How Influencers Became Strictly Better Than Journalists

The mainstream media is dying — and almost nobody is actually reading it anymore.

In this episode, Malcolm & Simone Collins break down the shocking reality behind the Washington Post laying off a third of its staff, why legacy media has become irrelevant, and how a new decentralized information ecosystem (YouTubers, citizen journalists, Substack, and AI synthesis) is rapidly replacing it.

Topics covered:

* Why the Washington Post’s 13–14 person climate team was mostly cut

* How our small channel has more real influence than dozens of NYT journalists

* The hidden truth about newspaper readership and subscription signaling

* The new media pyramid: original research → synthesis → commentary

* Why citizen journalism is outperforming legacy war reporting

* AI’s biggest emerging threat to information quality

* How we’re returning to real gumshoe reporting in the cyber age

If you want to understand where news is actually going in 2026 and beyond, this episode is essential.

Watch until the end for our thoughts on AI harmonic patterns and the coming verification crisis.

Drop a comment: Do you still read any legacy media outlets? Which ones?

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re gonna be talking about the death of Legacy Media.

Recently, the big story in the news tied to this right now is that the Washington Post laid off a third of their staff

Simone Collins: and they’d be mad.

Malcolm Collins: You were just complaining to me, you’re like, oh my God. I do not understand. When you see people protest like. These people were not generating value, they were not generating money anymore.

The number that had been going around that I think is hilarious is they had 13 to 14 journalists as part of their climate team.

Simone Collins: Just, just to cover climate change.

Malcolm Collins: And they let, I think all of them go,

Simone Collins: no, I think they kept one or two. One

Malcolm Collins: or two to like,

Simone Collins: which is one or two too many. You could have honestly, like anyone covering economics or politics or really any, I mean, climate change is one of those subjects that really only.

Has context and importance in relation to another field like science, [00:01:00] like, ecosystems, like food, like any, anything on its own. It doesn’t matter. It only matters in the context of something else. So you don’t need a journalist for that. I can’t believe they ha How did they even end up with that mini, I mean, the way that Aspen Gold was talking about it was that like you just get one and they just hire more and more, like they just want more of themselves and they grow like a cancer.

Malcolm Collins: No, it’s,

Simone Collins: it

Malcolm Collins: is just like a cancer. I mean, wokes and Wokes topics aren’t like a cancer within an organization. Yeah. And they spread from the, the, the start point. And it is you have to cut out the entire cancer. That’s the only way to, to keep the organization alive.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And if you’re not willing to, and that’s the thing with giant bureaucracies, it becomes harder and harder and harder to do that.

So giant bureaucracies perform less and less well. Mm-hmm. Which is why new companies are able to bubble up and do. New and cool things like our fab ai creating the best AI chat bots around. And they really are, we’re gonna start advertising. Like

Simone Collins: actually yes.

Malcolm Collins: Like actually, yeah, I’ve used the other bots, they’re not as good.

And, and it’s just [00:02:00] because we’re using the top of the line models really, and everybody else tries to do some proprietary nonsense. But anyway, to keep going here if you get an idea, because I, I do not think people realize contrasted wiz, because what we’re gonna be talking about in today’s episode is.

The phenomenon of media dying, but also the phenomenon of what’s replacing it, how you can gather information today, how people will gather information in the future. ‘cause a lot of people are like, well, when the media’s gone, how is information parsed? How do you get stories? How do you know what’s happening in the world?

Mm-hmm. And I mean, the answer is obvious now. People are getting it from their information circles. You know, you were just talking about how I was learning about what happened to the Washington Post by watching as asthma gold. Don’t you all want a wife like that who genuinely is just like, what does, as asthma gold have to say?

Say, yeah, God. I think a lot of guys are like, yeah, I want a wife who’s addicted to o asthma gold. But anyway I do not think people understand just how few people actually read [00:03:00] even the largest of media organizations. And we have an older episode where we go into the numbers on this. And in that episode, even when the channel was much smaller I was pointing out that if you look at, like, if you divide the show’s viewership by two, because there’s two of us working on it.

Each of us is worth, I think it was seven full-time staff at the New York Times when you con we’re contrasting our viewership numbers. Was the average viewership numbers of the New York Times? Oh

Simone Collins: no.

Malcolm Collins: In terms of, yeah, it was bad. And I can try to find those numbers. I’ll add it in post here to give good idea of just how bad it was.

So the average American when they click through to a newspaper

is on that link for 1.

5 minutes actually a little less than that. So I’m inflating the numbers a bit. Okay. If you look at the New York Times,

the New York Times gets around 385. 7 million clicks per month. That comes down to around 9, 642, 000 K hours now, [00:04:00] consider that they have 1, 700 journalists working there, and there are two of us.

