Episode Details

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] Simone Collins: Excuse me, are people researching female gooners?

[00:00:39] Malcolm Collins: Oh, yes. We have many re- Simone, when you say female gooners as if they’re the rare thing, the vast majority-

[00:00:46] Simone Collins: No, I know ... are women. Look, trust me, I know. Yes. I just-

[00:00:50] Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, I know you know, because I know what you listen to at night,

[00:00:53] Simone Collins: Simone. Stop. I’m listening to the Old Testam- Oh, never mind.

[00:00:56] Yeah, that’s pretty messed up, so go on then.

[00:00:59] Malcolm Collins: I actually wanna ask it for later. Which industry makes more, this or male ?

[00:01:06] Simone Collins: Oh, no, we did this before. The, the romance novel industry makes a ton more money. Are you kidding me?

[00:01:12] Malcolm Collins: Well, we’ll, we’ll see, we’ll see. It’s

[00:01:13] Simone Collins: not even- But, okay, hold on

[00:01:14] funny and funny. Yeah So,

[00:01:15] Malcolm Collins: A third- Offended you

[00:01:16] Simone Collins: would ask ...

[00:01:17] Malcolm Collins: a third of all fiction books is that people are reading right now are- ... female gooning books, okay?

[00:01:22] Simone Collins: No one reads anymore except for certain reasons.

[00:01:25] Malcolm Collins: This has gone up from 23% w- just a decade ago.

[00:01:31] Simone Collins: Oh, oh.

[00:01:32] Malcolm Collins: The romance sales industry year over year grew 24% this year in the, in the first half of the year circa BookScan And 26% of survey r- readers reported buying more than one romance book in the prior year.

[00:01:51] Now, for, I wanna get to this immediately because a lot of people on our channel are gonna j