Hurkle-Durkle, Tradwives, and Hikikomori for White Women： Exploring Internet Subculture with Suzy Weiss
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, we're joined by writer Susie Weiss from The Free Press to talk about a new kind of self-care culture called "Tradwives" and how they're like MLMs, but for men.
Transcript
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Yeah. There's also like this weird way that medieval debunked science is being repackaged
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in the wellness world. Gomori, for those who don't know, are mostly men in Japan who are
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shut-ins. They don't leave their room for years, sometimes at a time. Their parents bring them
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food. They play video games. They're totally addicted to their screens. Japan is 10 years
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ahead of us and everything. Fast food tastes like food enough, but it's not food. And video
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games feel like problem solving and engaging, but it's really not doing those things. And he
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described it as this slack noose around his neck where he technically forgot all of the
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things fulfilled. He was talking to people. He was eating. He was alive in the world, but
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at this really not at, what's the word I'm looking for? Like not at the level of actually
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living, but not enough that he would go and change it. Like it wasn't dire enough.
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Hi everyone. We are so excited to have our favorite writer on the podcast, Susie Weiss.
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She's with the Free Press. You can find her on Twitter slash X at
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Snoozy Weiss. And she has written some amazing pieces. We first discovered her through this
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mind-blowing article on Spoonies. But more recently, she wrote about a different type of
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kind of self-care culture that we thought would be really fun to discuss today. Particularly referring
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to Hercule Durgle as a trending term, but also like that rot and quiet quitting show up in the
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article as well. Yeah. We'd love to talk about this with you because there's so much going on here.
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We're really going to, we're going to get into Trad Wives. We're going to get, everyone should
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buckle up for a ride through the internet. You had this great quote in there. Didn't you say
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something like Trad Wives are the girl bosses of the home or something? Trad Wives are the girl bosses
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of the, they're not different. They are. They're just villainized women. 100%.
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We're trying to get what they want, which is, I thought what we all want, but I guess not.
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Yeah. Well, they're having it all. They're having it all in the home. Yeah.
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If you get what you want. Well, it's so interesting the way that society is so politicized that every
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subculture has a team. And depending on what team you are in, that subculture is either an evil
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or good subculture from the perspective of each team. Yeah. The Hustlers versus the Quiet Quitters
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and the Trad Wives versus the Soft Girls. And yeah, there has to be this. Yeah. It's actually
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almost odd when there are un-teamified subcultures, like MLMs. MLMs isn't explicitly a right or left
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thing. But if I think box shipping, when you were talking about Hustlers, I'm like, oh, those are
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right-wing nut jobs. That's what people would say about them, right? Dropshipping? Yeah. Dropshipping.
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Yeah. Dropshipping. There's like a whole dropshipping culture. Like Andrew Tate's in,
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university really fights for dropshipping, right? Yeah. They might, but a lot of things like that
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do. So it's very similar to MLMism. So, okay. Obviously you have MLMs, which predominantly
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target women, but the ones that target men are typically not monetized through the traditional
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MLM model. It's more like a guru monetizes through very expensive courses. And then they try to target
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teaching people like actually how to start a company. But if you're going to teach at scale,
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how to start a company, there's really only a few companies that work on that model.
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Dropshipping is one of them. Actually doing lectures yourself.
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It's like raw milk and it's like anti-vax. It's the middle of the horseshoe and you're,
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you could, it's the Rorschach test. Like whatever you get it.
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But it's not as abusive as MLM because you can genuinely make a lot of money doing it if you do
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it right. But it is like MLM in that it forms like these cults of personality. And yeah.
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And the whole vocabulary around it. Like the vocabulary around, hey girl, hey. Hey babe.
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Okay. Let's go into, do you want to start with Hercule Durkul or Tradwise?
