
00:08:57.540
and he's still married. She's making him, and I'm not going to play the clip for you guys because
00:09:01.240
like, I would stop watching. Like when that clip started, it was just too painful to watch.
00:09:04.880
Couldn't handle it. But she, she makes him go on about how like, he's like, well, you know,
00:09:09.000
I expected monogamy from marriage. And she's like, but you know, I expected polygamy, like
00:09:13.800
being polyamorous. Cause like, that's how I was raised. I guess raised in a single parent household
00:09:19.520
or something is all I can assume is what she means by that. Because you know, polyamory was not common
00:09:24.920
when she would have been raised. So I think that like the one, I just love the way she argues for
00:09:31.820
this and tries to normalize her behavior. Like, this is just a difference in our ideas around what
00:09:36.180
marriage is. Right? Like, as opposed to, no, marriage is what you agreed it was when you got
00:09:41.900
married. Right? Like, you don't get to change the terms of your relationship unilaterally.
00:09:46.960
Yeah. And it's clear that Will Smith was not okay with it. At one point, she says something like,
00:09:51.720
you know, the only person who could give permission for that was, was me. And he's like, yeah, I,
00:09:59.180
not, not me. Like, but in a way where he's like, I did not give permission for this. Like,
00:10:03.340
I did not consent to this at all. It's just horrible. I can consent to, to who sleeps with,
00:10:09.440
but, but the, the problem is, is part of normally like, like, and it's, it's clear that,
00:10:14.820
and I see this a lot within that generation is one partner wants to be polyamorous and they see
00:10:18.960
it's like a thing now. And so they basically just force it on their partner because they don't
00:10:23.100
understand that your partner has the right to turn down you wanting to be polyamorous, right? Like
00:10:28.240
that's, that's always been, and they don't understand that. Well, a partner who doesn't
00:10:32.980
consent to polyamory, that's just cheating then. Yeah. And my husband could just say, no,
00:10:38.160
how does this work? And it's like, well, you should have negotiated it before the marriage,
00:10:42.880
right? Like I, I, I see this over and over again within this generation and it's really toxic the
00:10:49.620
way boomers have taken and tried to use the word and, and relationship format of polyamory.
00:10:54.520
Not that polyamory isn't in itself toxic. You can watch our episodes on those,
00:10:59.200
but the ways that boomers are doing it is like a whole nother layer.
00:11:04.300
Yeah. Well, this is a common theme in prominent couples being criticized for the way that they,
00:11:11.480
they treat each other is airing dirty laundry like this, like talking about the fights they have.
00:11:16.720
Like, I think Christian bell was criticized for talking about the fights that they have and her
00:11:23.360
husband's anger issues and other things. And just people being really uncomfortable with that,
00:11:27.820
like dirty laundry being aired, but also, and Brett Cooper did not discuss this one,
00:11:33.520
but there are really prominent examples of just women being physically abusive toward their husbands
00:11:41.400
in public, like in a very intentional way in front of the media. And in this case, I'm going to,
00:11:46.820
I'm going to send you a TikTok because you can actually see it in this. It is insane.
00:11:50.280
I mean, it is Brigitte Macron. That is the first lady of France. You know, the, the school.
00:11:56.740
Nobody was like way older than her husband and was his teacher or nanny or something growing up.
00:12:00.840
In this clip at Hanoi airport, as they're just, she physically assaults him. Yeah. As they're
00:12:16.440
getting off an airport, she pushes him in the face. And then when they are heading down the stairs,
00:12:22.300
he goes to like reach to hold her hand and she like holds the rail and like clearly snubs him.
00:12:28.040
And this is all very intentional, very in front of the cameras. Like at first Macron looks like
00:12:33.580
kind of shocked after literally his face gets pushed. Like it's one thing to shove your husband
00:12:38.360
like that already is, is, is, is physically. But you should be like desperately shamed that
00:12:43.580
anyone can see this. I've never seen anyone push anyone else's face with two hands. Like
00:12:50.400
who even does that? And just that, like, we're talking about a first lady, a first lady, a first
00:12:58.800
lady. Like I had heard of this, which is wild. I would think this would be a major scandal that I
00:13:06.860
would have heard of. Perhaps in France it was, but it is not a scandal here. I just don't know. But I
00:13:12.900
mean, that was just insane to see. I mean, that's like this level just open. Okay. I am curious to
00:13:20.840
hear where this came from because this is, this is what, but it's behavior that I've seen, you know,
00:13:24.860
when I look at like my parents' generation, whether it's them because my parents were divorced and
00:13:28.800
remarried or their friends, except for my, my biological mother did not act like this ever to
00:13:34.740
my knowledge. No, no, no. In public, she always took on this, this very supportive persona. Like
00:13:41.180
you could tell it was an act of just like, yes, dear. And like, but she always acted the perfect
00:13:47.240
part. Yes. And even, even behind closed doors, she would, no. Yeah. Even behind in, always in front of
00:13:53.100
the, of, of her husband, like very, very sweet, very respectful. But the, the, the, the person who
00:14:02.320
my dad remarried does act intentionally like sassy and puts him down in front of other people.
00:14:07.420
This is actually, so I think this is the more important form of spousal sassiness that I wanted
00:14:13.080
to discuss more because this is what had, had brainwashed me. And I think this is what's more
00:14:19.300
normalized, right? Like we can all look at these. I want to, I want to be clear when I say this about
00:14:24.060
the person who my dad remarried, I'm not saying this as like a disparagement of her character. What I'm
00:14:28.180
saying is this is normalized behavior to the point where it was something my wife did until I corrected
00:14:34.200
her behavior. She's expressing normative behavior. Like it's expressing normative behavior and it is
00:14:39.340
my dad's responsibility to correct that. And he never did. Yeah, exactly. So we're not putting it
00:14:44.400
on her at all. And, and this is, so in terms of the prominent examples that I think are much more
00:14:48.640
indicative of what's this widespread toxic sassy wife syndrome is actually something that, that I saw
00:14:55.480
and that really shocked me and kind of shook me when I was watching this Netflix documentary called
00:15:02.100
Inside Bill's Brain, Decoding Bill Gates. And it's this three-part documentary talking about Bill
00:15:07.980
Gates. And it's just, it's, it's pretty boring in general. It's like, what books does he read?
00:15:12.120
And let's go on a walk with him. But it's peppered with these short interviews with Melinda Gates.
00:15:17.680
They were still married at the time of the filming of this documentary. And even mentions that Bill
00:15:22.020
Gates makes of her in other interviews where she is not present that just show that the relationship,
00:15:28.600
which did end in divorce after 27 years was also permeated with this sassiness. She constantly kind
00:15:35.900
of cut him down in interviews and kind of had this like sassy eye roll approach toward him of like,
00:15:41.640
well, I, I kick, you know, I, I take him down a notch every now and then, like I keep him grounded.
