Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

This episode examines the Lindsay Clancy case in detail, including why it does not align with postpartum psychosis based on clinical insights from a trauma nurse. It explores historical and cross-cultural patterns of infanticide, legal responses in various societies, and the role of cultural and religious frameworks in shaping attitudes toward child protection. The discussion also covers the mother-baby dyad concept in modern medicine and its potential influence on perceptions of maternal responsibility.Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of anthropological data on neonaticide and infanticide rates, comparisons across hunter-gatherer groups and historical societies, and proposals for...

Malcolm and Simone break down new reporting from effort.news exposing how effective altruism organizations spent tens of millions funding anti-AI narratives across journalism, YouTube explainer channels, and religious groups. They discuss the circular donor ecosystem, undisclosed grants, and the impact on public discourse.The conversation covers specific examples from The Guardian, Time Magazine, Kurzgesagt, and multiple faith organizations, along with personal context from their own grant history with the Survival and Flourishing Fund. They also address the mental health effects of doomer messaging and why the arguments fail under scrutiny.Shout out to Matthew...

Today on Based Camp, we dip our toes into the Aztec civilization through a review of Inga Clendinnen’s Aztecs: An Interpretation by John Psmith of Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, exploring how their religion, cosmology, and social structures centered on ritual human sacrifice at an industrial scale. The review examines their gods, warrior culture, child-rearing practices, and the inversion of pleasure-seeking societies into ones obsessed with pain and cosmic dread.We quickly came to understand why this society felt like Lovecraftian horror made real, how ideas and religion shaped every aspect of life, and why neig...

Discussion of recent data on Burning Man attendance trends, including a New York Post article and Black Rock City census figures showing a decline in younger participants and a rise in attendees in their forties and fifties. The conversation covers historical context from past events, personal experiences at the festival, and comparisons to other gatherings.Additional analysis explores organizational challenges, succession planning, and broader cultural shifts affecting participation. The episode also touches on related events and movements that have evolved over time.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. I’m excited to...

This episode examines popular VTuber avatar designs and how they influence audience engagement. The conversation covers community reactions to recent viral moments, perceptions of age representation in virtual content, and comparisons with trends in other regions.The discussion also reviews data on viewer sentiment, patterns in top-performing models, and broader questions about norms for online personas as technology evolves. Emphasis is placed on protecting real-world audiences while understanding market-driven preferences.Episode TranscriptMalcolm Collins:Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to be talking about an interesting case that has had some virality within...

For most of Western history, acting was a low-status profession often linked with vagrancy, moral suspicion, and limited respectability. This episode traces how that reputation formed—from Restoration England and Victorian theater culture through early Hollywood—and why the public association between performers and social stigma lasted far longer than most people realize.Drawing on historical research and primary accounts, the discussion covers when women first appeared on the English stage, how limited career options shaped public judgment, the slow professionalization of theater after the Civil War, and the modern shift that turned entertainers into trusted public voic...

Historically, what we now call dating was treated as lower-status than prostitution. The word “date” itself once meant visiting a prostitute. Then working-class “charity girls” undercut professional sex workers by trading companionship and intimacy for dinners, tickets, clothes, and nights out — a practice contemporaries called treating.In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins walk through the late-19th / early-20th century shift: cheap urban leisure (nickelodeons, dance halls, Coney Island), taxi dancers as proto-host clubs, shop girls hunting rich bosses, the rebrand of face-painting into “makeup,” the invention of “personality” and the It Girl, and 1920s petting parties...

Simone woke up to a 5am text thread claiming brain death was invented to harvest organs — and the more she dug, the worse it got. This episode walks through the TJ Hoover case (a man wheeled toward organ recovery who was crying, thrashing, and later survived), the 1968 Harvard “irreversible coma” paper that built the modern framework, the Lazarus sign, the apnea test, paralytics used during recovery, hospital reimbursement incentives, and a New Jersey case where an organ procurement group treated donor registration like a lifetime contract the family had to fight in court.If you only do one th...

What is alpine divorce? This episode breaks down the viral outdoor trend where partners get left behind on hikes, climbs, and trail adventures. We explore the term’s surprising literary origins, recent social media stories, and a high-profile negligence case on Austria’s highest peak, then look at how mismatched fitness, pacing, and expectations turn outdoor dates into breakups.From Grand Canyon and desert peak accounts to crowded trail TikToks and the wider man-versus-bear conversation, we examine outdoor culture, preparedness, and why solo travel content can paint an unrealistic picture of wilderness risk. The hosts share personal near...

Simone and Malcolm walk through a widely circulated write-up on izzat—the North Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi honor/reputation system—after Homath quote-tweeted it. They treat it the same way they treat critiques of Western hookup culture, Chinese face, or American individualism: as a cultural technology that can either support or sabotage flourishing.They read the original Kiwi Farms post, then fact-check it. Izzat is a real, documented concept of collective family/clan honor. It is not practiced by all Indians. It is concentrated among many Hindi and Muslim communities in the north and is a poor fit...