That means

the number of people watching our content is equivalent for each one of us to 44 New York Times journalists. We have the same influence on the public as 44 New York Times journalist for each of us individually. 22 for the show in general, do you have any idea how much 44 people is?

That’s like more people than could fit in our entire house. And we are not a particularly large YouTube channel either.

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: bad.

Malcolm Collins: Bad. But to give you an idea, when you’re talking about New York Times pieces, because I’ll go through the major. Things because I think a lot of people, they’ll look at the total viewership on these platforms. Yeah. And they get confused because what they’re confusing is a few viral pieces versus how many people are reading the average piece.

Right. How many [00:05:00] clickthroughs does the average piece get? Not the long tail piece. Right. So if you’re looking these days and you, and you do the math on this should I explain how. Views based on I’ll just, okay. Views based on 1.6 billion monthly page views, 7,000 articles, media media and adjusted full reads at 25 to 35% rate higher for long form EG 10 K views at or to 25% equals 2.5 k Engagement time is 30 to 45 seconds, which supports this.

And with the New York Times. The way that we did that, by the way, is, is the average site time. It’s, I think 30 to 45 seconds, as I said, and then you’re looking at 1.6. Billion monthly page views. And so you’re like, okay, so how, what does that translate to in watch time versus what is our watch time?

Simone Collins: Sure. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which generally, like when we’re humming along, right now, I think we’re at around like 120,000, 130,000 hours a month.

Simone Collins: Oh, that’s awesome. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And, and our norm when we get to like our peak, because we’ve hit this number a few different times, has been around 150,000. Yeah. We’ve gotten to around [00:06:00] 200,000 at points.

So we’ll see if we can get to a norm of over 200,000 this year. But anyway. If you’re looking at the estimated medium viewers per story in the New York Times, you’re looking at 10,000 to 25,000.

Simone Collins: But the amount of money that goes into each articles.

Malcolm Collins: Is enormous. What? So you’re going to understand why this doesn’t make sense anymore.

And the estimated number of people who read an average New York Times story to the end of the story is around 2,500 to 8,700.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Not a lot. So the average New York Times story is getting about the engagement as an average video on this channel.

Simone Collins: Yes. With one small counterpoint. Which is, and I think this is a, a difference with.

Old media that’s going to keep it alive a little bit longer than these dismal numbers would suggest. Yeah. Which is that a lot of people, and keep in mind in New York Times doesn’t make money based on views. It makes money based on subscriptions. [00:07:00] Mm-hmm. And people often get subscriptions to publications they do not read.

I mean, obviously a lot of people do it out of. Inertia or it’s a, an institution or a publication or a doctor’s office or whatever, right? And they just get it because they’ve always got it and they always will get it. And so it’s gonna take a generation for that to end. Or you know, more institutional shakeups for an auditing team to be like, wait, why are you paying for this when no one’s using it?

You know, more doge kind of stuff. ‘cause that happened a lot when Doge people were like, wait, no one has ever used this software. Ever. Why are we paying for it? But then there’s also the element that people buy. Like I think the New Yorkers a better example of this. They buy a subscription to it, so it sits in their house, and when people come over, they’re like, oh.

You read The New Yorker no one reads the New Yorker. You know what I mean? Like five people read the New Yorker. But they, they have those just as a signaling thing. Most [00:08:00] people who received, and I remember when I was a kid. My family had a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle. ‘cause it was the nearest big newspaper.

We paid for it. We had it delivered daily for a while. And everyone in our household would read at most one article. We didn’t get it. Because we wanted to read all the articles like you, it’s, it’s not really a per article view kind of thing. It’s a, I’m the kind of person who reads the newspaper every day, and it’s very much a social signaling and more importantly a self signaling thing.

We talk about different models of friendship like you have. Different types of friends. Some people are friends that are more mercenary. We love them the best. They’re called utility friends in our household. They’re friends that you keep around. Like if, if you’re a kid, it’s ‘cause they have the best video game console.

If you’re an adult, it’s ‘cause they have the best social setter because, you know, they’re. They, they host the best parties or they’re entertaining. But then there are also character reinforcing [00:09:00] friends. And that’s because, you know, you are a professional woman on the upswing. You need to have your token gay friend and your girls that you lunch with or you know, like your, like this kind of guy.

And so you need, like the guys you watch sports with, like your, the, the drama of your life is not complete without the, this set of characters supporting characters and a New York Times subscription. Is often a very important prop based on a character that you’re trying to fulfill. Now, we wouldn’t say that people who are age agentic do this kind of thing.