00:15:46.700
And there's also the scene when he's hiking, where he talks about how she always makes him
00:15:53.840
walk first. So he walks into all the spider webs because he like, she doesn't want to deal with
00:16:00.120
them. And, you know, like, what we can imagine these people who I think of as like super successful
00:16:05.440
and having great lives. And they're like trapped in these, these horrifying relationships where
00:16:11.540
they're the billionaires who are like Kaya in their own house. Kaya, please. The, the thing is too,
00:16:18.080
and this is another, like such a prominent example of this. When they met, Melinda was just a newly
00:16:24.040
hired marketing manager. And, and Bill was the CEO of Microsoft and co-founder. Like there's,
00:16:32.000
there's a clear power distance. And yet she acts as though she is this morally superior,
00:16:37.760
smart woman who rolls her eyes at him. And, and just seeing that like subtly throughout the
00:16:43.260
documentary, no one ever criticized that. Like there's all these other prominent examples of
00:16:46.920
like Stephen Curry's wife going super viral after talking on a podcast about how like she never wanted
00:16:52.720
to be a mother and she never wanted to be a wife and she wishes she had male attention and people freak
00:16:57.580
out. So I, I didn't want kids. I, I didn't want to get married.
00:17:06.840
And I just, I mean, these are like sort of more violent examples, I guess, or like really egregious
00:17:12.540
examples of women being openly ungrateful, but the much more insidious issue is that women feel like
00:17:17.540
it's okay. And normal to be shrewish, to roll your eyes, to nag the husband. And that's, that's where I
00:17:26.860
wanted to get into like, okay, well, where did this programming come from? Yeah. Where did it come?
00:17:31.880
I want to hear, cause you say it's not just typical wokeness. It came from somewhere specific.
00:17:35.780
No. Yeah. And that's, what's really interesting. So first it's, it's important to note. And I think
00:17:40.960
all of us will immediately recognize this, that domineering wives were presented as warnings against
00:17:46.820
male weakness, just either straight up through like, we are going to shame this or through comic
00:17:52.580
subversion for basically as long as there have been stories. So you have like, it's so funny
00:17:57.860
that you mentioned this. So people who know, I love my Korean romance dramas that are, that are
00:18:04.540
period pieces, right. You know, you, we need to like link to them somewhere. So people can go
00:18:09.740
through your top of my favorite ones. If, if I can remember to just go to like webtoons and look up
00:18:15.060
anything about villainous reborn or something, they all take place. And like this medieval world was like
00:18:22.960
So people might be underestimating how cheesy the ones I like reading are. The last two I read
00:18:29.200
was Charming the Northern Duke, which I did not think was very good. And I abdicate my title of Empress,
00:18:37.200
which I thought was actually pretty decent, uh, among the ones I've read.
00:18:41.840
And, and by the way, if you're wondering, they have no not safe for work scenes.
00:18:45.200
No, they're all very just like, I actually remember in one of them, I was reading recently,
00:18:50.080
a character got pregnant and I was like, wait, what? Like, you were not sleeping together.
00:18:57.600
Like, how did you, it was so sly about implying that they had moved to that stage of their
00:19:08.560
But the thing I'm going to mention about it is in these stories, if a woman is acting domineering
00:19:16.640
over her husband, that would be seen because they deal with sort of older tropes, which is what I
00:19:23.120
like about them. They're still very like older type stories that the husband is a bad guy, right?
00:19:28.480
Like that he is in some way morally a failure of a person, you know, that that would be, you know,
00:19:34.720
an intro, and then you'd find out that he's into drinking and gambling and buying slaves.
00:19:38.720
That was the point though. And this is a very old trope.
00:19:43.440
Before we go further, another trope that I've noticed in them, which is very funny because
00:19:47.600
this was true of all old stories, but it totally wouldn't happen in today's media.
00:19:52.800
Yeah. If, and this is like universal, if a prince ever ends up getting a crush on like a maid or a
00:20:03.280
duke ever ends up getting a crush on like a common woman, you know, by the end of the story, it's going
00:20:09.360
to be revealed that they were actually a princess all along and just got separated from their family,
00:20:14.320
or they were actually from a noble house all along. And just, it is, it is never crossing
00:20:20.640
social boundaries, whatever. Cause I remember in one, I was like, Ooh, the, the, the princess is
00:20:26.480
interested in this guy who, who is a, an orphan. And then no, he's not an orphan. He's actually a
00:20:35.200
You know, what's interesting actually, when you, you look at the current British Royal family,
00:20:38.960
I believe there've been plenty of narratives in which people have tried to trace Catherine
00:20:43.200
Middleton's ancestry to British nobility, even though she's a commoner, like her family's not
00:20:48.400
titled. Whereas Meghan Markle seen as in this largely villainized woman who was also highlighted
00:20:53.520
in Brett Cooper's video of horrible wives who demean their husbands is, you know, she's,
00:20:58.240
there's no provenance to her. Like there's no way someone could argue that, but that,
00:21:01.680
that because Kate Middleton has been accepted and loved, even though she's sometimes ridiculed as
00:21:06.400
Duchess do little or the Duchess of buttons or whatever, those are in the earlier days.
00:21:11.040
Now she's pretty much beloved. She, she has been like, the narrative has been shaped around
00:21:18.640
her, her being from actually, she is noble that in the end. So I think that's interesting that the,
00:21:24.480
these tropes bleed into reality, but yeah, I mean, even if you look at biblical references,
00:21:29.280
like Proverbs 29, 21, 9, that they warn of a quarrelsome wife. I also, I didn't know that the,
00:21:37.760
the, the Greek philosopher Socrates, he was married. He had a wife. Her name was Zan, Zanthippe.