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Can you, yeah. Define Hercule Durkul for our sage audience that probably has never heard
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Yes. Cause your audience is smart and reads books and I've never read a book, but Hercule
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Durkul is this 18th century Scottish term. And we could get into the whole like trend industrial
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complex, but basically it's like an update to bed rotting, which is an update to, I think
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Heige, which is that there's, there's this Heige or Heige. It's like the, it's like a Nordic
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Swedish word for getting cozy. And then there was like another term for staying in on a Friday
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night during like Norwegian winters, but it's like this umbrella term. It falls under self
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care, but Hercule Durkul is just apparently this Scottish phrase from the 18th century
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that means staying in bed longer than you should. But of course, when you combine that with the
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internet and the algorithm, it turns into this rallying cry for people not to feel bad
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about pickling under their duvet cover all day and Hercule Durkul, which is stay in bed,
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but of course means stay on your phone and allow a stream of garbage to go directly into your
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eyeballs and hold still while TikTok infiltrates your brain.
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So this actually reminds me of one of my favorite misinterpretations of a historic context. So
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people on the show know we're very into like religious systems and stuff like that. And we were
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talking with a friend of ours and they're like, Oh, we were like, how's your diet going? And they're
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like, Oh, I came up with this amazing new diet system. That's based on ancient Eastern philosophy.
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And I was like, Oh no, what do you think? I had like, I knew things were better.
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No, no. They're like, well, I learned about this concept called Wu Wei. Are you familiar with Wu Wei?
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Okay. So it's a fairly complicated concept. It is where you are elevating an aesthetic reaction to
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your environment, to a moral status. It's often described as like in a river moving with the
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water to get to your destination. It's like if you've read anything by the Church of the Subgenius,
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it strikes me as like their concept of slack, which is very similar to the concept of slack.
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But through a sort of natural elegance where you're not fighting against nature and society and
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everything. Instead, you are like an Aikido using your enemy's opponent against them, or at least in
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your favor. So, but she heard of this concept. That was just a diet. Yeah. No, what she thought it
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meant is eat whatever you want, whenever you feel like it. Yeah. Just, yeah. Just don't try to do
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anything. Just eat whatever you want. And then she immediately started eating a ton of junk food.
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And she didn't wait. Yeah. Okay. But it's the same with these Herkel-Durkel and concepts like
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this. It's people are trying to elevate base hedonism to a moral system of superiority over other
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individuals, which is really interesting. Yeah. There's also like this weird way that medieval
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debunked science is being repackaged in the wellness world. So I have a friend who gave birth
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and, or my friend was talking to her friend who gave birth and she had this little midwife who
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was like essentially trying to balance her four humors. Oh no. And it was after a little bit of
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questioning, it was like, wait, what's the thing with the phlegm? What are, but this was like the
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new age thing. But anyway, yes, it is like a misused Scottish concept. I don't know if Scottish people
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stayed in bed really late in the 18th century. I assume if they did, it was because they had just
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gotten back from like a land war. So I don't know. Well, I don't know. I've read some books
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from England and they do say the Scots were lazy people. I can also see though, like it was only
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used in a derogatory fashion, like a mother or a wife being like, you can't Herkel-Durkel all day,
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that kind of thing. Totally. There is like a Yidditch, like the sound of it matches what it is,
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like an onomatopoeia or something. I appreciate, but this, the Herkel-Durkel at this point,
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it's old news online, but he's in line with the trend. Before you go further, one thing I want
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to elevate here, which I think is really interesting, is essentially people are rediscovering
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old forms of hedonism, then building sort of an aesthetic theology around them. And by this,
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what I mean is in a modern context, default hedonism is status hedonism, i.e. it's go on trips
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so that you can take pictures and show how much better you are than everyone else. It's hedonism tied
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to affirmation from peer groups. Promiscuity. Or data seeking, yeah. Whereas in a traditional
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context, Herkel-Durkel hedonism is just searching out pleasure, which can often be achieved fairly
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inexpensively in an individual's life. And I do think that there is some value in at least
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recognizing this as an individual, as I pointed out on previous podcasts, actually maxing out
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individual hedonism stats when you disassociate from affirmation. It's pretty easy. Once you learn
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to cook for yourself, you can make easily four or five-tier star chef meals that are perfectly
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optimized for your taste buds, that have access to spices that people fought and died over
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historically. It's so easy. There are four apps you can download to make your life like you would
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be like Genghis Khan level pleasure. You know what I mean? You can order sex, you can order the groceries,
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you can order the most gorgeous linen sheets. I mean, you don't have to leave your house and you're
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like assaulted. Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorites was one of my very wealthy friends complained about
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being wealthy in this era. We've mentioned this on another show because he's like, I just can't get
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anything that middle-class people couldn't get. Like he's, I used to be able to what call a restaurant
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and have them deliver food to my house. Now what Uber like eats does that for everyone. I used to have
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access to foods that other people don't have access to. I don't have that anymore. I used to be able to
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on demand have servants. Now everyone basically has TaskRabbit. I used to like, what do I have? I had
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access to maybe a band that can come play for me, but now everyone has music players.
