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this has never happened before today we have three experts in their field with three different opinions debating the
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subject of porn this is the first time I've gone on pornh Hub at work in one corner we have Dr Reena
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Malik the sex scientist helping millions of couples enhance their sex lives in the other Corner we have Dr Kate the
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psychiatrist specializing in helping people with addictions to pornography and more who is up against Erica lust
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who runs a large pornographic production company no one can sit on the fence here
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is porn a benefit to people and Society definitely and especially for people who
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haven't really had that right to pleasure to understand their sexuality but I think what we're clearly seeing is a trend of it being damaging and let me just share with you all what I'm afraid
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of it is doing way more to the brain than we ever realized so the first thing that we know is that bye there's data to
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suggest that couples that use pornography together have better sexual en counters and women who use
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pornography have better sexual satisfaction rates and remember that women's sexuality has been so much about
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pleasing others and you see it with the orgasm Gap from a devil's advocate would say that there is significant number of
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women interested in looking a certain way that they're often seeing on pornography that's harmful I'm a bit
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suspicious about this because honestly that statement is from 10 years ago but there's also unrealistic expectations
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about performance that creat shame and small penis anxiety is a real thing and it's often from watching pornography the
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real problem is we are not giving sex education to our young people they are lost but it doesn't have to be an addiction it's the way that you relate to it it is something that people can
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control and parents can learn how to have these conversations with their kids there are a couple of really nice techniques that you can use the first is that
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this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the
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show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you
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make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guests that
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you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much let's start with introductions Dr Reena who are you and what you do so I'm a urologist which is
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essentially a medical and surgical doctor of the genetry urinary tract but I see myself more as a digital opinion
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leader in the space of sexual health and neurologic health so someone who can talk to and speak about complex Concepts
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in addition to Sexual Health in a way that people can understand can you give me sort of a a view of the VAR iety of
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things that you've worked on in your career the types of patients you've worked with and the subject matter broadly that you've addressed and are
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confronted with in your line of work absolutely so as a urologist we're trained to treat anything in those areas
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of the genitor urinary tract so that can be kidney cancer prostate cancer bladder cancer Sexual Health erectile
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dysfunction female sexual dysfunction kidney stones children's issues but then when uh I did a fellowship in what's called female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery or Euro Gynecology so I initially trained in
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dealing with voiding dysfunction um and problems with bladder leakage overactive
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bladder prolapse those sorts of things and subsequently expanding my practice into sexual medicine so I take care of
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patients with issues with erectile dysfunction arousal or disorders ejaculatory dysfunction um libido issues uh lubrication issues a whole bunch of
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different areas of issues that people deal with when it comes to sexual health Dr K same question to you sure so I'm a psychiatrist by training but I had kind
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of a roundabout way to get there so uh I failed out of college due to video game addiction and then went to India to find
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myself studied uh to become a monk for about seven years and then wound up going to medical school becoming a
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psychiatrist and now the majority of the work that I do is actually like focused on the internet so what I noticed when I
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was training was that if you look at like academic Psychiatry or Psychiatry we focus on things like depression or
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bipolar disorder or anxiety but I saw that there was a whole lot of evolving mental health problems for the digital Generation video game addiction pornography addiction and I noticed that
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most of the psychiatrists weren't focused on those we kind of had an opioid epidemic that's still going on a
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lot of problems with alcohol and marijuana but there all these digital addictions that are emerging and those are the people that I work with now
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Erica yeah who are you and what you doing I'm Erica I'm independent adult filmmaker I'm an entrepreneur I made my first short film explicit short film 20
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years ago and then I developed a career in this space of Indie adult cinema and are you a director yes of adult films
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yeah I direct films I produce films I also run the company to set the stage on where we are with pornography I found some statistics which I thought were quite pertinent to the discussion which is the first
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statistic is that 30% of all internet traffic roughly is related to pornography 35% of all internet
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downloads are pornographic in nature 79% of young men view pornography monthly 64% of young adults actively seek out pornography weekly or more often one in five mobile searches are for
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pornographic content 58% of men and 38% of women watch porn at work and pornography websites receive more traffic than Netflix Amazon and Twitter combined interestingly I found another
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statistic which said that pornography in Poland has increased 310% between 2004 which I guess is when you got into the
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business and 2016 some other sort of potentially adjacent Trends which I thought were interesting were that the percentage of
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men aged 18 to 24 reporting no sexual activity in the past year increased from 18.9% in 2000 to over 30% in 200 16 and
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similar increases in sexual activity are seen in men and women um similar decreases in sexual activity have been seen in men and women among high school
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students the percentage who have never had sexual intercourse increased from 45% in 91 to 70% in 21 and finally the
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average age of first exposure to pornography is now just 11 years old and 64% of young people report to that they
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came across pornography by accident so I guess my first um point of discussion that I wanted to raise is is pornography a benefit to people and
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society and I realize that this question is intentionally short and narrow but that's the basis of the first conversation and I want to start with you Erica is porn a benefit to people in
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society it can be it can be definitely and especially to the others who haven't really had that right to pleasure to desire to the sexuality remember that
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women's sexuality especially has been been so much about pleasing others I think that it can help women to find you know their own desire to understand
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their sexuality to see others what they like what they are doing and to turn their Liberty on Liber on which is obviously one of the things that so many
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women are struggling with let's go anticlockwise Dr K I'll repeat this statement is porn a benefit to people in
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society the way that corn is being produced and consumed is starting to cause way more harm than good I mean the the the statistics that you really just
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machine gunned out right like it's like one thing after another thing after another thing of things that are you know very scary like each statement that
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both of y'all made I could think about a specific person that I've worked with where it's like yeah I've seen that problem I've seen that problem um you
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know early exposure so when you get exposed to pornography before puberty so everyone thinks that pornography is about you know like sexual lust and and this kind of stuff and I think in a in a
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good way it can be but what I've seen a lot adults for adults is that children are getting exposed and I've seen like a
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very scary correlation between early exposure to pornography like seven eight nine years old right so I think your
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statistic was the average is 11 yeah that's average which means that there are people that are higher and people
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that are lower and when something I don't know what exactly but when we get exposed to pornography very early it
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makes some kind of alteration in our brain that makes us way more likely to addictions not only pornography but
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other things so I think that there you know sexuality is a healthy part of human existence um a lot of the current
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research suggests that masturbation is also like relatively speaking not unhealthy it's somewhat healthy and so
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pornography can be a part of that I think especially listening to Erica and how pornography can be used to elevate
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Horizons increase awareness um there can be benefits but I think what we're clearly seeing is a trend of it being