00:21:47.200
And he was, he was ridiculed, ridiculed because she apparently had a pretty sharp tongue and he
00:21:51.920
didn't really do much to resist it, but he was openly publicly ashamed for that. So that's,
00:21:57.040
so like ancient Greece, this was an issue, biblical references. Then we have, you know,
00:22:01.520
plays like the taming of the shrew with Shakespeare, you know, where it's, it, it, this, this, this
00:22:06.160
popular concept of a shrew as a witch-like skull that needed to be tamed. Like this is a problem
00:22:12.560
to be solved, right? When, when a woman acts like this, you put her in her place. You don't tolerate
00:22:18.800
it. In the 18th centuries, we're talking to 1700s. There, there were these comedies that had what were
00:22:24.800
called slipper heroes, which were men who were comically struck by their wives' shoes as they asserted
00:22:30.640
dominance. So this, you know, they're shaming men for this. Like it was like calling a man a cuck or
00:22:35.280
something. And then in, in the 19th century, that's when if slang, like the old ball and chain
00:22:42.880
sort of started to come into modern parlance or normalized parlance where like wives were
00:22:48.160
sometimes framed as these like shackles as men felt like they were being domineered by them. It was
00:22:53.840
always framed in a very negative. And this is not an okay thing context. And then in the early 20th
00:23:00.480
century, both cartoons and vaudeville and also early, really early films had comedians play
00:23:07.440
hand-packed husbands fleeing their, their nagging spouses. And that's something that was again,
00:23:12.880
framed as negative, ridiculed, not okay. Unusual. There was also this radio show called the
00:23:20.880
Bickersons in the 1940s. It's featured constant simping between spouses or sorry, constant sniping
00:23:28.160
between spouses. And it, that, that sort of set the stage for what was to come, but it should be
00:23:33.680
emphasized. And this is the key thing. And I think this is a really key turning point.
00:23:38.480
All of these were framed as aberrations as like, look at this freakish behavior, this woman who won't
00:23:45.200
be put in her place and not as a normative thing. And then what happened is we got mass media in the
00:23:52.240
1950s. And while in the beginning you had sitcoms like leave it to beaver where there was, you know,
00:24:00.320
a very aligned family and wives loved their husbands when women were happy to be subordinate to their
00:24:07.920
husbands. This, this is when you first see the arrival of the sassy wife and why I think the sassy
00:24:15.840
wife in these instances caused women to normalize this as behavior that was permissible and not just
00:24:23.520
like some joke or like an example of like a, a bad woman being, you know, uncontrollable or a man
00:24:30.160
failing is because these were sitcoms. These are serialized shows and people, instead of seeing a
00:24:36.080
one-off play or like a sort of like weird scenario, these were like slice of life shows that were teaching
00:24:42.960
people what was aspirational and normal. Does that make sense? Like we still look back to the 1950s
00:24:49.120
of like, this is what normal ideal life is like. And people are anchoring to this. And so when you
00:24:55.520
have shows like the honeymooners, um, where Alice Cramden frequently uses sarcasm and eye rolls to,
00:25:03.600
to deflate her bombastic husband's Ralph and, and, and says things like, one of these days,
00:25:09.360
you know something, right after you left the house this morning, I got in one of those silly moods of
00:25:12.720
mine. You know how I get sometimes? So just for laughter, well, I'll do the breakfast dishes and
00:25:16.560
make the bed and take the garbage down. Then when I came back up, I was still in such a funny mood.
00:25:20.560
You know, I thought, why should I settle down to the drudgery of mending your socks? So I scrubbed the
00:25:25.040
kitchen floor. Started in 1950s culture is what you're saying. It was the 1950s culture that was,
00:25:31.040
that makes a lot of sense. But it's not even, it's not, I, what I'm trying to say too and highlight is
00:25:36.160
that it's not just the culture because these tropes were always here. It was the fact that
00:25:40.480
these tropes were then inserted into slice of life, sitcoms, serialized shows that became part
00:25:48.080
of people's lives and that became aspirational templates for their own identities. Does that make
00:25:54.240
sense? Like it's one thing to see Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare. It's one thing to see
00:25:59.280
or to read something in the Bible or to like hear about an example, but here you're being like
00:26:04.080
programmed by these shows of like, this is what I'm anchoring to. I want to be like,
00:26:08.720
I love Lucy. Sorry, honey, 730. You gotta have the sheets for the laundry, man.
00:26:17.840
I want to be like this. And I've noticed this from women who aspire to be trad wives as well.
00:26:23.360
Yes. And this is why I always say it's, it's really dangerous to anchor to the 1950s in this way.
00:26:30.560
And I think that you're a hundred percent right. This is how people build sort of their templates
00:26:34.480
for actions. They build ideals that they want from themselves. They're like the conglomeration
00:26:39.200
of things that they admire or are sort of, you know, primed with like, this is how you be the
00:26:44.080
correct type of wife or the correct type of woman. And then they spend their lives trying to get other
00:26:50.400
people often to see them as that type of thing.
00:26:53.280
Well, it's very like monkey see monkey do people. And we also see this in all these various social
00:26:58.720
studies where like when, when girls are exposed to people in STEM roles more that are like them,
00:27:03.600
then they're like, oh, well I can join a STEM role. Like when, when you see someone do something
00:27:07.040
that's like you, that's what you decide. Oh, well that's what I do then. So when I, because I grew up
00:27:12.640
seeing women in the world of wife being sassy, my default assumption was, okay, well, if I were to become a
00:27:20.560
wife, like, okay, I have to pull up my, like, what does a wife do? And I like pull into my Rolodex of
00:27:25.600
like TV examples and they're all sassy. So what do I do? I act sassy because that's, that is where I
00:27:33.040
learned how a wife acts. Well, I mean, I think it was a amplified for our generation because, you know,
00:27:39.840
when we grew up, that's when you had, you know, love and marriage, the symptoms, you know, all of those.
00:27:45.840
Yeah, it does get, so I'll explain a little more because it's more nuanced. I just want to,
00:27:50.400
it is more nuanced than that. I wanted to emphasize with the fifties, the thing that
00:27:54.160
happened is a new form of media gets released that I think changes the way that people created
00:28:00.080
social norms, where the social norms were no longer coming from their local church community or from
00:28:06.480
their schools or from whatever, like very localized stuff. It was coming from TV. Um, and that those
00:28:14.080
tropes then suddenly become a lot more powerful. And then in the 1960s, you had the arrival of second
00:28:19.600
wave feminism, which contributed to these tropes. It also revealed some tension. Like there was this
00:28:26.720
British sitcom called George and Mildred that established the blueprint of what became this
00:28:32.400
sort of new trope, which I think further justified this behavior on behalf of women, which is this
00:28:37.200
trope of the mediocre husband and then the materialistic middle-aged wife who belittles him
00:28:42.560
for not providing more. Like, and that's like this sort of Homer Simpson in March thing. There was
00:28:47.440
that Twilight episode called the, the stop at Willoughby that portrayed a wife pushing her husband who
00:28:52.720
hated into, into a job that he really hated framing her as like this person undermining him and pushing
00:28:58.800
him into things. There were shows like Bewitched where Samantha, that the witch used sarcasm to kind
00:29:03.680
of manage her husband. So like, this is sort of where the nagging wife came out, but also husbands,
00:29:09.280
I think in part because of second wave feminism also started getting framed as a little bit more
00:29:14.560
hapless. And then in the eighties and nineties, the sort of like hapless husband who was being
00:29:20.480
nagged by his wife in a more critical way. Cause like this also showed the tension with second wave
00:29:24.960
feminism, but like the women were depicted as kind of evil for doing this. And then in the eighties and
00:29:29.840
nineties, suddenly the women weren't evil for doing this. And the husbands were just lovable
00:29:34.480
buffoons like Homer Simpson and like, I don't know. What is it? I think everybody loves Raymond
00:29:39.920
is another one. Love and marriage, I think is one of the best examples of this given how long it
00:29:44.320
showed and how ubiquitous it was. Yeah. Look at them over there. Men are such idiots. Look at them.
