In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the dramatic decline of The Daily Wire — from massive layoffs (25-50% staff cuts), an 85% drop in Ben Shapiro’s YouTube views, and high-profile splits with Candace Owens, Brett Cooper, and others — to financial flops like the $10M Pendragon fantasy series nobody asked for.
They explore Shapiro’s mean-girl gatekeeping, failed attempts to control the conservative movement, allegations of heavy viewbotting, outdated content strategies, and why the old-guard “Boomer conservative” model is collapsing while newer, more vital, fun, and adaptive voices (including Based Camp) are rising.
Show Notes
Around May 1st, the Daily Wire laid off around 13% of their staff
At least according to a company spokesperson
Candace Owens claims that 50% were laid off
And LayoffHedge (a third-party tracker) estimates approximately 100 jobs cut in 2026 (that is 50% of the approximately 200 remaining staff)
This is their second round of layoffs, following a 25% staff cut in April 2025
A year in which they also shut down their Bentkey children’s entertainment division
So their team is down over 60%
These changes coincide with a 85% drop in Ben Shapiro’s YouTube viewership
2023: He had over 170 million monthly views
Now: 18-28 million monthly views
Plus Ben Shapiro and Team Daily Wire is very publicly splitting from major right-wing influencers—after a long history of sanctimonious gatekeeping
And this is in addition to insanely stupid financial indulgences made by the Daily Wire, like dumping $10M on a fantasy series nobody asked for
Let’s look at their rise and fall and what it indicates about the right.
The Rise of Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire
Ben Shapiro’s rise began in the early 2000s as a teenage author and columnist, accelerating in the 2010s through campus debates, books, and podcasts.
Shapiro published his first book, Brainwashed, at age 17 in 2004 while at UCLA, followed by columns and radio appearances.
His national breakout came around 2012-2016 via viral campus speeches (”facts don’t care about your feelings”), resigning from Breitbart in 2016 amid Trump tensions, and The Ben Shapiro Show podcast launch. By 2018, it was syndicated on over 200 stations, peaking his influence during 2016-2020 political polarization.
The Daily Wire launched on June 29, 2015, co-founded by Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing with seed funding from the Wilks brothers, building on Shapiro’s momentum post-Breitbart. The Ben Shapiro Show debuted as its flagship in September 2015.
The Daily Wire perfected Facebook‑era virality with clicky headlines and “SJW owned” debate clips, becoming one of the most‑linked news domains on the platform and a powerhouse during the Trump and early COVID years.
The company hit its peak in late 2023, driven by Shapiro’s YouTube reaching ~170 million monthly views amid Israel-Hamas coverage, with revenue claims over $100 million annually by 2022. Expansion included Nashville HQ (2020), DailyWire+ (2022), and Bentkey (2023).
The Layoffs
Most of the layoffs were around the Daily Wire’s Nashville, TN headquarters (and particularly within the production office)
The YouTube and Facebook Drops
Facebook
Facebook’s 2024 feed changes de‑ranked news and gutted The Daily Wire’s traffic, collapsing the distribution engine that had made them look unbeatable in the mid‑2010s.
YouTube
Independent YouTube analytics (VidIQ and others) show Ben Shapiro’s channel views are down roughly 70–85% from their late‑2023 peak
Flagship channels sometimes have normal slumps, but online commentators like Philip DeFranco have noted this change in traffic is closer to a collapse
Social Blade data shows The Daily Wire’s YouTube subscriber base has plateaued or shrunk in 15 of the last 16 months since early 2025.
Website traffic by March 2026 was about half of what it had been a year earlier, and Shapiro has admitted that revenue is down from 2024 even while insisting cash flow remains strong relative to critics’ expectations.
The Splits
Direct
Brett Cooper
Voluntarily left The Daily Wire on December 10, 2024
Candace Owens
Left in March 2024
CEO Jeremy Boreing announced the end of their partnership, stating it was mutual but amid public feuds like Owens’ “Christ is King” posts and defense of Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks. Shapiro challenged her to quit if unhappy, while Owens called herself “finally free” and accused Shapiro of ad hominem attacks. She continued criticizing Israel and the ADL post-exit.
Owens weaponized receipts, text messages, and live‑stream theatrics to frame Shapiro as hypocritical and captured by Israeli donors, and then rode the Charlie Kirk assassination discourse into a giant audience surge while undermining Shapiro’s legitimacy.
More Ideological
The Daily Wire fell out of step with the dissident right and younger MAGA, especially re: stanning Israel
Nick Fuentes
In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes talks about how Ben Shapiro gatekept and belittled him early in his career, even when he was essentially a nobody
Fuentes describes first publicly criticizing Shapiro and The Daily Wire over Israel, then getting labeled an antisemite:
“I tweeted to Ben Shapiro. I said, ‘You know, I’ve never seen anything on the Daily Wire that’s actually critical of Israel.’ And he quote tweets me… And he says to accuse a Jew of dual loyalty is the shest sign of anti-semitism.”
“He immediately called you an anti-semite.” (Tucker) – “Mhm. So I’m driving to Christmas Eve mass with my family and I see on Twitter the notification comes up. Ben Shapiro quote tweets me calling me an anti-semite.”
“And then… I said something like, ‘If you’re China first, you should live in China. If you’re Mexico first, you should live in Mexico. If you’re Israel first, maybe you should go live in Israel.’ And again, he quote tweets me and says, ‘You’re an anti-semite’ that same night.”
Fuentes frames this as Shapiro deciding early on to shut him down inside the conservative movement:
“It turned out that Cassie Dylan, she had texted him earlier and she wanted him to take me under his wing… And he goes, ‘I’ll take a look.’ And so, I guess the two of them were kind of like grooming me in a sense. They wanted me to go maybe and be a Daily Wire [guy] or maybe looking me as a potential conservative activist or influencer. And so they started paying attention to me.”
“And the more critical of Israel I was, I started to get this really intense push back from the both of them and from a lot of the people at Daily Wire.”
“For them, it was very easy that if they detected that a promising young guy was going to become anti-Israel in the conservative movement, they could crush that person easily and grind them under the heel. So, they sort of were alerted, oh, there’s a precocious young guy that isn’t on board with Israel. We’ll keep an eye on him and if he gets too vocal or popular, we’ll cut him down. We’ll crush him.”
“Basically from then on, it was just this escalating series of blacklisting, censorship, hit pieces, rumors to try to ostracize me from the movement.”
Fuentes links Shapiro/Daily Wire and their circle to efforts to isolate him and get him fired:
“First they would try to dissuade me from asking questions… they would say, ‘Well, you know, there’s a really good answer for that, but you’re asking it in the wrong way… you’re asking it in an anti-semitic way.’”
“And eventually they said, ‘You know what? we’re not going to talk to you anymore.’ And these were my friends… All of them one day said, ‘You’re done. We’re blocking you. We’re never going to speak to you again. We’re never going to have you on our show.’”
“At this time I was on RSBN… And they escalated their attacks. Cassie Dylan would call my boss… every day for weeks, saying, ‘You’ll never believe what Nick said on his show tonight. It’s so racist. It’s so bad. You got to take him off the air. It’s going to make you look bad.’”
“And I would then get word from my boss… ‘I don’t know what has gotten into Cassie. I thought you guys were friends, but she is calling me every day hysterically demanding that I fire you.’”
On a clip that ended up at Media Matters: “And so that clip appears on Media Matters… and ultimately then they fired me… But the pressure in this scenario came exclusively from the Daily Wire.”
“My show got maybe a hundred live viewers every night… So the Media Matters was not on to me. They were put onto me by people in the right that wanted me cancelled.
Later, Fuentes explicitly ties Shapiro’s attacks to his own radicalization and turn against the conservative establishment:
“Looking back with that 2020 hindsight, I mean, Ben Shapiro seems like a big part of your political evolution. You went from a fan acolyte to an opponent and then just pivoted against everything that he believes.” (Tucker) – “Yeah. It was because it was this new dialectic that Trump forced… So once you accept that, a lot of the way we’re doing things becomes impossible to support or justify. The contradiction becomes apparent.”
“I realized that the conservative movement was completely bankrupt in that way. Became very radical.”
Tucker Carlson
Shapiro blasted Carlson as an “intellectual coward” and “moral imbecile” in late 2025 for interviewing Nick Fuentes and echoing antisemitic tropes on Israel/Jewish influence. Carlson retaliated by slamming Shapiro’s “many attacks on Jesus,” immigration views, and pro-Israel stance as “bigotry and cruelty,” especially on Iran policy. Their rift deepened post-Trump’s 2024 reelection, splintering right-wing media.
Megyn Kelly
Kelly mocked Shapiro’s YouTube views as “like 500 views” apiece in May 2026, amid his audience decline. At Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in December 2025, Shapiro called her a “charlatan” for platforming Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson; Kelly fired back, accusing Shapiro and Bari Weiss of fueling antisemitism by suppressing Israel criticism. She defended her neutrality and friendship with Owens, calling Shapiro “Israel first.”
The Conservative Disney Boondoggle
Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing pulled Daily Wire into a fantasy series passion project
CEO Jeremy Boreing pursued a Breitbart‑style “politics is downstream of culture” vision, pouring money into kids’ content, feature films, and merch (anti‑woke razors, chocolates), aiming to build a conservative Hollywood in Nashville.
He is no longer CEO, he just wants to lead creative stuff
The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin
Arthurian fantasy series
Here’s the preview:
The Daily Wire spent at least $10 million on “The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin,” with a minimum of $1 million per episode for its seven-episode season.
This figure comes from statements by co-CEO and executive producer Jeremy Boreing, marking it as the company’s most ambitious production to date, filmed in Italy and Hungary.
The series is fully live and available now. It premiered on DailyWire+ on January 22, 2026, with all seven episodes released by early March 2026
It holds an IMDb rating of 7.9/10 from over 2,400 votes and a Rotten Tomatoes audience score around 86-88%, ranking moderately at #2,181 out of 35,000 shows.
