Viral Trend of Taking Tylenol While Pregnant: They Hate Us More Than They Love Their Children

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive into the viral controversy surrounding Tylenol, pregnancy, and autism. From RFK’s claims to TikTok trends, they break down the science, the media reactions, and the real risks behind the headlines. The discussion covers medical studies, social media challenges, political polarization, and personal stories about pregnancy and autism. Whether you’re a parent, skeptic, or just curious about the latest health debates, this episode offers a nuanced, evidence-based perspective.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be going over something that I have found really fascinating, which is both RFK, saying that, you know, Tylenol and pseudomona could lead to autism or other birth complications.

And then more interesting the left’s reaction to it for me where there have been viral trends of women just taking lots of Tylenol, I can’t even TikTok, and there was one report of a death from this and we’ll get over whether that report is likely accurate. I hope it’s

not,

I think it’s plausibly accurate.

I think over 50% chance that it’s accurate. And we’ll do, I mean a lot of

Simone Collins: people overdose on Tylenol. All the time anyway, so, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well you don’t know when you’re trying to get like TikTok points or something like that. I mean, these other women who are doing this and there have been thousands of videos of women doing this that are getting millions of views.

Right. I hope they’re just

Simone Collins: drinking something fake [00:01:00] out of Tylenol bottles or, or taking fake pills. They’re taking.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they’re,

Simone Collins: yeah. May I, I hope they’re taking, you know, like your pills.

Speaker: I got a call, very frantic call at four o’clock in the morning from a husband whose wife is now dying of liver failure on a ventilator in an ICU, um, because she was trying to prove that Tylenol doesn’t cause autism because of, um. What Trump said on the news, mind you, that’s a Harvard study. Now, whether or not you believe the Harvard study or not is not, not the issue here.

The issue is that she’s somewhere between 23 to 25 weeks and she overdosed on Tylenol and she’s going to die. She’s not gonna come off that ventilator. People are, are just taking massive amounts of Tylenol to prove, prove Trump wrong. I mean, weren’t these the same people who put Harvard and Fauci and the pillars of science?

On a pedestal. And now they refuse to believe [00:02:00] 28 weeks pregnant. You know what, I’m gonna take some, the title, we’ll see. The oph gonna work like a charm and my baby won’t have autism.

Speaker 3: How dumb are they that you hate a president enough? To risk the health of your unborn child, and where the hell are the, the men who made him pregnant? Mm. Probably, I’m telling you, I would have an issue. This is not new. The warning not to take acetaminophen during pregnancy is not new. It is. Well.

Simone Collins: So,

Malcolm Collins: and we’ll get into this for people who don’t know Tylenol is by like, mu, let’s ignore the JFK, let’s ignore the new studies that we’re gonna go into.

Mm-hmm. It was considered to be the safest pain reliever when you’re pregnant, but not. Safe for pregnancy, it, it was the safest option when you needed an option. [00:03:00] Yeah, and to be

Simone Collins: clear, in multiple pregnancies we have used Tylenol, and that is because you have to balance risks. So if you have a really high fever and you have, for example, a first trimester baby.

You, you risk giving that baby neural tube defects if they are exposed to a high fever. So for the baby we just had who is now in the NICU and was otherwise very healthy, he basically sustained an injury while being born. So nothing inherently wrong with him. I had a very high fever. Moments after the embryo was transferred and then like one week after when neural tube development began, I was definitely on Tylenol.

Like everyone was like

Malcolm Collins: aware of is is cost benefit trade off with this stuff ‘cause we’re, we’re also gonna go over in this. Even if RFK is right about everything he’s saying, what is the actual risk of one of the complications from Tylenol? And it’s still fairly low. Mm-hmm. I say a single one to 2% increase in, in probability.

Yeah. And this is [00:04:00] based probability, not, you know, if the, if the original risk was 1% and now the new risk is 2%, you could say, well, it increased by a hundred percent, or it increased by 1%, it

Simone Collins: doubled your risk, which sounds so scary.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and but the, sorry, the point I was gonna make here is it’s as if these people hate, like our political side more than they love their children.

They would just decide to risk their, and when I say risks, their child, Tylenol itself said in tweets, in multiple tweets that will go over. Do not take this when you’re pregnant.

Mm-hmm. It

has not been approved for use in pregnancy and it may have negative consequences.

Mm-hmm.

When people asked if they could, so like, this is mainstream, the company itself saying don’t do this.

Everyone should know that you can’t just take infinite Tylenol. But I think these people are just like, my side says, Trump is bad for saying [00:05:00] x, therefore. I don’t need to like, like do they not even research? Did they not even Google before? They just start taking a ton of Tylenol when they’re visibly pregnant?

I mean,

it reminds me of in, in Scotland I heard one of the, a report from my friend of, of a girl who he knew from like inner city Glasgow. ‘cause that’s where he grew up, where she was smoking when she was pregnant. And they were like, why are you doing that? And, and she said she heard it made the, the baby smaller so that giving birth would hurt less.

Oh.

So there are astonishingly stupid people out there. Well, and, and there’s

Simone Collins: the, the other example of I, someone on, on social media was complaining that they ordered a grocery delivery that included Tylenol and the person who delivered the groceries substituted it for acetaminophen and was like, didn’t you know that Trump said that Tylenol isn’t safe?

And. They’re

Malcolm Collins: the

Simone Collins: same thing.

Malcolm Collins: The same thing. Yeah. I know. And the Simone has been bemoaning the entire time this [00:06:00] controversy has been going. How upsetting it must be to be at Tylenol just because Trump cannot pronounce acetaminophen. Yeah. And we know that’s why he said Tylenol. ‘cause there’s this feature apparent, we’re like.

You describe it, you described it to me this morning. Oh my. It’s

Simone Collins: the, no, you have to, I’ll, I’ll try to find a clip of the press conference. Yeah. Where Trump, you know, makes this big announcement about RF K’s report on acetaminophen. And he’s like, oh man, I’m gonna mispronounce this. And he tries to say the word acetaminophen and butchers it multiple times.