You know that they live in a much more pragmatic way, but most people are, what you might describe as NPCs. They’re not actually thinking in terms of. What is going to fulfill that, which I believe has inherent value in their world. They’re more like, I’m this kind of person. What would this kind of person do?

And there are lots of people who are like, well, I’m this kind of person and this kind of person gets the New York Times. And so that’s probably what’s keeping this [00:10:00] publication alive a lot longer. And why? I would just wanna add that annotation to your note about the views that each article gets. Does that make sense?

That was really long-winded, but I, I think it’s important. Well, no, I think

Malcolm Collins: that you’re, you’re, you are absolutely right about that. And I think that you also, there’s a lot of people who get the New York Times for just the puzzles to keep that in mind as well.

Simone Collins: Oh my God, no, this is actually true. So I like, I’ve mentioned this on a, another podcast recently, so sorry, but like for three months, every morning I looked at the top Google Trends, results.

And often the, the result was like, oh my God, America, are you okay, bro? Because it was like always like on a Saturday morning or Friday night, it was like accident, injury, lawyer and stuff, like really bad trending searches. But very, very commonly it was like New York Times crossword puzzle hints and like wordle hints.

And so you’re 100% right about that. Yeah. The games. That’s so sad. Can you imagine the [00:11:00] pessimism you have to grow is the CTO of the New York Times, or like the analytics experts who like actually know what people look at.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, if, if we’re looking at hours sorry, if we’re looking at the, the next big one, right?

Because I, I just started with the New York Times ‘cause that’s one of the top ones here, right? Yeah. You’re looking at something like, like the Washington Post that had to lay off everyone. On an average article, they’re only getting 3000 to 10,000 views. And they’re only getting about 600. People to 3000 people reading to the end of our article with cnn, oh gosh.

For your average post it’s 5,000 to 15,000 was only 750 to 3,700 reading to the end of an article.

Simone Collins: This also shows what a huge scam PR is because there are, and like even large corporations will pay huge amounts of money. Oh God. Yeah. Like for them an, an article in the New York Times, it’s this big get and they think it’s gonna lead to conversions or an ROI of some sort.

They don’t realize that no one is gonna read that. No one’s gonna learn about [00:12:00] them through this. No one,

Malcolm Collins: nobody cares,

Simone Collins: cares.

I really wanna highlight what Simon is saying here because this is always a big problem for me when I’m talking to people and be like, oh, I’ll do a business and then the media will talk about it and then everyone will use it. And I’m like, even if you get a piece in the New York Times, you’re looking at , ,

In terms of reading that piece until the point that they read your company’s name, I.

you know, 8,000 impressions, 5,000 impressions.

, That is not a lot of impressions.

And then even if they get there, what ion of them are gonna click over? What? Uh, you know, maybe 10%, 5%. So you’re talking about hundreds of clicks over to your product. This is for the New York Times, the best website you could get.

Okay. You, you could buy that with like. A few hundred dollars on, , at Google Ads, right? , It is just not that relevant. You need the piece to go viral, and then you need to ask, well, why is the piece on you going to go viral? Right? But it’s more than that.

It’s also, when it comes to negative media, when people freak out about negative media about [00:13:00] them, it hasn’t gone viral. Cannot help but roll my eyes. I’m like, nobody cares. Nobody cares. That X magazine or X thing wrote some mean piece on you. It is irrelevant unless it gets picked up by the algorithm and comes up when people search your name and that, and that can be relevant.

But in general, , what the news media does is just not very important.

Malcolm Collins: We had an article about us last week in the New York Times. Did anyone hear, or at least that that name checked us? Did anyone here know that? No. Nobody. F*****g nobody. Because

Simone Collins: nobody care.

No

Malcolm Collins: one friends were like, Hey, you’re in the New York Times again. Yeah. ‘cause nobody cares. No one knew. Literally because I, I mean, the article was on JD Vance having an additional kid, which is just not something you’re gonna click through on because who cares? We know he’s having additional kids. Yeah.

They just felt they needed to have a perfunctory article on He had a kid. What do the ISTs think? And they didn’t use my one, it would’ve gone viral if they had used my quote about us not wanting to send progressive women to Mar-a-Lago breeding pits. But no, they [00:14:00] just wanted me to say some nice things.

So they took my nice quotes, which was so sad, so sad, so

Simone Collins: sad.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway,

Simone Collins: that’s our version of a hit piece. How dare they? I’m outraged. How could they, they’re destroying my character, my reputation.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the reason why it’s so important is, you know, I can be for arrogance reasons, comparing you know, these numbers to something on our you know, YouTube channel.