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damaging so I would say that I agree with Erica completely I think there's actually some data to suggest that women
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who use pornography have better sexual satisfaction rates have more frequency of sexual encounters because they're
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learning about their bodies I mean we can't know exactly why that is but we know there is a correlation in that specific way and so when people are
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using pornography for sexual curiosity um for pleasure um they're generally showing good for for the most part without any signs of addiction or or concerns of compulsion and use of
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pornography they're using it in in a good way and they're having better sex because of it now in terms of using it
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as a couple there's also really strong correlations that couples that use pornography together have better sexual
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encounters and better sexual satisfaction so I think there's a lot of ways that pornography is used in a
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positive way and not to undermine that there are people who struggle with it absolutely but I think yes there are
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some benefits it allows people to experience fantasies to see different types of sexual cultures as Erica
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mentioned and I think that that that is an important side of pornography in terms of um using that to learn what you
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like and learn what you want to try in your relationship if that's applicable much of the literature that I've read
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about and the studies I've read about show that if you consume pornography you're somewhat desensi ties to the real thing
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I.E sex in your relationships and when we look at those stats on sexlessness people are having less sex than previous
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years people are losing their virginity later and later and I wonder if that is we've sort of been desensitized to the
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real thing because of pornography Reena absolutely so I think that there is certainly people who feel they use
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pornography as a way to achieve pleasure and that is the sole way that they achieve pleasure so they are constantly
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using pornography and it's sometimes correlated with a certain style of masturbation and those things cannot be replicated with penetrative intercourse
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of any kind or you know manual intercourse with another person and so in those cases then it becomes difficult because your brain habituates to that
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style of stimulation and excitement and visual sense Sensations that they're getting from watching pornography and so
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that does happen to some individuals I would say say it's not the large majority but certainly we're seeing more
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of it what is the impact though on the brain especially a young brain that is exposed to pornography yeah I mean
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there's no we there's no studies on kids looking at pornography so I couldn't tell you exactly but you might be able
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to talk a look more about this yeah I mean so like first of all I think this is a fascinating discussion and if I can
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kind of track back and freestyle for a bit so I thought it was so interesting because Stephen asked this question
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right and he's like you know is pornography a problem and then I thought it was so interesting that the two women
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at the table had the more positive answers and the dude is like it's bad right so I I think the first thing to understand is that and it's so for me it's eye openening to hear both of y'all
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talk because I I think so much of it is like your experience of it right we're talking about pornography as if it's an
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isolated thing but the biggest takeaway that I already have is that there is a relationship between the human and the pornography uh Erica was talking about you know how the pornography can be used
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to help the human understand sexuality become more familiar with pleasure that we have con with your desire yeah and we have this orgasm Gap and then and then you know she's and Arena was saying you
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know we don't I forgot exactly what you said but something about we don't see it very much or you said that the the
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problems of um you know sexuality relating to pornography are I thought you said not that common which is which
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is something that I'm not saying it's common or uncommon I think that's just such an interesting selection difference
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because I work with people who have pornography and like death grip syndrome because I've never heard it discussed is
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like very common what's death grip syndrome so it's exactly it's a twitch chat degenerate way of describing what Dr mik did a great medical job of describing which is that so what happens
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is our body can acclimatize to a certain kind of stimulation so when um often times what happens when and I I haven't worked with too many women and and sexual stuff way more men um so that
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there's a selection bias there too but often times what happens is that boys or men will start to masturbate without any kind of lubrication and so there's a ve they almost train their bodies physio
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physiologically to climax with a certain degree like a certain you know pounds per square inch of force and a certain
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sensation which they get used to not only at the physiologic level but also at the neurological level which Dr mik
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alluded to that there's a certain kind of um visual stimulation that they almost get used to the brain acclimatizes to in order to achieve sexual Climax and then what happens is
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when these people have a sexual relationship for the first time the sensations and the the from a visual
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perspective you know auditory perspective because the sounds that we hear in these big you know fast food
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pornography Productions are nowhere near the sounds in real life um and and so the the inputs of an actual sexual act make it very difficult to have a A
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Satisfied sexual life and so I think that there's a lot of subtlety to you know when Dr mik said when couples watch
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porn together there are also studies that show that as you increase your pornography consumption that correlates with relationship dissatisfaction but that could be a
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chicken or the egg problem am I watching more porn because I'm unhappy with the sexual relationship or does watching
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pornography decrease my satisfaction in the relationship and so I I think it's there's just like so much here to explore yeah yeah and I think your point about the couples usually yeah if
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there's a discrepancy in one partner is watching more porn than the other then there's s decreased satisfaction
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certainly um and I think that your point to saying that you're seeing a lot of it well that's these people come to you for
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this problem right so you're seeing this exclusively um but I think in the general population um and maybe they're
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not coming to the urologist as often right um but certainly I'm not seeing as much of it and it's not reported in
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terms of like people complaining about it in studies and again these studies are small numbers and they're not generalizable to the entire population
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but I would say that it's not as common as I think we let on but the other important thing to add is that there's a
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because it's so nuanced there's a big moral component people have a belief about what pornography is good or bad
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and so when they watch pornography if they have a moral in congruence meaning they think it's bad to watch pornography
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they are more likely to report having a problem with pornography so there's a lot of nuance here in terms of how
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pornography can be beneficial or harmful to a specific individual and how it affects that specific individual's
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brains whether it's going to send same Pathways um you know as any sort of strong visual stimuli the way your body
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sensitizes to those Pathways is very individual and what about poog on the brain then in terms of its impact on
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dopamine and how that then will Cascade into other areas of Our Lives yeah so I mean I I'll launch this one um so I I think that the biggest takeaway that I
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have is it is doing way more than we ever realized so the first thing is if you get exposed to pornography early on in life and this accidental exposure by the way the most common story that I
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hear and this is such a weird like anecdotal statistic is um if you're if you have older brother and you're a younger brother I see so many pornography addicts who have older
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brothers and the most common story that I hear is you know older brother is post
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puberty and is watching pornography which is like a little bit more understandable and acceptable and then
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your younger brother wants to do whatever you're doing and they get exposed to it at an early age so the
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first thing that we know is that early exposure correlates with an increase in potential for addiction that's probably
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somewhat neurologic olcal and potentially somewhat um sociological or family oriented because if you think
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about what kind of seven-year-old will get exposure to pornography maybe parents aren't in the house as much so
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there could be other risk factors but we we absolutely know that when you activate in an artificial way the