And, and Kennedy, RFK is just standing right behind him the whole time with his pain, look on his face and you know, his voice is super screwed up. So he is saying acetaminophen, acetaminophen. And like obviously Trump is not hearing it and you could see his, his lips moving and he’s trying to tell Trump, obviously Trump didn’t listen to the white Stripes.

And, and,

Malcolm Collins: and a and did they talk about acetaminophen?

Simone Collins: Yeah. There’s this, the, you know, you have no taste in medicine. Acetaminophin. Okay. You see.

Speaker 5: First, , effective immediately the FDA will be notifying physicians at the use of ace. [00:07:00] Well, let’s see how we say that. Ace acid, acetaminophen. Acetaminophen. Is that okay? Yes. Which is basically commonly known as Tylenol during pregnancy can be associated with a very increase. Risk of autism. So taking Tylenol is, , not good.

Alright. I’ll say it, it’s not good for this reason. They are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary. That’s, , for instance, in cases of high fever.

Simone Collins: Well, so the,

Malcolm Collins: the great thing here about all of this and, and I will know when people are like, like, what are your guys deeper thoughts before I get into this?

Simone, you believe that there actually aren’t. Particularly like you think that RFK messed up the studies that [00:08:00] he was citing. I think that maybe you were told this by a progressive journalist without actually looking into the volume of studies that he was citing. Okay. So I, I, I think he is likely accurate that there, there probably is some complication there.

I also really, my

Simone Collins: understanding is that this is one of those issues where he, there, there wasn’t enough correction used. Like when you ultimately correct for. A bunch of factors that you should be correcting for in a, in a study, which is hard. It’s a very nuanced thing. Right.

Malcolm Collins: But that’s, you sort of have the impression that this was like one study of like 20,000 people.

Yeah. When it was like. Eight studies of like 80,000 to 200,000 people each. Mm-hmm. Done by different teams that all came to around the same result. So I, I wanna be clear here. It you, you had the impression, like, it was like one study that made a mistake, and I think one study might’ve made a mistake.

I mean, the left has to react reactively to everything like this. I think the wider problem around autism is Simone’s diagnosis, autism. Our kids are diagnosed with autism. It’s genetic. Also, it’s a bunch of different things. My mom had a view of autism that is not [00:09:00] dissimilar from RFK. She’s like, you know, she won’t be able to love you or the children.

And when one of our kids was diagnosed with autism, she was like, well, you know, that’s it for his life. You know, and at RFK I’ll see all these things. Like, you know, when people with who have autism, their lives are ruined. Meanwhile, you know, Elon has been diagnosed with autism because he is diagnosed with Asperger’s, and Asperger’s is no longer a separate diagnosis.

So he would be technically autistic. And so, we need to, I think realistically as a society break apart autism into multiple diagnoses. Again, yes, it’s really, really stupid to have it listed as one diagnoses when one person is like Elon or my wife and then another person. Can’t use the bathroom on their own.

Like, why are we calling these the same thing? It’s, it’s, it’s not even like degrees. And the reason why the wokes and the woke departments cannot do this is because. Then all of the people who are using this to try to claim like disability points and which, which, which they need for their social games, [00:10:00] right?

Like anyone could just self ideas, autistic, which they do, you know, the internet, right? And then the people who actually. Have challenges because of this. They, they point to them as if they’re in the same kind of disabled camp as the actually severely disabled person. And the mere fact, and I actually think it’s really sick and psychotic, that people do this because you will see like far lefties online, like literally be like.

How dare RFK say he wants to reduce autism rates. This is a genocide against my people. This is my people being erased. And, and, and so no research should be done into reducing autism. When I’m like, you understand that? Like this is a diagnosis that’s also being applied to people who can barely function in society or Yeah.

Who

Simone Collins: will forever be in diapers and need full-time round the clock care, who will never be able to get a job, will never be able to do anything independently. Who are huge risks to themselves and others. Yeah. Yeah. Like how,

Malcolm Collins: how dare you say that those [00:11:00] people that we shouldn’t try to reduce whatever’s causing that.

Just so you can claim your disability points and the RFK is coming to genocide, you. Yeah, and I think

Simone Collins: that there, there are some conditions that are diagnosed as autism that are downstream of just other things, like there’s this new medication that a lot of people are talking about. Which is meant it to treat, I think maybe like a thyroid imbalance or something like that, that really does seem to effectively treat it at, at least in, in the research, it’s been focused on children, but adults have also reported big changes in like their language processing ability, and that’s getting grouped in and, and those people want this treatment because it makes them.

Like they, they can be more functional as people. Yeah. And so there’s all these things that like sensitivities to stuff, imbalances to things. All the, and it’s autism. I’m saying

Malcolm Collins: this to somebody with autistic wife. Autistic kids, right. If you use the fact. That you are autistic to try to prevent other people, [00:12:00] especially if you are not low functioning autistic.

Mm-hmm. To try to prevent other people from coming up with cures or preventing that you are an actual psychopath and like when people should

Simone Collins: have the right to. Try to avoid or lean into certain traits that they want. You know, you shouldn’t force people. Right, right, right. That’s not what I’m talking

Malcolm Collins: about here.

When you see somebody online being like, how dare they attempt to reduce this? How dare they work on cures for this when you are not actually dealing with the negative consequences that they are trying to address? Oh

yeah, yeah. You

are. Basically sacrificing those people and those future people for your chance to sort of emotionally masturbate online.

And one, our audience needs to call these people out when they do this. Like people need to stop feeling okay doing this. Yeah. People need to stop feeling okay. Like this is how we got to this place in society is that people would do stuff like this and we’d just like roll our eyes and we need to be like, you are an actual psychopath that you would throw low functioning autistic people under the [00:13:00] bus like this.

Yeah. Just so you can feel good about yourself. But anyway I wanted to go into the woman who’s, he’s he’s back on screen by the way. Cam, maybe

Simone Collins: NICU cam.