Critics and some outlets like Esquire call it uneven or “terrible,” while fans and figures like Roger Avary praise it as engaging fantasy akin to Game of Thrones.
The $10M+ production aims to attract subscribers, but no reports confirm new viewer influx or revenue gains post-premiere in January 2026. Past Daily Wire revenue hit $100M+ in 2021-2022, but recent 2026 figures are unavailable.
Why Ben Shapiro is Falling Off
Shift from in-demand inexpensive content to not-highly-demanded highly-produced content
Pendragon has become the symbol of Daily Wire drifting from relatively cheap, high‑margin podcasts/political commentary into expensive streaming‑style productions that may not have had the necessary audience.
Failure to evolve
As social platforms shifted toward short‑form and livestreaming, Shapiro’s show format, thumbnails, and pacing stayed static, while creators like Candace Owens aggressively embraced live, high‑drama streaming.
Brittle model
The company’s model—sign talent, build their audiences, and monetize under The Daily Wire umbrella—became structurally weak once it was trivial for stars to spin up independent monetized channels and leave.
Sanctamonious gatekeeping
Episode Transcript
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. I’m excited to be with you today because the Daily Wire is having a moment. Around May 1st they laid off around 13% of their staff, but this is just according to a company spokesperson. Candace Owens claims that 50% were laid off.
And Layoff Hedge, which is a third-party tracker, estimates that approximately 100 jobs were cut in 2026, and that is about 50% of their approximately 200 remaining staff. Oh no, Candace Owens coming in with truth nukes here? I mean, well, she’s because people are leaking to her from the inside, and I think that’s entirely plausible.
It’s not like she doesn’t have any remaining friends there. You know, she worked there for a while. Well, when you
Malcolm Collins: look at their decline in viewership, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. Because you don’t wanna cut, when you’re in the middle of a decline like the Daily Wire is right now- Yeah ... you don’t wanna cut to your existing level because you’ve got to presume that it’s going to continue to decrease going forward.
Exactly, so
Simone Collins: maybe they’re kind of preemptive cuts. And keep in mind, this is, this is their second round of [00:01:00] layoffs. This, there was a 25% staff cut in April of 2025, so last year. And that was a year also in which they shut down their Benke Children’s Entertainment division. So their team is down over 60%, as far as anyone can tell.
Yeah ... and the changes coincide, as you alluded, to an 85% drop in Ben Shapiro’s YouTube viewership. In 2023 at their height, he had over 170 million monthly views, and now that’s down to 18 to 28 million. And then also, Ben Shapiro and Team Daily Wire are very publicly splitting from very major right-wing influencers after a very long history of sanctimonious gatekeeping.
They were like the Regina George of the conservative space, and now they’ve been deposed by some upstart redhead from Africa.
Malcolm Collins: Who’s Regina George? What? Wait, sorry, you are quoting some girl book here that people are... Who’s Regina George? Who’s some upstart- She’s the queen
Simone Collins: bee in Mean Girls From what?
Oh, from Mean- Mean Girls ... Girls movie.
Speaker 10: I love your skirt. Where did you get it? Thanks. [00:02:00] That is the ugliest effing skirt I’ve ever seen.
Simone Collins: Yes Yes. Gee whiz, Malcolm. Whoa. Grow a pair of tits. You need to be more girly. And he also- I know, okay, yeah, our fans will love that, right? You know, hold on. Right. Hold on. Oh, God. Hold on. What? Brian Gnome is doing it, you can do it too, okay? This is in addition, I should say- Mm
to the insanely stupid financial indulgences made by the Daily Wire, like dumping $10 million on a fantasy series that nobody asked for. And I will share more information about that one, ‘cause-
Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God ... what? Yeah. But I wanna get into well, one, what’s kind of cool about where Ben Shapiro is right now, the Daily Wire is more broadly, is, like, they’re falling into, like, our territory in viewership.
If they’re- ... he’s at, like, 14 million we’re growing pretty quickly, and we’re now, you know, regularly over, I wanna say, like, a half a million to, like, you know, 0.75 million a month- Yeah?
Simone Collins: Oh ...
Malcolm Collins: from our various sources. And so yeah, that’s [00:03:00] still, like, more than 10X lower than him. But, like, that’s a, that’s a measure...
Like, we were 10X smaller a year and a half ago, right? You know, if we look at, like, where we’re going and where our movement is going, which I think is really telling. One of the things I wanna throw out there with the Daily Wire is... Because I think that this is really telling, and you’re gonna go into some of it, but Ben Shapiro really attempted to control the direction of the conservative movement.
Yeah. And if you are an inside baseball player, like a conservative influencer person, right? Over the past however many years, you are aware of this. So, there’s the crazy emails that went out from Charlie Kirk, and it’s particularly crazy- See, I don’t
Simone Collins: remember these. Can you bring me up to speed?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so these leaked from Candace Owens, or somebody tied to Candace Owens, and they’re Charlie-
Simone Collins: She
Malcolm Collins: has
Simone Collins: been
Malcolm Collins: such a great source of gossip.
And, and look, this is the thing about Candace Owens leaks. Candace Owens, like, when she makes a mistake [00:04:00] with a leak or something like that, right? It’s- Makes a mistake ... a crazy, it’s a crazy way of misinterpreting it. Like, Charlie Kirk will say something like, “I feel like an alien somet-,” or like- Oh, yeah, and she’s like- Like, “I feel like an alien”
“He’s an alien time traveler.” Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and then he’s like, “Yeah, and I feel like I came from the future.” And she’s like- Oh ... then she goes out to everyone and she goes, “See? He came from the future.” But we don’t actually have any evidence of her manipulating evidence. She has never- Huh ... faked a tweet.
She’s never- No, she’s, I think she’s a very
Simone Collins: earnest person. She’s just going a little schizo and that’s okay. Even
Malcolm Collins: when she gets evidence wrong, she’ll, like, pull out flight logs and be like, “These flight logs say X.” And they’re real flight logs. It’s not that, they’re, they’re not fake. Yeah. And then people go to it and they go, “They don’t say that at all.”
So, so I’m just saying this so we can know that this is probably an accurate text exchange between her and Charlie Kirk, okay? Okay. So Charlie says, again like Ben has been going on like, “I’m gonna pick up the bloody microphone that Charlie dropped.” Really like he’s gonna carry on the movement for Charlie.
And it’s [00:05:00] like, Ben, you were anti-Charlie Kirk behind the scenes. Yeah. So let’s get into this. He said “The Ben thing involves me more than he wants to admit. He knows Jon Snow is stronger as the dragons fly higher,” Candace says. “100%. It pisses him off,” Charlie says. “Two reasons. You’ve always been a threat to him, and because you’re smarter,” Candace says.
“He... And he is sending his incestuous brother to go try and kill us,” Charlie says. Now, of course, he’s referencing Game of Thrones here. This is all an, an analogy.
Simone Collins: Yes. No one, but... Wait, did she like interpret it?
Malcolm Collins: Did you- Although people have, I... To me, this is clearly a Game of Thrones, but anyway, to continue. I, yeah,
Simone Collins: I mean, oh, look, I c- it’s a little on the nose.
I- And then
Malcolm Collins: Candace says, “And he views you as responsible for me.” And then Charlie says, “It’s worse. He views you as my slave 100%. ‘Control her’ is what he was trying to say to me when he called. You are bigger than Ben now. Walking into the White House yesterday, I realized that.” And then she says, “I know. He hates it.”
And then he says, [00:06:00] “We just have to treat him like noise. He wants you to punch down to him. His respect amongst movement fighters is quite low.” So note here he’s saying that like actually like conservative influ- And I’ve seen this as well, and this is something we’re gonna be talking about in another episode we’ll be doing.
But even if you look at like raw view count, nobody gives an F what Ben Shapiro has to say anymore, who’s like an on-the-ground operative in conservative politics at this point. In, in fact, he’s sort of seen among the operatives I know as a Boomer entertainer. Like that’s the only people who- That’s, that’s actually,
Simone Collins: yeah, it’s one of the themes if you look, and it’s not just him.
I think it’s, it’s some of his colleagues at the Daily Wire co-founders, et cetera, who are pushing in that direction. But it is definitely a, an older, more stagnant Boomer-ish, and by Boomer I just mean stagnant, unwilling to change with the times, not, not flexible mindset that is leading to the downfall.
Well, hold on. Yeah. Would, would classically Abby be his incestuous [00:07:00] brother? Because he is, he’s... Hasn’t he like commented on that beauty competition? They are classically
Malcolm Collins: Abby. I actually thought that episode was really fascinating. Yeah. So, just a quick aside Go check out this episode if you’re interested on Classically Abby, but he had this sister who he decided he was gonna promote for a period, and she was, like, all over YouTube when they were trying to promote her.
Oh, yeah, I mean, like,
Simone Collins: I don’t... You, you couldn’t go on YouTube without seeing her promoted content. I, I, I was shocked by it, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was, it was everywhere the amount of money they went into trying to astroturf her, and- Yeah ... it didn’t work remotely. Her channel has, has since shut down, but I mean, if you look at, like, her regular view counts you know, they were you know, at, at like a, a 2,000, 3,000 views per video.
Like, like nowhere. And I actually think that his failure with her as well as his attempts to control people both represent his disconnect in understanding the modern conservative movement and how the movement is changing- Yes ... as well as his intense [00:08:00] arrogance in it. Because everybody’s like, it’s just the, like, what does he represent in attempting to control the conservative movement?
They think of it as just, like, a Jewish influence, right? Like, just like a pro-Israel influence. Yeah. When the reality is, is that his attempt to control the movement was incredibly more damaging than just his Israel stuff. No, and
Simone Collins: yeah, I think people are overly focusing on his pro-Israel stance being the element of d- his downfall when really it is a constellation of mean girl gatekeeping behavior that’s very petty.