00:29:51.440
Our protectors, the great white hunters, you know, in the old days, those men would have gone out there,
00:29:57.920
fought the bear, come back with supper and a nice rug. Now you send them for milk. They come back with
00:30:04.960
a leaking carton, a runny nose and a bad back. You know, it's amazing. The one thing they're good for,
00:30:13.760
they're not good at. I hate the way they won't ask directions when they're lost.
00:30:19.520
And the way they leave the toilet seat up. And that show is very big on the wife, you know, nagging.
00:30:30.160
Yeah. But you saw it on, on almost all of the shows, all of the, and this is what I think that
00:30:34.240
you're, you're capturing here with that. I had forgotten. This was present on all of the major
00:30:38.960
old sitcoms or most of the major old sitcoms. And the sitcoms are how we, this is where a lot of us
00:30:44.880
learned how husbands behave, how wives behave and what is acceptable and normative,
00:30:50.640
even though like the writers didn't mean to do this. They were trying to create comedic situations.
00:30:56.000
They were trying to create drama. And I also think like, you can see this too, with reality TV,
00:31:01.920
you know, they, they have to manufacture drama and toxicity because it's entertaining.
00:31:06.080
But I think that has led many people to think that their lives have to be toxic
00:31:10.640
because that's what's normal, even though, because that's what they see, but that's not normal.
00:31:15.840
Like relationships aren't toxic like that, but because we don't, we don't spend a lot of time
00:31:21.920
around people anymore. Like people aren't hanging out with other family, like, unless you're Mormon
00:31:26.000
and you have like family home evenings and you hang out with your church community or whatever,
00:31:28.880
you're Catholic or you're an Orthodox Jew, you're watching TV, you're watching reality TV,
00:31:33.600
you're watching social media. And so you're watching these really toxic and dramatic
00:31:37.680
and really fake relationship dynamics play out. And then you ape them at home because you
00:31:44.640
don't have anything else to anchor to. And I think that's, that's a lot of where this is coming from,
00:31:50.480
but here's, and I think one of the things is, is being aware of the media you're consuming and,
00:31:57.040
and being really targeted about it is important to your point.
00:32:00.960
I want to be clear about the way that you grabbed onto this early in our relationship,
00:32:06.160
which I think differs from the way I've seen other people. You did not, unlike what somebody
00:32:10.560
might say, you, you did not, and you never, and I don't think it should ever be normal to regularly
00:32:15.440
criticize your partner, right? Like that was not something you ever did. And the way I see other
00:32:19.600
people do this, you know, you, you also didn't actively throw me under the bus in social situations.
00:32:26.640
You never once, I think in our entire relationship have raised without any provocation,
00:32:32.560
some fault about me. But what you did do early in our relationship is people would attack me
00:32:36.560
publicly and you wouldn't defend me. I would side with them often.
00:32:40.240
Yeah. You'd often side with them and be like, well, they do have a point about,
00:32:43.920
and I was like, Simone, you can't do that if you're married to somebody, right? Like,
00:32:47.200
no, but I point out because people could hear all this and they could think that you were actually
00:32:50.800
worse than you were. And that like, maybe you can fix more about a person.
00:32:53.680
I feel really, I feel really bad about what I did though. Yeah. I mean, basically what happened
00:32:57.840
is I just assumed that like, oh, well, it's my job as Malcolm's wife to be the one who like
00:33:04.160
takes him down a peg because that's what wives do. Right. And so every time, and this happened a lot
00:33:08.480
at like family reunions, his family would gang up on him for really stupid things. And he would
00:33:14.960
naturally react with, with some umbrage sometimes because he was being ganged up on for really stupid
00:33:20.000
reasons. And like, keep in mind, like examples of things that his family would do to him,
00:33:24.000
like at gatherings, like stick fake cockroaches in his food and hope that he freaks out at a
00:33:28.640
restaurant, things like that. Like this is not nice. I never do though. I have like a perfect
00:33:33.520
self-control. Yeah. No, you were on. I think I was kind of trained by my family from a very young age.
00:33:38.320
Yeah. To, to handle all of this with, with a perfect, but whenever, whenever you did show
00:33:44.000
a little bit or like whenever you tried to stand up for yourself, I would, I would side with your
00:33:49.040
family and it would really deeply hurt you. You'd be like, why did you do that? Like who's
00:33:54.400
Yeah. Why, why, well, I'm, I'm citing with the majority because women have a natural instinct
00:34:00.000
to side with the majority when they're in group situations. Now that is not, that is above and
00:34:04.960
beyond the behavior that we're talking about here. Even when you first started dating me,
00:34:08.800
you never insulted me in private and you never were the instigator of a public insult.
00:34:14.720
But I think it's still notable that, that even a woman who is a, a devout super fan of a man,
00:34:22.080
like I was of you and, and still am of you more than ever, um, would, would normalize to
00:34:29.520
throwing him under the bus and situations where he's being ganged up on in public when she should
00:34:34.080
obviously stand by him because that is the culture we've been taught is notable.
00:34:38.960
I want to point out what, what you, what you finally, cause you were always like, okay,
00:34:42.560
well, what are we going to do? Like, you would always try to correct it by after that happened,
00:34:45.760
you would talk with me and be like, that really hurt me. Why are you doing this? Like,
00:34:49.600
try not to do this in the future for a while. You tried priming me, but then sometimes we'd forget,
00:34:54.640
you'd be like, remember, like we're a couple, can you please be supportive of me? And that didn't work.
00:35:00.880
What finally worked in the end, I think for me, like what finally hit me is like, is you sat me
00:35:06.800
down and you said, Simone need to be aware of the fact that when you undercut me like this,
00:35:14.400
you don't make either of us look good. Like you make yourself look like a terrible person. You make
00:35:20.960
me look like a not good person. And you make us look like a bad couple. And you think that what you're
00:35:28.320
doing is, is diffusing tension and increasing social harmony. When in the end, you're making
00:35:36.000
yourself look like a conniving, backstabbing wife, and you're making me look like a buffoon
00:35:41.200
and you're making our marriage look unstable. Poor thing. He's, he's picking up on the tension.