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dopaminergic circuitry of the brain it sensitizes the dopaminergic circuitry and makes it more vulnerable to dopamine later on this is something called the kindling effect we see this also for
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example in like marijuana as a gateway drug the reason marijuana is a gateway drug is is not because it makes you
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immoral it's because once we start activating certain circuits in the brain during brain development it changes the
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way that they develop the second thing that we see is that pornography is used as a method of emotional regulation so if you look at like I was trying to figure out what effect does pornography
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have in the brain and so I was thinking about okay which part of the brain does sex come from and it turns out that
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every part of the brain every neurotransmitter is involved in the sexual act because the purpose The
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evolutionary purpose of a human being is to procreate so all of our circuitry is designed for this thing so we we see
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that there's absolutely an emotional regulation component um because when we get aroused like our brain doesn't care
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about you know anything else in our life when it comes to the act of procreation so we see a lot of emotional regulation
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which then becomes an emotional crutch so I see a lot of this now with where um people at work will watch pornography
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and it's not about masturbation or lust it's about emotional regulation I've seen a huge spike in second screen
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pornography so we'll be working over here and I'll just have porn like running over here like this is a a
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really common story and it's an emotional regulation effect now the third thing that that you uh the
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question you asked about is dopamine so here's a really fascinating thing so it absolutely messes with your dopamine when it messes with your dopamine it
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messes with your motivation because dopamine is the prim neurotransmitter involved in motivation so as you watch
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more pornography you just stop being as motivated about the other things in your life and the Really crippling thing the
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really scary thing from a relationship standpoint is that if we look at falling in love falling in love is
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primarily the function of dopamine so when we look at a relationship there's initial attraction which it comes from
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like the thalamus in our sensory inputs what do I see what do I hear oh she smells great her laugh is beautiful
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right that's all sensory and then we get into the stage where we're in love when I can't get enough of this person I'm just sitting with this person we're not
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talking we're not doing anything we're just holding hands and oh I'm so in love so like literally what creates that
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feeling is dopamine and when we start using pornography on a regular basis our dopamine stores start to deplete we start to develop dopamine tolerance and like literally what I'm seeing
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clinically matches with this because it's harder for people to fall in love when I talk to younger people now who
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are in their 20s and 30s and struggling to date you know you go on a couple of dates but what's the problem there's no
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chemistry there's no spark that comes from dopamine so I think we're seeing all kinds of really scary Downstream
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effects from unregulated pornography use I can't help but feeling that what you're talking about is a very masculine experience somehow and that when we're talking about poror addiction or
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compulsory Behavior with pornography it is very related to men and that we in our society tends to see men's experiences as universal
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experiences and I think that we lack a perspective of really where when women get into this construction of of addiction of use of pornography is it
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Reena do you see it as an addiction so I you know this is what I think I think that I the so it's not been termed an
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addiction in terms of in medical vernacular they call it problematic porn use because it there hasn't been a clear
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definition in terms of addiction right um but I would say that I think that there are certainly people who have this experience but there's certainly many many people who use pornography and
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don't develop this tolerance and maybe it's more common in younger people because they're getting access to it
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sooner and more often and that has yet to play out at least I tend to see older patients and so um so that has yet to
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play out in in older Generations but I would say that I think there's many people who use it fine and don't have an
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issue and so I think that while these issues do exist there's also a whole bunch of other things that are ongoing
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in society right now that may make it more difficult for people to connect and for people to feel intimacy with people
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because it's very difficult currently more and more people are not getting married more and more people are choosing to stay single for a variety of
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reasons I don't think porn is the only Factor there I do think it is something that people can control and so they feel
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like okay if you feel like you have a problem with it and you can control pornography that allows you to feel like
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you have control in one area of your life that then that control can potentially improve other areas of your
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life so I think that there is correlations here but I think it's very complex I think the way it affects our brains is very complex as well and like
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dopamine is one way to describe it but there's you know there's different sensitivities and how our brain responds to the same stimuli right the way I
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watch pornography the way you watch pornography the way anyone of us watches pornography our brains will respond in a different way um because our receptors
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are either more sensitive or less sensitive and there's no way to really test that on an individual level one of
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the things I found most interesting when I had the first conversation on this podcast about pornography is my my team went out and looked at um a couple of
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tools which pull search data so what are people searching on the subject and the number one most search term was how do I
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quit pornography and that's quite an interesting thing because there's a certain desperation to that question
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you know going to Google to ask Google how you quit a behavior that makes me think of it in the context of an
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addiction and in fact the second most popular search term was also about how how you quit this thing and and it
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speaks to a certain powerlessness that a certain percentage of people feel they have with pornography um throwing that
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out to to everybody here no but I think this connects also to the stigma the huge stigma around sex and around porn
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and this idea that people have somehow that it is bad I mean people want to watch it at the same time they they have
00:24:32
the moral idea that it's bad and that they shouldn't do it but I think we're also talking here I mean we end up talking about porn all the time but somehow porn is now very related to
00:24:45
technology and how technology kind of has hijacked Our Lives it's not only porn we're struggling with in that sense and when you know with young people people they are saying they are not
00:24:59
having as much sex anymore you were talking about it before uh kids are not playing as much anymore outside as they used to so I think we have a correlation
00:25:13
there that we need to think about the role of technology and then how much of that space does really this pornography take up and also to have in mind that
00:25:27
when we're talking about po porn most people see it as a monolithic kind of thing when when if you go out on the street and you ask people what is porn they think about the tube sites that's
00:25:38
what that's what they have in mind but actually there's many different kinds of porn existing do you think there's such a thing as good porn and bad porn it's a
00:25:48
very difficult kind of Distinction to say bad porn and good porn because if you do that then it's you classify some type as as acceptable and other types as
00:26:00
nonone and you kind of you know grow the stigma around it I think that we need to
00:26:06
think about porn that is made with great working conditions taking care of everybody who's involved in that process especially the performers made with uh
00:26:18
support by intimacy coordinator Talent managers where the performers have been able to be involved in the process to
00:26:26
give feedback on what is going to be how how it's working they have they know all
00:26:31
the conditions beforehand Etc they can give feedback afterwards H I think there are ways of producing pornography that are safer than what we have seen in the
00:26:43
past we were talking a second ago about the impact pornography has on the brain um and I know some of your work involves
00:26:49
dealing with people who have erectile dysfunction some of the stats I read on erectile dysfunction show that there's been quite a significant increase over
00:26:55
the last couple of decades in people reporting to have erectile function do you think porn has played a role in
00:27:01
increasing erectile dysfunction as it relates to when I'm with my partner in the bedroom and I'm trying to have sex
00:27:07
so I think this goes back to the people who are watching pornography and are learning what sex is through pornography
00:27:14
and then they go to their sexual encounter with their partner and they don't respond the way that they do on pornography or their partner doesn't
00:27:20
respond the way they do on pornography and immediately they feel insecure right immediately and that leads to this
00:27:27
psychogenic ere dysfunction where you are no longer able to perform because you're so stressed about the anxiety of being able to get an erection because maybe things didn't go the way they were
00:27:39
supposed to or maybe you're insecure about your body image or a whole host of things that come from watching maybe