Malcolm Collins: We just had maximally autistic. We, we, you know, did all of it all write feedback off screen? No. Needed to ensure maximum autism in this one.

Yeah. Text the autistic, that’s his middle name, the autistic, it’s, it’s actually Demy from the, the Culture Series by Ian Beman. But anyway the woman who, who potentially killed herself, where does this report come from?

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: what

Simone Collins: happened? Well, first, what did she

Malcolm Collins: do? She did a video where she did a bunch of Tylenol to try to show that it’s not risky at all while she was pregnant.

No. Oh, oh, oh. I told you thousands of women are doing these videos. This is a viral trip.

Simone Collins: Then. It’s not just her, she’s putting at risk. Oh, that’s dude. Like, yeah. Everyone knows in pregnancy, like, you can’t take anything. You can’t take anything. You can’t drink chamomile tea. I mean, come [00:14:00] on.

Malcolm Collins: These people hate you more than they love their children.

That’s, that’s just the end of it. Okay. They, they, they, their children, they’re just having them to extend this. A life, I guess this, this, this hypothesis of happiness that they are living, that that clearly isn’t giving them what they want. So by the way, Simone, I just finished this off. Let’s try to remember to not throw these away and wash them out because I think they make really good bonkers for the kids.

They’ve got. Okay, I’ll, I’ll, let me wash them out with soap though. You don’t want ‘em to like grumble? Yeah. They’ve got a sort of club shape to them. I can put them in like a milk break balloon or something. Yeah, they’re gonna break our kids

Simone Collins: play with trash. We’ve been

Malcolm Collins: looking for some, like good toy swords for our kids and yeah.

This, this would be a great one. They’re good

Simone Collins: clubs. Yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: gotta, gotta look for that in the future. The, the good bonker stuff. Try to find

Simone Collins: some way for them to decorate them or something. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, it was a video posted by Nicole Sir Tech, who is the executive director of American Frontline Nurses.

Now the reason why a lot of progressives disbelieved it [00:15:00] is she was flagged with COVID misinformation. Specifically she was one of the people who said that these shots might be killing some people. Which. We basically now know that some of the early shots were causing the type of blood clot in some individuals basically.

Okay. So the story here our behind the scenes information on this is that when the shots were approved, they were approved for intramuscular injection only. And that that required a special type of trained nurse, and so it would’ve made it harder for them to be deployed at the rate that they needed to be deployed at.

Mm-hmm.

And so, when they accidentally did go intravenously which I think happens like one of like 5% of the time or like 3% of the time it would form a blood clot, which could cause heart, heart issues. And yeah, like when you

Simone Collins: do an intramuscular shot, what you’re supposed to do is pull out the plunger a little bit to see if you pull any blood.

If you do, then you need to start. It’s not that

Malcolm Collins: hard to train people. They just basically decide. Yeah, it just

Simone Collins: takes a lot and I mean. But it’s also like more disturbing for the actual [00:16:00] recipient. So I could see like from an optic standpoint of view. Yeah. The point being is

Malcolm Collins: that she wasn’t wrong about this, but you know, she broke a progressive, like mainstream thing and so they’re like, oh, now you can’t trust anything she says.

But anyway she claimed that she received a frantic 4:00 AM call from an anonymous husbands who’s 23 to 25 week pregnant, had overdosed. On an entire bottle of Tylenol after seeing trumped announcement in TikTok trends CTEC said the woman was now on liver failure and a ventilator and there was little chance of survival for her and her baby.

And people have said, well, why can’t you get a camera crew on this woman if this is real? And she is Basically, the answer is, if you’re not. Retarded is this woman clearly does not like Trump, right? She doesn’t want the fact that she screwed up and likely is going to die, and her baby died. To be a right wing talking point, very obviously, she isn’t going to consent to being on camera about this.

You could say, why wouldn’t the hospital consent to this? You think a hospital’s gonna throw one of its patients under the bus like [00:17:00] that? Like are you out of your mind? There, if, if this is a real thing, you wouldn’t be able to easily confirm it. And this lady is not on record having lied before, and she runs a major nurses organization.

She’s not like a, a nobody out there. Right. So, yeah, I, I think it’s very plausible what she’s saying, especially when I look at these TikTok Trends videos and I’m like, that looks like a potentially lethal amount that you’re taking there. Like somebody has explained to you that Tylenol isn’t. A a no side effects medication.

Right. Like, I, I just don’t think they, they’re aware of this. So to get to the thing I was talking about, the Twitter from Tylenol the at Tylenol brand wrote, we don’t actually recommend using any of our products while pregnant. Thank you for taking time to voice your concerns. They deleted that post, by the way.

They got freaked out because it’s gone viral recently. Oh goodness. In another post at Tylenol said, congrats on your upcoming edition, ex. So exciting [00:18:00] Excl. Mark, it would be great to touch base real quick since we haven’t tested Tylenol to be used during pregnancy. Call us when you can quote then in another one on addressing pregnancy brains at Tylenol.

Said, we’re sorry to hear that it hasn’t helped your pregnancy plans. Please be sure to talk to your doctor for alternative pain relief options. So basically, and multiple. Things Tylenol was saying, Hey, you shouldn’t be doing this.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and just for pain, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. You undergo so much pain during pregnancy when you tough it out, Simone, you’re such tough.

It’s better.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, like, I don’t know. I, I think that medications should only be taken to protect the baby. When you’re pregnant, you get thrown under the bus. I do not care. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I, I heard you can’t even drink when you’re pregnant anymore. What, what would I actually feel

Simone Collins: like people

Malcolm Collins: are really loosening up on that.

They’re like, ah, like,

Simone Collins: yeah, take

Malcolm Collins: it’s

Simone Collins: fine. Have a glass of wine. My

Malcolm Collins: mom, she drank during pregnancy.