Which he did
Malcolm Collins: to us, by the way. For people who don’t know, when we started rising in the conservative sphere, he, like, dedicated a huge part of an episode to us and basically sent people out to, like, harass us, ‘cause we got harassed heavily after this episode. Where he called us basically insufferable nerds.
And I’m like, yeah, we’re taking your spot, bro. You used to be the right’s insufferable nerd, but now we’re coming in with actual nerd cred. Oh, yeah. No, and it’s, it’s funny [00:09:00] because he just sort of, like, learned a nerd, right? Like, he looked the- No, no, no. Well, I mean,
Simone Collins: to, to be clear, like, his... He, he rose really early and, and it wasn’t al- it was never really nerd.
It was, like, young wunderkind. Because keep in mind, he was 17 years old in 2004 when he published his first book, Brainwashed, while he was at UCLA. Really? Yeah. So, like, he, he was this, this early 2000s teenage author and columnist- whoever was like, “Whoa, who’s this young kid coming out of nowhere?” And th- that, that is, I think, where people get y- like, we get the, the nerd thing.
Because, like, in general you don’t get, like, a little Doogie Howser, like, like, brilliant little, like, genius- No, he’s still Doogie Howser ... and it also helps that they’re nerds
Malcolm Collins: He’s like grown-up Doogie Howser in a kid’s body in everyone’s mind, right? Like- And that’s the
Simone Collins: problem. It’s like you, you can’t maintain that branding successfully into your mid-40s.
But yeah. It’s, so it’s, it’s that combined with a [00:10:00] model they made a couple key bets that were really poorly thought through. So they, they decided well, what we’re gonna do with The Daily Wire to a certain extent is bet on all these, like, rising stars or sign all these rising stars before it became super obvious that you can just go off on your own.
So that’s when you get people like Candace Owens and Brett Cooper spinning off and just doing their own thing. Yeah. ‘Cause they’re not idiots, ‘cause they know they can do better and get more money and have more creative control and have better work-life balance if they just work on their own. And, and they can get the same number of views if not more, because they’re not being held down by this dead weight of The Daily Wire and their creative control.
And then beyond that, a lot of things just changed in a much more technical, less interesting algorithmic way, where ways- Mm-hmm ... that they used to grow viral on Facebook and on YouTube shifted and they did not adapt with the time in their format, in their title cards. They didn’t shift to shorts the same way.
They didn’t [00:11:00] go for the same sort of clickbaity viral content that got people a lot of views like Candace Owens. And, and to a lesser extent like Brett Cooper.
Malcolm Collins: He’s... I mean, I, I would argue it’s more than that. Like, I want you to lay out your argument, ‘cause you did a bunch of research on this.
Yeah. But I, I actually think the core problem is that his politics never evolved.
Simone Collins: The, the- Well, that too. Yeah, it’s, it’s in general a failure to evolve i- is, is the problem. Yes. Right.
Malcolm Collins: Like, like he didn’t need to join, Like if, if you look at the online culture war in the right, there are multiple interesting factions at play.
He’s just not aligned with any of them. He represents, in many ways, the last of the old guard. And it’s because that was the faction that he rose appealing to. And so nobody- Mm ... likes that because the modern conservative movement is intrinsically a rebellious movement fighting against inter- entrenched institutions.
But continue with your theory and then I’m gonna go with mine. So go.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So just, again, ‘cause it seems like you weren’t [00:12:00] super aware of, like, the full background. His, he, he rose as, as a teen, as a kid. And then his, his national breakout happened around 2012 to 2016 via viral campus speeches, virally Ch- very Charlie Kirk- ish.
There was one- Mm ... that was super, super famous. Like, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” I’m sure you’ll, you’ll vaguely remember this. And then he worked with Breitbart for a while- Mm ... but then resigned in 2016 amid Trump tensions, and then he launched The Ben Sha- Hold on, he didn’t just
Malcolm Collins: resign. I need to put some context on this.
Yeah ... so Steve Bannon said that Ben Shapiro was pushed at, like he had to aggressively push Ben Shapiro out- Mm ... because as Ben Shapiro was within Breitbart- Ah ... he aggressively tried to control the organization- Mm-hmm ... and control the brand of conservative politics that it was pushing.
Simone Collins: Which is very much his MO.
Yeah ... and we’re gonna get into how he’s done that more in, in the case of another person later. We’re gonna get there, I promise. But yeah. So then he, he... And, and it’s funny that he, like, [00:13:00] didn’t learn from his, his own actions ‘cause he, you know, just as he left Breitbart and then went on to found the, the Brett...
Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. The Brett Cooper Show. But no, he founded The Ben Shapiro Show. And then it was syndicated, and it was on 200 stations. And then it peaked at its influence from 2016 to 2020. And then- Uh-huh ... he launched The Daily Wire in, in- Oh ... 2015- Ah ... along with Jeremy Boreing.
Ah. And he also got really, like, prominent seed funding- Ah ... like building on this post-Breitbart momentum. Just as like a little side, he should have learned that, oh- Ah ... y- having major talent, you know, as, as a larger company like Breitbart, you know, is kinda risky ‘cause that major talent, just like I did, can just, you know, bustle off and make their own money.
But he didn’t learn from his own, you know, kind of predatory or maybe selfish behavior, whatever, which is fine. Like, I think it’s fine- Mm ... that he did that. Anyway one thing that’s really important to note here in terms of [00:14:00] why they saw- have seen a drop is they perfected this very Facebook era form of virality with super clicky headlines like, “SJW Owned,” and little debate clips.
Again- Yeah ... very Charlie Kirk style. Mm. And he was one of the most linked news domains- Ah ... on Facebook, and a very big powerhouse- Ah ... during the Trump and early COVID years. Right. And then so the, the... Oh, my gosh. Okay, let me ... Give me one moment here. There. So in 2023 is really when all of it came to its beautiful height, which is really, I mean, ultimately quite recent, right?
That’s, that’s three years ago- Mm-hmm ... when, when his YouTube reached 170 million. And this is especially during the October 7th sort of huge crash out in the media amid all the I- Israel-Hamas coverage. They, the Daily Wire that is, claimed revenues around 100 million annually by 2022. And then at that time, like well around the pandemic, they expanded in, with their Nashville Eight headquarters.
They launched Daily [00:15:00] Wire Plus in 2022. They, they launched Ventky in 2023. That’s, that’s the kids production arm which they then subsequently shut down. And then basically things started falling off. So, the, the, the layoffs I already mentioned starting last year and then continuing this year.
They really centered around their Nashville headquarters, which they, again, had founded in 2020, which seem to largely have just been kind of a stupid idea. I think they made a lot of hiring they never should have made. And in 2024, this is also key and not something discussed a lot, is Facebook changed its fees significantly, which de-ranked news and just gutted the Daily Wire’s traffic.
It completely collapsed for them, Facebook as a key distribution engine that had made them look super unbeatable in the mid-2010s.
Malcolm Collins: So that’s one- That’s fascinating Yeah And we never really distributed... So for people who know, we distribute on Rumble, Substack podcast networks and YouTube. But we never were able to successfully distribute on Facebook [00:16:00] because- Never
their their spot checks on video clips, which I include in a lot of episodes to be entertaining, are just way too restrictive for the show to operate. Yeah, yeah. I was actually thinking, should we look at syndication?
Simone Collins: I don’t know. I, I feel like that’s too old school. So no. But I mean, you know, if someone knows about it and thinks we should, chime into the comments, because we read the comments.
And thank you for everyone who comments, ‘cause- Yeah, if anyone knows how to do- ... you always have interesting things to say.
Malcolm Collins: I, I’d even... If somebody was willing to take over that for us and it made some money, I’d be willing to do profit-sharing with them.
Simone Collins: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, we’re, we’re definitely of the, like- Look how Aplay does- We can’t do everything
Malcolm Collins: YouTube, by the way
Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway in terms of their YouTube channel, independent YouTube analytics like vidIQ and some others show that his sh- that is to say Ben Shapiro’s channel views are down 70 to 85% from their 2023 peak. So like it went way up, it was amazing, but it has gone way down. I mean, so it should
Malcolm Collins: be- But, but you gotta keep in mind, Simone, that 70 to 80% reduction [00:17:00] is not even on the platform where they’ve been hit the hardest, which is Facebook.
Yeah. So just across platforms he’s being destroyed.
Simone Collins: 100%, yeah. It’s, and it’s not like at the same time YouTube has had some huge algorithm change. This is a, I think to a large extent mimetic, but also them not really changing their format with the times and title card with styles and stuff. But to be clear, it’s very common for flagship channels that get a lot of investment to have a slump.
Like it, it, it happens. But online commentators like Philip De- DeFranco have noted, and like they know better about this stuff than I do, that this is not, this change of traffic is not a slump. This is a collapse. Like this, there’s no way to be like, “Oh, like it’s fine.” And to be clear the, the Daily Wire team is like, “Oh well, you know, revenue year over year has been up under my leadership.”
That’s what Mr. Boring has been saying. But just ‘cause your revenue is up doesn’t mean you’re actually doing well. It could just mean that you’re like spending like massively wrong. But I mean, their layoffs indicate clearly that they’ve gotten over their skis on, on their spending. Yeah. Social media data shows- But another really
Malcolm Collins: [00:18:00] interesting thing about his YouTube that I’m noticing by looking at videos- Yeah
is the view count is wildly inconsistent. Oh,
Simone Collins: hmm.
Malcolm Collins: A, a lot of them get around like I, I wanna say to like 16K to like 50K views. Huh. And then occasionally, like every seventh one or something, gets half a million views.
Simone Collins: Bizarre. Super bizarre.
Malcolm Collins: Oh,
Simone Collins: I see
Malcolm Collins: why.
Simone Collins: Why? Wait, why?
Malcolm Collins: It’s a different in format.
The ones that do really well are the ones that have the word Ben on them and appear to be about an hour long. And- Okay ... the clips don’t do very well.