00:27:45
some of the big box pornography where we're not really showing real sex we're showing a produced product that is meant
00:27:52
to entertain and uh Captivate people for a short period of time and so I think that is one certainly issue that I do see where people start feeling this the other thing is where people are um you
00:28:04
know using pornography over quite often and then they again are are unable to get that stimulation through a partner right they can't get the same they're using death grip or they're using um you
00:28:16
know the same this very erotic stimuli very intense visual erotic stimuli that they can't produce with a person and so
00:28:23
then they're like why am I not getting aroused and why am I not getting an erection and it's because they've now
00:28:28
relied on this solely so I do see that certainly um as an issue in some people who are using pornography but I don't think it's like pornography use leads to ED I think it's these other factors on
00:28:40
the way to having psychological concerns about your own performance that lead to
00:28:46
issues with directions and before we move on on Dr K's point about motivation as well do you believe that there's a
00:28:53
correlation between the amount that we watch pornography and mass debate and someone's motivation based on what you
00:28:59
know about dopamine receptors you know hard to say I think again it's very individual certainly some people will
00:29:05
take the E like you know there is a availability part when it comes to any sort of addiction type Behavior so when something is more available to you and you're using it more often it can become
00:29:17
more problematic and so certainly I think that plays a role in terms of like if you're using it a lot and it's very
00:29:23
available to you and it's an easy way to emotionally regulate right if you're having stress and life you're unhappy
00:29:28
with your relationship or you're unhappy with other things people are often using pornography as a way to avoid those
00:29:36
negative emotions and really just participate in something else like take their mind off of that and so that is
00:29:42
sort of where it becomes this challenge for some people yeah I just wanted to chime in so this is fantastic because because I I I agree with everything that y'all are saying and I also kind of come
00:29:53
to a slightly different conclusion so the number one search term that we have is how do I I quit porn so when I hear
00:30:00
that and and I think Dr mik has also done a great job of pointing out you know there's a difference between anecdotal clinical experience and what
00:30:07
we have randomized clinical trials on you know we're not exposing seven-year-olds to pornography and then
00:30:14
seeing how their brain develops by doing MRI scans over the course of 10 years so
00:30:19
some of this research is absolutely not there and we also have the number one search term is how do I quit porn what
00:30:26
that tells me is that there is the literally the largest population of what people are looking at is to stop using
00:30:34
pornography and I think the reason for that is is there good porn or is there bad porn is it individual is it Nuance
00:30:39
completely agree with all those points it's not a problem for everyone but I think what I'm seeing very clearly is
00:30:46
that it's getting worse right so it's not an issue of good or bad what is the trend that we're seeing we're Tren the
00:30:52
trend that we're seeing is that Erica is saying hey pornography can be more than the tube sites so that then begs the
00:30:58
question why does everyone think that pornography is the tube sites because they hijacked the system exactly so I
00:31:06
think that word is is beautiful hijack so I think what we're seeing what I'm seeing is that pornography is getting
00:31:13
worse for sure it's becoming more of a problem if we look at these tube sites there there you know it's kind of like
00:31:20
there's nutrition and then there's calories and a lot of what I'm hearing y'all talk about you know Dr mik is
00:31:26
saying if you watch it as part of a relationship ship that's nutrition it can be something healthy we can learn
00:31:31
about ourselves we can destigmatize various things fair enough but I think we're seeing the same trends that we see
00:31:37
with like fast food where now pornography is becoming mass-produced and there are actually studies that show
00:31:43
there's a really fascinating bizarre piece of research right which is where the you have to go this is where
00:31:49
I've gone to find this stuff because we don't have studies but there was a particular group of biologists who were noticing that a population of beetles
00:31:56
was dying out and they were trying to figure out like why is this population of beetles dying out and what they
00:32:02
discovered is there's one thing that's responsible for these beetles not mating with each other which is green beer
00:32:09
bottles that were being littered and the green beer bottle then what they noticed is that the Beatles were trying to go up
00:32:16
to the green beer bottle and mate with it and they were like what is going on you'd see this this litter that has a
00:32:21
green beer bottle and a bunch of male beetles are clustered around it and like they're like what is this and it turns
00:32:28
out that there's this concept of something called a supera normal stimulus so when a Beetle's eyes look at
00:32:34
the environment there's certain signals that indicate this is a fertile female and a green glass beer bottle activates
00:32:41
those parts of the brain and what we're seeing with these tube sites is things are [ __ ] things are louder things are
00:32:50
slipperier right we have these 4K high defa like so we're we're sort of turning we're taking what used to be nutritious and we are turning it into fast food and
00:33:01
that and what why all these tube sites why are they successful they're in this darwinian war that's kind of like a race
00:33:08
to the bottom how can I create the pornography that is going to leech the most traffic away from my competitors
00:33:15
and they're figuring out very rapidly that there are all kinds of weird ways to activate the brain what our brain
00:33:20
looks for and what it gets excited about and so it feels to me like there's a race to the bottom we're making
00:33:27
pornography for money we're making it more addtive but the thing is that these companies Behind these tube sites they
00:33:33
are not interested in human sexuality they're not interested in sex they're not interested in porn they're not
00:33:39
interested in the conditions of the people who are working in front of the camera I mean they're selling
00:33:45
advertisement and what do they need for that they need content that is Extreme that has words that are click baity that are kind of small clips that are quick
00:33:56
to watch they look at the algorithms to see what works right but this reminds me
00:34:02
of the food industry yeah of course it's the same as big F the same as big farmer big fashion Etc big porn is the same how
00:34:10
does an industry succeed if it doesn't engage in that practice though if because think about the food industry
00:34:15
the thing that has the most sugar in that's the most available the cheapest is the thing that's going to succeed the most so in the we think about these tube
00:34:22
sites some of the stats are crazy I mean only fans released their earnings for last year up 20% they made 6.6 billion
00:34:28
um PornHub one of the big tube sites is the eighth most trafficed website in the world at the moment doing 5.5 billion
00:34:35
monthly visits these are the brands that people recognize and it's it's extreme like if we think about nutrition high in
00:34:41
sugar it's extreme so I get the the most extreme sort of dopamine stimulation it's so easy to access I can one I don't
00:34:48
have to put my shoes on and put my After Shave on I can just I can get on there within 15 seconds for me to get laid I'm
00:34:57
going to have to put in some work I'm going to have to go to the gym I'm going to have to take care of I'm going to have to go get a job I'm going to have
00:35:03
to get some money I'm going to Le I'm going to have to learn how to speak to a woman or 15 seconds and I can see the
00:35:08
most extreme yeah I I think that's the problem but I do worry to some I'm going to play a little bit of Devil's Advocate my devil's advocate would say that because there's so much moral in congruence that leads to problematic
00:35:20
porn news porn addiction whatever you want to call it right that we're creating more of it by disparaging
00:35:26
pornography right like that everywhere people are saying pornography is bad pornography is bad you can't go on any
00:35:32
social media platform without somebody citing a study that says pornography is leeching people's life force and their
00:35:38
you know their life is falling apart because of pornography and Destroy lives right and and so but so then we're also
00:35:46
adding to that moral in congruence by saying that all pornography is bad pornography is there because we're watching it right and so people like if
00:35:53
you asked like probably the generation older to me like would you be would you be watching porn where you're seeing um
00:36:00
the things that you're seeing now which I mean shocking to me right like they would be like no I don't want to see that right like I that doesn't interest
00:36:07
me in the slightest but like why is this becoming so you know people are watching
00:36:12
it I mean to me so much of this is totally anti-erotic I sometimes go there to investigate and to kind of see what's what's going on and what's happening and I feel like oh no don't J it is I don't
00:36:24
want to see it oh I rather throw up than you know feel excitement and wanting to
00:36:30
to have sex so it has an opposite effect on on lots of their their audiences actually but again what is it about the it's about earning money and
00:36:41
concentrating power it's about selling advertisement that's what they're doing it's grow your dick pills it's dat the
00:36:48
sexy Latina in your neighborhood it's and and as a society we have been very slow to see what has happened because these sides they were born you
00:37:01
know 17 years ago 2007 they came out it happened very very fast so a couple of thoughts the first is like yeah that's exactly what's going on is like so if we think about it we
00:37:14
have all of these every part of our brain right oxytocin dopamine serotonin estrogen testosterone right those are hormones not brains but you know every Circuit of the brain all of our
00:37:26
neurotrans MERS they're all to help us procreate and now what's happened is people have fundamentally
00:37:34
hijacked all of these circuits and we're seeing problems and I'm with you about the moral in congruence because we see
00:37:40
this in other addictions as well where we we tried to like demonize like alcohol usage right and we know that
00:37:45
once we separate out the moral in congruence because once I feel guilty and ashamed this is something I see a
00:37:50
lot I watch pornography now I feel ashamed how am I going to cope with those emotions watching more pornography
00:37:56
and so you create thisy of like like this moral Focus cycle of Shame and that actually fuels the
00:38:03
dependence so that's absolutely an issue at the same time like these companies and they don't care about erotic or Falling in Love or Whatever right they're interested in making a buck and
00:38:14
they're exploiting our brain and while we should be a little bit careful about the moralistic nature of it I mean I've
00:38:21
seen it gets so much it's getting worse like every time every year and this could be selection bias right cuz I I'm
00:38:27
an addiction psychiatrist but I I think it's like even with something like only fans because now what we're adding is a
00:38:32
social component the one Refuge we used to have when it comes to pornography whether it's ethically produced or non-
00:38:38
ethically produced is that there's no way that this person is ever going to pay attention to me I'm just consuming something but now now I can interact
00:38:47
with someone someone can send me a DM hey thank you for watching my video and jerking off that makes me so happy but
00:38:55