But keep in mind, people who get their news from our YouTube channel are actually getting their news from a CA cluster of channels, right? And many of them are bigger than our channel. So if you compare the average numbers of, let’s say a Fox News article, which is 5,000 to 12,000 with reading it to the end, 800 to 3,600 and you compare that to an average kirsha piece or an average leaflet piece.

Yeah. Or an average nuts, or you really wanna blow it out like, I’m using Kesha. ‘cause I think people who watch kyia and leaflets think of them as like niche content producers. [00:15:00] Right. Like, or, or VTV Romanian, whatever.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: He an average one of his pieces ‘cause he’s around us in size. I think a lot of people who are into these sorts of channels do not realize, you think you are watching some niche thing, but you’re actually part of a constellation of news sources that is significantly larger in terms of its reach than.

The vast majority, like really only edged out by like the New York Times specifically and the bbc. Yeah. In terms of its actual reach. And then if you are in the Asma Gold slash Nux, no Constellation, which is like bigger, like I’ll put here like, Sargon of a Cod and Asma Gold and Tim Pool and stuff like that.

And these are videos that are regularly getting on daily videos mm-hmm. Of millions of youth.

Simone Collins: And you know, it’s not because people are trying to signal something to themselves. People don’t necessarily do themselves favors by like thinking of themselves as like, oh yes. I’m so proud of myself for being the person who has [00:16:00] a.

Cartoon character. Tell me about the news every time.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. I actually do think it’s about self signaling.

Simone Collins: Really?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So as the gold, I think people watch ASME gold to signal that they know what the averaged like informed bro think. I love that. Like, I

Simone Collins: just think he’s genuinely entertaining.

I, I, yeah. I,

Malcolm Collins: you know, he’s, he’s entertaining, but he’s not like an entertainer in the same way that, n is really more of an entertainer, right? Like, oh, well,

Simone Collins: well Knucks has affectations, if that’s what you mean. But like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Asma Gold is what his, his, the core to his stick is that you feel like you are getting the opinion of your average of based

Simone Collins: centris.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, your average American male who plays video games and is interested in politics and hangs out online. Mm-hmm. And he does a very good job of that. I mean, I think he does a good job of that because that’s exactly what he’s delivering. Mm-hmm. He has not, he has not changed his [00:17:00] lifestyle. You know, he is, he still perceives the world the way he did when he started.

And I, you know, that’s why he’s, he is gotten big. Whereas with other content creators like Leaflet, I think a lot of people watch leaflet. Because leaflet creates, like, okay, so the reason that people watch leaflet differs from the reason people watch like Keisha. Mm-hmm. So with leaflet, I think that she is the king queen of parasocial bonds.

You watch leaflet because you like, genuinely are like, oh, what a sweet person. Like I’m really. What, wondering what this, this, this sweet, but based person thinks. Right.

Simone Collins: Well, and badass. Yeah. She’s

Malcolm Collins: all these than she’s Yeah, she’s, she’s, she’s got the full, she’s very much playing the host club game.

Right. Like, not

Simone Collins: exploit,

Malcolm Collins: not exploitative, but, but it’s, it’s, it’s, she’s very good at building a pair of social bonds.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If you look at Keisha right, another v YouTuber I think. The, the reason people go to Kirsha is not like with Leaflet. When I first stopped and watched her channel, I was like, wait is an anime avatar?

Which is cute, but based, [00:18:00] like, that’s fun. I wanna, I wanna see like what a based anime person thinks, right? Like, with Kirsha you really only watch her stuff for the, just that she does very good original research. That is what she’s really good at. And I, I think the VT tubing shtick is really ancillary to that.

And frankly, I, I, I think she should invest in a better model. Because her model’s a little 1990s at this point. I mean, she’s been doing this for a long time. A lot of people will freak out when you update your model, I guess. But because, you know, people get attached to one model or whatever, but yeah.

It’s it’s, it’s, it’s clearly a different era of technology when contrasted with like leaflets model.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I do love how more recently developed V YouTuber models can pick up on even subtle facial expressions. It’s delightful.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, it’s wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. You can throw a lot of really fun stuff around that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But Keisha’s model, the, sorry, the reason the, the Keisha’s whole thing the reason I’m mentioning this is the way the new information economy works is really fascinating to [00:19:00] me because I actually think it’s superior to news when people are like, what happens when news is gone?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: How will I know what’s true and what’s not true, and what’s happening in the world and what’s not happening in the world? Mm-hmm. And my response to you is, you, you generally, like if you’re part of the informational ecosystem in which we exist. You likely have a better understanding of current geopolitics than if you are watching the news.