Simone Collins: So yeah, they’re really bad at clips apparently.
Speaker 12: So after we recorded this episode, we recorded an episode where we went deep into how botting works and how to spot when something is heavily botted. And, , unfortunately, Ben Shapiro’s channel has all the hallmarks of being almost entirely botted. , By what I mean by this is the videos that are getting the half a million views are the long-form [00:19:00] hour plus long videos.
Whereas the videos that are getting the, you know, 12K views, those are the shorter, piffier videos in like the 10 to 15 minute range. , That doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider how the YouTube algorithm works. , It should be the shorter videos getting more views and the longer videos getting fewer views.
, Like this is difficult for me to explain to someone who’s not a YouTube creator, , but basically it just makes absolutely no sense. It would never happen, at least not at this order of magnitude difference, which implies to me that he sees his long-form content as the important content, so he bots that, and he doesn’t bot the other content.
Which also makes sense when I think about the number of people I’ve talked to who genuinely seem to have watched a Ben Shapiro anything in the last, I don’t know, six months. , I’m not talking about in the distant past. You know, people used to watch him. I used to watch him in the distant past. I’m talking recently.
, And so, , yeah, my current intuition is he might have a smaller [00:20:00] regular audience than we have at this point.
To word this in another way, , it would make sense that his long-form podcast got orders of magnitude more views than his shorter form content, , if it was being hosted in other locations. So like if somebody said, “Oh, it gets orders of magnitude more than the YouTube content,” that makes sense. It doesn’t make sense that it’s getting orders of magnitude within the YouTube platform, because that would require some like alternate audience that just knows to tune in whenever the long-form thing is coming out, and YouTube doesn’t really work that way.
In addition to that, even if it was the case that it was working in that way, right? That for some reason, YouTube just knew that this long-form content algo-wise did much better, their company would stop posting the short-form content within the same channel. Because if it was a, a short, okay, , that doesn’t affect the algo on the long.
So sometimes people will post shorts on channels where shorts don’t do well. It doesn’t really matter. But if it’s like a 15-minute video, and they’re [00:21:00] often doing orders of magnitude higher multiple hour videos, okay? Or like hour and 30 minute videos, that, those short videos would be nuking the longer videos in the algo.
Like you just wouldn’t have those in the same channel. You’d put them on a different channel, unless you were botting
So a couple other notes here. , Just so people aren’t confused, when I say his short form content, I’m not talking about short form vertical videos. Those run on a separate algorithm and wouldn’t be hurting the long form videos. I’m talking like ten to fifteen minute videos, which would severely hurt the long form videos if they’re this underperforming.
In addition, Candace Owens has said that the channel heavily bots. Given that she worked for them, she would likely know this. But I think the most important bit of evidence that we can look at here is let’s look at our video from yesterday. So this video has only been out for a day. It has thirteen thousand two hundred and twenty-nine views and nine hundred and thirty-four comments.
Okay? Now let’s look, , at [00:22:00] Ben Shapiro’s video, , from, , the other day that presumably has two hundred thousand views. Okay, so, , more than twenty x what ours got around. All right, it has eight hundred and sixty comments, literally fewer comments. How is that conceivably possible?
Speaker 23: That does not make sense.
Speaker 17: Now here you might be saying, “Okay, Malcolm, maybe, maybe, but why don’t we look at some other metric to try to understand if he’s botting? Why don’t you look at the most liked comments on each of the videos to look at the variable interaction? Because maybe people just don’t comment on his videos, but they spend time liking the comments on his videos.”
Okay, so we’ll go to our video. , Top not pinned comment, two hundred thirty-nine up votes. Next one hundred and eighty-six. Next one hundred and twenty-two. Next eighty-nine. Okay. Now let’s go to his top comments. First, two hundred and [00:23:00] nineteen. Hmm, that makes sense. Then ten, forty-two, eighty-six, forty-one, thirty-seven.
Excuse me? Excuse me? Come on, guys
Speaker 18: Presumably looking at a video here that’s getting around 20X the number of views, but getting around 20X lower engagement? Explain that to me
Speaker 23: Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
Speaker 24: So a Redditor had looked into this more so I’m putting the image on screen here. “Notice how the recently released Ben Shapiro episode has under a hundred thousand views.
, The Ben Shapiro from the day before has three hundred thousand views, and the Ben Shapiro episode from forty-eight hours before that has five hundred thousand views. Keep in mind, because I checked a few hours ago, , and this is what I found. Notice the pattern again. The video from today is at a hundred K views.
The video from yesterday or thirty-six hours ago is now magically at five [00:24:00] hundred K views, and the video from forty-eight hours before, which was at five hundred and f- uh, sixty-four K views, “Has now magically only gained four K views in the twenty-four to thirty hours.”
So basically, normally, so for people who aren’t aware, you get your biggest viewership right after the episode is released. That is not what Ben Shapiro is seeing. Right after the episode is released, he’s not getting that much a bump in views. It’s like the day after he gets a linear large jump in views up until the video hits five hundred thousand views, then it completely drops off,
He also notes, and I’m not gonna go into how he calculated this because it’s boring, , you can look it up yourself, but that during the period of slower interaction, that beginning period, he’s getting one comment for every 30 views. During the period of quick growth that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, he’s getting one comment for every 500 views
But they pointed out something else that is very indicative of viewbotting for the Ben Shapiro episode videos, , is that they almost [00:25:00] always get around exactly 500,000 views. That’s not normal. Normally on like your bigger videos, you’re going to be going up, you know, 30% sometimes, down 30% sometimes, have an occasional b- episode bomb, have an occasional episode do really well.
So if we go outside of the episodes that he appears to currently be populating to five days ago, uh, right? And we’ll just go through the final view counts on the Ben Shapiro episodes. 489,000 views, 478,000 views, 517,000 views, 517,000 views, 571,000 views, 582,000 views, 504,000 views, 612,000 views, 480,000 views, 529,000 views, 605,000 views, 541,000 views.
Do you see how absolutely insane this is? This is very clearly viewbotted.
Simone Collins: The social- And if you look
Malcolm Collins: at like, I mean, the title cards aren’t bad. Like, I’m looking at this. It looks a lot like one of our title cards.
Like, here’s the most recent long [00:26:00] form episode. Here’s how China spies on the US. Hmm, wonder where they got that idea from. Are they watching our episode from, like, three days ago? No. I, I, I bet one of their writers is just, like, a fan of ours. Oh, no. It
Simone Collins: was, it was a major headline. The, the ... I think it was with the London Times, had been really pr- it, it, this, this this young woman who had been spied on I think it was Elsa- Yeah, but
Malcolm Collins: we had to delay our episode, like, a week after we filmed it, so it’s weird that he-
Simone Collins: Right.
Well, they, they’re also produced and edited. It takes them a while to get stuff out too. Like, everyone needs time, so you know. I don’t know. But anyway, social- Right ... blade data shows Daily Wire’s YouTube su- subscriber base has plateaued or shrunk in 15 of the last 16 months, since early 2025. And their website traffic by March 2026 was about half of what it had been a year earlier.
And Shapiro has admitted that revenue is down from 2024, even while insisting that cash flow remains strong relative to critics’ expectations. What is he getting cash flow
Malcolm Collins: from?
Simone Collins: Probably, like, Daily Wire [00:27:00] Plus subscriptions. Like, they’re trying to be the Christian Disney, you know? And I’m gonna talk about that too.
And
Malcolm Collins: yeah, I wanna talk about that, because what’s interesting is they tried so hard to create all of these alternate forms of conservative media. Yeah. And yet when we look at the conservative media creators that I think people are actually watching there’s really two of them that stand out for me, and, and, and they’ve both been really excellent sort of coming on the conservative media scene.
One is Freedom Tunes. Oh. Freedom Tunes is excellent, excellent show.
Simone Collins: Just in terms of entertainment. Yeah, there’s, like, short form stuff ... and then the other is
Malcolm Collins: Babylon Bee’s
Simone Collins: media. Yeah, but no, they’re, they’re literally, they’re trying to make just generally conservative and Christian, like, shows.
This is not- But nobody wants shows anymore I know. I know. Well, and we live in a, a market very saturated with shows, also in which time has collapsed. People are watching stuff, stuff from, like, 1968. They’re watching stuff from 1992. Like, it, no one needs ... We, we really [00:28:00] don’t at this point need more serialized content in the same way that we did before.
And we’ve, we’ve talked about this in other episodes. Anyway, though- Well, and that’s why
Malcolm Collins: I mention Freedom Tunes specifically. Oh. Because I think Freedom Tunes delivers content to the right in a way that the right wants to consume content, right? Like, it is- Yeah ... funny, it is irreverent and I think we’re beginning to see the bubbling of, and guys, like, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m predicting this now.
What is coming out of The the Skybrows Cinematic Universe- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah ... which is like a collection of content creators who have just created some amazing songs. I’ll, I’ll play one from, like, a Kirsha song on here right now. This is from the Holy Ball, which isn’t even Skybrow. This is like a Skybrows inspired guy.
Well, but I love
Simone Collins: Holy Ball. It’s fantastic. Yeah, his, his style’s my favorite. His, his music- Yeah ... is better than Skybrows, I think.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Speaker 5: call me a racist, fascist, nationalist grifter, bootlicking [00:29:00] theocrat, literally Hitler, colonizer Nazi, incel, bigot, white supremacist, privileged idiot, snowflake, pick me, toxic, homophobe, CHUD troll, sexist, deplorable, xenophobe, shill dog whistlin’, transphobe, simp stan, alt-right, neocon, tyrant.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then you’ve got obviously, like, the Leaflet stuff, which is doing pretty well these days. Oh, my- And- ... yeah, amazing ... and then th- like, her music videos, right? Like, which are- They’re so good
some of them are very clearly inspired by our podcast, which is fantastic ‘cause it feels like- Thank you ... you have this virtuous circle of you know, we have an idea that we take an hour to say, and then she makes it into, like, a two-minute music video that is really catchy. And then you know, it, it, it spreads and normalizes, right?