you know it's an AI bot right sometimes so so so I know it's an AI bot but I am so ashamed of myself that you know take whatever water is given to you in the
00:39:06
desert I am so alone I am I feel so bad about myself and there's a chance right there's a chance it's not an AI problem the real problem is that we are not speaking about sex we are not speaking
00:39:17
about intimacy people don't have the sex education and they are lost and they are
00:39:24
human beings they have this drive and this need and we had it in all cultures right do you think people had the sex
00:39:30
education they would still be on only fans talking to what's probably cuz there are big agencies now I've seen on
00:39:37
social media there are big agencies of men who pretend to be these porn stars on sites like only fans and I I see them
00:39:44
bragging about their income it's this big thing on Twitter at the moment I've made $10,000 this month pretending to be
00:39:49
this actress speaking to young men on only fans yeah and I think the reason that men do that part of the reason is because they know what men want to hear right there's a part of us that they
00:40:01
know exactly what to say because it won't be an AI bot it'll be this kind of person and now what's happening is we're
00:40:06
activating the social loneliness aspect and combining it with pornography so now
00:40:12
you actually have a relationship with maybe an AI bot maybe a dude right but there is like some amount of genuine human interaction over the Internet so this is getting worse and I think sex
00:40:23
education is an excellent point at the same time I don't know if sex education is going to be sufficient because I think we can teach people about their bodies but we're also seeing like a wh
00:40:34
scale social skills atrophy where dudes don't know how to talk to girls anymore yeah and also media porn is Media it's
00:40:41
important to understand that it's telling us messages about gender roles how we interact about sexuality how our
00:40:49
body functions Etc so when we have all this misinformation going on on this online
00:40:56
huge media of free porn and we see women screaming in fake orgasms after four minutes of hard penetration and as a woman you look at her and you say she didn't even use her fingers what
00:41:10
happened you know and you just know that something is wrong here that this is fake but then there's lots of men out there thinking this is what my girlfriend should be doing this is how
00:41:21
it should work and then they don't connect in real life what kind of point do you make what kind of porn do I make
00:41:28
I make I make lovely porn I make beautiful porn I make cinematic porn I make porn with you know with intentions of of of
00:41:39
showing different uh ideas of desire and fantasy where people I try to work with
00:41:45
people who are connecting who show chemistry together I ask my performers who they want to work with I try to team them up I support them with a system of
00:41:59
intimacy coordinator Talent managers producers in the background that take care of them that check who they are
00:42:05
what they like what kind of sexuality do they have but if I was a consumer of your pornography what would I notice
00:42:11
that what would you notice probably the great cinematography would be the first thing you would notice kind of
00:42:17
narratives uh that are erotic driven somehow where people explore their desire and their sexuality you would notice
00:42:28
um you you would feel very I mean many people tell me they they Go like Erica but I watch your films is it really porn
00:42:35
because they identify porn as something that is kind of tacky agly kind of objectifying Etc so suddenly when they see people in my
00:42:47
films having sex coming together and everything is kind of you understand why they are Desiring each other and you kind of I am invite them to join this kind of erotic journey of the characters
00:43:01
then they go but this is more like like in the in the cinema in the eroic cinema can I is it fair to assume that because
00:43:08
you from what I've heard though the pornography you produce is has a slower story arc which is more reflective of
00:43:16
what sometimes okay so so I'm trying to because the things that you it sounds like you might have yeah removed from
00:43:23
the pornography you make yeah versus the pornography I'd find on one of of the big tube streaming sites the most
00:43:28
popular videos on the tube streaming sites it sounds like you might have put yourself at a bit of a competitive disadvantage in many respects because
00:43:36
those streaming sites if their incentive is purely money yeah the data is going to determine what people see so that's
00:43:43
so it feels like they've really optimized for user consumption where you've optimized for something around ethics because I care about it for me
00:43:51
the money is not the most important aspect why I you know created this company why I'm making this I really want to kind of send a different kind of
00:44:03
message out to the world do your content end up on those sites sometimes sometimes uh years ago it was taken on those sites for example changing the
00:44:15
wording of it because remember that many of these sites also what they do is that
00:44:20
they fetishize people they use very racist language chauvinistic language Etc and my movies may have much softer kind of language and the way they are so uh
00:44:35
they they obviously pirated them they put them up and they changed kind of the wording for for the bits it was a very
00:44:43
hard process to take them down Etc what do you think is better for someone's relationship specifically so men and
00:44:50
women do you think no porn is better for their relationship do you think your porn is better for their relationship or
00:44:57
do you think and obviously I think it's individual I think it's a very individual decision what works best
00:45:03
sorry yeah I can answer I've never seen one of your films I can tell you it's her porn thank you better than no porn
00:45:09
I'm going to go ahead and go out on a limb and saying that if you're someone who's struggling with
00:45:15
pornography watching an erotic film with a glass of wine with your significant other is a great way to
00:45:22
transition from bite-sized Fast Food calorie dense [ __ ] slippery loud porn two it's like how do we rewire the brain right how do we move one step at a time from this to this and because like like
00:45:36
the word erotic seems so powerful to me it's about anticipation even when we talk about you know differences between
00:45:42
male and in female sexuality the the lag time of parasympathetic activation in foreplay is so much more important biologically and correct me if I'm wrong here um uh for women than it is for men
00:45:54
I mean we're like kind of ready to go and we want to make it short and and so I think like it's almost like a part of
00:46:00
that sexual education is in understanding okay how can we teach men to be erotic again instead of these like
00:46:09
very like chicken nugget style highly processed like this is what I think it is maybe watch some of Erica's film when
00:46:16
we talk about watching pornography with your partner I wonder if that is the rule of the exception to the rule you
00:46:21
know because I yeah I mean so you're saying what do we do I think we have an erotic film watch party
00:46:27
right we have anime watch parties we have different kinds of watch parties like this thought had never occurred to
00:46:32
me before I'm sure it is a terrible idea on that point though if you reduce the stigma by having these watch parties
00:46:39
um does that then because you cited earlier that it's a tool for emotional regulation so when people are stressed
00:46:45
or depressed or anxious they seek it out if we remove the stigma does that increase the addiction so it's a great
00:46:52
question so I think there's it kind of goes both ways and what I mean by that is see we run into addictions when this
00:47:00
substance becomes or or behavior becomes one to one correlated with something else so right now the problem with
00:47:07
pornography isn't that it it yeah it's so the problem is if I watch pornography and that's the only method I use to regulate my emotions that will increase the addiction now the flip side of it is
00:47:19
also true if the only reason I watch pornography is to regulate my emotions that will strengthen that addiction capability so I'll give you all just a simple example from like alcohol right
00:47:30
so if I use alcohol after A Hard Day's Work to get through the day and calm down and then I stop drinking for fun whereas alcohol can be used as an emotional coping mechanism or it can be
00:47:42
used to celebrate a wedding right so the substance can be used in different ways
00:47:50
and the more that we use it in different ways in healthier ways the more it actually chips away at the addiction in
00:47:56
some cases this is also highly individualized so depending on your genetic predisposition dispositions and
00:48:01
stuff like that you know you may not be able to drink at weddings but we also see the opposite which is like you know a huge number of people are qualify for
00:48:08
an alcohol addiction in college and then most of those people are able to develop healthy relationships with it and one of
00:48:15
the biggest changes we're seeing in addiction is that there do seem to be healthy relationships that we can
00:48:20
develop I think it's about changing our relationship to the thing now seeing someone naked engaging in a sexual act is not solely about getting off it's not solely about emotional regulation it's
00:48:32
not solely about dopamine it can now become a film experience that we can enjoy so we're diversifying our
00:48:39
relationship to the object I don't know if that makes sense psychoanalytic awareness mindfulness understanding of other of how you use that how you and
00:48:50
then I I think this is also great like just the simple idea that like if dudes are watching this recognizing watching
00:48:57
an erotic film with your significant other assuming a heteronormative a heterosexual relationship you know may
00:49:03
be a great way for you to enhance your sexual experience you don't need dick enhancing pills or or you know whatever else right like because that's and I'm sure Dr mik knows better than I do but
00:49:15
you the majority of the no I I meant more as a year I didn't think that but okay no no so so like you know my understanding from med school right so back when I was doing Urology and I I
00:49:27
work with some things like vaginismus and stuff like that yeah um is you know the majority of the female nerve endings
00:49:33
are are you know at the front end of the vagina and if you get all the way back to the cervix that's like painful so you
00:49:40
don't actually need a gigantic penis I was trying to think about whether I should use some other word but you know
00:49:47
and and so to help like you know if men are the ones who are primarily having this addictive problem then let's call it what it is which is help men realize that sex ual pleasure engaging in a
00:49:58
relationship that pornography can be a force for good and doesn't necessarily have to be evil but and maybe like
00:50:05
erotic film moves Us in that direction and like I just got to say man like my degenerate male brain is kind of telling
00:50:11
me like you know watching an erotic film for an hour and a half could be the best and easiest foreplay that I could ever
00:50:18
do would be a lot easier yeah pretty quick um but I would say the other thing I've been thinking about while we've been talking about this is we don't talk about erotic audio literature or erotic
00:50:29
books which is more commonly used by women but we don't stigmatize that like women are like oh I love these books and I read them all the time and nobody is sitting here saying like it's bad I know
00:50:40
thoughts on that because it's not naked bodies I guess here the main problem again is back to to our bodies we are
00:50:48
somehow ashamed of our bodies of our nakedness of our sexuality I mean women can show nipples
00:50:55
online we know that uh you can I I mean I'm heavily censured I can't show anything on my accounts my my social media accounts are cut off all the time
00:51:07
it's impossible to grow do you think pornography should be bound on social media Dr K should pornography be banned