Because the news just for whatever reason, chooses not to focus on a lot of really important stuff. And the reason why I, I mentioned it’s, it’s, it’s a bizarre new ecosystem. It because it doesn’t function okay, it actually functions a lot the way the news used to, but is more transparent about it.

So I’ll explain what I mean by this. R Remember how I said Kirsha is really good with original research, right? Yeah. You have a few people on this pyramid of content producers. Mm-hmm. Who are at the bottom. Uh uh, this would be channels like hours. Often [00:20:00] kirsha often. What’s another one that, that the one that Asma gold is like his go-to one to cover. Oh,

Simone Collins: the Asian dude.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Asian dude

Malcolm Collins: In my head, his channel’s name is something like default voice, but when I search it, I can’t find it.

Simone Collins: Or coffee zilla. ‘cause he sometimes he got

I can’t remember. But he also does a lot of coffee zilla stuff and some other YouTubers. So, yeah, like they either, yeah, they, they, there’s this go-to group of people who do original.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s

Simone Collins: video based research. Original journalism.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Research to discover new topics and then and information on those topics or expand,

There is actually a category of channels below us or somebody like default voice, , that does the actual on the ground fact finding. But I didn’t think of it when I was thinking about the funnel because almost nobody watches these channels. So like if I’m trying to understand like how drones are being used in the Ukraine, I might find like five hours of videos by some drone artist that like 400 people have watched.

And then I synthesize all of the content from [00:21:00] there, and then that becomes our content. And it’s the same as him when he’s finding like X the, you know, thing with BLM where they’ve burned down X monument or something like that. He’s not doing the on the ground stuff. He’s going through , whatever, auto compiled every single tweet about X thing.

And then trying to find out what’s true and what can be presented to you guys in an entertaining way.

like if we are trying to do something in our channel, we can’t just say. Washington Post laid off 30% of its staff. We need to have some wider thesis about the informational ecosystem, where it’s going, et cetera, that introduces either new ideas or new patterns or new facts.

Like in our recent Epstein piece, right? The one that we would’ve released yesterday, which I was surprised, didn’t do as well we found evidence that he likely did. May still be alive that no one else had found yet. Like I can’t just do a compilation on all the stuff that everyone else is already talking about in our informational ecosystem, because I [00:22:00] don’t feel like that’s what our channel is for.

Right? But then there’s that whole layer on top of us, right? Which includes individuals like leaflet and asthma, gold and stuff like that, who go over. Other original research channels, videos and provide commentary on that. Mm-hmm. And people can say, well, that’s not the way news used to work. And it’s like, no, it’s exactly the way news used to work.

You had on the ground field reporters, on the ground field researchers they would find information that wasn’t being covered or that wasn’t well known. And then you would have a room full of. Pundits or talking heads that would all discuss that at like a round table or something like that. Right.

And, and that’s what we are seeing with this other layer of the informational ecosystem.

Simone Collins: I would also say to build on your, we’re coming full circle element of it. Yeah. You’re describing how. YouTubers and news commentators, including our channel, but especially a lot of the v YouTubers we love, and Aspen Gold, et cetera.

Even Hasan as well, like he, he falls into this [00:23:00] category that they are a lot like broadcast newsers news, news people, journalists that have been on tv. The newspapers. And magazines are now returning to their original format. The original magazine was a very limited circulation publication that was supported by a small collection of patrons who would pay one or more people to put together very specific information about a domain.

And the where you’re really seeing the return to this is, is with substack. And people’s paid subs that are on very specific things. And I, I think that it’s really interesting to see this full circle return, that now people are going back to paying for information that is very specific and, and from a trusted, very diligent source.

And, and going back to these more organic [00:24:00] models, there was just too much bureaucratic drift. And you can really also see how bureaucratic bloat and mission drift just lead to this inevitable refreshing of organizational formats, which is something you talk about as inability. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it is really interesting.

And, and, and the on substack you get a lot more original research on things like us. You get a

Simone Collins: lot more research. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so, I am very excited. I, well, so now let’s talk about the quality of the research we have in the two locations.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And like, why I actually think that this is a, a, a pretty good system.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The first is, is that the media system and, and the, this is a reason why. It’s, it’s losing so hard, or one of the big reasons why is it had become institutionally captured. Mm-hmm. By sort of the, you know, as, as McGold was like, you let in a few people and then they start multiplying and they start hiring other people that have these same opinions and they will attack you or anyone at the organization who doesn’t share these opinions and try to get you fired.

