Episode
The Girl Gooner Apocalypse (Is A Good Thing?)
- Published
- Aug 13, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3386
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Summary
In this episode, Malcolm and Simone go deep on the female gooning wave — the explosive rise of erotic romance novels and smut that now makes up a huge share of what women are actually reading. We cover the hard data: romance sales growth, reading frequency stats, and older studies showing romance readers have more (and more satisfying) sex. Simone and Malcolm explain reactive sexuality, why these books can act as exogenous priming, and why the average effect on relationships appears positive rather than destructive. Then they break down the dominant tropes in the biggest current series — Empyrean (Fourth Wing / Iron Flame / Onyx Storm), A Court of Thorns and Roses, The Hunting of Adeline, dark mafia, and Zodiac Academy — and what the power dynamics, possessiveness, and “claiming” language actually reveal about female arousal profiles. Also discussed: the Wicker movie trailer going mainstream, why most men and women want very different things in erotic content, the biblical case against inventing extra sexual prohibitions, and a short closer on premarital sex and the film One Night Only. Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Simone Collins: Your face. What? What? What? So you can see we’ve reached mainstream. No, you, you, you haven’t read these books. You don’t understand what women are reading about- [00:00:14] Malcolm Collins: Did you read those books? ... [00:00:14] Simone Collins: in these books. [00:00:15] Would you like to know more? [00:00:17] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. We have touched on the topic of the rise of the female gooning wave, but I wanted to go deeper into both the research around it and how that wave is changing, because it’s having an, a much bigger impact on society than people think. [00:00:35] About- [00:00:35…