00:51:13
on social media yes pornography should be banned I can answer that I'm I'm I'm making it I definitely think it should be banned but I don't that the explicit
00:51:24
images should be banned but the right to discuss about it to talk about it to give uh sexual advice or to you know discuss different topics around
00:51:38
sexuality we should be allowed to do that we should be allowed well we're allowed to do that no I get I get banned too really cuz this doesn't get banned maybe you are allowed to YouTube is
00:51:48
different Twitter's fine Instagram's fine YouTube's fine Instagram Instagram I have Ted Talks that are censured so only people who are over 18 and have an
00:52:00
account online have access to watch watch them and it's me talking yeah no it there is definitely
00:52:08
uh limitations the thing that we've noticed is your video just doesn't appear in search in the same way but
00:52:15
they still recommend the video so when we had for example Andrew huberman on a couple of weeks ago and he talked about pornography because PA was in the title
00:52:21
in the thumbnail the video got huge recommendations by the algorithm but if you typed in Andrew hub
00:52:27
it would not come up until we CH took the word porn out and you type in Andrew hubman and it comes up so that's the only we've noticed but we've been quite
00:52:33
surprised actually by yeah I I think it's so cool that like you know you asked me that question and
00:52:38
she jumped in with an answer no no I think it's good I I think it's like because you asked I mean I think that's
00:52:43
the value of this right because my I I don't feel nearly as passionate I mean you asked her the question you know is
00:52:48
it which of these is the best and I jumped in with an answer I was like this is clear to me and and I I think just a
00:52:54
couple of things that I just want to touch on the first is that um you know what Dr bollock was saying about you
00:53:00
know audio Literature Like erotic fiction or romance novels right so I I think it's harder to commoditize that
00:53:06
which goes back to Erica's point of of you know like some things are more likely to be turned into fast food so I
00:53:14
think that erotic literature it's like harder to do that um I also do think that going back to this earlier point of
00:53:20
like you know men are epidemiologically more vulnerable to addiction I think it's more complicated than that in
00:53:27
just psychological hurt or problems manifest in men as addiction and look different in in women when it emerges um so I think it's kind of like you know so we're we're sort of seeing a difference
00:53:40
in addictive quality it's easier to commoditize more sensory organs uh so I think that's an important point and I I think in terms of you know should it be banned or not like I don't know um so I
00:53:52
work kind of like more at the individual level and arguably some at scale but like like one of the key things is you
00:53:58
know I have some ideas about what should be done but I I'm not too sure about that I'm I'm curious you know I I don't
00:54:03
know like I no but I'm saying it basically because it's open for kids again this is why I'm saying if if we're
00:54:10
having social media and it's for people 18 about then we're talking about another thing but go to Twitter or it's
00:54:17
not called Twitter anymore uh the X go there and it's full of porn it is it is it is full of porn you can you accidentally stumble across porn I was saying this to my partner a couple of
00:54:31
weeks ago I said look at how Twitter's changed and I said watch this scroll down my timeline and I know there's ALG so if I dwell on something more often
00:54:36
then it's going to show me more but I scroll down I scroll down I was like look porn
00:54:42
and I was like oh look she's taking her close of scroll scroll scroll I didn't realize it was new to the it didn't happen I've actually not seen it but
00:54:48
I've had many people who tell me that it comes up on their feet all the time recent change to the algorithm which is
00:54:54
prioritized again um View time so if you want to want people to dwell longer show them video Extreme video people being
00:55:01
shot someone being hit by a car fights pornography wow you increase your dwell time you increase your advertising and
00:55:06
this is just how incentives play out so much of the discussion we've had today and much of my like why I refer to it sometimes as
00:55:13
being idealistic because sometimes it can sound like just give them broccoli when actually if you leave them to their own devices no one's going to
00:55:19
want broccoli they're going to take the cookies if the cookies are available and If you equate this to food we did put
00:55:26
labels on food to say look this has got this much calories in it we've put a sugar tax on sugar in the UK we you on
00:55:32
cigarettes we say if you smoke these cigarettes this is what's going to happen to your lungs and we put explicit images of how your lungs will get you
00:55:38
know cancers and things like this should we be doing something similar with pornography because part of me goes just
00:55:44
you know saying we should just give them broccoli this kind of like erotic different point they're not going to they're not going to eat it no but but
00:55:50
but also again adults I think they have the right to watch pornography whatever kind of pornography it is as long as it's legal and and and well done
00:56:02
I wish all pornography would be ethically produced I know that the industry is working towards more
00:56:09
standards Etc because you know we have been as a society talking about it they don't have much of a choice because if they don't go that way should we should we tell them about the harms of
00:56:20
pornography at the point of consumption like we do with cigarettes it's a bit difficult Maybe
00:56:26
maybe I I think we should we should talk about what could happen like gambling what effects like like gambling like but but this also happens you you've been
00:56:38
talking about gaming a lot you know there's a way of of gaming and healthy gaming right there's a way of video
00:56:44
games that is too much and not too much I what do you think don't okay yeah so I
00:56:50
mean I think it's it's a great question so I've got like um a couple of different things so I'm going to about to contradict myself so the first is
00:56:56
that we know that you know putting warning labels on things does move things in the right direction but I love
00:57:01
to just share a story so when I was a medical student didn't really understand much about medicine or Psychiatry or
00:57:06
humans um you know I had a patient who came in and was smoking and so I I came in and I was like you know he came in I
00:57:12
was like a first year medical student so I was like I'm gonna be a doctor one day and so this person comes in I'm like sir
00:57:18
do you know that smoking is dangerous it can cause lung cancer it can do this it can do this it can do this so the person's like yeah you know oh like that
00:57:24
sounds bad I don't want L cancer I was like great we're going to give you like a prescription to help you quit and you
00:57:30
can get a nicotine patch and like I was like I'm going to be a doctor one day so month later guy comes in and like I ask
00:57:35
him how's the quitting smoking going and he's like well I I'm still smoking and then I was like I don't think you understand man it increases risk of
00:57:41
heart disease and stroke and all these kinds of things like it's going to like do all this kind of stuff and he's like
00:57:47
yeah oh that's bad I don't want any of that stuff and I was like cool so like you're going to quit right and he's like
00:57:52
yeah and so I then he comes in and I I comes in the next month he still hasn't quit and I started to try to figure out
00:57:58
what's going on right so one of the key things that we learned is that if you want someone to eat broccoli instead of
00:58:05
cookies um telling them that cookies are unhealthy for you isn't good enough so we need generally speaking when you look at recovery from addiction and behavioral change you have to have a good enough reason to do it yeah so I
00:58:18
was still blunt and I figured this out and talk to my my preceptor and stuff and then I asked this person so what's
00:58:24
important to you and he's like oh you know I love my daughter and then I asked them a very bad question I was like when you and he was
00:58:30
like I was like what you know tell me about your daughters and he was like you know I can't wait like I'll know I can die a happy person once I've walked them
00:58:36
down the aisle and I they're married and stuff like that and then I asked him a question I was like when you walk down the aisle do you want to be carrying an
00:58:42
oxygen tank behind you and he was like what I was like if you keep smoking that's what's going to happen or maybe
00:58:47
you'll be in a wheelchair right so I was a first year medical student kind of brutal but that actually sunk in you
00:58:53
have to connect with people with what they care about yeah that is still a warning though isn't it you've put a warning on that Absol but it's it's it's
00:59:00
a little different right so so it's individualized but even now when we you know I'm I stream on Twitch and I try to
00:59:06
get people to stop playing video games which is like holding an AA meeting in a bar and what I've discovered is I'm with
00:59:12
you we've lost a lot of faith in humanity if you give them a broccoli and a cookie they're going to take a cookie
00:59:18
but I I'm still hopeful I think that we do see the number one search is how do I
00:59:23
quit porn there's a lot of energy in desire to do it they just don't have a path and I think one of these very
00:59:30
simple things is like emphasizing an erotic film and telling people hey if you're lonely hey if you're having
00:59:36
trouble finding a relationship you know hey if you're if you have a problem with premature ejaculation or you're having
00:59:42
difficulty engaging in a sexual act and can't achieve orgasm what you need to do is slow it down don't make sex a three
00:59:50
minute jiggly slippery experience slow it down watch an erotic film reprogram your brain like I bet you money that if we somehow figured out if we told people you can reprogram your brain by watching
01:00:03
erotic film and we could say that scientifically that would be incredibly successful because I think people are
01:00:10
hungry for this right they're hungry for what we were biologically designed to do which is connect and have fulfilling
01:00:15
sexual relationships what's your take on that Dr yeah I think that that's that would be helpful absolutely because I think's telling someone to go cold turkey from having something that they
01:00:26
do derive pleasure from right even if they're even if they have addictive potential addictive personalities towards that behavior then giving them
01:00:34
something else that they can still derive pleasure from and have the the benefits of orgasm and have the benefits
01:00:39
of feeling that desire and enjoyment is is a really great way when you tell someone you take something away that
01:00:45
they've used as a crutch potentially and they have nothing to replace it with and I you know we've talked about this far
01:00:51
giving people a purpose a lot of times people don't have purpose and so they're they're like they have nothing else to
01:00:56
do and they're like oh I'll just do this thing because I'm bored and that's one of the reasons people watch porn is because they're bored and so you give
01:01:03
them a purpose something else to do whether it's an erotic film or actually purpose in their life um maybe it's
01:01:09
meeting people outside in the real world which would be even better that would help our our issues with not getting
01:01:14
married having high divorce rates and not having kids right but like I think those would be great Solutions if we could come up with ways to get people to
01:01:21
either find a substitute or find purpose interestingly there's clearly a two-way relationship with purpose porn
01:01:28
motivation Etc so it we giving them a purpose one might say well then we stop porn because then I'll have more
01:01:34
motivation to put their shoes on yeah so I I think you know if you look at there's one study that showed the two
01:01:40