And you didn’t see this in the opposite direction. Conservatives weren’t trying to get any progressive in [00:25:00] an organization fired but progressives routinely, they were like, well, it’s this conservative opinion you’re not allowed to have. This is the one above the fold. Like, you know, right now in the v YouTuber space, there’s this big thing where they’re trying to get somebody canceled.

But it wasn’t V YouTuber, it’s just, just like streamer. Because she wouldn’t denounce ice. She was just like, look, you, you don’t need to come to see me to get your opinions on this stuff, right? Like, that’s not why I’m not educated in this. And you shouldn’t be taking opinion.

And people flip the lid because they do not want anyone in their space who’s not actively promoting their agenda, right? And that is how entire spaces turn bias. And then people leave those spaces because it’s not useful anymore. Like the news. Isn’t useful if it’s just telling you the, the party ideology.

Simone Collins: I thought it was ou who got in trouble for that? Who was sexually assaulted at Twitch Con or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, and she was the one who had that mischief as a partner. And they had that, was that, was that

Simone Collins: emer? Oh God, yeah. She’s what, a what, a 12 month period? Well, yeah. What

Malcolm Collins: a cycle for her, right?

She’s

Simone Collins: been through it. Yeah. [00:26:00] Give her a break, guys. Aw, free em ru

Malcolm Collins: Gotta get emro on the channel. That’d be fun.

Simone Collins: She’s cool.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Well, she, no, she couldn’t come on if she’s getting attacked just for not denouncing her friendship with M Gold. God imagine, imagine if she was on Base camp, people would not like that.

Mm-hmm. It’s funny, I was reading one of the comments on the base camp subreddit, which is now doing terribly well, still doing better than most like Jordan Peterson subreddit or something. But it’s, it’s not at its peak, which used to be one of the largest conservative subreddits because got shadow banned, but.

It still serves as function. It’s still fun. So I was reading the comments on it and somebody was like, oh my God, like I saw this comment and I was like, it’s so sad that this comment won’t be here for long. ‘cause it’s hilarious. And then they go, and then I check the subreddit name. Thank God sub exists.

Simone Collins: Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean we’re, because we’re a shadow brand now, I don’t even mod as heavily. ‘cause I’m like, I don’t freaking, let’s see, you know, the, the random sensitive [00:27:00] people aren’t gonna see this anymore.

Simone Collins: Also, I doff my cap to those who have taken on modding roles. Thank you so much for helping.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I’m sorry. It is a thankless job. People just get mad. They’re like, why did you take me down? It’s like, well, because you said you were gonna kill somebody. Like,

Simone Collins: what did you expect?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Be, be more creative. You know, noticing, noticing, you know, you can say things like that, you know, you don’t need to say the full thing.

Like what we do on this channel I actually think we’re pretty good at, at curing the line, skirting the line of what we’re allowed to say. But the point here being. Is let’s, let’s not talk about the, yeah. The quality of this. So one is you, a lot of people realize they were just reading the party line and there wasn’t actually that much independent, new news reporting happening from the major news outlets.

Simone Collins: Well, I think there was also a realization around 10 years ago, so this has been going for a long time. The journalists were just recycling other journalists’ posts and not actually doing diligence. And we [00:28:00] also met journalists who. We’re doing really well in their publications and could basically get whatever job they wanted.

And we’re like, oh, why, why, why are you doing so well? And they’re like, oh. So I like actually call people basically, they actually just do original reporting and no one else does. Everyone else just like Googles it and then sort of plagiarizes, but with sufficient word changing that they don’t get caught for it.

Other people’s work. Yeah. And I think that that’s an underrated element of this as well.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, with that in mind the, the, the plagiarizing and everything like that yeah. So, consider war reporting or something like that, because that’s an area where people can be like, well, you absolutely need journalists for foreign correspondent reporting.

Right? For war reporting for what’s happening in government reporting. And what we’ve learned, I think since journalism has, has basically died, is actually you don’t need that. Hmm. If you want to get an understanding of what’s going on right now. Ukraine, you’re going to get a [00:29:00] much better understanding if you follow like the channels that are specialized in this on both sides.

Mm-hmm. Then you would’ve ever had any idea of what was going on in, say, Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Mm-hmm. You simply did not really know what was going on. You might have known about major encounters or something like that. Which you wouldn’t have had a good grip of who’s winning, who’s losing, why they’re winning, why they’re losing much less nuanced breakdowns of specific encounters, how equipment is being used, how equipment is being deployed, how tactics are changing.

Simone Collins: So just the, the citizen journalism reporting on weaponry on the war in Ukraine alone is so God tier, I can’t even get over it. Like, and multiple people who listen to this. Podcast have on multiple occasions, sent us links to these amazing channels. Just on the drones. Just on the drones.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: It’s, it’s incredible.