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Yeah. It's like the most gorgeous, like high fidelity systems. Yeah. Like flatness and
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convenience culture has in this weird way, turned us all into Kings while spiritually impoverishing
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us all. So you might as well stay in bed. The one thing that's interesting to me is in the article,
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you to point out that a lot of this is potentially in, in a backlash or contrast to hustle culture and
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this feeling like it's a combination of response to girl boss and hustle culture and try fight,
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fight. And then this realization that we're not necessarily going to get boomer level rewards for
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the work we do. It's okay. Having it all was a lie. So in response, I will do nothing.
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I will have nothing and do nothing. Yeah. Weird reaction.
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Do you think that this was a reaction or do you think that they just happened to be at the same time
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and people reacting the, like in different ways to the same thing? And do you notice any patterns
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between the types of influencers or people online who go for one answer or another?
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I think there's a few ways this happened to take your question in parts. I think a big part of this
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and what I get into in the article is that this is the logical conclusion of self-care culture.
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I do think like the era of wellness is ending. It's, I don't know, like yoga pants don't count
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as clothes anymore, which like I'm happy about, but self-care as it became like kind of mass produced,
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commercialized, whatever you want to call it, began to just mean anything. It meant going to
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yoga class. It meant skipping the yoga class and watching TV. It meant spending a lot of money on
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food. It meant making your own food at home and making sure there were no seed oils in it.
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It meant going to a protest. It meant hanging out with your friend. It just is a word that means
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nothing. And so like the end part of it is just, I will be sedentary and do nothing. And that is
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also self-care. I will do nothing for myself as opposed to, I guess the ideal of self-care is I
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will curate this beautiful life. So I see it, like what Malcolm said, it's an update on an ancient
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form of hedonism, but I also see it as like the death rattle of wellness culture. And we're going to
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enter into whatever's coming next. I forget the other part of your question. Oh, the types of
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influencers who do it. Yeah. Who, how does this sort? Because I, there, there's still a lot of
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people who are heavy hustle and there's still a lot of people who are heavy soft life.
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Yeah. I think, I don't know if it falls into a type. I think this is something that was interesting
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is I keep getting fed all of these like Christian influencers and Christian podcasters.
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I don't know why they're really weird and interesting, but they were a few Christian
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girls on a podcast talking about how, when you want to go out and you, and when you made plans
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to go out and you don't want to go out and you're really tempted to cancel the plans. This is like
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an annoying meme online. Oh, nothing like sex is great. But if you ever canceled plans at the last
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minute or whatever, and these girls framed it as the devil was telling you to cancel the plans.
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And maybe if you went out, that was like, God had something in store for you. Maybe you were
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going to meet your husband that day or whatever. I think, while I think that is like a weird way to
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frame it. And I don't think there's like a demon who's stay in bed. So comfy cozy. There is something
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a little bit like feeding into this base impulse of staying in bed and like going out will like lead
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to more activity. I think it shows the value of these old religious systems. This is something
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we're always installing on this podcast. I'm like, many of these religious systems actually had utility
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to them. And here you're seeing that utility in action. They have created a framing that prevents
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them from falling into these. And I should be clear, this form of hedonism creates a spiral,
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which makes your life worse. Where I would have a different hypothesis. I don't not think we're at
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the end of wellness culture. I think we're at a transformational moment in wellness culture
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where, and you mentioned this in the article, as I remember, is that this is reminiscent of
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hikikomori culture in Japan. And that what we might be seeing is an evolution of a form of American
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hikikomoridom, which I can see becoming incredibly popular among gen alpha.
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Hikikomori, for those who don't know, are mostly men in Japan who are shut-ins. They don't leave
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their room for years, sometimes at a time. Their parents bring them food. They play video games.