strongest variables with pornography addiction or a sense of meaninglessness in in life and I forget what the other
01:01:46
variable is maybe early age of exposure um but so I I I think it's it's kind of spoton right so when I don't have a life that's worth living what happens my body and my brain become squeeze bottles of
01:01:59
dopamine because what is the joy of life so I try to just extract as much dopamine as I can for my brain so that I have some joy in the day some kind of pleasure and then I watch more of this
01:02:11
mass-produced supernormal stimulus pornography because that squeezes more dopamine out of my neurotransmitters and
01:02:18
the more that my life becomes that now there's a moral component now I feel ashamed now if I remember looking at
01:02:25
some statistics on online dating profiles and like saying that you're a dude who watches porn is like an instant
01:02:31
no but if I'm watching pornography it's going to sap me of the motivation to pursue my purpose absolutely so if I'm
01:02:36
extracting all my dopamine through watching pornography I'm going to have none left for Behavioral reinforcement
01:02:44
from other activities so what reading books becomes not as much fun going to a park becomes not as much fun so it's absolutely this vicious cycle where meaninglessness I have no reason to do
01:02:56
anything all day so I might as well watch some porn not erotic film so we canel porn then
01:03:03
no so please let us have it yeah I I don't know I mean the on you're done the majority of my income and why brand would collapse if you started Bing so
01:03:15
short no I mean I think there I think we have to I I mean I think there's a lot of things we've talked about but I think
01:03:22
sexual education I think understanding that you know explaining to younger kids of what they're watching right I think adults have a little bit more um their brains are fully developed they
01:03:34
understand what they're watching they know it's a produced product they presumably have already gone through the process of finding a job and doing other
01:03:41
things that give them purpose maybe they have children maybe they have a family right but but the I think it's really in
01:03:46
that Young Generation they're finding themselves maybe they're going out and they're not finding a partner because we
01:03:52
know that there's less people coupling there's higher you know Mis match of expectations we've talked about that too
01:03:57
in terms of dating and so you know it's it's very easy for those people when they're still trying to figure out what to do with their lives to fall into something like that and I think if we really focus on that generation I think
01:04:10
and that's a generation that probably shouldn't be watching porn anyways right um and and I think that would make huge
01:04:15
a huge difference and help parents because parents are really really worried how' you do it I mean you you
01:04:22
there's many way of kind of of of of starting it but but they what they need to know really is that you are there for
01:04:29
them you are open if they have any kind of of Doubt situations you are going to be there for them this is not a subject that you are going to you know bail out
01:04:41
because you feel too ashamed or you can't handle difficult questions I would tell parents educate yourself if you're having kids you're going to have to talk to them about sex if you didn't get
01:04:53
education what age you need to start when really really young you need to start when they're learning language I
01:04:58
mean young kids today many of them they don't know the difference between a vagina and a vulva even Billy ish in an
01:05:05
interview came out saying that she wanted to put her face in in people's vaginas no and you go what what happened
01:05:13
you're talking about vulva girl you know yeah no it has to start from I completely agree with everything you're
01:05:19
saying I have kids I've talked to them about sex I think you you have to start early with at least knowing the anatomy
01:05:25
right knowing what their body parts are and what the body parts of are of the opposite gender um so that they know
01:05:30
that they're different and and all that stuff and then honestly being open they're going to ask you questions like it's kids are curious and so they'll
01:05:37
come home and be like what's this what's that and not being like oh no no no I'm not going to talk about that it's just like okay yeah let's have a conversation
01:05:43
about it and let's talk about it and realize that it's not going to be one conversation it's going to be like throughout their development as they
01:05:49
become older you're going to maybe introduce more topics or they may have a question for you and just never shaming
01:05:55
that and that can come even early right kids are masturbting babies are masturbating like as young that's a
01:06:01
soothing Behavior right and so sometimes you'll see your child doing it you don't want to shame them right because that's
01:06:07
already setting up that stage of Shame so sort of allow being like okay that's that's fine that you're doing that but
01:06:12
maybe do that in private and that's something that you do in private um but you know I think it's really important to have these conversations and it's
01:06:18
uncomfortable it's going to be uncomfortable and know that it's going to be uncomfortable but like we have a duty cuz they're not going to learn it
01:06:24
at school in the way or enough in school yeah so I I I completely agree with what
01:06:29
they said so it's really interesting because the number one question so when we started talk working with Gamers what
01:06:35
happened very quickly is parents started reaching out and they're like hey I have a son who's got this problem usually a
01:06:40
son sometimes a daughter 7030 and um how do I talk to them so we actually started
01:06:46
doing a study in 2020 2020 or 2021 where we started developing different kinds of
01:06:52
techniques and measuring what worked best so now we have four years of data um a lot of those findings went into the
01:06:58
book about how to raise a healthy gamer which is actually all about conversational techniques for parents
01:07:04
about how to talk to their kids so for four years here are the biggest takeaways uh so that book is like it's
01:07:10
conversational techniques about video game addiction but we find that this works really well for pornography too so the first is uh like Dr mik said um
01:07:19
multiple conversation so the first mistake that parents make is that they think that they have to get it all in in
01:07:24
one conversation talk no it's it's lots of them second thing start earlier than you think you need to yeah so one of the biggest principles that we learn in in you know medicine is
01:07:36
that you don't have endof life conversations when someone is dying you have to have the conversation before
01:07:42
it's an issue so I I think we were talking about you said what 64% of people get exposed to pornography at the
01:07:47
age of 11 right so accidentally accident still but so that what that tell parents think oh I like I can push this off and
01:07:54
wait until they're 14 or and and of course my Beta is not going to watch right oh he's good he's so good
01:08:01
not my Beta KS right yeah not in our house yeah and you I I noticed you said you talked to your kids about sex have you talked to them about porn yeah okay my older one my older one nice good job
01:08:12
thank you um your beta is going to be so good so so I think it's going to be multiple conversations start earlier than you need to and then there are a couple of really nice techniques that you can use so the first is asking
01:08:23
open-ended questions and not about you watch porn it can start with hey are are you familiar with what pornography is do
01:08:30
you know what it is what do you understand about pornography another really good evidence-based technique
01:08:36
which has been shown to be effective for talking about drugs is do you have friends who watch porn do you have
01:08:42
friends do you know people or kids in your school watching this yes or no what do you think about that so oftentimes
01:08:49
you don't want to ask the kid directly you want to ask about what's happening around you and then you can ask them
01:08:55
what do you think about that do you have questions so make yourself a resource and signal to them that hey we can have this conversation and it's preparing them for
01:09:07
the world really it's giving them the tools to be able to manage situations that will come up because sex is not easy and they're going to be in
01:09:17
difficult moments and if they have been prepared they're going to know better how to respond to those moments you know if they're watching that pornography though the type that's available on
01:09:28
those tube streaming sites do you believe that it will cause or lead to a rise in violence between men and women
01:09:36
because when I look at some of the statistics around this nearly one in three porn videos contains physical violence and almost 90% of the most
01:09:43
famous porn scenes are violence scenes 18 to 21 year olds out of 18 to 21 year olds 179% had seen pornography involving sexual violence when they were children and almost 50% of young people say girls
01:09:56
expect sex to involve physical aggression such as Airway restriction and according to a study in 2024 um of 18 to 35 year olds they found
01:10:07
that 57% of young people aged um from 18 to 35 had been strangled themselves during sex and 51% had been strangled um at least once during sex and my last
01:10:19
stat on this is the BBC revealed that 38% of women under the age of 40 have experienced un wanted slapping choking and gagging during consensual sex and 42% of these women said they felt
01:10:31
pressured or coerced into doing it so we can allow people to watch pornography but is there not a risk that at a very
01:10:37
young age at the age of 11 we're going to learn that sex is a violent act and that's going to make us more violent G
01:10:43
to start with you yeah this is a really important discussion and I think you know I actually spoke to De Debbie
01:10:48
herban who leads a lot of the studies on strangulation and so basically what they found is that very commonly Young people
01:10:56
College age students are having strangulation or during intercourse or during for plane it's become so common
01:11:02
that it's almost like kissing right like this is something that is so common and often consent is not being discussed or
01:11:08
like hey can I do this yeah it's all right but it's not like a real discussion and as you guys all know and
01:11:13
especially asphixiation can lead to loss of oxygen to the brain and and sort of a whole host of things and so I think
01:11:19
ultimately that is a concern for sure in terms of um you know we have in movies for a reason right like we don't show our kids like the boys for example on Netflix right because it's very violent
01:11:32
and so similarly we would like to have ratings on pornography and they shouldn't have access to it but
01:11:38
sometimes they see it now uh yeah that is a concern I don't know exactly how to rectify that maybe you have some
01:11:43
thoughts is that because we want it though earlier on you said a porn is there because we we want it so I'm thinking isn't strangulation in porn
01:11:49
because that's the type of porn that people want so there is you know some people who derive pleasure from is you
01:11:55
know from a temporary occlusion of uh of of breath right and so there is some people who enjoy that erotically but that doesn't mean that that's Universal and um and again it's fantasy so just
01:12:09
because you watch something on pornography doesn't mean that you should be doing it it's a fantasy um it's not
01:12:14
real life and that's in a hopefully a controlled safe situation where they're producing that pornography but I think
01:12:20
it's very important when we're starting to talk about sexual violence towards women that we understand that that
01:12:27
doesn't come from porn that existed long before porn sexual violence towards women is a systemic problem we have in our society and we all know that the
01:12:43
most dangerous place for a woman is her own home it's her own husband or her boyfriend or her relatives around her Etc so the way I see it porn reflects