Speaker 3: よ。大切な人にちょっとしたプッシュ。理想の自分に変えちゃお。 液に溺れて[00:30:00] る時は愛情たっぷりでほどほどにって教えてあげよ。全部肯定するだけじゃダメだよね。優しい気持ちで批判するのも最高の愛だよ。 , groom, groom your wife.Pick her up dive and keep growing.Groom, groom, groom your husband.Get us stronger, faster.
Malcolm Collins: Or one, one of the things I found really crazy recently, have you seen the Asmogold going back over The Onion videos from back in the day to show how right they were?
Simone Collins: No. That sounds really fun. Okay. I will
Malcolm Collins: play one, yes here. But anyway, continue.
Speaker 2: Author Christine Eckard is here to show us some exercises to reduce stress.
Speaker 4: The first thing I like to do is imagine my money-related stress as the most disgusting, terrifying creature I can think of.
Okay. I like to imagine an ugly, greasy little creature with a hooked nose and oily black hair. Oh.
Speaker 3: Oh, he is scary. I
Speaker 4: call him the Grabbler because he’s a greedy [00:31:00] little monster who wants to grabble up all my money. Ooh. Mm. Now close your eyes- Mm-hmm ... and picture the Grabbler.
He invented interest rates like the ones on your credit card. Oh. Oh. He’s taking the jobs, because Grabblers only hire their own kind. Now imagine the Grabbler slowly disintegrating like a pile of ashes blown away- Oh ... by a purifying wind. Ah. Ooh, what a relief. Yeah. I feel so relaxed.
Simone Collins: Right. So let’s, let’s talk about stumbles other than YouTube.
We, we just need to go over the fact that, like, there were some e- extremely prominent splits, both in terms of from the team, but also memetically. So you had Brett Cooper leave in December 2024 voluntarily. It was a, you know, conscious uncoupling, but she clearly understood she could do better on her own, just like Ben Shapiro himself did also with Candace Owens.
It was mutual. Jeremy Boreing announced that their partnership ended was for mutual reasons. But it was amid really public feuds, like Candace posted this [00:32:00] Christ is King post and defended Kanye West’s anti-Sem- Semitism basically, and Shapiro was like, “Dude, if you’re unhappy, just quit.” And so she quit and called herself finally free.
And, you know, the rest is, is, is history. You, you already know. She’s, she’s posting receipts. She’s leaking stuff even now about- Yeah ... Full Send Media. I mean,
Malcolm Collins: Ben Shapiro has been one of the... I, I might say the single most... Like, if, if you consider all humans that have lived maybe in the past 25 years, maybe even 50 years Ben Shapiro is probably what, the, the single worst for the long-term safety of the Jewish people.
The- Yeah, that’s fair ... the number of almost every prominent anti-Semite was basically minted by Ben Shapiro’s constant rambling. Let’s talk about that.
Simone Collins: Yeah, so I’m gonna, I’m just gonna pull some quotes from the Tucker Carlson interview with Nick Fuentes where, like, you really get a, a good succinct layout of the, the manner in which almost it seems like Brett [00:33:00] Shapiro is personally responsible for the anti-Semitic radicalization of Nick Fuentes.
He is. He is personally responsible ... and I think this also represents an ideological split. Yeah. No, really. And, and I’m linking this all in the show notes. I have show notes if you go to Patreon or Substack, and by the way, thanks for everyone who supports us. You guys are amazing and we love you.
I, you can find the video linked along with all my other sources. He, he talks about how basically way before he was a big deal at all, he’s just, like, this college student posting online Ben Shapiro gatekept and belittled him even, you know, when he ba- had no reason to. He describes, Nick Fuentes describes first publicly criticizing Shapiro in the Daily Wire over Israel and, and not in, like, a, like, “I hate Israel” way, but in a, like, “I don’t, like, do we need to support them this much?”
He I’ll just quote him. Nick says, “I tweeted Ben Shapiro. I said, ‘You know, I’ve never seen anything on the Daily Wire that’s actually critical of Israel.’ And he quote tweets me and he says, ‘To accuse a Jew of, of dual loyalty [00:34:00] is the surest sign of antisemitism.’ ‘He immediately called you an anti-Semite,’ said Tucker.
Mm-hmm. So I’m driving to Christmas Eve mass with my family and I see on Twitter the notification comes up. Ben Shapiro quote tweets me calling me an anti-Semite. And then I said something like, ‘If you’re gonna if you’re gonna, if you’re China first, you should live in China. If you’re Mexico first, you should live in Mexico.
If you’re Israel first, maybe you should go live in Israel.’” Which is a really great rejoinder. And again, he quotes tweets Nick and says, “You’re an anti-Semite,” the same night. And then Fuentes in the same interview with Tucker frames Shapiro’s deciding really early on to just- And I, I wanna point out here, cut him down inside the conservative
Malcolm Collins: movement ... for Jews who are unaware of this, you cannot throw around the word anti-Semite for non-anti-Semites. If you do, that is an extremely loaded term. That is- Yeah, it is. It is ... telling whatever racist person you’re talking to- And he was just saying, like, “By the
Simone Collins: way, nothing on the Daily Wires is, has ever, you know- Been like, “Hey, you know, Israel...”
And Israel is an imperfect country. There are que- and there are many people in Israel who fight for Israel, who die for Israel, who question the way that it’s [00:35:00] governed. Like, it is not wrong for him to point that out, you know? Right. And it is weird that The Daily Wire has never been like- But it is wrong within a
Malcolm Collins: certain perspective, like Ben wanting to com- Ben thought he could just shut it down.
Like, any criticism- Yes ... I can shut it down because I have the cultural power. And what he seemed, well, I mean, he, whether or not he’s aware of this or not, we’ll talk about why he’s so blinded to this, but he’s wielding woke weapons. Mm. And woke weapons radicalize right-wing people against- 100% ... whatever faction is using them.
Yeah. He’s trying to be like, “How dare you say that? You’re an anti whatever phobe.” Mm-hmm ... and, and as such, I’m gonna attempt to de-platform you, which he did do- Yeah ... to, to Nick Fuentes. Continue. Yeah. And to us. Keep in mind, like the reason I believe all this from Nick Fuentes is he did the same to us, right?
And we weren’t even anti-Israel, we were just too nerdy for him. Too nerdy. And we didn’t even
Simone Collins: tweet at him. We didn’t even criticize The Daily Wire. We were just talking and he, yeah. Anyway. We were just talking, yes. Nick says [00:36:00] In his interview, it turned out that Cassie Dillon, she texted him earlier and she wanted him to take me under his wing.
And he goes, I’ll take a look. And so I guess the two of them were kind of grooming me in a sense. They wanted me to go maybe be a Daily Wire guy or something, looking at me as a potential conservative activist or influencer. And they started paying attention to me. This is totally believable in my opinion because they’ve cultivated other talent to have on their platform.
It’s part of their business model. He continued. And the more critical of Israel I was, I started to get this really intense pushback from the both of them and from a lot of the people at the Daily Wire. For them, it was easy to say if they detected that a promising young guy was going to become anti-Israel in the conservative movement, they could crush that person easily and grind them under the heel.
So they sort of were alerted, oh, there’s a precocious young guy that isn’t on board with Israel. We’ll keep an eye on him. And if he gets too vocal or popular, we’ll cut him down. We’ll crush him. Basically from then on, it was just this escalating series of blacklisting censorship hit pieces, rumors to [00:37:00] try to ostracize me from the movement.
And he goes on to link Shapiro and the Daily Wire and their circle to efforts to isolate him and get him fired. And I’m not going to go into like the full quotes on all this. It involves this clip from Media Matters. And then he eventually- We went over this
Malcolm Collins: in our episode on Nick Fuentes, the first one we did on him, the big one.
But yeah- And then he explicitly
Simone Collins: ties Shapiro’s attacks to his own radicalization and then turn against the conservative establishment. He says, looking back with that 2020 hindsight, I mean, Ben Shapiro seems like a big part of your political evolution. You went from a fan acolyte to an opponent and then just pivoted against everything he believes.
That’s what Tucker said. Nick said, yeah, it was because it was this new dialectic that Trump forced. So once you accept that, a lot of the way of doing things becomes impossible to support or justify. The contradiction becomes apparent. I realized that the conservative movement was completely bankrupt in a way that became very radical.
Anyway, it was a very, you should go watch the interview if you [00:38:00] haven’t. But speaking of which The, I think Tucker Carlson- But I, I, I wanna
Malcolm Collins: point out he’s done this to us too. Like, it is loud and noticeable when him or the Daily Wire are involved in a conservative event, we are blacklisted. We don’t get approved, we don’t get invited.
They have never... It is weird that they’ve never reached out to us or done anything with us given that, like, almost every major conservative influencer has done something with us. Like, but, but anyone who is remotely tied to the Daily Wire just completely- Well, and you’re, you’re s- ... blacklisting us
you’re so
Simone Collins: right in that they’re using a very leftist tactic, because a very common leftist thing attack is like, “Oh, you spoke with this bad person? That makes you bad.” There’s this, like, contamination accusation, and that is exactly what Shapiro did with Tucker Carlson after Tucker Carlson had this interview with Nick Fuentes.
Shapiro blasted Carlson as an intellectual coward and moral imbecile [00:39:00] for interviewing Nick Fuentes and echoing antisemitic tropes on Israel and influence. And then Carlson retaliated by slamming Shapiro’s many attacks on Jesus and immigration views and pro-Israel stance- ... as bigotry and cruelty, especially on Iran policy.
And this, this just deepened their rift. And so now you have Ben Shapiro even radicalizing Tucker Carlson further and then- Which
Malcolm Collins: he did do. Like, you, you- I know ... again- I know ... Jews, you gotta understand this. If you call someone an antisemite when they’re not being an antisemite, the standard American cultural reaction is, “Well, I guess I just hate the Jews.”