00:35:49.280
And, and I realized you were totally right. And I think when, if you are a dude,
00:35:56.640
you couldn't do it for my sake, but as soon as your own stability was on the line,
00:36:01.280
no, I mean, what people selfishness, Malcolm, I don't know what to say, but like just trying
00:36:05.120
to defuse social situation. I was, I was, yeah, I was trying to defuse tension.
00:36:09.040
You didn't want to take the action that you saw as escalating the conflict. So if somebody attacks,
00:36:14.960
because this is what you're used to doing with yourself, you look for a way to disarm them.
00:36:20.640
The customer service, make it go away. Yeah. And you can't take the customer service approach.
00:36:25.440
But the reason why I mentioned this is I want to talk about like, what should actually be
00:36:28.800
normalized in a relationship. One, I think, you know, historically in today, first of all,
00:36:33.840
there is no reason to ever regularly criticize your partner about anything. If your partner is
00:36:40.000
doing something that is causing you distress or that you disagree with, this is not resolved by
00:36:46.320
constant nagging. This is resolved by setting them down, talking through with them. Why,
00:36:50.800
like, as Simone said, I did with her when she had, when I had problems with her being like,
00:36:55.440
you need to stop doing this for this reason, this reason, and this reason,
00:36:58.880
and let's think through the consequences of you doing this. And if they actually care about you,
00:37:04.720
Um, nagging, insulting, especially publicly does absolutely nothing. And you should never,
00:37:11.040
ever be the first to air negative information about your partner in a social context.
00:37:17.520
But I do think, I do think, because one, it was effective when you did it with me,
00:37:22.000
that catering to women's vanity is important because when all these women are doing this,
00:37:26.800
and even when you see these examples that we've posted, these women think they're looking good.
00:37:32.400
They are being vain. They are. When, when Melinda Gates rolls her eyes about
00:37:37.920
Bill Gates and, and, and, and talks about how she, you know, you know,
00:37:41.040
takes him down a notch and how, you know, she keeps him, you know, solid. And when,
00:37:44.800
when Hilaria Baldwin on the red carpet is like, you know, they're all thinking that they're,
00:37:50.880
you know, advocating for themselves and, you know, no, they look horrible.
00:37:56.320
Absolutely horrible. And I think they look horrible even to other people like themselves.
00:38:00.640
Yeah, exactly. Very few people watch or look at this behavior and are like, wow,
00:38:07.600
that person's really cool. And I note here, if you're like, Malcolm, what you expect from a
00:38:13.280
relationship, it's just unrealistic for other people. Okay. I would point out that we have a
00:38:19.760
lot of friends within our generation who are married. And I don't know one of them who doesn't
00:38:27.040
hold their relationship to these standards. If of, of my married friends that are like,
00:38:32.000
like educated out sort of elite intellectual class, which is like the class that we hang with.
00:38:37.600
None of them ever have spoken poorly about theirs. They're so solid. And I think a really great,
00:38:42.480
if we want to talk about like a palate cleanser of a prominent couple that the media tried to make look
00:38:48.800
divided and toxic when they ultimately aren't is Hannah Nealman and her husband.
00:38:58.560
This by the way, what's, what's she known by more Mormon?
00:39:01.120
Ballerina Farms, the Ballerina Farms, Mormon, tried wife. They have a beautiful farm and like eight
00:39:06.080
kids and maybe 10, a lot of kids there. There was this British journalist who went out and wrote this
00:39:12.000
piece about them and basically talked about like, I think it's David Nealman, just mansplaining,
00:39:17.280
like talking over her all the time and like, you know, taking too much control of the conversation
00:39:23.440
and, you know, try to frame Hannah as this victim. And after it came out, Hannah posted on social media,
00:39:30.480
like we were taken aback by this, that, you know, my husband has always been there with me.
00:39:34.400
It is always both of us in the trenches with everything. She 100% stood by him, defended him,
00:39:41.040
said that this is completely not an accurate depiction of reality.
00:39:44.480
And they are so aligned and they work wonderfully together.
00:39:48.640
It worked out in their favor. I mean, I think the public cited with them on that one was,
00:39:52.800
was generally, you know, all the leftist female content creators that I follow are like,
00:39:58.320
confirmed she's, she's been trying to find out much more.
00:40:05.680
People are going to believe what they want to believe. But I will say, even if,
00:40:12.720
even if Hannah, I would actually argue that Hannah, in everyone's view comes across better. So if you
00:40:19.280
want to believe that they're the aspirational corporate family, or like trad couple, they look
00:40:25.200
great after this. If you want to believe that Hannah is a beautiful, delicate victim,
00:40:30.480
whose ballerina career, she still looks better, having not thrown her husband under the bus,
00:40:37.040
because she looks like the victim who's taking the high road. So no matter what, it's true.
00:40:43.120
So Simone, I, what was I going to say here? I also note that we have a lot of people reach out to us,
00:40:48.320
like fans of the show about their spouses and not in a single one of the emails that any of them ever
00:40:53.920
complained about their spouses. No, they're, they're aligned. They care deeply about each other.
00:40:59.120
One hundred percent. It is, it is, is the thing. I can only think of one instance. So I'm actually
00:41:04.640
like racking my brain to think of anyone we know. And the one instance, I don't think he saw it as a
00:41:10.240
bad thing. He was like, well, my wife said that once we went above, what was it like four or five kids,
00:41:15.680
I needed to start doing more of the housework myself. We've heard that actually from a
00:41:19.680
bunch of husbands. I don't know. To me, that was like a, but she's a stay at home wife.
00:41:24.800
You know? No, no. We've actually heard that from multiple husbands. I think that's a really common
00:41:28.240
thing for, for husbands to experience in their lives. But what I'm pointing out here is this
00:41:33.600
isn't asking too much from somebody. And no, this isn't a one way thing. The reason why we're not
00:41:38.720
talking about men doing this is because we have other episodes about men doing this. Yeah.