Simone Collins: Your

Malcolm Collins: mom? Yeah. Half a bottle of wine a day. Yeah. Half a bottle of wine a day. So she drank and, and everyone’s like, wait, you don’t have fetal alcohol [00:19:00] syndrome? You can tell like, you know, Greta Berg has fetal alcohol syndrome and it, it’s pretty easy to tell when you’re looking at somebody.

And people can be like, why aren’t you? And I was like, do you know how much alcohol I drink? Like my family is like immune to the effect not even

Simone Collins: immune. It, it’s like you, you need it like bender.

Speaker 6: Leave me alone. Look at that. Five o’clock rust. You’ve been up all night. Not drinking, haven’t you? Hey, what I don’t do is none of your business please bend or have some malt liquor. If not for yourself, then for the people who love you.

Speaker 7: Wait. I want you to look me in the eye and promise you won’t get behind the wheel without some kind of alcoholic beverage in your hand.

Speaker 6: I promise nothing.

Simone Collins: It’s, yeah. It’s a necessary part of your diet without you,

Malcolm Collins: people are like, Malcolm, you’re really smart.

I’m like, imagine how smart I would be if I wasn’t born you know, soaked in and half a bottle. Born pickled. Yeah. Pickled.

But let’s go into these studies. Because I think [00:20:00] that you might have a, a misunderstanding of why he made this decision. Okay. Where did you get this understanding that you have, by the way, was it on blocked and reported that No, I asked, I asked

Simone Collins: Perplexity

Malcolm Collins: no. Okay.

Simone Collins: But I mean that, you know, like, it, it’s dealing with source data that has skewed so.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m asking crock, so right, like we’re, we’re getting it both from ads. Well, there you go. So, so, nurses in health study two, 2019, among 29,000 mother child pairs, prenatal acetaminophen exposure was linked to 20 to 30% higher risk of autism or A DHD In children the adjusted odds ratio is 1.22, 1.3 longer exposure duration correlated with greater risk.

Now, I’ll note here before we go to the next study, that was a 29. Thousand mother child pair thing. And it didn’t just show greater risk. It showed the more you took, the greater the risk was.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I thought that what there was was a correlation between people who [00:21:00] were autistic themselves taking more Tylenol when pregnant.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Maybe, but I, I just can’t believe that that wasn’t tested for in a single one of these studies. So we’re gonna go to the next study.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Next study. Boston birth cohort in 2,500. Urban mother child pairs diverse, low income, prolonged exposure, over 28 days associated with four x. Higher a SD risk or autism risk.

Now this one is interesting because this is what I saw when I looked into this before when you first started giving birth, because of course I wanted to know like, is Tylenol safe to take while you’re pregnant? And what I remember reading, and this is what I’ve always communicated to you, is that when it was found unsafe, particularly in animal models you basically needed to be on it for very long periods of time.

IE 28 days or more, like you wouldn’t even. Think of taking Tylenol 28 days in a row while you were pregnant whereas this is where you’re getting these, these risk scenarios. And, and, and [00:22:00] this was what we saw in mice around risks from it. Is is normal amounts of Tylenol taken for extremely long periods of time.

And some people just do this because they have daily pain. And that’s where I think we really do need to be looking at the risk from this because I, I would not be at all surprised to this four x higher rate. And, and I don’t think you can get something like a four x higher rate just from a correlation with autistic people being more likely to take Tylenol.

Simone Collins: I think maybe there’s a I’m gonna check this to something about siblings like. In, in pregnancies that had more acetaminophen intake. If you also looked at whether their siblings were autistic, there were, but then, I mean, presumably the mothers just have a habit of taking more

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: more acetaminophen.

However it, it does say that some research indicates that there is a maternal genetic predisposition to neuro development conditions and, and correlating with increased pregnancy symptoms like autistic people. As you know, are more sensitive to [00:23:00] a lot of things. True. And therefore may medicate more.

I don’t think they get

Malcolm Collins: you four x higher risk. That’s really high. Okay, let’s go to the next one here. Harvard th Chan School of Public Health Review 2025. Mm-hmm. They did an NIH funded meta analysis of 46 studies with over a hundred thousand. Participants.

Mm-hmm.

And they found, quote unquote, co consistent associations.

27 studies showed positive links to a to autism A DHD with higher quality ones being more likely to report risks. So ones that were using more controls showed more risks.

Mm-hmm.

Say, recommended minimal use John Hopkins University and that, that just came out this year and used over a hundred thousand people.

John Hopkins University study 2019. Meta-analysis of seven studies with around 130,000 participants reported 20 to 30% increase in both A DHD and autism. And this mattered more in boys and more if it was used later in pregnancy. Later in pregnancy. Later in

Simone Collins: pregnancy. That’s

Malcolm Collins: [00:24:00] interesting ‘

Simone Collins: cause normally.

The impression I get is it’s the, it’s what you’re exposing a baby to earlier in pregnancy. That has more of an impact.

Malcolm Collins: Then we have the, and note here, I’m, I’m, I’m here talking about like John Hopkins, Harvard, NIH. This isn’t like some crack pot, like conservative, whatever. Seen a bunch of yahoos. This is, it’s, it’s not like the, the actual thing that happened here is not.

That because a lot of people are like, well, he couldn’t possibly have run enough studies to get this data in this amount of time. This is basically something that was well and commonly known throughout the medical field before this. Hmm. But it was also known that we don’t wanna scare women about Tylenol too much because we, we do.

Simone Collins: I’ll take autism over a neural tube defect any day.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: absolutely. Any

Malcolm Collins: day. Right? So that’s, that’s the point, right, is they wanted to not overly freak people out. So they, there wasn’t some big [00:25:00] campaign around this, but I’ve, but I’ve noticed that there was this like weird reactive thing on the left, and I think it sort of came from the, autism is from vaccines thing where any explanation for autism is taken as a sign of a conspiracy theory. Mm-hmm. Anyone saying this is what might be causing autism rates they’re just like. Ah, that’s definitionally conspiracy theory because we know that what causes autism is one of the things we’re not allowed to talk about.