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They're totally addicted to their screens. Japan is 10 years ahead of us in everything.
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Yeah. Infertility class and everything. Yeah. And I think that we will get a form of American
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hikikomoridom. And I think what will lead it in reference to our last talk about Spoonies
00:14:46.120
is an elevation of agoraphobia as a thing of status within certain elements of online culture.
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And they will then feel emotionally rewarded and affirmed for leading in to their agoraphobia,
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which will elevate the actual amount of agoraphobia they're feeling, which makes it much easier to end
00:15:12.280
up locked in your house for 10 years. And we've got an entire generation that started their lives
00:15:17.240
in COVID and stuff like that. First job, stuff like that. So they got started on the tracks of
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staying inside all the time. And then they built their friend networks on Discord. They're getting
00:15:28.800
their needs fulfilled and they desperately now need to justify why they're making these decisions,
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that are clearly against their best interest. And now there's communities that affirm that,
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like the antinatalists and the effilists. Right.
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They say, actually, you're doing a good thing by doing nothing with your life and being a drain on
00:15:47.520
society so long as you don't contribute to keeping that society going.
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There's a few things I want to pick up on. One is you talked about getting your needs fulfilled.
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I interviewed an incel for a story about the, for the 10th year anniversary of Tinder,
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who described, yeah, it was, he was in England. He was really interesting. And he described how,
00:16:04.040
like fast food tastes like food enough, but it's not food and video games feel like problem solving
00:16:09.820
and engaging, but it's really not doing those things. And he described it as this slack noose
00:16:14.960
around his neck where he technically forgot all of the things fulfilled. He was talking to people,
00:16:20.480
he was eating, he was alive in the world, but at this really not at, what's the word I'm looking for?
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Like not at the level of, of actually living, but not enough that he would go and change it.
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Like it wasn't dire enough. And I thought that was really interesting.
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It's like he's living in a simulated version of a human life.
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We have created the things that we need. We don't need to go in VR to live a simulated life. We can
00:16:46.880
already have simulated love, simulated accomplishments, simulated adventures, and simulated food.
00:16:53.180
But I would argue that is VR. That is like a virtual, it's not reality.
00:16:56.860
Yeah. Yeah, that is. Yeah. When we, I think the mistake we made, and this is something I realized
00:17:01.940
about when I first met Malcolm, he just assumed that all this would become a big issue when brain
00:17:05.940
computer interface was a thing. Like when we were like literally plugged in, but somehow like with
00:17:11.500
just dumb screens and laptops and computers, like we are there already fully integrated.
00:17:18.240
And that's what you keep bringing up, which I think is really interesting. These ancient concepts
00:17:21.860
like Wu Wei or, and people trying to bring those into the modern era where it's, wait,
00:17:26.580
it doesn't work when the food is like hyper palatable and extra salty. And similarly with
00:17:31.360
Hercule Durkul, I'm Jewish. We have Shabbat. You're, you are not allowed to work. You must rest.
00:17:36.200
So I think people would be like, oh, that's like Hercule Durkul. And it's like, no, if you're living
00:17:39.680
like a Jewish life, you are working in such a way where you need the rest. And Shabbat actually isn't
00:17:45.700
about isolating yourself. You're made to convene with your community, with your family, have meals
00:17:51.200
together. So I think people take these ancient concepts and use them to justify this like
00:17:56.360
ultimately pleasure seeking attitude. And it's like a lot of fasting more or less. There's so many
00:18:02.560
things you can't do. Right. Exactly. Oh, that's crazy. Well, now get into the trad wives part of this
00:18:10.480
conversation. Oh yeah. So, so, ah, trad wives. I'm, are you a trad wife, Simone? Is that?
00:18:18.920
We call her a trad wife in some of the video titles to get clicks because she looks like one,
00:18:23.600
but I don't think you are one by most traditional. Well, so a lot of people call what we do.
00:18:27.340
I don't know. I cook the meals and I clean inside. Technotrad. Technotrad or Neotrad?
00:18:32.060
Yeah. Technotrad. Or Radtrad. Radtrad. Radtrad's kind of rad.