00:41:43.760
Watch our episode. You're so red pill, you cucked yourself, which is where we talk about how,
00:41:48.560
within some parts of the red pill community or the culture that's downstream of that,
00:41:52.880
they sort of confused aggression with masculinity. Anger with masculinity. When in, when in the end,
00:42:00.480
the demonstration of anger is a demonstration of a lack of self-control, which is a demonstration
00:42:04.640
of a lack of maturity and masculinity. Yeah. We talked about the example of this
00:42:08.400
Crowder in his wife's divorce, right? Like people are like, he didn't physically,
00:42:12.800
he didn't physically be there, but he talked to her in a way that I would be deeply ashamed
00:42:17.440
to be caught on camera talking to my wife. Like I'd be like, oh my God, this is like a,
00:42:22.800
you don't, and apparently he talked to his staff the same way, which also was like, you don't just,
00:42:27.280
you don't talk to people like that. But if you, if you learn masculinity from what was at one point
00:42:33.440
normalized, and I say this to somebody who considers himself like squarely within the red pill
00:42:38.320
manosphere movement, there was this, you know, be growlier, always be in frame, always be, you know,
00:42:45.520
and most of the people who had that mindset have moved away from it at this point and are like,
00:42:49.040
yeah, that's probably not the right way to think about this stuff. But generally speaking,
00:42:54.400
these men are the minority, even within the red pill movement. And men just do not cross this boundary
00:43:01.840
as frequently as women do because they know, because culturally they know it makes them look
00:43:09.200
terrible to talk about their wives this way. I have never heard a man in my age range, and this isn't
00:43:15.840
even just like our friend group or something, refer to their wife as the ball and chain, you know,
00:43:20.080
refer to their wife as it makes you, it makes you look like a dick. Just like acting like your husband's
00:43:25.040
a lovable buffoon makes you look like a dick. But everyone would, I think, both immediately
00:43:30.480
realize this and call it out much faster if a man did this. If a man put his hands on a woman in the
00:43:35.840
way that Macron's wife put his hands on him, he'd be an effing J. I know, right? If somebody, you know,
00:43:45.040
treated their partner, and I have actually seen this within certain Manosphere influencers,
00:43:49.440
where the man will treat their partner the way that Baldwin's wife treats him. Like, oh, you know,
00:43:55.840
I, I sit down and I like put, I have her dressed up as like a maid and like delivering me stuff. Or
00:44:00.960
I sit down and I put my legs in her lap or something. And these are typically like the,
00:44:05.760
I've, I, I watch some less popular Manosphere creators. Okay. And they got it in their head
00:44:11.440
that like the way that like you show dominance over what, because they're like, well, I'm married now.
00:44:15.920
Like I'm, I'm in a, a long-term relationship. So how do I continue to show how cool and dominant
00:44:21.200
I am? Well, there's that one guy who gets up at four in the morning and his wife or girlfriend,
00:44:26.000
like you see her hands show up in his videos as he's getting up and like, she slices his bananas
00:44:32.400
and give some food in a bathtub or something. Yeah. That kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of thing.
00:44:36.320
And I'm like, it doesn't make him look good though. It makes him look like a baby.
00:44:39.920
It makes him look like a baby. I like the way you say that. No, but what I wanted to point out
00:44:44.400
here is the way that you either way are coming off to other people with this was when people come
00:44:49.200
off this way, but it doesn't get stopped. And the reason why we need to bring this up is we,
00:44:53.760
the show does have a lot, a lot of female viewers and also a lot of, it also has, it has a lot of
00:44:58.960
young male viewers who are going to find themselves in positions where there will be the first time
00:45:04.720
where your girlfriend or fiance or wife does this. And what, you know, you need to have a conversation
00:45:10.240
about that immediately about what it means to you, about the optics for her, about the culture
00:45:15.760
that may have led her to believe that. You know, all this stuff too, makes me think twice about
00:45:21.760
Mormon standards around media, how like, it actually does kind of matter what you grow up watching.
00:45:27.520
And I think Mormon standards around media would not shield any Mormon from these toxic
00:45:31.600
dynamics. Like they're trying to hide Mormons from swear words when instead, like they should be
00:45:36.160
hiding them from toxic relationship dynamic shows. Like, I don't know how to make a standard around
00:45:41.920
that. And if you're like, how do I quote unquote, train my wife on this stuff? It's yes, sit her down
00:45:47.120
and you don't let any instance of this slide. Every time it comes up, it is a conversation that you need
00:45:53.120
to have. It's not a nag. It's a, this is, is, is not productive. It makes both of us look bad and it
00:46:00.480
makes our relationship look bad and it is detrimental to our combined goals as a couple.
00:46:06.000
How do we work on this? Right? Like, and I think that the way that I would frame
00:46:11.200
your relationship with your spouse to, to them so that they can understand what you mean by this
00:46:15.600
is as like a noble house. Think of it like what it used to mean in one of the Korean romance
00:46:20.800
like the Duke's house. Okay. This is, this is what I'm talking about. Media coloring the way that
00:46:27.360
you see the world. Now you see the whole world through like Korean drama. You marry into the Duke's
00:46:33.200
house. Now the house's goals are your goals. That's true though. Something bad happens to that. So you
00:46:39.920
would never act counter to the Duke's will in public because you two are a team. You are two faces of the
00:46:47.440
the same sort of corporation, right? Um, you, there, there is no conflict and it's not that you could
00:46:54.720
negotiate for a higher place. You're his wife. That means your role is X. He's your husband.
00:46:59.600
That means his role is why his successes are your successes. Your successes are his successes.
00:47:04.320
Absolutely. And so like that is, and I think that one way you can really do is, is when you're having
00:47:11.200
the marriage conversation with a woman and you're like, this is what I expect for marriage. Like,
00:47:15.680
this is what I want marriage to be about, about us. Not you never criticize your husband in public,
00:47:22.240
but like we are working as a combined entity for collective goals. And that it's very easy
00:47:30.080
to have aligned goals with someone. So long as your goal isn't just hedonism or status or something
00:47:36.080
like that. But even then you're probably better off. I knew, I knew actually really good couples who's,
00:47:42.240
whose shared goal was hedonism and they did, they pulled it off. They made it great. Like,
00:47:45.600
and they had a lot of fun together, but they were aligned on it. Like it's, I don't care what your
00:47:49.600
aligned goal is, but it is your aligned goal and you do it together. Don't undermine each other.
00:47:54.800
And oh my gosh, just how uncomfortable it is to be around that couple that like fights.
00:47:59.360
Oh, it's miserable. You would, you wouldn't want to be around them at all. You, you'd have no reason.