I I, in the same way that like, if we’re talking about like falling fertility rates, you’re like, oh, that must be a great replacement theory thing. That must be a conspiracy theory because we just know this is in the category of things we’re not allowed to talk about. So Mount Sinai study came out in 2025.

This was the cohort of a thousand mothers and it found 25% higher risk. There was the international consensus statement in 2021 which had 91 experts from 17 countries review data and urged precautionary limits on acetaminophen during pregnancy due to quote unquote emerging neurodevelopmental [00:26:00] risks.

So, so in 2021, like a group of experts, and this was published in nature. Nature reviews, endocrinology saying the experts, the 91 experts came together and said, do not take this wantonly during pregnancy. Biological mechanisms. Review 2022. This one actually had a proposed pathway.

Acetaminophen may disrupt fetal brain development via glutathione depletion and prostaglandin inhibition and hormone interference.

Simone Collins: Oh, wow.

Malcolm Collins: So yeah that’s a lot of research from a lot of really, and, and this is the thing, there’s also a lot

Simone Collins: of research that points out that endocrine disruptors in, you know, first trimester at the very least, and probably all trimesters.

You know, are, are really not good to be exposed to. And if you’re ordering takeout, if you’re eating at a restaurant, like your stuff is being cooked in plastic, you’re getting that exposure. If you’re microwaving stuff in plastic, you’re getting exposure. [00:27:00] If you’re breathing in the air, you are getting that exposure.

So. You know, like,

Malcolm Collins: no. But the point you are making, and I I make this point as well, is if you watch this podcast, you’re gonna be broadly aware of the tide studies that she’s referencing here which show that young boys who mothers have endocrine disruptors in them during the first trimester of pregnancy which are common in a lot of chemicals today.

They develop less into fully males. They show more female play behavior at the age of seven, lower an genital distance at birth. Yeah. So, this is a thing that is known. If RFK went up there and said there’s a chemical that’s, you know, making young boys develop more like young girls everyone would be like, oh, you turn in the frogs gay.

Oh, this is a conspiracy theory. Oh, can you believe how crazy it is? The next day there would be 20 things from the left about why these studies don’t have proper controls and why these studies don’t have proper

Simone Collins: women eating plastic microwaving their vegetables and plastic bags. Yeah. You

Malcolm Collins: [00:28:00] guys know this.

We know this. This was just a category of thing that was in certain communities, was commonly known. IE, the the in nature from the big panel of international experts. And RFK just basically went up and said it publicly and the left had to have an existential freakout in the same way that and I, I won’t say right these days, this is more common on the left, but the right used to be like this.

Like when Michelle Obama decided she was gonna like plant healthy gardens in the right. Oh yeah.

Simone Collins: She, yeah, she planted like a victory garden at the White House. Yeah. Yeah. What can

Malcolm Collins: I do? This not gonna offend. Then it became cool on the right to be like performatively unhealthy for a while and people would walk around with like the giant, like baby size.

Speaker 9: Then there is a horrifying 512 ounce version that they call child Side. How is this a child size soda? Well, it’s roughly the size of a 2-year-old child. If the child were liquified,

Malcolm Collins: oh God.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Cups of, of [00:29:00] soda drinking them just to show Oh, I’m not a, a cocky damn. I, I am destroying my body to, to show how bad they are. Right. You know? The broader thing is. Because people often ask, what do we think of Maha? What do we think of RFK?

He seems pretty cool, is what I’d say. I, I don’t think, I think he’s like, seems like a righteous dude. He seems like a righteous dude. Yeah.

Speaker 11: . He jeopardizes my ability to effectively govern this student body.

Speaker 12: Oh, well, he’s very popular. Ed, the S Portos and Motorhead geeks sluts, bloods, OIDs, dweebs, dickhead. They all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.

Malcolm Collins: He, he, he’s not right about all the science that he does. Absolutely true. He does make mistakes. He is not like a rationalist, he’s much closer to a granola mom.

But. He doesn’t attack the things that I care about. He’s, he’s not out there, you know, complaining about GMO foods, [00:30:00] which I think are like a way, I love that, that we took the, let’s prevent the random chemicals in endorphin. A blocker, you know? And let’s, let’s drop the GMO in anti-nuclear stuff.

That was common in, in the old granola communities. Like I remember at Stanford, somebody was like, you’re, you’re they’re trying to get me flyers about that. And I was like, oh, like, no, sorry, I’m, I’m a scientist. And they’re like, oh, well then you must be extra against it. And I was like. Nobody who has a deep understanding of biology is against this, it, it, it’s not that it cannot cause issues.

Right. Like you, you can’t get crossbreeding with wild specimens. You can’t get change in wild populations. And then, you know,

Simone Collins: there’s the, the, the political commercial issues of like theoretically an agricultural company that produces them suing a farmer who’s growing it because they didn’t pay for the seeds.

Right, right, right. But

Malcolm Collins: if you’re, but if you’re actually aware of how much. Extra crop is produced because of this. Well, and often

Simone Collins: without the need for, [00:31:00] genuinely bad for your health. Pesticides. Pesticides, yes.

Malcolm Collins: Which grow into the water supply. Yes. And then it’s not just the pesticides that you are eating these pesticides through.

The rainwater go into the rivers. And they just completely f up these ecosystems. Yeah. Like if, if you care about environmentalism, you are pro GMO. Clearly if you care about like starving Africans, you’re pro GMO, it gets all of these very important nutrients into regions where you can’t easily otherwise get them through like golden rice and stuff we’re talking about.

Hundreds of millions of lives are almost certainly saved every year by the existence of GMOs. Mm-hmm. Like the, the, the, it’s, it’s one of these things where you just need to be sort of like comically incompetent or evil to be against it, like being against nuclear power or something like that. Mm-hmm.

Like it’s, it’s like a strict benefit thing when it’s being well maintained. I mean, you can say, well, what if, what, what if it’s not being, then focus on maintaining it, man. Right. Like this isn’t the, the decommission them when they get too old. Right. Build new ones. That’s what we should be doing right now, but we don’t have any major projects doing [00:32:00] that.