00:18:36.480
Well, we'll see what they converge on as a name for it, but it's not overly trad. Like we're right
00:18:42.120
now really excited about these AI toys we're getting for our kids so that they have somebody
00:18:45.800
smart to talk with, but we're going to put them in their old toys and reprogram them to think that
00:18:50.480
they are the kid's old teddy bear. But now they have an imaginary, that's not trad in a traditional
00:18:55.900
context, but then you dress like a medieval peasant. Yeah. Talk about trad wives. Cause we,
00:19:01.300
we talk about this a lot on the show as well. I don't think it's a holistically positive trend.
00:19:06.120
I know that you would frame it as such, but I think one of the big problems with trad wives
00:19:10.180
is women begin to define the aesthetic of trad wife as the reason, as the heuristic they use
00:19:17.880
to make decisions and judge whether or not they're living a good life. And that's a very bad, they're
00:19:22.480
like, yes, my husband may not be happy with the decisions I'm making, but I am following this
00:19:27.780
aesthetic correctly. Therefore I am a good wife or a good partner. Right.
00:19:33.460
I think we also, we have gripes with the way that many people define trad wifery and that
00:19:37.840
we think that the true trad is the corporate family where everyone works, including the kids
00:19:42.900
and everyone kind of shares the burden. Whereas a lot of people who go to trad wifery, they're
00:19:47.500
working, obviously they're managing a household, but they're doing it in the modern age where we
00:19:51.360
have dishwashers and washing machines. And it's just, it's not the same to just to manage a household
00:19:57.220
and have that be your career. Well, I'd also point out that, that think about this in the
00:20:01.860
eight passengers context, right? With the eight passenger situation, you had a woman who in part
00:20:07.620
identified as a trad wife to an extent, but then because the aesthetic of trad wifery was her moral
00:20:14.380
system, she, because she was a Mormon, but she was not like, this is how it works. This is how it
00:20:20.100
infiltrates religious communities. She identified more as a trad wife than as a Mormon, more as a trad mom
00:20:26.120
than as a Mormon. And because of that. And more of a trad mom influencer.
00:20:30.140
Yeah, right. No, but because of that, when then she's all of, I'm a trad mom, right? And that is
00:20:34.180
what this aesthetic is morality. Where do trad moms compete within the hierarchy in terms of how
00:20:40.520
they're different from non-trad moms? Well, it's how strict they are with their kids, how strict they
00:20:45.420
are about how their kids engage with pornography. Yeah. And then she began to spin like virtue spiral on
00:20:53.280
these particular topics to the point where she ended up committing real and pretty severe abuse
00:20:58.440
of her children. Yes. This was crazy. It was so funny. I was talking about this with my cousins
00:21:01.900
at Shabbat dinner. I think the overall trend of trad wives is just an interesting case study because
00:21:07.600
it's where the theory of feminism of women should be able to do with it, whatever they want crashes in
00:21:13.980
to the feeling like, well, not like that. Let's do whatever you want, but it better look like this.
00:21:19.680
It better not look like that. So it's like these values that are intention of, I need this woman
00:21:26.060
to want agency, but she needs to want it herself. Have you heard of a taken in hand marriage?
00:21:31.000
No, what is that? Okay. Okay. So I've got to point you to this because this could be an interesting
00:21:35.160
story. So taken in hand relationships are a concept. It was in a relationship where the woman
00:21:43.400
is completely, it's basically a 24 seven slave dom relationship, but done within the context of
00:21:53.140
traditionalism and a monogamous marriage, but also understanding the, like it definitely came out
00:21:59.700
of the BDSM community. So people who are familiar with a 24 seven slave relationship, this is when a
00:22:05.480
woman often lives in as a man's in a 24 seven sexual role play scenario. Well, in a taken in hand
00:22:12.120
relationship, they are doing that, but with the aesthetic of a traditional wife. Yeah. So instead
00:22:18.640
of like with Gorian relationships where they were going in this dynamic off of a sci-fi universe,
00:22:23.980
they're going off of like the 1950s aesthetic of traditional marriage. Yes. And where these women
00:22:30.380
want to be spanked when they make mistakes, they want to be like open hand slapped when they say
00:22:36.200
something stupid. And it is interesting to me, this recontextualization of, I think a stereotype
00:22:44.960
of the worst kind of trad wife relationship built into a BDSM relationship for the satisfaction of
00:22:53.420
women. Yeah. It's like feminist, but super not. We just shouldn't have ever gotten the right to vote.