It’s so cool.

Malcolm Collins: And so people are like, well, how, how does this end up happening in a way where you can get information [00:30:00] that is largely unbiased? And this is, this is how it happens. First you need to understand that all information has a bias, whether it’s from a newspaper, from a YouTuber, or whatever.

You find the unbiased truths through attempts at triangulation from biased media sources. We, for the people who watch us. Openly have a bias on almost everything I discussed because I want people to know that in their triangulation of what is actually true when they are looking at our channel.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Because it is so, it’s, it’s so much more insidious and, and less honest to say. We are the unbiased truth. And that is not true. No, everyone has an agenda.

Malcolm Collins: Everyone’s got an agenda. So, you, and then on top of the bias sources, so you’re gonna have some sources that are like more pro Ukraine, you’re gonna have some sources that are more pro Russia and they’ll try to spin the information in both directions.

But you can typically overlap those sources and say, oh, here’s what they [00:31:00] agree on. So this is almost certainly true. Like they both agree a conflict happened here. Yeah. They both agree that like this many people died at a high end and this many people died at a low end. Right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They both agree that, you know, these tactics were important, but then you have the people who are just autistic nerds, which is another great source of information.

Yes. Filter through people like us. Sorry, when we’re doing our video on something like drone warfare or something like that we are before doing that video, going through a bunch of videos by drone nerds. And I trust these individuals because sometimes it can be very clear that they or military nerds.

The, the military, a lot of military nerds just actually like, don’t have a bias. They’re just like effing nerdy about military equipment. Yes. And want to understand how it’s being used, how it’s being deployed. And so we then go and, and how do they get that information? They, they go artists out, right?

Like they go they look for. Information on down drones [00:32:00] they look for to try to understand how they’re being made, how they’re being deployed. They look for chatter from people who are actually in the military on deployment recently, undeployed, stuff like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And they put together huge amounts of information on that.

Then you have people like us who come in and say like I’ll do two things. I will, one, read the original sources, but then two I’ll take when I can get a ton of sources on something and then dump all those sources into AI and get the AI to synthesize. You know what it is that these sources agree on about this technology.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Then I take that and I try to repackage that for you, the audience, in a way that is more entertaining than what you’ve been getting in other

Simone Collins: locations. Yeah. And that saves you time because. Even if we’re, we’re trying to compile efficiently. I mean, it takes a lot of time to like find the good sources, go through everything, choose what’s actually salient.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then the other thing that you won’t get from mainstream news, which is really bad, is you, they are too afraid. Of making mistakes in their [00:33:00] reporting, which means that there are huge areas that they essentially do not cover. And a great example of this was our recent video on the recent coup attempt in China.

And people will say, well, you know, we don’t have heart of confirmation on this part of the coup attempt, like the. The, the live battle with weapons. And so they’re like, so why do you, why would you report that? Right? If we don’t have full confirmation, it’s because the rumor mill is saying it happened.

And two the rumor mill that is saying it happened now, predicted that there was going to be some sort of conflict between g and these generals, and that that is something that was not being predicted by like the New York Times when I would read it. Like they didn’t say, oh, these generals are about to be ousted.

But the rumor mill said that these generals were about to be ousted, right? So, and that’s relevant for making decisions, geopolitically investing, planning the future. But in addition to that I can do things that the New York Times can’t do, right? Like, I can say, what, what’s the probability, you know, given that some people are saying that there was an armed fight.

An armed conflict [00:34:00] before these generals taken out, the XI would not just take out these generals, but arrest their entire extended family. Mm-hmm. And, and by the way, he legally wasn’t allowed to do this. He needed a full vote of that council. To arrest anyone else on the council. But because he arrested two of the people on the council Right.

And there was only two left, I mean, he never could have gotten that majority vote.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So he didn’t, he didn’t have a way to legally do what he did, which means that he must have felt extremely pressured for some reason or another. Like this is actually destabilizing. And so I have to look at that information and make an educated guess as to, okay, how plausible is what’s coming through the rumor mill.

Or you could look at something like what goes on with the Cuba story we recently did, right? Mm-hmm. Cuba running out of oil, the oil shipment stopping how Cuba’s likely to react to this. And a lot of people were like, why do we care what’s going on with Cuba? Right? Like, Cuba’s an irrelevant country.

And I’m like, well, Cuba is a big part of training. The leaders of a little group [00:35:00] called Antifa. And they do matter. What’s going on in the us They also were important in training both the leaders and setting up the United States Socialist Party, which played a big part in things like sohan Mond’s right to power, which is gonna be very important in the future of US politics.