And most of our nuclear plants are over 50 years old. I don’t know if you knew that. Not, not great. When I think of a 50-year-old person’s structural state but. The, the, the, what was I gonna say was the, the wider point here. I don’t know when

Simone Collins: you think about it though, also, like appliance has built 50 years ago, last, a lot longer than

Malcolm Collins: appliances built today, so, yep.

But you know, but the other thing I was gonna say about RFK is so people are like, well, so he gets some science wrong sometimes being over granola, over crunchy. Like, is that a problem for you? And I’m like, as long as he doesn’t touch my GMOs, as long as he doesn’t touch my nuclear. Mm-hmm. And the ways that he is, is making these decisions, they’re like, well, more kids could die because communities are going unvaccinated.

I think that we have treated questioning vaccines as a sacred cow for far too long. And I think we as a society need to. Go back, look at various vaccines and be open to saying that they may not be safe in some circumstances. And

Simone Collins: what REU has argued on X, which I think is. Both very [00:33:00] brutal, but also fair in like a, in a world in which we respect people’s cultural autonomy is the highest rates of vaccination happened after big death scares, after people realized this is what happens if you don’t vaccinate.

If we don’t have herd immunity and then people went out in droves, like forcing people to get vaccinations is not the way people need to do it because they see the value. They themselves have been convinced and you know, they, they do it. Lemme point this out on

Malcolm Collins: another episode. There’s been studies done post COVID on like masks, for example, and we now know that masks.

And the regions that were heavily masked, like in the United States, the states that had less mass restrictions actually had fewer overall deaths. Mm-hmm. Even though it did increase casualties in the short term. So the idea of slowly building herd immunity and not having better effects in a lot of these external things is another thing that we just haven’t been studying very well.

This, this also is true in, in, in Europe. Not, not smaller, it was statistically no different effects there. Mm-hmm. But. [00:34:00] The point being we as a society need to be open to having conversations about this. And I’m okay with RFK mostly because I like the voter base he brings into the right, like. He brings in the granola moms and the soccer moms, and we only have to care and deal with like a few.

He’s not like banning you from getting Tylenol while pregnant or something. Right. You know, maybe incorrect things being spoken about. You know, somebody was boomer’s idea of what autism is like. If you’re autistic, you’ll live your entire life in diapers and be a drain on the economy. Meanwhile, like up on stage is Elon Musk like looking nervously.

But no, but I think

Simone Collins: that DC at the time, probably Good call what? He left DC at the right time. He hasn’t, he like didn’t go back since. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well I love that. What was it? You know, Chris Chan is, is very upset about Asperger’s people and, and now that Asperger’s isn’t around being considerate autistic because he doesn’t.

I think rightly he sees them as [00:35:00] using people like him who are undergoing real and genuine challenges, like the inability to not great their mom. Come on, come on. I had to, I had to go on that. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yes, you did.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I found out today because we’ve been going through and, and pushing to private on our fab.ai, which is like the AI chat engine that we built, guys try to, it’s like getting so much better every day. I’m really proud of it. But push you know, scenarios that are overly potentially like would squi people out in the not safer work simulator section.

For clarification here, the only reason we can see these is because they were set to public intentionally when they were created. , You can just choose to set things to private by default and, , unlike any of the other chat engines, our fab.ai has, , local saving enabled and not just local saving, but your save games themselves, not the local safe scenarios, but your save games themselves have military grade encryption on them and.

Every time you reload, , it will ask you for a word that is used to unencrypt them. , And that word, the [00:36:00] reason it’s asked every time, is because it’s not saved on our database. So even if somebody had our database and your computer, without knowing that string , of text or word, they couldn’t unencrypt your files.

Oh, and as to why we’re pushing some to private. We have some investors looking at us right now, specifically made it to the next round of the Andreessen Horowitz, , application. , And , by pushing them to private, the person who created them can still play them. But we don’t have to worry about an investor getting squibbed out and deciding that they don’t want to.

Now I know a bunch of people are gonna rush and try to create specifically embarrassing stuff on there, but whatever.

Malcolm Collins: We have like an automatic generator, so you don’t need to like, use simulates other people made to private. And there were a lot on incest and somebody was like, is this like a power user who’s making them all public? Or like, we, we, we on the, on the dev end don’t actually like have the ability to see that because I tried to make everything super anonymized.

So wait, someone’s

Simone Collins: just adding a bunch of incest content.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Incest. Fantastic.

Simone Collins: I love it. Okay. Go. Whoever you are, go off whatever. Yeah. [00:37:00] Hey,

Malcolm Collins: we had the episode where we’re like, yeah, cousin marriages are the best. Fourth,

Simone Collins: third to fourth, but yeah,

Malcolm Collins: third to fourth cousin, right? Yes. And and that was the episode where we had the big reveal to me that you and I are not related.

I had no idea.

Simone Collins: I know, I know. We were so sure. You were so sure that we were gonna come up as cousins.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I felt like third or fourth cousins.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But no, we look very similar. I know people joke all the time, we have similar personalities. It makes

Simone Collins: sense though, like when you look at our, our the, what we knew about our lineages and like where our ancestors immigrated and stuff.

It would, it would be fairly surprising. Yeah. They, yeah, they came over in very different waves. From d very different groups.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So anyway I any, any final thoughts from you on this?

Simone Collins: I’m, I, I wanna look more at the research now. Yeah. I was under the impression that it was, it was totally misinterpreted.

So now I’m like, well, I guess I need to.

Malcolm Collins: Well, ai, you know, sometimes the question that I affirmed it was is, is why did he [00:38:00] believe this? Like, where did he get this information?

Simone Collins: Oh. So, yeah, I mean, that could be a little confirmation bias, like, I mean, well, I also then

Malcolm Collins: why people don’t believe it and the answers it gave for why they didn’t believe it were so bad.