00:22:59.620
Yeah. Everything went wrong. Everything. I want to say women should have the right to vote because
00:23:06.400
like my ancestors fought for that and everything like that. Like they weren't, but then I look at
00:23:10.160
who would be elected to office if women didn't have the right to vote. And I'm like, but functionally
00:23:15.360
the country would be economically healthier and safer. Oh my God. There was that amazing Grimes
00:23:21.520
thing. It's what do you like about the patriarch? He's like Rhodes. Rhodes.
00:23:24.380
Wait, did he say that? She said that. Yeah. It was an interview and she said, I'm into the
00:23:29.320
patriarchy. I really liked the roads. I really liked the infrastructure. It was just fun. Yeah.
00:23:33.820
Are trad wives supporting the patriarchy? Are they subverting the patriarchy because
00:23:38.220
they're choosing it themselves? No, I think that they're subverting it. I think that trad wives are
00:23:43.300
like horrifying. The idea, as Simone pointed out, that there was ever a long period in history where
00:23:50.900
your average wife could afford to not work and spend 24 seven looking after the kids.
00:23:56.380
This is a historical fantasy because people are basing their assumptions about what historical
00:24:01.960
marriages were like based on Hollywood from the 1950s. So there was a short period in American
00:24:08.720
history from about the 1910s to 1970s, where this was an aspirational lifestyle among the common
00:24:17.040
people. But it was never really the norm, except like maybe like right after World War II, when we
00:24:22.580
had that enormous economic explosion in America. And among very wealthy people. But didn't the
00:24:26.600
housewives in the 50s like go berserk and that they started? They basically did, yeah.
00:24:31.260
Yeah. Because they had the washing machine. Yeah. Yeah. So now women are, have tricked guys into
00:24:39.000
thinking they're living this conservative relationship when they're living like, I don't know,
00:24:43.920
like a harem lady would in an old Islamic palace, but without the work, just like the raising of a
00:24:50.000
few kids. And I've seen these women who like stop, I have seen trad wives stop after three kids because
00:24:57.220
they said it was too much work and they had a live in childcare. Well, and we see if you, if you look
00:25:02.280
at stay at home girlfriend videos online. Oh my God. Or stay at home daughters. Yes.
00:25:07.560
I love them. Where it's like they're, and they're not, they may do some laundry. They may clean up
00:25:12.180
dishes and film themselves doing it, but they are also completely, this is my expensive latte that
00:25:19.780
I'm not having. This is me working out. This it's a very indulgent life. So yeah. Yeah. And somehow
00:25:24.840
we've gotten to the place where you're a trad wife. If you make like a Buffalo chicken pizza from scratch,
00:25:29.260
which just feels like beside the point. But anyway, I kind of love that they explode heads. I love that
00:25:36.700
the girl bosses exploded heads. And I think all of these people are in opposition to the self-care
00:25:43.720
regime, whatever we're going to call it. That tells you that the best thing you could do is whatever
00:25:48.380
you are doing for yourself, whatever that means. Do we understand that one of your next pieces is
00:25:53.280
going to be about the next stage, the non-self-care, the self-destruction? Oh, the unwellness
00:25:59.420
influencers? The unwellness influencers? Yes. Yeah. Well, it's not, it's not my piece. I'm editing it. I
00:26:03.260
have a, I don't know if you've read Freya India. She has this great subset.
00:26:06.460
Yeah. And we met her last November. She's super cool. She's so cool. And I was like,
00:26:11.480
I need to bring in the big gun for this one. So she's doing a deep dive into unwellness influencers
00:26:16.420
and, and they're, I guess maybe they're the opposite of trad wives. We need to like,
00:26:20.180
we need some sort of visual chart to chart. I think Ayla is the opposite of a trad wife.
00:26:27.100
Ayla is the opposite of a trad wife. I saw she was getting into it about surrogacy
00:26:30.540
on Twitter today. I was interested in that. You guys, you're pro-surrogacy.