Yeah. Like, if, if I’m gonna get called it anyway like, it actually takes a lot of mental effort on my part to not have that reaction when it happens to us. Yeah. Because- Yeah ... it is the standard reaction that an American, culturally speaking, is going to have. And- So another
Simone Collins: example of Ben Shapiro going after anyone who touches the bad person, right?
Again, this is, I said Regina George from [00:40:00] Mean Girls at the beginning of this ‘cause he’s- Yeah ... he’s doing ex- He’s being a c- high school mean girl. Because now when, So, so even after all this, right? So now he hates Tucker Carlson and he hates Candace Owens ‘cause they’ve turned on him. And then at Turning Point USA’s America Fest in December 2025, Ben Shapiro called Megyn Kelly a charlatan for, for platforming Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson.
And Megyn
Malcolm Collins: Kelly used to be his friend and helped him a lot in gaining his public recognition.
Simone Collins: Well, and to your point- Like- ... just like you are, she fired back, accusing Shapiro and Bari Weiss of fueling antisemitism by suppressing Israel criticism, and she defended her neutrality and friendship with Owens calling Shapiro Israel first, because he, he is.
And she, she was... And again, he w- She wasn’t, like, defending their stances. She was simply having discourse with them, and he, in that very leftist way, is like, “Oh, by talking with them, you’re platforming them. You’re now bad.” That’s such a leftist- Shelton seriously ... sentiment.
Malcolm Collins: That’s such a woke sentiment, right?
Like, everyone- Yeah ... on the right knows [00:41:00] this. I know, I know.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But, like- It’s crazy ... okay, so I wanna, before you go further here because- Okay, okay ... we’re not getting to meat and potatoes, so I’m gonna get to some meat and potatoes. Okay.
Simone Collins: Okay. Why
Malcolm Collins: did he actually lose his audience? ‘Cause I don’t think he lost his audience because of all of these missteps.
He lost his audience because his brand of conservatism doesn’t make sense in a modern context. He’s going out there with a very like, you know, anti-porn, like, like s- s- specifically for widespread pornography bans. Trad wife, like women don’t have a job, you know, stay at home, take on a traditional role.
Their role is raising the family. You know, very anti oh, you know, Malcolm and Simone are too nerdy to, to be in all of this, you know, what, what are they doing here? And we go through with every one of these. You can watch our episodes. You know, he’s, he’s video games and, and lewd things are terrible, you know, all, all of the, the, the traditional things here.
And there’s a way to do something like this that is at least entertaining. But he just comes off [00:42:00] as, like, morally policing in, like, the driest Old lady sort of a way that you can. And what makes it so perverse and I think turns people so strongly against him is at least if he pretended to live out the lifestyle that he was preaching- Mm-hmm
people would take it seriously. But he’s here promoting a woman’s job is to raise kids and his wife is a doctor, and he can’t help it. It very much fits the trope of the, the Jewish person who is attempting to infect a culture with ideas that they know will eventually destroy that culture- Mm ... and not follow them themselves.
And I think that a lot of people functionally see it that way, and are really disgusted by it, right? Like v- so for example, him attacking us for being too nerdy and everything like that. Like obviously you’re a giant nerd, like Ben. Like just maybe, maybe a little more old school, maybe a little more prestigious with your Lord of the [00:43:00] Rings nerdiness.
You can go hang out with Stephen Colbert. I’m sure you guys would get along great. Instead of your- Sure ... your anime and whatever nerdiness. But like when he tried to make his sister work, I think he perfectly showed how much he didn’t get the modern conservative audience because what he presented her as was this non-salacious, perfectly presentable rule follower, right?
It did- she, she never mentions that she’s really into Warhammer tabletop gaming. Or- And she
Simone Collins: totally should have. Yeah, like against Sarah etc. More like
Malcolm Collins: if she led with that and it was a, a big boobed whatever lady d- doing tabletop miniature painting while talking about you know, like the nerdier parts of conservative politics and like- Yeah, the
Simone Collins: busty Warhammer conservative mom.
People would’ve loved that. Come on Oh,
Malcolm Collins: people would’ve been so into it. Right. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, he thinks that you need to- Pretend to be this sort of fake [00:44:00] thing that the internet hates more than anything. And, and, and this is the thing. It, it, there are ... Like, we are fighting a meaningfully annoying deontological faction that is, like, genuinely, you know, taking blows and fighting back.
But this faction leans in on all of this, like, curmudgeonly pearl clutcher stuff, but does it in either a profoundly entertaining way, like they’re, they’re being over the top about it, they’re being ... nick Fuentes falls into this category to some extent, right? Like, at least when he complains in the sort of the, oh, the, the whatever anime nerds and video game
Right? Like, he’ll attack them in a way that’s entertaining, right? And over the top and vitalistic instead of just like, “Mm, well, don’t do this. It’s weird and you’re weird for doing it and I don’t like it.” Or they are, and I don’t like this faction much either, but they are growing a lot they’re UK boring.
Typically former leftists who have adopted a lot of these- I do love
Simone Collins: that boring, there’s a special brand [00:45:00] that is UK boring. Yeah, there’s, there’s yeah. U- UK vanilla. American boring is different. And
Malcolm Collins: y- and you bite into it and you’re like, oh my God, this is just, like, filled with unprocessed vanilla beans.
Like, that’s what I’m like when I, I, I bite into, like ... But I think that that’s being replaced by the Reform Party, because the Reform Party is pretty boss. Yes. When they’re like, “We need to melt down- 100% ... Nigerians to fill potholes.” Like, that’s an elected representative. I’m like, okay, you go, boy. Okay, continue.
Continue.
Simone Collins: Right. Well, let’s go into their conservative Disney boondoggle and, Yeah, yeah, let’s get into it ... this whole thing. So a lot of this comes down to Ben Shapiro’s co-founder and, and the former CEO of the Daily Wire Jeremy Boreing, who pursued this Breitbart style politics is downstream of culture vision pouring money into kids content, though of course they shut down that branch, feature films, and merch like anti-woke razors and chocolates.
And he was trying [00:46:00] to build this conservative Hollywood in Nashville. And you can tell by the pattern of their layoffs that, like, they’re quickly discovering that no one wanted this and it’s not making any money. Of course not. No ... he, he’s no longer the CEO of the Daily Wire, but he is leading creative stuff still, so I don’t know if they’re gonna keep throwing money at this, but he’s not gone.
Malcolm Collins: He should be gone. His name’s Boreing. What did you wanna
Simone Collins: say? No, I’m sorry.
Malcolm Collins: No, I’m gonna take determinism. - Oh,
Simone Collins: well. Yeah. Yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: no what I was gonna say was if we look at this sort of content- ... like conservative kids content, why doesn’t conservative kids content do well? Because I show my kids conservative kids content, and it’s cartoons from the 1980s.
Yeah. And it’s free, and it’s on YouTube, and I can just push play- Yeah ... and it’s on forever. Yeah. And I can show them G.I. Joe, where American soldiers go and shoot a bunch of people with a lisp, right? Like, that’s what we’re all about as Americans. You
Simone Collins: know, and we know that we build- Ooh, it’s such a gay theme song, though.
I, in, in the best way. I mean that, [00:47:00] I mean that in a good way. Well, no, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: We teach kids, y- you know, the G.I. Joes are a little f- you know, there’s some gay undertones. They’re extremely
Simone Collins: gay, and it’s wonderful. But they’re not- It’s, it’s, yeah ... they’re
Malcolm Collins: not faggy about it, okay? They’re basically like Sea Spray in, I, I gotta play this from, like, The Venture Brothers, right?
Like, this is G.I. Joes. But no- Oh, no ... it’s, it’s fantastic, right? You don’t need to be overly puritanical about this stuff. And he feels- Yeah ... you need to be, and there just isn’t... Like, when I’m like, “Okay, what conservative content do I want to see more of?” Like, if I was like, “Okay, I wanna see more, like, explicitly conservative media to shape ideas,” right?
Yeah. Yeah. Honestly it’s just more cinematic Sky Брауз Universe stuff. Like- Yeah ... there was a feature length anime made about Leaflet and Powder. And it’s l- No ... it’s literally, like, 60 minutes. Huge. It’s got a fight scene, and then the, the CEO- Oh, my goodness ... of Twitter tries to trap, trap them in a crystal, and they end up battling him.
And, um Breaking out, breaking out Asmogold, who, who teaches him to, [00:48:00] to not destroy him or whatever. You know, it’s fun. It’s, it’s, it’s very well done. But like, like that’s entertaining.
Speaker 7: This woman in anime is voiced by Asian now. I guess I unban her. Quang!
Speaker 8: Do you know why I’m here, Quang? You unbanned another 2D cutting board chess Vtuber without my approval.
Malcolm Collins: And I think, you know, we’re a year away, two years away from like full links anime being able to be easily [00:49:00] made from these sorts of systems.
Yes. And you know the moment that that stuff gets out there, this sort of cinematic universe that we’ve begun cultivating... And I wanna be honest, I’ve had like a realization and a change in how I see the world and the wider conservative scene. Part of it was hugely influenced by your recent appearance on Chris Williamson.
Part of it was hugely influenced by the growth of Leaflet and, and her seller humanist philosophy. And by the way, for people who like she- At least she’s feminism
Simone Collins: all the way. Ah, she gets it. Yeah, she’s huge. Gets it. You know she’s like
Malcolm Collins: on Twitch like a third bigger than Kirsha on, on YouTube. She’s like white Spotify.
Which gives me hope for
Simone Collins: humanity. Yeah, man. Yeah. And all she’s pushing is like- Oh my goodness ... we gotta get
Malcolm Collins: to the stars. We gotta get to the stars. Yes. This, this fun, n- not overly theosophical set. Yes. But the thing is, is like, you’re up there and you’re next to all these like do- all the other leaders of the prenatalist movement, but there’s all the, like, stodgy, you know, the, the statistic pushers and everything like that, and they’re all like, “Well, if we can move the numbers here and here and [00:50:00] here,” and you’re just like, “Oh, you.