00:48:02.960
And, but we've all been there where you're like at a dinner and a couple starts fighting and you're
00:48:06.880
like, I'm going to leave now. I have, when I was growing up, I was exposed to a lot of boomer
00:48:12.320
parents. Okay. And I have a lot of friends who are around our age and I guess of sort of a similar
00:48:17.680
social class to the parents I was exposed to as a kid. I can think of few, I would say maybe 25%
00:48:23.520
of those boomer relationships where I didn't see the wife belittle the husband. I, I, of people in
00:48:30.080
our age group, I would say it's near zero. And, and so like, don't do it. It's not normal. It's not
00:48:37.440
a holdover. I think that our generation is already normalized to not do it. But if you're, if you're
00:48:41.760
dealing with this, or if this is a challenge for you and your relationship, I think even just
00:48:47.120
normalize to your friends, right? Like if, if she's like, oh, this is push back. Yeah. So we've had
00:48:52.000
other episodes where we talk about this, where we have the episode where we talked about the mental
00:48:56.000
load concept that has been really spreading around social media where women are unfairly
00:49:02.240
complaining about this mental load they experienced because they are the ones remembering to pack their
00:49:07.440
kids' lunches. They're totally not acknowledging as people like Amanda Claypool have pointed out
00:49:12.240
the fact that men also have their own mental loads of like defend the family. Like what happens if you
00:49:17.360
hear a, like a door open your house at 2am in the morning? Is that your problem? Is the woman,
00:49:22.400
or is your husband the one going down? Like men also have mental loads that they deal with,
00:49:26.720
that women take for granted just as men do. So like, that's not even fair, but like,
00:49:30.880
so there are these, these memes that circulate on social media. And one thing that was really
00:49:35.680
interesting in the comments on our video on mental loads, where women are complaining about this and
00:49:39.680
acting like, you know, it's so unfair what they take on as wives and they have to take on these
00:49:43.840
man children and take care of them is that in their friend groups, they often had like one person who
00:49:49.680
would constantly complain about these things because they'd been poisoned by various like
00:49:53.360
algorithmic pools on social media. And that it was really annoying to them that like the two other
00:49:59.840
friends in their groups would never point, like call them out on it and that they were always the
00:50:04.800
one to call them out on it. But I think that it's, it's so great that they're doing that and you need
00:50:09.440
to be that person. You need to be that person to be like, girl, like that's, what are you doing?
00:50:14.800
You need to pull yourself out of friend groups like that. I think that that's another thing is,
00:50:18.320
is, is pull your, your partner out of toxic friend groups if, if, if they're toxicating.
00:50:25.760
It does. Yeah. Well, thank you for pulling me out of it, for deprogramming me.
00:50:31.520
And I, Oh, you know where I do still see it? Lesbian relationships.
00:50:37.520
I thought you were going to say, I still do it.
00:50:40.400
I do still see it in lesbian culture, but lesbian culture is,
00:50:43.440
you know, uniquely toxic, like very low levels of mental health,
00:50:46.000
high levels of divorce, high levels of spousal abuse.
00:50:48.400
So like, I can see why they would also, they're more close to the urban.
00:50:54.800
We have a few lesbian friends, which is why I don't see it. But in every one that I have had,
00:50:58.880
like acquaintance, lesbian acquaintance I have had, or I've seen, I've seen negative talk about partners.
00:51:05.600
I don't want to be too specific, but you don't remember that?
00:51:09.600
They transition. So maybe you don't think of them as a lesbian?
00:51:30.000
Get the shock collar. I'm going to see if I can make a video where I edit you to be shocked
00:51:35.280
looking. We need to know. I'm sure like there's some Halloween sale after Halloween where we can just
00:51:40.320
buy like shock collars for humans, you know, like the kind that we're supposed to have like bombs on
00:51:45.440
them, like how flashing lights or something. We need to get this for like all of our children.
00:51:55.440
That is the Halloween costume of the year. That is, that is to be Kaya for Halloween. Kaya and Hassan.
00:52:02.880
Kaya, please. Can we, oh my God. I wish we had a Halloween party to go to so I could be,
00:52:09.360
I could be Kaya. Or no, our children would all be Kaya and we would both be Hassan.
00:52:18.560
Love you. But it's all good. Delicious chips and salsa. And what I'm going to do with the
00:52:32.000
Bulldog is I think I'm going to go ahead and freeze everything so that we're not like reheating
00:52:37.680
it after refrigerating it multiple times. I think that like from a food safety standpoint isn't good,
00:52:41.280
but every time I redo it, I'm going to simmer it for a while.
00:52:44.000
Okay. Before I. Well, did you, did you boil the Bulldog first? Boil? No, you're supposed to,
00:52:51.040
for the recipe, you pan sear it until it's browned on the outsides.
00:52:55.040
Yeah. I think what needed is like, it needs to be steamed because you were saying the inside
00:52:59.440
didn't seem soft. Well, remember the first time you cooked it, you steamed it before you pan seared it.
00:53:04.880
No, that was just for Bulldog. Sorry. That was just, sorry. That was just for Tio Boki or whatever.
00:53:10.800
Well, I think, you know, we did something wrong. We were supposed to steam it in some way and then brown it.
00:53:17.840
No, I did it exactly the way I was. I followed, I followed the directions.
00:53:22.960
You got the directions from an AI perplexity. No, no, no, no. Actually, I got it from a recipe that you sent to me.
00:53:28.480
Oh, wow. Yeah. When, when, when perplexity gives me instructions, nothing goes wrong.
00:53:34.000
The AI only guides me correctly. You don't understand. I love it when people get mad about
00:53:38.400
AI hallucinating and I'm like, people hallucinate all the time, you knob. Yeah. Human recipes give me
00:53:44.480
the most trouble, honestly. That's, that's where I, well, it's my fault. I sent you a bad recipe.
00:53:50.560
So I guess, yeah, we'll just cook it longer when we reheat it. Yeah, that's, well, and you know,
00:53:55.360
we'll see tonight if that works and if it doesn't, then we'll find something else to do. But I, I have confidence in this one.
00:54:01.120
Yeah. The, the, the rice cakes came out for the audience who wants to know they were a little
00:54:07.680
hard compared to how they normally taste or their usual texture. As one of our kid is very into
00:54:13.760
texture. He's like, I really like the texture on this toy. He'll say like, it's like metal or
00:54:19.040
something. He's like, it's got a great texture to it. He sounds so sophisticated.
00:54:23.520
Well, they're, they're autistic. So, I mean, texture's everything if you're autistic.
00:54:27.680
I don't, I don't tell him he's a weirdo. We know we're weirdos. I love that you, when you're,
00:54:32.560
I knew I was going to love your family when your mom said that the family motto was,
00:54:37.200
I'm not okay. You're not okay. And that's okay. And I'm like, that is amazing. Please.
00:54:43.200
They're, they're, what are they going to say? The, the episode today, the, so in, in my GSB class for,
00:54:49.040
for Stanford business school, there's like a group and everyone's starting podcasts now. It's like
00:54:53.040
the third podcast that's gone live recently. But of course I'm terrified they'll one day find my
00:54:57.520
podcasts. Or you haven't told anyone about your podcast in that group.
00:55:01.600
No, no, no, no, no, no. I am terrified that they will find it because they are, they are far,
00:55:06.880
far left anyway. Yeah. But they never liked you anyway. I mean, you had some friends,
00:55:11.360
you had like a few friends who were really nice to you and then everyone else like acted super superior
00:55:16.960
and kind of ignored you and didn't. Yeah, they kind of did. It was really surprising. I don't know why.