Confounding factors in studies. Women take Tylenol for things like infections, migraines hyper blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, that wouldn’t increase the risk by that much. Mm-hmm. That, that would’ve a correlation to the risk, but not four x or something. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Inconsistent or weak evidence of the 46 review studies, 20% show No.

Or inverse effects, but. Only 20% show no inverse effects. That’s like normal science. When you know something is right when only 20% of the studies show no lack of causality or proof. This is just nonsense here. The, the experts like those at Yale or Penn, no. Genetics explain 80 to 90% of the autism variants.

Yeah, but that doesn’t then, then what about the other 10 or 20%? Like we still need to talk about that. And then they’re like, an RFK is a conspiracy theorist. And then there’s been statements from who, FIGO and European agencies [00:39:00] which say evidence does not support causality, which they released that, or the RSK thing.

And I’m like, yeah, but like your top scientists were saying that it did until RFK went out there and went on the record, right? Like, this is the thing. Like everybody was like, chill about this until the Republican said it. Then they all freak out and start. Putting their heads in the sand is basically where we are as a society.

And if, if you’re watching this and you’re wondering like, where do I come down on this? I think it probably does increase the risk, especially if taken for long periods, like 28 days. However, I also think that pain management is critical in a pregnancy. I don’t think so. You’re right. I think

Simone Collins: fever management is critical in a pregnancy.

I

Malcolm Collins: think fever and pain management. I think if the mom has too much cortisol for too long a period, it can likely cause neurodevelopmental issues in the child. So there’s actually some really interesting studies on this. There was one study that looked at women who gave birth during a period of famine.

And their children were like significantly more likely to become obese later because [00:40:00] basically their bodies were, and that has to

Simone Collins: do more with caloric restriction.

Malcolm Collins: Right? Right. The point I’m making here is their bodies. Transfer information about the environment that that baby is going to be born into, to the fetus, right?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

If you are very stressed or you believe life is very hard, and there have been studies about this during like economic depressions and like the effects it has on babies this is not good for babies. It can cause like anxiety, it can cause depression in adulthood. It can cause sort of hoarding behavior.

And this is all like natural and evolutionarily adaptive. Right. So it’s, it is not even something that I would like question when I see this in a study, I’m like, oh yeah, like, that makes sense. Right. You know? And so I think that it’s about using Tylenol where it’s effective. Sorry. Using, using Tylenol like.

To, to, to some extent while understanding that you are trading one risk for another risk.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like do you want higher risk of neural tube defects or [00:41:00] do you want higher risk of autism? Yeah. You’re, you’re choosing a lesser evil and that that is the calculation to make, not, I’m just not gonna do this and be completely blind of the opportunity cost.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. I think that’s really important.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s, it’s a much, it’s a much more important way of looking at it or, or, or functionally of looking at it.

Malcolm Collins: And I think it’s also, the other thing I take away at the end of this is. The other side literally hates us more than they love their own children. They are willing to, that is

Simone Collins: disturbing

Malcolm Collins: callously and casually put their children’s lives at risk because they have dehumanized the rights so much that if somebody on the right says something that was well known in the scientific community and largely accepted before this they just have to reactively be like, well, then it must be wrong.

I, I almost feel like, I mean, it reminds me of the, the vasectomy van that was outside the DNC oh my god. You know, by Planned Parenthood. And I was like, if the right had sent a van, like, I wanna do that, I wanna get like the vasectomy van [00:42:00] sponsored by prenatal list.org. Right? We want Americans to have more children know that doesn’t mean you free vasectomies.

Then they’d freak out and be saying, we need to ban vasectomies. You know, this is, this is just what you do. Right.

Simone Collins: I suppose yeah, reverse psychology in the most simplistic way possible, and yet they fall for it. I, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I, I would, I would love, like if I had like a big foundation, like one of these mi or like,

Simone Collins: or if you were funded, like Turning Points USA

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

You would,

Simone Collins: you would, you would ditch the, the paid for debate me bro sessions and just put out vasectomy tr

Malcolm Collins: trucks. I would literally, I mean literally send a truck. A vasectomy truck. Two the DNC and I have it very branded, like American Flag. Why, why

Simone Collins: do it when they’re doing it and paying for it?

Let them pay for it? Well, because

Malcolm Collins: of the, the, the one I think it would, would do a good job of highlighting [00:43:00] for people who are open to hearing our message. Like the actual cost of not having kids and that we are not against dinks. You can be dink. That’s great. And then you can, you can put signs on it.

Like, oh, you know, you talk to news teams, it goes, you know, back in the day we had to round these types of people up these days, they just marched right in our van. You know, it, I think it would highlight for people. The value of being able to reproduce and that when somebody is excited about taking that away from you, they are not a friend to people like you.

Okay? Like that is why Planned Parenthood opened. The first place was to sterilize black communities like that was their stated objective. Okay? Yeah. It’s still so hard to

Simone Collins: believe and yet.

Malcolm Collins: There you go. 89% of them are in majority minority communities. That’s, that’s still I think the popul. I think it was like some crazy that the US black population would be 40% higher if Planned Parenthood never existed.

And I don’t under, I mean, for right-leaning [00:44:00] people, I, I think that this is a much harder pill if you’re like your classic like nineties rightist instead of like the new right, that doesn’t have any racist in it at all, and you’re like, actually a racist. It’s like abortion or racism. Which 1:00 AM I for?

You know, we, we saw one guy who wanted to fund Planned Parenthood for racist motivations. And he wanted to like start a big campaign around it. And I was like, I mean, you can try. But that, that’d be another fun thing to do if you want to end Planned Parenthood. Very, very easy. Be like start a campaign to fund Planned Parenthood for explicitly racist reasons.

And I think really quickly that would do the news rounds. People would freak out. Planned Parenthood would not take your money. And then people would be like, oh yeah, abortion, when you’re targeting specific demographics is really. A horrifying thing. Not that abortion isn’t more generally a horrifying thing, but, you know, anyway, love you to DeSimone.