You know it won’t work. You know it won’t work.” Right ... and it doesn’t even matter. Why are we even trying to save these people? They hate us. They are in opposition to everything we care about. Let’s just breed, spread our culture to the future, and we’ll replace them. And then within the parts of the Conservative Party that are still breeding but are not technophilic, they’re also not particularly long-term economically relevant, right?
So, like why am I even stressed about fighting them? Just cultivate our movement, cultivate our wider ideological movement keep it fun, keep it light and don’t, don’t worry about the conservatives that are eschewing technology and whining about this is bad and that’s bad because they’re falling out, they’re crashing out of the, the slip stream.
Like it’s like we’re, we’re, we’re warp speeding into the future, you know, like a, a, a time machine or something, and somebody falls out of a time thing and they like r- more rapidly [00:51:00] wither and turn to dust. Like, that’s what is repeatedly happening, right? We don’t need to worry about all of them because we know we’re in the driver’s seat in this, okay?
And all we need to do is keep going and keep working our hardest to do what’s right for humanity. And I, I have a feeling that we’re doing that, and there is no large faction that has, that seems to have a place in the future that isn’t on our wider team. So, like, why am I even stressing about these people, right?
Anyway, continue.
Simone Collins: Right. You were talking about all the cool Skybrow Cinematic Universe stuff that we love, that we enjoy. You were talking about Freedom Tunes. Well, what does The Daily Wire think that people want? The Daily Wire thinks we want Pen- the Pendragon Cycle: The Rise of Merlin. I sent you the preview.
You don’t need to watch it, but I sent you the preview on WhatsApp.
Speaker: All of this is an illusion, an echo of a voice that has [00:52:00] died. And soon that echo will cease.
Simone Collins: It just comes across as, like, the Game of Thrones reboot that nobody wanted, and they’re, like, c- like, cribbing Game of Thrones hair and just, like, people wafting around in costumes, and it just, it just looks oppressively- It’s, it learn,
Malcolm Collins: it’s the conservative version of woke media
Simone Collins: Yeah, but, like, no one... I, I just don’t under- I don’t, I don’t understand why anyone wants it. The series now is live. It’s available. It premiered on Daily Wire Plus this January. All seven episodes were released. They spent 10, at least $10 million on this with a minimum of one million per episode for this seven-episode season.
And this is, this is not my conjecture. This comes from Jeremy [00:53:00] Boreing marking it as the company’s most ambitious production to date. They filmed it in Italy and Hungary. I- it’s this huge thing, and it, I mean, I don’t think it’s doing so well. It, it holds an IMDb rating of 7.9 out of 10 from over 2,400 votes on Rotten Tomatoes.
It has an audience score of 86 to 88%, which is okay, but I’m like, I don’t feel like watching this. That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good, Simone. It, it ranks moderately at number 2,181 out of 35,000 shows, so yay, top- That’s
Malcolm Collins: pretty good for what they were doing. Look, 2,000- They tried to- It’s, I don’t care about that.
I don’t wanna watch that stuff anymore
Simone Collins: Well, yeah. And, and some, some outlets, to be fair, they call it uneven or terrible. Of course they would- ... some like it ... because The
Malcolm Collins: Daily Wire did it. I don’t care what some outlets say. That’s true. That’s true. I bet it’s fine. I bet it’s fine and boring.
Simone Collins: But financially, it’s unclear as to whether it has been a financial boon for them, and I doubt, I highly doubt that it is.
But [00:54:00] I think the really big thing is that when you, when you roll all this together, what you have is this shift from... Their, their strategic shift from in-demand, inexpensive content, heavy on AI, heavy on clips, heavy on being, you know, bombastic and fun and flexible, to not highly demanded, highly produced content.
You know, creating this Nashville headquarters, and we’re gonna do all these productions, and we’re gonna make culture, and, and you’re gonna want it and watch it instead of just watching ‘90s cartoons like everyone else. And I feel like Pendragon is really the symbol of The Daily Wire drifting from just cheap, high margin podcasts and political commentary, which just, I mean, from a business standpoint, is way more sustainable, into this expensive streaming style production that there’s a lot of competition there.
They, they didn’t have any particular, like, moat or special ability that, that, you know, would make them uniquely good at entering this space in which they have no head up or like, sorry, like, advantage. And then [00:55:00] also their failure to evolve. You know, as, as social platforms shifted towards short-form and live streaming, Ben Shapiro didn’t.
And, and their pacing didn’t change. They, they are just being left in the dust by people like Candace Owens, who’s all about her live high drama streaming. They have a very brittle model in that they wanted to sign talent and then build their audience and s- and then monetize under them with this Daily Wire umbrella.
And then it just became trivial for, like, their true stars to just walk away, while the, all these people they tried to manufacture, from, like, Classically Abby to Reagan replacing Brett Cooper just not really working out. And then you have- You have- ... on top of that all the sanctimonious mean girl leftist woke gatekeeping.
It’s no wonder that The Daily Wire is winding down at this point. I don’t know if there’s any coming back for them.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s, [00:56:00] it’s sad to see where this is going. But at the same time as they have been falling apart, our movement’s been growing. Yeah, I mean- and I’m excited to see this because it’s fun.
Our movement is fun, and their movement- It is ... was boring and sad and stodgy, and I’m done with it. I am, I am So done with, even, even the culture war stuff. I’m like, “Why even care about it,” right? We’re, we’re fighting against people who don’t matter. They either don’t have kids or don’t have technology.
Simone Collins: Yeah, it, it’s boring and not engaging, so why would we care? Even if they’re attacking us, it’s like, like, “come at me with something more interesting please,” you know? Yeah. Oh, so lame. So lame ... why,
Malcolm Collins: why listen to somebody about a trad lifestyle who’s not living a trad lifestyle, right? Like, why, you know, why, why...
W- when we come at you and we’re like, “This is how you should structure your marriage. This is how you should, you know, have kids and raise kids,” we never once- We live it ... no, yeah, nobody, people are like, “Oh, you’re doing it wrong,” which is fine, but [00:57:00] nobody doubts that, like, we sincerely believe what we’re saying and are trying it, and change our mind when presented with evidence we find compelling.
Mm-hmm ... we had a really sweet letter recently about the whole sword and shield marriage thing, you know, the wife d- doing the, the safer stuff and the husband... and it really was big for me because it showed, I think a lot of people, when we did that video, people were like, “Well, not everyone’s trying to change the world in the way you guys are trying to change the world.
Not everyone can wanna save humanity and everything like that.” But in the way that they were implementing it, the wife was managing, you know, the, the safe stuff, right? And the husband was managing trying to recreate sort of youth sports in a way that wasn’t super costly, so you don’t need to travel between states and everything like that.
And that is actually focused on fun and kids and not creating show ponies for rich parents. And the moment I heard that, I was like, “Oh, obviously this is so something that’s needed in our society right now.” And it, and, and obviously so many parts of our world have become broken. You don’t need to [00:58:00] empower your husband to save all of society, but to become a force for good within your community that is durable, and not something boring and perfunctory like serving in a soup kitchen or something that’s exciting for a lot of people.
And, and we- Mm-hmm ... present a way that you can do that, and then other people go with it and they’re like, “Oh, this is great. This actually really makes me feel a lot better about being alive because I’m trying to make the world a better place,” right? And I’m not gonna step back from this, the people who are like, “Well, not everybody wants to make the world a better place.”
And it’s, try. Not just with your family, but, like, we all have a responsibility to fix our society as it crumbles around us.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway, that’s my spicy take. Although it’s, honestly
Simone Collins: it’s enough. I think, I think it’s plenty to, to fix your family, to, to make a good, a good family, to raise kids well. I think that that is a very honorable thing to do
Malcolm Collins: I think that’s a good place to start.
But when your kids are, you know, teens or whatever, and you’re... I think for a lot of [00:59:00] people I, I do want to encourage this, and I know it’s, it’s spicy- Well, your kids
Simone Collins: are teens, and you work on matchmaking, and you work on setting them up for their careers, and then you work on helping them raise their grandkids.
I know this is
Malcolm Collins: spicy, Simone- I think people being
Simone Collins: like, “Oh, no
Malcolm Collins: one likes you” ... and it’s gonna piss off part of our audience- Mm ... but I’m gonna say I do think it is good for men to focus on civic engagement.
Simone Collins: No, it’s true. And I think, you know, what I’m hearing a lot of people discuss I think this is coming up more and more, for example, on the All In podcast and among that class of people, talking about this idea of basically having a tour of duty, you know, serving for a certain number of years, maybe four years, maybe eight years in government, in politics, to try to improve whether it be your, your local area or on the state level or on a national level- No, I think-
sort of depending on your resources ...
Malcolm Collins: I think that’s fine. If you wanna go into politics, that’s fine. But I, I, I- There are other
Simone Collins: things you can do, too, but, like, yeah, to have a tour of duty in civic engagement in some way to help your community
Malcolm Collins: or country. And that the wife’s job is to support the husband in this tour of duty.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s more effective when you have that [01:00:00] support. Yeah, you can do more with one well-supported person than two not at all supported people working separately,
Malcolm Collins: absolutely. Or, or the husband’s role to support the wife. Sure. If the husband is, is doing the day job and the wife is at home with the kids, do some tour of duty civically.
Mm. And, and I know it’s extra work, but I, I promise you... Or I don’t promise you. I can’t, I can’t promise anything, but I, I believe based on the evidence I’ve seen that both you and your husband will feel better about your lives if you have been successful in at least attempting some form of ambitious civic engagement.
That is my spicy take that’s gonna get people mad at me. Oh, well. Oh,
Simone Collins: well.
Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone. I thought this was fantastic. I think it’s fantastic that Ben Shapiro’s losing his influence. He’s been- ... as, as Steve Bannon called him, and I don’t even like St- Bannon. I, I see Steve Bannon as a swamp creature. You know, look at his Epstein rehabilitation takes.
Mm. But Ben Shapiro is a [01:01:00] cancer. And you know, fortunately, the cancer is in remission, heavy remission.
Simone Collins: I’d, I don’t... I wouldn’t go that far. I think he’s a well-meaning person who played a game, who lost some agility or really just didn’t- He’s not well-meaning.
Malcolm Collins: He’s spiteful. He may have aligned goals with us but he’s kind of a little prick.
I don’t think he has
Simone Collins: aligned goals with us. Not
Malcolm Collins: true ...
Simone Collins: I- Yeah, actually. I mean, I think weirdly a lot of people, I feel like they just are all very, they’d be very happy with each other because they kind of just love hating on other people. Like, both he and... Actually, you know, never mind. I’m not gonna say this.
I think Nick Fuentes is a more, a more inclusive person in the end. He may troll- No, Nick Fuentes is a more inclusive
Malcolm Collins: person ...
Simone Collins: and hate on people. Yeah, but yeah- I’ve got problems- ... Nick Fuentes is way more inclusive than yeah, than Ben Shapiro is. Yeah, so yeah. Nick Fuentes’ audience- Okay,
Malcolm Collins: I think we’ve- When we were growing, let’s, so I wanna, I wanna contrast Ben Shapiro and Nick Fuentes, and people know w- I do [01:02:00] not like either of their politics, and I think Nick Fuentes is an active harm to the right.
Despite all of that, the one thing I will not say about Nick Fuentes is he is not gatekeep-y. He, yeah, he’s
Simone Collins: really not When we- He’s really not, actually ...
Malcolm Collins: first started rising in influence this was around the time when Ben Shapiro crashed out about us Nick Fuentes’ like wider circle reached out to us, included us, interviewed us.
Nick Fuentes during that period talked about us positively, thought, “Oh, maybe they’re people I can win to my ideological faction.” These things are things that I, I want to state very clearly. As much as I disagree with his political orientation and his strategy for the conservative movement which I do not see that, it’s, I mean, he’s really a Democrat at this point.
Even he says that. He still is not somebody who snipes at ducklings as they come to shore. Like- ... Ben Shapiro’s the guy where all of the little, the turtles are coming to shore, all the little baby [01:03:00] conservative influencers are coming to shore, and he’s shooting them with a sniper rifle, whereas Nick Fuentes tries to help them through the the, the, the, the, the bird attacks and everything like that, even though they may not always be on his side.
Simone Collins: Yeah. No, I agree. And I would still love to have Nick Fuentes on our show, though he never... Maybe eventually, you know, who knows? We’ve been warned, “Don’t do that. Everyone will hate you.” No, people are gonna... It’d be great. Look, it’s, it would be, I would love, I would love to interview him. I would do it, yeah.
If
Malcolm Collins: he wants to come on, I mean, we, you know, for mutual fans. I mean, obviously the show’s gonna be boring ‘cause the whole time I’m gonna be talking about, like, Catholicism or something. It’s, we’re gonna be totally different.
Simone Collins: I don’t know. It’d be amazing to see him just nerd out about Catholicism for a bit and not do his, like, normal thingies.
But anyway, I don’t know. Whatever. Maybe it’ll happen. Yeah, I’d actually- Maybe it won’t ... be
Malcolm Collins: very interested in that. Like theologically, like what’s, what’s his plan here? His- Oh my God, yes.
Simone Collins: I’d love to know, like, his stance on, his different like theological stances and stuff. Yeah. And then, y- maybe he’s- Yeah.
What I’d really
Malcolm Collins: like to have if we got him on the show is where does he want [01:04:00] America to be in 100 years? Mm. Like, what’s his 100, 150 year, 200 year plan for our species? I’d
Simone Collins: love... Yeah, I’d love to see that too. Yeah, come on. Ah, someone make it happen. Help us out here. Someone has an in. I mean, I guess don’t donate $50 to him on his stream though and tell him that there’s a woman present on this podcast, ‘cause that’s not gonna work.
He’s not gonna feel like he can fart on stream if I’m there, so-
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh my God ... I don’t know. Yeah A woman? A wo- yeah, we’ve heard he- he- that’s... Sorry, we did a clip recently of his where he crashed out on a fan who donated $50 to him because the fan had all female children. And I was like, “What?” And you can’t
Simone Collins: fart and burp around daughters apparently, even though our daughters constantly fart and burp around us.
Yeah. God, I love our kids. Apparently Octavian farted in the doctor’s office today. Is that something that happened? Octavian was like- No ... “Yeah.” ... he didn’t
Malcolm Collins: fart in the doctor’s office.
Simone Collins: I farted in the doctor’s. He was really proud about it. I guess- I didn’t see
Malcolm Collins: it. They were, they were- There was this whole thing.
It was highlighted ... astonished. The doctors were so amazed at how much they all helped each other. Aw. How much they [01:05:00] all, like, did their thing. They tried to give him all the information he needed. They were very worried when they found out that Indy had to get a shot. And they wanted to... Octavian, oh my God, you wanna know how sweet the kids are?
Like, I don’t even know how our kids are this sweet. When they were gonna give Octavian the shot, Octavian- Indy ... like, no, Octavian goes to Indy and, like, looks her in the eyes and he goes, “I’m gonna sing a song for you.” And so he sings a, a song for Indy while they’re, like, prepping and doing the shot so she doesn’t notice.
And she actually didn’t notice.
Simone Collins: Oh my God, Noodle. I love these kids. Jesus.
Malcolm Collins: Why are they so good? They are simulated. That’s all I can believe, because I’m not that good a person. Yes, you are. Or maybe I am. Like, maybe fundamentally- Yes, you are ... I’m actually, like, a pretty nice person.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Fundamentally, you, like, actually are.
Who knew? After a lifetime of being told, “Oh, you’re a demon child. Oh, you’re crazy. Oh, you’re so problematic. Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm.” Yeah, actually.
Malcolm Collins: [01:06:00] You’ve been around my family, yeah.
Simone Collins: Malcolm, Malcolm. Oh my God, all the ways. All the ways of your voice or your name being pronounced. This is why you’re so resilient online.
N- no one’s n- the, the cruelest comments ever made about us don’t, don’t come m- anywhere close to the things that come from your own family. And I’m not just talking, like, one mean person. No, like, everyone.
Malcolm Collins: Everyone in my family- Everyone ... constantly belittling me.
Simone Collins: Oh my God. Anyway, I love you. Bye. I
love you.
Bye.
Simone Collins: Well, after this you can tell my parents, who are very generously offering to order in, what you might have in terms of preferences. So very rare, exciting opportunity to eat from a restaurant.
Malcolm Collins: We do really live in an area with some quite good restaurants.
Simone Collins: Well, and there... A, a non-trivial number of [01:07:00] people who listen to the podcast live around here. Like, eventually we’re gonna have to host a local meetup. It’s gonna have to happen.
It’s a good place to live. Just saying. Maybe somebody will do one in Philadelphia. That could be kind of fun. There was that one cool restaurant that reminded us of, like, British pubs. Do you... You remember the one I’m talking about, with the multiple floors and the cool chairs?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was nice, but, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if I wanna go to a city again, Simone.
That’s the... That’s not an option for me. Never again?
Simone Collins: You, you’re just quitting ci- cities forever?
Malcolm Collins: I’m quitting cities, yeah. I think I’m done with them. I, I don’t I don’t think that they’re good.
Simone Collins: Never again. I don’t think they attract-
Malcolm Collins: Never again. Okay. Never again. I’m just done. I’m just done. Cities are over.
I- is that... are we allowed to have this opinion?
Simone Collins: Just- Well, what about Edinburgh?
Malcolm Collins: Edinburgh is over. I’m sure it’s gross now. No, it’s not.
Simone Collins: Stop. Don’t you ever say that.
Malcolm Collins: I hear it’s full of you know, people- ... who weren’t there a few years ago. How dare you. No. That’s all... That’s Glasgow. Scotland is, like, more progressive- [01:08:00] That’s Glasgow.
No, E- pff. Scotland is more progressive than the rest of the UK. You, like, know that, right? Like, it’s seen as, like, by far the most progressive part. I don’t know that.
Simone Collins: Honestly, like, just from m- meeting random locals in the process of doing all of our wedding planning, I know that was ages ago now, but, like, they were just normal.
Honestly, they reminded me a lot of just normal local Pennsylvanians, but with a fun accent. Actually, Pennsylvania’s also have fun accents. But you’re meeting
Malcolm Collins: rural people in the... It’s the city dwellers who are the danger.
Simone Collins: Well, no, I was dealing with city dwellers. I’m getting things like, you know, hairdressers and, and cake makers in- Oh, I guess that’s true
the city. Yeah. You’re just being a silly, a silly goose. People in Scotland are amazing and wonderful. And you were just dealing with the bougie international students at the St. Andrews, so you don’t even know what you’re talking about
Malcolm Collins: Oh, I don’t? You know. Is this the type of scolding I get from a wife who pretends- Yes
to love me?
Simone Collins: The, the ball and chain.
Malcolm Collins: The ball and ch-
Simone Collins: what am, what is [01:09:00] psychological- Pretend to love you? As soon as you, as soon as you married me, I had to stop pretending, right? Well, of course, you decided to write into our vows, “I don’t promise to love you.” So it was never even part of the contract. Never even part,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, we just...
All right, all right,
Simone Collins: all right. You ready?
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Let’s go.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Speaker 13: You see what Toasty’s hiding from him? Yeah, we like it.
Speaker 14: What are you guys doing?
Speaker 15: Octavia, don’t, you’ll get wet. Mom gave me permission to go on. But you won’t leave your ankle. Oh. Say hi to your friend. Go to your friend.