00:26:34.560
Yeah. It's not scalable, but we were like, yeah, go for it.
00:26:37.240
I'm not allowing it. I prefer artificial wombs or xenopregnancies.
00:26:41.420
What's xenopregnancy? Xenopregnancies is using other animals to carry human fetuses,
00:26:46.840
but genetically altering them so that they creating a chimera. So it has a human womb or something.
00:26:51.140
We're more freakish than, yeah, we're more, Ayla's a trad wife.
00:26:58.600
Surrogacy, what? Come on. That's unsustainable. I can't farm human women,
00:27:03.260
at least legally anymore in the U.S., but I can farm cows and go to the,
00:27:09.180
you wouldn't do it with cows. You do it with a capybara or something like that. That's
00:27:13.100
more closely related to us. I was having a small call about this earlier today about how to make this
00:27:17.680
real, because I'm very excited about the potentiality of the mass production of children.
00:27:23.160
A lot of people are horrified by our, so we are trad wifey to an extent, but we also want to,
00:27:31.060
culturally speaking, win, which I think requires some deviations where trad culture is breaking down,
00:27:38.900
which brings me to a question. Are you going to be a trad wife? And in what ways are you not going
00:27:43.760
to be a trad wife? Oh, that's so, I think anyone who gets married is doing a trad thing.
00:27:48.680
Like, I think there's a big reflex, I think, especially among my contemporaries who are like,
00:27:54.520
I'm getting married, but it's going to be different. And it's, you're wearing a white dress,
00:27:58.260
you're doing the thing, you got a sparkly thing on your finger. That's cool. That's fine. Like,
00:28:02.860
it's okay to want a thing that many other people want. It's annoying to me to reframe it as not that
00:28:09.220
traditional thing. I think every wife is a trad wife. So in that way, yes, I hope to be a trad wife,
00:28:13.960
I bake bread every Shabbat. Oh, no. That's confirmed. You bake bread.
00:28:19.120
I just have to hide my decolletage for my modesty for my husband. But no, I'd like to have a lot of
00:28:25.160
kids, but I also really like to work and write. And I would, everyone wants a life where they could
00:28:30.720
do both. A lifestyle that some of our friends have gone into, which is when it is open to you,
00:28:35.820
so you might consider it, is the, I call it secular Orthodox Judaism, where they are not like
00:28:41.060
theologically that into it, but they follow all the rules really strictly and live.
00:28:47.820
Yeah. Yeah. I am like been thinking lately more about like communal living, especially all three
00:28:52.740
of my sisters had kids in the last two years. And I see how my middle sisters who live where my
00:28:57.840
parents live in Pittsburgh, or it's just like this kibbutz where it's like in and out and this kid
00:29:02.300
and that kid. And there's just something so incredible about it. Yeah. Maybe one day,
00:29:06.560
maybe I'll be like Simone on the eve of number four. Hopefully. No, I hope, or we'll have our
00:29:13.340
big artificial womb factory and you can just pick one up. Yeah. By the way, we're not close to this
00:29:21.880
technology. I am joking about this for our audiences edification. Don't go off and say
00:29:26.960
they're growing children in their backyard. Yeah. Rodents there. I'm sure there will be this whole
00:29:34.240
status thing of, yeah, well, you grew in a human and humans are gross. Whereas I grew in a super
00:29:38.360
cute capybara. So that's fine. Wait, but I think womb, are womb transplants a thing or not a thing?
00:29:43.680
There, yes, there has been at least the first woman to successfully have a baby after receiving
00:29:49.180
a full uterine transplant has taken place. So there's at least one case of it that like we had
00:29:54.840
a gestationally functional womb transfer, which is something I think about a lot. Cause I'm like
00:29:58.340
terrified. I get my C-section this Thursday and I'm like, I don't want to lose it. I don't want to lose
00:30:02.620
it. So if I do lose it, I'm going to be like, can I get a new one? Can I get a new one?
00:30:08.480
Fingers crossed. Remember when the most, the most controversial thing was the death boards?
00:30:13.480
What were they called? Oh yeah. Death panels. Death panels. That was like the craziest thing.