00:55:21.840
There's, there's really no love lost Malcolm. I, I, I've, I mean, there were,
00:55:25.760
I could, I could probably count on one hand, the number of people who are not dicks to you at
00:55:31.440
Stanford GSB. You can, you can, you can take this part out, but not even, she was only nice after.
00:55:37.440
No, she was nice. No, she was nice to me for a period at the beginning of the GSB. And then,
00:55:41.280
then she got in with the cool kids. So she, she had to stay away from you.
00:55:47.680
Nothing on her. You're hanging out with the cool kids.
00:55:49.360
I'm only at four. Oh, you forgot. What's her face. And I'm sure there were others.
00:55:59.680
And she was dating me from the first day I went there too. So, you know,
00:56:04.400
actually, no, no, because for the first, at least 30 days, you were, you were, you were dating and
00:56:10.960
like in the, during the summer vacation, leading up to it, you were, you were traveling with various
00:56:17.680
subgroups of the GSB to get to know them. And also in search of a wife.
00:56:22.480
It's so weird to have a wife who was with me during my time at graduate school, because,
00:56:28.400
you know, I can look back on high school or I can look back on college and feel like, hey,
00:56:32.240
maybe people weren't that nice to me. But then I'm like, no, Malcolm, you're just being indulgent.
00:56:38.000
And now I have this person who is fairly level headed and experienced all this with me and is
00:56:43.280
like, oh, no, no, Malcolm, actually, people didn't really like you that much. Because of course,
00:56:49.120
in my head, like trying to be generous, I assume that I must have been being a jerk to people and
00:56:54.160
not realizing it. And so when I looked back on my life up until Simone started being an external
00:57:00.640
recorder, this is the way I saw myself. Hey, Liz, how's the telescope? Oh, Kelsey,
00:57:06.800
how's your mom's pill addiction? So, but anyway, I said it was really funny because they released
00:57:11.760
this podcast and it's so like NPR voice and everything like that. And on the same day that
00:57:16.720
that podcast goes out, my podcast about Nick Flintis fangirls comes out like fan fiction of Nick
00:57:22.400
Flintis and like, you know, morning glory milking farm or whatever, milking minotaurs at the milking farm.
00:57:29.040
And I'm like, this is like my level of culture right here. This is like your level of culture,
00:57:35.040
right? Like we're not in the same world. She's talking about like Haitian relief efforts or
00:57:40.560
something. Not even that, though, like you had so much more. Okay. We had so much more substance
00:57:45.840
in our podcast about Nick Flintis fan fiction and female gooners than she had in an entire opening
00:57:53.360
podcast, which was literally the thesis of it was I lived through a disaster in Haiti and I discovered
00:58:03.840
that someone was nice to other people during that disaster. What a revelation. I'm going to go give
00:58:10.240
speeches about that and start a podcast about it because I can't believe that people might actually do
00:58:16.560
nice things for other people. I'm I'm being very generous. What I would say is I think she's not
00:58:24.320
going for like an informational podcast, I think. No, no, no. She's like, she's a, she's a development
00:58:29.680
coach. So her entire shtick is motivational messages and we're dealing with a lot of very
00:58:36.960
helpless people like us and our thing. Like, obviously we would, we would not gel with that sort of like a
00:58:42.880
vibe. But I think for the audience that she's trying to target, I thought it was incredibly
00:58:48.000
well-produced. Like I'm going to be honest. It was top quality, way better than ours. And yeah,
00:58:53.680
we're very, I mean, there's like a grunting baby in, in our audio here. Like I get it.
00:58:58.800
The theming, the, she would even have like within her own words, she would trail off and then like
00:59:03.760
audio would start and then it'd go back to her words to have like a, you know, like you would have
00:59:08.080
on NPR as a transition between two people. Not my aesthetic. That's not my aesthetic. Yeah.
00:59:12.240
Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's for. Oh my God though. If we did though, we'd have to use
00:59:16.240
audio of our son, Torsten going doot, doot, doot. No, it's funny, but when I was listening to it,
00:59:20.640
all I could think is like the person who consumes this is like a different species
00:59:24.240
from whatever we are. Well, people literally comment on our podcast being like, what is that?
00:59:30.960
So we are different species from other people. It has been confirmed by our own viewership.
00:59:35.560
So yeah. Yeah. And I want to be clear here. I'm not saying it was bad. Like something produced
00:59:40.600
for this alternate species of human that exists alongside me, it was expertly produced. Like
00:59:47.320
it sounded like a very high quality NPR piece, but like when I listened to NPR pieces, I'm like,
00:59:53.160
but why? Like the speed at which new ideas are introduced to me is so slow. I think it's more
01:00:00.760
about a vibe and some people live for like this vibe and I struggle to emulate that part of humanity.
01:00:08.280
We, we are, we, we target nerds. Like that's the thing, right?
01:00:12.760
The people I've been working with, what they like.
01:00:20.040
the in, in thing. I think pretty much everyone who watches us is a nerd.
01:00:24.120
A religious nerd, a MGTOW nerd, a racist nerd, a gene bro nerd, tech nerds, AI nerds.
01:00:31.240
You want to, do you want to get us started on today's episode?
01:00:35.560
Yeah. We got a bunch of sexy nerds ready to unholster their autism on the world.
01:00:45.000
Yes. Okay. Sorry. Let me get the outline in front of me.
01:00:49.720
And I mean, I, I had to slap this together really quickly because I didn't know you wanted
01:00:53.080
to do this today. So it's not, it's not perfect, but we're going to get into it.
01:00:56.360
Well, we can go through some of the specific examples that what's her face.
01:00:59.320
Yeah. And I, and I, I have, I have, I have some too. Yeah. I've got, I've got, yeah, I've got,
01:01:03.160
I've got stuff. I'm just saying I'm, I'm running on two and a half hours of sleep and
01:01:14.200
If you want to put this off, we can do another one.
01:01:19.080
And I I'd rather do my debt Jubilee one when I'm not running on so little sleep,
01:01:22.280
because this is a little more personal. All right.
01:01:46.040
Oh my gosh. Are you going to take out too many seeds?
01:01:48.760
And put them in the bowl and put them in the bowl, but it doesn't look, oh yeah,
01:01:58.040
Oh, that's a good plan. And what about you, Toasty?
01:02:03.960
Well, I have a giant, giant, because so many seeds.
01:02:09.720
I want a giant, I want a giant, but I get 3,000.
01:02:33.320
Did you know that daddy has a birthday around Halloween?