Episode
The Noticing Intensifies: I Wish I Had Not Pulled This Thread
- Published
- Jul 20, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4094
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Summary
In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone unpack a striking civilizational pattern: nearly every major cultural movement of the past 100 years—blues, rock, rap, punk, goth, grunge, techno, heavy metal, and more—along with most modern sports (soccer, basketball, baseball, rugby, American football, etc.), top video games, and key inventions originated in Protestant-majority countries or regions. Catholic-majority areas dominate refinement and style (think Paris and Italy) and often excel at competing within existing frameworks, yet almost never invent the new forms themselves. Japan, Korea, and a few outliers like Poland provide the main exceptions. They dig into why this pattern holds, using Ireland as a critical test case that points to a Protestant vs. Catholic cultural difference rather than a simple North/South European one. Topics include historical differences in innovation, scandal handling (IRA, Church), terrorism rates, treatment of captives, status-seeking vs. inventiveness, religious orders, and what Catholics (and others) can usefully reverse-engineer. This is not about identity or conversion—it’s about treating culture as technology and stealing what works. Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be pulling on one of those threads where my mind notices a pattern, and then I start pulling on it, and I’m like, “Oh my God, this pattern is so much more robust than I expected it would be, so much larger than I expected it would be,” and it kind of changes how I think about things at a civilizational level, and it’s something that we need to talk about. [00:00:23] I began to think about, like, various cultural movements throughout the last 100 years. So what do... ‘ Blues,…