00:30:19.320
And now we're talking about God knows what, who's in line for the first womb transplant,
00:30:23.640
probably the most natalist among us, but yeah, we'll see. It's a weird world. I do think the story of
00:30:29.600
reproduction, breeding, IVF, IVF regret, birth control, getting off birth control,
00:30:36.140
the world of fertility, toxicity, testosterone numbers going down. That is what I'm focused on,
00:30:41.920
I think for this next couple of months. Cause I think it's a really rich subject.
00:30:44.900
You should talk with raw egg nationalist. If you can already do raw egg nationalist.
00:30:49.840
Oh yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. I follow him on Twitter. He's really interesting.
00:30:53.560
We can introduce you. He's been on our show before.
00:30:55.720
Yeah. No, he has like a font of great research. He will just send it. He'll email us like here,
00:31:01.340
this study, I think you'll like it. And it, whoa, like he finds really good stuff. So
00:31:04.920
he'll be a great informant. Okay, cool. Cause I, I'm also like raw eggs and like the status of the
00:31:11.040
egg as like the perfect food, the evil food, cholesterol, the white's good egg whites,
00:31:15.100
white, like you can follow what we think of like fertility in a way through the story of how we
00:31:21.900
regard eggs and milk. Yeah. That's good. And like, we're out of the alt milk, soy milk era,
00:31:27.840
which now we're renegade raw milk. Now you're, you guys are on milkers. No one now.
00:31:32.580
No God. No, you're not. Yeah. No, but that's new. I think I got you guys pinned down.
00:31:38.520
No, we are speed running life. A lot of people are like the things you do are really like unhealthy a
00:31:43.740
lot of the time. And it's yeah, but we're not life extensionists or anything. I just want to live
00:31:47.800
long enough to give my kids a good life and get the tasks that I'm working on done.
00:31:51.320
Oh, you're like, get the two gallon whole milk and get in the car. We're going home.
00:31:55.540
You're not doing like the boutique. Let's drive away.
00:31:57.720
No, we go to one of those bulk stores and we just get like BJ's pretty much all our food comes
00:32:02.800
from BJ's and then goes in a chest freezer. But in our district where I'm running for office,
00:32:07.240
there is definitely a big theme about raw, like this farmer tried to sell raw milk and they stopped
00:32:13.820
him. Oh yeah. Cause you're in Pennsylvania with a lot of Amish and Mennonite communities. I'm from
00:32:18.460
Pennsylvania. We have a lot of eggs in our, we have chickens at our house as we gave them out
00:32:23.540
at the last party, but we're not like chicken supremacists. We're chickens as an ascetic. I
00:32:28.820
don't actually think we're making our health that much better by having our own chickens.
00:32:34.000
It helps me deal with the anxiety of the food that the kids always don't eat. Cause then I just
00:32:38.160
feed it to the chickens and then I feed the eggs to the kids and then it just the circle of life.
00:32:43.600
It's good. Yeah, but good. Okay. We're going to make some intros for you. Thank you so much
00:32:47.640
for talking about this. I can't wait for your next article.
00:32:50.120
We would love you to come on. Like every time you do a piece, if you want to come on and talk
00:32:53.380
about it, just let us know. You gave me so many ideas. Dropshipping at the MLM for men is really,
00:32:59.520
that's going to, that's going to be fun for me.
00:33:01.500
Effilism you need to go deep on. That's the one that no one has done. It is so fascinating.
00:33:06.580
Okay. Effilism. It's life spelled backwards ism. You can look up our effilism for the subreddit on the
00:33:11.980
subject. It is a movement that is an extreme form of antinatalism that wants to erase all
00:33:18.100
life on the planet. So not just get rid of humanity, but ensure that sentient life never
00:33:22.520
evolves again on planet earth. Cause they think that sentient life is an intrinsic evil
00:33:29.880
So it's like pro mass shootings. I would assume.
00:33:32.260
Yeah, kind of. So they're about seven times the size of the pronatalist movement to give you an
00:33:37.500
idea of like size of this movement and they are absolutely insane. And I think that they're going
00:33:43.960
to be an increasingly big thing as pronatalism picks up steam, because then people have to justify how
00:33:51.260
they're not bad people. And so they come up with these moral frameworks, like negative utilitarianism