So glad that we were able to welcome our kid into the world. Same. And anybody who, who wants to that’s a bunch of money [00:45:00] and wants to fund a vasectomy brand ban outside the DNC this next election cycle you let us know. And, and, and, and we’re gonna be like, we’re here to have a conversation.

You don’t want to have kids. We don’t want you to have kids. Oh God. Love you Malcolm. Put a scorecard outside the van, okay? Okay. God hitting. End recording. Love you.

Simone Collins: And set up. I learned something really interesting about I guess ultimate fighting and boxing. When Ultimate Fighting was introduced, it was seen as very savage and, I don’t know, inhuman because they were moved. Boxing gloves. This was bare knuckles fighting, and that was seen as, I don’t know, more violent, I guess.

Yeah, but it actually isn’t more violent. And do you know why boxing gloves were actually introduced in the first place? I do not. They have a higher [00:46:00] knockout rate. They enable you to hit harder.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. ‘

Simone Collins: cause it doesn’t hurt your hand as much. Like, you know, the classic film trope where someone punches someone else and they’re like, ah.

Because it hurts. And

Malcolm Collins: yeah. When you, my recent causing a concussion by, that is, that is crazy that that’s a, especially when,

Simone Collins: When, when boxing gloves apparently get wet, it’s, they’re like, you’re just fighting with giant rocks on your hands. It’s, it’s so question. And so the reason why there is an economic reason to do this is with sports betting, knockout rates are really favorable.

You want more knockouts because more people then have something to really, like, a clear thing to bet on is too easy to tap out if you’re just grappling or something like that. So it was, there was a commercial reason. For this one, for boxing gloves to be introduced and also for more, more violence. But then of course, there was also commercial re reason for the Ultimate Fighting Guide to be like, oh yeah, Barry Knuckles.

It’s definitely more violent.

Malcolm Collins: Fascinating. Yeah. All right. I will get started with this, by the way. What, [00:47:00] what, what’d you think of the, the comments today?

Simone Collins: People enjoyed it. I mean, a lot of the, the, the biggest criticism was Asman Gold is not to the right. And yeah, he is a centrist, but these days, if you don’t tow the most extreme points at the left, then you are categorized as on the right.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, even Russian right? Is, is, is, you know, JFK or whatever, who we’re gonna be talking about today, R-F-K-R-F-K, or you know. No, come on. RFK is like a, a, a lefty by previous definitions. Right. You know, yeah,

Simone Collins: a very, yeah. Crunchy, crunchy lefty. Yeah, totally.

Malcolm Collins: Even, even with controversies are left leaning, like, so the, the right, I mean, if you’re using that traditional definition of the right I think, I think MG GOLD is very sort of like the, the modern ID of the right.

In terms of Yeah, and I think

Simone Collins: a lot of people just haven’t recognized that the right is no longer about just pure conservatism, social conservatism and religious conservatism. It is about a heterodox alliance of people who want cultural autonomy. [00:48:00]

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is very, very different than we’re gonna force cultural, where the cultural conservative types.

They’ve actually moved to the left, um mm-hmm. Because they wanna do things like ban porn, which requires VPN bans, which means you’re basically giving the government to control what anyone says or thinks. Yeah. And in that case, you end up with like extreme leftist positions. Like, we need to give the government and bureaucrats control of what I’m allowed to see and think.

Yeah.

And so I think that, yeah, it’s just different world that we’re living in now. We’ve changed through technology and social situations. I guess I’ll get started here.

Oh yeah, we should probably also let people know. So we had a kid the kid is in the NICU still. There was, I forget the word, holes in his lungs due to aspirating in each lungs in each lung. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Which is, is it’s, it’s another word way of saying collapsed lung.

Malcolm Collins: And he’s probably gonna be okay.

You know, obviously we’re, we’re praying and we’re hoping that things work out. He if you, if you wanted to see [00:49:00] like a full video of like the births and the hospital process and everything like that we put that on one of our picture on episodes. It’s not because we wanted to

Simone Collins: ize that paid Substack episode

Malcolm Collins: or, or paid substack.

It, it is not that like we were trying to hide that from our general audience. I just don’t think that the type of people who come for our. Usual talks are going to find that interesting. And so it would’ve hurt us in the algo. So that’s why we put it with paid content and that’s what often happens with the paid content.

Yeah, I would

Simone Collins: show y’all texts on our NICU panda cam, but he’s being fed right now, so I have to, but I have him on a constant screen. And that’s one thing that they don’t tell you about NICUs, that a lot of NICUs have a constant camera you can have on your baby. So even when you can’t be with them, you can still.

Watch that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and for those who don’t know, because you did mention that some people were like, oh, if I could pay for you guys, I would, well, we do have episode seven days a week. It’s just the weekend episodes you only get if you’re paid. I, I will note the weekend episodes are, are shorter and oftentimes on subjects that I think that like.[00:50:00]

Yeah. Honestly, like when, when we’re doing our, our regular episodes, it’s a lot of stuff that I think will do well in the algorithm, like women, bad, Democrat, silly when it’s weekend episodes, it’s, it’s,

Simone Collins: it’s listener requests that we agree are really interesting, but that we don’t, that we think we’d be punished for on YouTube.

Mm-hmm. Basically. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So it’s more like what we think is interesting and what I think our higher economic user base is gonna think is interesting.

Simone Collins: So I, I like it. I love, I love the weekend episodes. But anyway, I like all episodes. Anyone who gives us the honor of their time these days is, I mean, that’s the most precious thing these days.

It’s, it’s a huge honor, but the monetary support is really appreciated, so thank you.

Speaker 13: Ben Bridge is working. Are you gonna break his legs? Soci.

What? Oh my God. You just punched the Yes, I did. [00:51:00] I off, off, turn off. What?

Cracked by the giant.

You’re breaking my leg towards move. Shoes are not allowed on the couch. Octa’s correct. Titan a pot of.

Okay. Walk through me and go

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