Based Camp - How Did It Become Cool to Belittle Your Husband？ (An Anthropology of Sassy)

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. 1.00

00:01:17.720 Yeah. If you want to watch this, it's called ranking the top four worst Hollywood wives. 1.00

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 0.89

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 0.91

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 0.95

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 0.99

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 0.98

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 1.00

00:06:21.100 the most ungrateful, horrible person. I don't think you make it more silly than it is. I actually feel, 0.99

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. 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.99

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, 0.86

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 1.00

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 0.74

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 0.74

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 0.99

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 0.66

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 1.00

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 0.99

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 0.99

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

00:18:20.080 balls and galas and everything like that.

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

00:19:04.640 relationship that I, the reader was unaware.

00:19:07.280 Like this is news to me.

00:19:08.560 But the thing I'm going to mention about it is in these stories, if a woman is acting domineering 1.00

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 0.80

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 0.98

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

00:20:33.920 prince of a neighboring kingdom.

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 0.68

00:20:53.520 in Brett Cooper's video of horrible wives who demean their husbands is, you know, she's, 0.99

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. 0.90

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, 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.80

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 1.00

00:24:07.920 husbands. This, this is when you first see the arrival of the sassy wife and why I think the sassy 0.60

00:24:15.840 wife in these instances caused women to normalize this as behavior that was permissible and not just 1.00

00:24:23.520 like some joke or like an example of like a, a bad woman being, you know, uncontrollable or a man 0.99

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 1.00

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, 1.00

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 0.98

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 0.96

00:29:03.680 of manage her husband. So like, this is sort of where the nagging wife came out, but also husbands, 1.00

00:29:09.280 I think in part because of second wave feminism also started getting framed as a little bit more 1.00

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 1.00

00:29:29.840 nineties, suddenly the women weren't evil for doing this. And the husbands were just lovable 1.00

00:29:34.480 buffoons like Homer Simpson and like, I don't know. What is it? I think everybody loves Raymond 0.92

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. 0.99

00:29:51.440 Our protectors, the great white hunters, you know, in the old days, those men would have gone out there, 0.96

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. 1.00

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, 0.78

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 1.00

00:33:08.480 at like family reunions, his family would gang up on him for really stupid things. And he would 0.99

00:33:14.960 naturally react with, with some umbrage sometimes because he was being ganged up on for really stupid 1.00

00:33:20.000 reasons. And like, keep in mind, like examples of things that his family would do to him, 0.98

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 1.00

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, 0.99

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 0.99

00:35:41.200 and you're making our marriage look unstable. Poor thing. He's, he's picking up on the tension. 1.00

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,

00:37:02.720 then they're going to do that. Right. Yeah.

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, 1.00

00:37:26.800 and even when you see these examples that we've posted, these women think they're looking good. 1.00

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.

00:38:56.320 When they had that British journalist.

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, 1.00

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. 1.00

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, 1.00

00:41:48.560 within some parts of the red pill community or the culture that's downstream of that, 0.94

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 0.99

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, 1.00

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 1.00

00:43:25.040 a lovable buffoon makes you look like a dick. But everyone would, I think, both immediately 1.00

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 1.00

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, 0.95

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 0.94

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 1.00

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 1.00

00:45:31.600 dynamics. Like they're trying to hide Mormons from swear words when instead, like they should be 1.00

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 0.94

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 1.00

00:46:00.480 makes our relationship look bad and it is detrimental to our combined goals as a couple.

00:46:05.520 Yeah.

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 1.00

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, 0.96

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. 0.81

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 0.98

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 1.00

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, 0.98

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, 0.58

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 1.00

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? 1.00

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.

00:50:23.360 Yeah. Because that stuff spreads like a virus.

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. 1.00

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, 1.00

00:50:43.440 you know, uniquely toxic, like very low levels of mental health, 0.91

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.

00:50:52.000 What lesbian friends do we have? 1.00

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, 1.00

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? 0.80

00:51:13.440 Transition.

00:51:18.320 Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. I love you.

00:51:21.600 Love you too.

00:51:22.640 Thanks for tolerating me.

00:51:24.800 I'm barely, I'm barely making it guys.

00:51:28.160 Just get the shock collar out. It'll be okay.

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.

00:51:50.480 And every time the journalists come over.

00:51:52.160 Dressed up as Kaya and Hassan.

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. 0.90

00:52:13.520 That would be chef's kiss. Oh, well. Oh, well.

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. 0.97

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 0.96

00:55:31.440 Stanford GSB. You can, you can, you can take this part out, but not even, she was only nice after. 0.96

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.

00:55:44.640 Yeah.

00:55:45.200 She's smart. Nothing, nothing on her.

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.

00:55:56.400 I don't have a great memory. No, sorry.

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. 0.56

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.

00:56:36.240 Everybody thinks that way.

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 0.99

00:56:54.160 not realizing it. And so when I looked back on my life up until Simone started being an external 0.96

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. 0.96

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.

01:00:14.440 Standard nerds.

01:00:17.080 You know, we, we don't target like what's the,

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? 0.96

01:00:33.240 Sexy nerds though. They're all sexy nerds. 1.00

01:00:35.560 Yeah. We got a bunch of sexy nerds ready to unholster their autism on the world. 1.00

01:00:41.240 That's what Basecamp is all about.

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. 0.50

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

01:01:08.360 I understand Simone. Okay.

01:01:14.200 If you want to put this off, we can do another one.

01:01:16.200 No, I'm ready. I'm ready. Okay.

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.

01:01:25.880 Okay. So what's happening guys?

01:01:35.160 That's a lot of pumpkins.

01:01:40.360 What are you doing, sweetheart?

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,

01:01:56.760 you are putting them in the bowl, aren't you?

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.

01:02:15.000 Okay. And Octavian, what about you?

01:02:19.080 Is this fun?

01:02:19.720 Yeah. Is this fun, Octavian?

01:02:33.320 Did you know that daddy has a birthday around Halloween?

01:02:35.240 Yeah, because mommy makes a cake for me. 0.97

Based Camp - October 27, 2025

How Did It Become Cool to Belittle Your Husband？ (An Anthropology of Sassy)

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