Mm-hmm. If we can wipe Cuba off the board as an antagonistic player that’s really relevant to the future of. Culture wars in the United States which I think might surprise people that Cuba is a, a heavy hitter in the culture wars. But they are, they are a heavy hitter. Yeah. And

Simone Collins: I had no idea, no idea

Malcolm Collins: training programs or progressives and stuff like that.

But that’s something you wouldn’t know if you’re not. One interviewing was Antifa. People like that. What I was really queued into that is I was interviewing somebody who was in Antifa because again, getting original sources, right? Like somebody from Antifa watching our show, or a former Antifa member, they’re not gonna go to the New York Times or something like that, especially if they have some more out there ideas.

Worse,

Simone Collins: they probably have gone to the New York Times and the New York Times never got back to them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they don’t, they don’t care. But he would [00:36:00] drop something and then it’s important for people like us to notice when he drops something so I can dig deeper. So in one phrase he said, oh to talk about like how senior a person was.

He goes, they were trained in Cuba, right? Like, you know, he’s like, oh, you know, one of the real big wigs, you know, trained in Cuba or something like that. And I heard that and I was like, that’s a weird thing to say, is that a sign of status in Antifa? So then I start to Google to see, you know, when we’re doing the Google story, have other people said stuff like this that have had connections to Antifa and yes.

It is seen as a sinus status within these leftist networks who receive some degree of training within the Cuban regime. And I was like, wait, is the Cuban regime like flying people out for training? Google. Google. Google. Oh, they are. And I’m not seeing this reported in the New York Times. I’m not seeing this reported on Fox.

I’m not seeing them report that What’s happening now is the oil situation is relevant to our culture war, to these protests that are happening on the streets right now, that the people running these. Protests and these agitators are trained by Cuba and often funded by Russia. If you go to our [00:37:00] video on the BBL M, that BLM was overwhelmingly funded by Russia, we really pull out receipts in that one. And it’s been basically public knowledge for a while. Just nobody cohesively covered it.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And the question is, is like, why? And it’s like, well, because it didn’t fit the narrative that Fox News wanted to tell, which is Russian isnt that bad. And you know, being unfairly maligned.

And it didn’t fit the news that the progressives wanted to tell, which is BLM is great and not an AstroTurf movement. I mean, so nobody tells it, right? And so you need this sort of independent news. Source to get stories like that out there and get them in front of you, the viewer. Right. And, and, and for that reason, you can without on the ground rein, and, and people can be like, well, come on.

You can’t have sources everywhere in the world. And it’s actually, you can, you can have sources everywhere in the world that’s relevant. And the way you have sources everywhere in the world is relevant is because you either have people in the world, everywhere in the world that’s relevant. I mean maybe not like the middle of Antarctica or something, but generally whether it’s inside of universities or on the ground in the [00:38:00] Ukraine or on the ground, in the Russian forces or in Iran, and I can read those.

And we don’t just have people there, we have fans there who will reach out to us and be like, oh yeah, I live in Iran. I like you guys on this stuff. And or they’ll say, oh, you got this wrong or you got this wrong. And so then we go and we correct it. Right? Really annoying. By the way. I cannot change videos.

I can only cut parts out of videos that are on YouTube. So we cannot edit past videos. We can only mention that we made mistakes in future videos that I find very, very frustrating. But

Simone Collins: just more, more accurate reporting from direct sources, which is a very common element of modern YouTuber.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we are there, there are actually people there, and then there’s some countries that are so repressive that you can’t easily get stories out of them, right? Mm-hmm. But the, I irony about these countries is that the legacy media had completely failed at doing stories on these countries.

If I want an understanding of what’s going on in North Korea, I am not gonna get that from any legacy media source. I need to go to the YouTubers [00:39:00] and the Substack stackers who specialize in North Korea watching.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’s the same as what’s going on politically in China. Mainstream news organizations. I mean, you basically need a spy network to do that.

Yeah. And the only way to get that spy network is through the rumor mill. Right. And there are specific rumor mills that work on these specific locations to try to understand what’s going on within them. And the legacy media just wasn’t able to cover that. So like, we’re able to break apart and unfold black boxes that they can’t even touch.

So I think that that’s another thing that’s really important, right? Like, that well, okay. And then, and then there’s that, and then there’s the, the framing and lens that the new media is able to give you. So if you watch us. We are a married team. We’re known for a prenatal list agenda, but also we have a big background.

We’ve written a number of books on things like human sexuality, things like human anthropology, the anthropology of religions, how [00:40:00] they evolved a lot of religious research like original origins research. Here, original, original, ori