Target pulled a kids’ Halloween costume after people said it looked like blackface. Malcolm and Simone use that controversy as a jumping-off point for a much larger argument: that systematically scrubbing minstrel shows, cakewalks, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Song of the South, Splash Mountain, Aunt Jemima, and similar “tainted” material didn’t just remove racism — it severed Black Americans from large parts of their own cultural history and from the credit for innovations that built American popular music, comedy, and theater.They walk through:* What Uncle Tom actually does in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel vs. what “Uncl...

In this episode of Based Camp, Simone walks through a question most humanitarian orgs would rather leave off the annual report: how often are aid workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and refugee-support staff sexually assaulted — and why do official databases, NGOs, and political tribes treat some perpetrators as unspeakable?The episode starts with a 2024 r/rapecounseling post from a high-school volunteer who said she was assaulted by a man she had been helping at a refugee organization, then deleted the thread. From there Simone stacks official sources against what workers say to each other when they think no one is co...

What does a traditional Afghan or Pakistani Muslim actually believe happens in heaven? Not the sanitized Western or progressive version — the classic one drawn from the Hadith and mainstream interpretations.Malcolm and Simone dig into the details: every believing man gets at least two wives (with no upper limit tied to piety), no woman in paradise is ever without a sister-wife, houris (created beings often described in highly physical terms), infinite sexual stamina, controllable pregnancy and aging for children born in heaven, the absence of bodily waste, the majority-female population of hell according to reports of Muhammad’s ni...

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with longtime right-wing creator and social scientist Aydin Paladin (one of the earliest anti-woke voices online).They discuss her path from trying Norse paganism to Christianity after a near-death experience, starting her channel during the 2016 Trump campaign, the replication crisis in social science, and why the right needs its own researchers.Aydin shares details on the Beowulf Foundation’s projects—including Wolfings Publishing (reviving out-of-print and banned books), the Witan conferences, and upcoming parallel-economy tools like VPN and DNA services.The conv...

In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins break down Heidi Blake’s exhaustive New Yorker investigation “Andrew Tate’s Empire of Abuse.”They examine the documented pattern of rape, strangulation, underage exploitation, financial and psychological control, human trafficking, and the systematic teaching of “pimping” through the War Room. Key accounts include Lauren Southern’s experience in Romania, the early UK cam-house abuses, the recruitment and abuse of Romanian schoolgirls, the use of female enforcers, the coercion and reputation-destruction of women who tried to leave, and the real-world violence linked to Tate’s content.The discussion...

Yukiwaru joins Based Camp after going viral for saying the quiet parts out loud: men can’t get periods, and tomboys are good.In this conversation, Malcolm and Simone talk with the VTuber about why she refused to apologize or walk anything back, the toxic “friend”/artist who kept centering themselves and walking all over her boundaries (including on her birthday stream), and what it felt like to finally stop walking on eggshells.They also cover:• How she started streaming (just a unique voice playing League) and became a snow-leopard VTuber• Losing old friends and artists vs...

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone Collins examine the rapid secularization underway in many Muslim-majority countries—often at a faster proportional rate than Christianity’s decline in the West. They walk through Arab Barometer and related data showing sharp rises in secular identification from 2012–2019 in Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt, followed by a partial rebound in the early 2020s.The conversation covers declining trust in Islamist parties (Muslim Brotherhood, Ennahda, Justice and Development Party), sub-replacement fertility across much of the region, and existential water scarcity in Egypt and Iran. They then dig into the dr...

NOTE: This episode has a companion guide with graphs, links, and stats—don’t miss it! https://technopuritan.com/new-religions/What if most new religions don’t fail — and the ones that follow a few simple rules have a 93% survival rate and over 50% chance of becoming major world religions?In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone dig into original research on new religious movements founded since the 1700s. When you filter for groups with a unique metaphysical framework + a real written (or recorded) corpus, the numbers are already surprisingly high. Add an explicitly pro-nata...

David Lorentzen is BACK—this time to share his behind-the-scenes experience as a Swedish hotel manager whose family has run hotels for over a decade.David gives a rare, unfiltered look at cultural differences he has observed as a hotelier: which groups of guests make staff smile and which ones create the biggest headaches. He walks through the three most difficult categories of guests his hotels have hosted — Russian oligarchs, Chinese tour groups, and certain Indian families — with specific, firsthand stories about room damage, cooking in rooms, overcrowding, and the economics of hospitality.The conversation then s...

Brian Chau joins Malcolm and Simone Collins to reveal explosive findings from his new AI-powered investigative outlet, Effort.news.The US Conference of Catholic Bishops derives 81% of its operating revenue from federal refugee and migration contracts (primarily HHS/Office of Refugee Resettlement). Total grant volume in the Preferred Communities program exploded from near-zero to over $1.2 billion after 2021, timed with Ukraine supplemental funding—yet GAO data shows the majority of that money went to non-Ukrainian populations.Similar patterns appear across Episcopal Migration Ministries, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Church World Service, and others. Several of these gr...