01:12:57
the values we have in our society I think I see porn a bit as a mirror of many of the of of of the values in our
01:13:05
society amongst them sexual violence towards women but then it's also true obviously that nowadays as porn has become more popular we're getting into a
01:13:17
bigger problem right where their attitudes are also provoked by what they are seeing so now it's not that easy anymore to say that porn is just a reflection because obviously they also
01:13:31
learn from what they see and then they go into their own lives and they try to reproduce what they have learned on online and that's in that case then if I
01:13:41
watch violent pornography when I meet my partner at 15 16 18 21 I'm going to have
01:13:48
this expectation that pornography looks certain I'm going to think sex has to be performed in this way where I choke them
01:13:53
I hit them I but or whatever they whatever because that's the only sexual education I've had and I got it from
01:13:59
Twitter for example so that in that case it will lead to sexual violence unwanted SE not necessarily it will lead to that
01:14:06
uh it might lead to a curiosity of trying it out because 42% of women said that they have been uh felt they were pressured or coerced into slapping
01:14:20
choking or being gagged yeah and I think many women also feel coerced just to have regular sex many times in their own marriages what do you think Dr K so so
01:14:31
many thoughts and and agree that this is a a very important discussion so like I was kind of curious about this because
01:14:37
I've noticed there's this rise in like asphixiation so the first question that I asked is like why are people doing
01:14:42
this so what I found is there's once again not randomized control trials that we're going to take 100 people split
01:14:47
them into two groups and you're G to you know and so the first thing is the physiology is actually like fascinating
01:14:53
so the I know this is gonna sound random we don't really know exactly what's going on but so it's really interesting because if you look at states of
01:14:59
meditation right so these are states of like Bliss so something changes in our brain when we're in a meditative State
01:15:05
now what the hell does that have to do with asphixiation so one of the most common trends of esoteric and deeply
01:15:11
spiritual meditation practices are a very low respiratory rate right so one practice that I did had a respiratory rate of one breath every eight minutes so that's like you know the regular
01:15:22
respiratory rate is 13 to 14 times a minute so what we know is that when the brain runs out of oxygen as long as we
01:15:29
don't damage it and that's the big problem with this asfixiation is that there's no consent there's no preparation people feel coerced into it
01:15:35
what we know in meditation is that a high CO2 level and a low O2 level cause alterations in the brain that will probably lead to something like a psychedelic experience a blissful
01:15:47
experience things like that so when when we're talking about asphixiation something is going on in the brain where
01:15:52
we're altering the State of Consciousness we're cutting off air flow to the the brain it can be lethal it can
01:15:58
be damaging permanently damaging and something can change in the brain that will enhance the experience of sexuality
01:16:07
that is exper that that people have so somewhere along the way people got into this idea I think the other thing the
01:16:14
other B basic Trend that we're seeing is that we're getting sexually desensitized so if you look at um this is not just sexual but like if you look at you know pornography what tends to
01:16:24
happen happen is what I find arousing will drift over time so I need to watch more and more hardcore porn to get the same level of arousal so there's also
01:16:35
something that show there there's uh you know studies that show that If You're vulnerable to an addiction you're also
01:16:42
vulnerable to risk-taking behavior so when you take when you engage in Risk what happens is like I don't know if this kind of makes sense but you know I I had a a a patient once who was working in a jail and he was telling me about
01:16:53
when he commits a crime and what he loved he has a really bad ADHD and what he loves about committing
01:16:59
a crime is he is completely dialed in because of the risk he has a survival reason to pay attention to every single detail he is so focused on the task and
01:17:10
we know that things like flow States involve an intense amount of focus and so when we're taking a risk it's
01:17:17
activating our dopamine way more we feel when I've talked to patients who engage in this kind of behavior they feel the
01:17:23
most alive because of the danger so there's a lot of stuff that is being activated if it's done in a healthy way
01:17:30
now there's all kinds of unhealthy stuff going on um I think the statistics kind of speak for themselves like my gut
01:17:37
check is that while everyone it doesn't necessarily increase the risk for everyone I think we're seeing the
01:17:42
intersectionality of a couple of things so the first thing is that men are angry so we have incels we have school
01:17:49
Shooters um you know men are resentful towards women so I think part of the reason we're seeing this violence against women in the pornography is because there's an angry incel who's
01:18:01
home alone who doesn't believe they're ever going to have sex believes that women are gatekeeping this and so the
01:18:08
the the masculine predatory systemic I'm GNA teach this woman a lesson she doesn't get to say no to me so these kinds of feelings are being someone has
01:18:21
figured out on a tube site that if I give men this fantasy they are going to watch it more and more and this is what we see punish [ __ ] of women we see
01:18:32
punish [ __ ] of women all the time I'm going to destroy you I'm going to you know banging and smashing and and but
01:18:39
you're saying that's a social problem not a porn industry problem well so I think what the porn industry is is doing
01:18:44
yeah the porn industry is figuring out this is what all technology is doing the machine learning is figuring out machine learning is figuring it out so as you
01:18:51
cited some statistic about you know sexual activity like more virin than ever before more sexual frustration than
01:18:57
ever before more frustration with life than ever before and so let's give you this extreme thing that's chck Tech chck
01:19:04
checking a couple of different boxes but interesting within this I heard something which is you basically have
01:19:11
described softcore pornography as a gateway drug to hardcore pornography because the brain gets desensitized it
01:19:17
looks for a bigger kick like it was heroin or something else you need a bigger more extreme experience to get the same high so if we start people on a
01:19:24
porn the broccoli they're eventually going to get to the cookie that's a great assumption I think
01:19:32
it's different because I think the desensitization hap it's different circuits of the brain there's a patience
01:19:39
to it there's an emotional component to it so I don't think I I think you're right that if we talk about squeezing
01:19:45
out dopamine could it be a gateway drug absolutely but part of the reason that in this moment I think it could be part
01:19:51
of the solution is is erotic is moving away from dop erotic is not about the orgasm the dopamine is the orgasm erotic is about everything else except for the organism so even when I'm working with
01:20:02
patients who have unhealthy relationships with sexuality the point is let's move away from orgasm let's
01:20:08
recognize that the sexual act and speaking of the orgasm Gap if you're a dude you can have sex and not have an
01:20:15
orgasm and it can still be a positive experience and this kind of goes back to the sexual violence what really scares
01:20:22
me is that as people watch this stuff for whatever reason what's going to happen is they're going to start to
01:20:27
think and I've seen this a lot recently it's amazing how much this is spiked how normalized this has become Oh I thought
01:20:34
women liked it this is what I'm supposed to do right and then you feel coercion from the side of women I think it's
01:20:41
interesting right I I wouldn't be surprised if I wouldn't be surprised and this is a bias in literature we ask do
01:20:47
you feel women as a woman do you feel coerced into doing this I don't think we ever ask men do you feel pressured into
01:20:52
doing this we don't even ask men what they feel coerced in because there not that many masculine scripts either of of
01:21:00
of having sex there's basically one that's a great point and it's you know the penetrative
01:21:07
sex machine that's the script we are why is that that must be a reflection of the
01:21:13
demand well I think it's a reflection of who's making the content and who's been making even traditional media right like
01:21:20
movies where you see how people have intimate acts even they're not showing the act right it's always ma penis and
01:21:28
vagina within minutes the female orgasms and that's it right that's the whole thing that's not real life and it's been
01:21:35
made by men I think it's this two-way dance really so I think there's there's a certain demand that exists because of whatever's going on in the world and then we meet that Demand with
01:21:46
conversation which enhances sometimes the demand for that content or subject and it's this kind of two-way dance where there's more content about it so the demand increases and people get more interested in it and all sees rise you
01:21:59
know yeah absolutely so I think that that's exactly what's going on here there's some preset demand but right now
01:22:04
the problem is that the only people who are fulfilling that demand are making you know highly processed calorically
01:22:12
densed you know orgasm masturbation focused pornography and we even see this in like other dimensions like if you look at literature right now you know the fantasy genre has so it has an an
01:22:24
inje of female authors so fantasy has changed completely in the last 10 or 15 years ya
01:22:30
has changed completely in the last 10 or 15 years I think maybe what we need is dudes writing romance novels and
01:22:35
consumers they always have power remember that people who are watching porn they are part of this industry they
01:22:42
are voting with their attention their time their clicks online hopefully with their money because everybody should pay for their porn because porn should not
01:22:53
be out out there for free for anyone it's it's a people are working in this they are you know they have lives they have kids they have to pay their rent the food on the table their schools
01:23:05
Etc we have to respect the work of those people sorry I couldn't help the laugh I
01:23:11
just realized you said porn shouldn't be free we live in a world where food is not a human right water is not a human
01:23:17
right Healthcare is not a human right but porn is free for everybody is porn free because it it's behind a different
01:23:22
advertising it's just an advertising model which means you are the you are the product like so if you're consuming
01:23:28
advert you're basically paying with your attention it's just a different currency we're paying with there's no porn that's free if you think about it fair enough
01:23:35
you I mean yeah yeah you're paying with your attention either way you're looking at an advert beforehand you're scrolling past a display advert on the right hand
01:23:40
side of the page or even on Twitter if you're on Twitter you're consuming ads when you stumble across porn it's a different advertising model but not the
01:23:47
right people are getting the money the people making the content you mean exactly I mean it's the dealers who are getting it when you look at only fans
01:23:58
interestingly 6.6 billion they made this year and about five billion of that went to the
01:24:04
creators and that's you know only fans has been a real phenomenon in culture last couple years I mean if we look at the the porn industry so it changed a lot I've been in this industry now for
01:24:15
20 years when I started you know there was sites online pay sites tubes didn't exist Etc and then uh when only fans came around and when they become big in
01:24:29
the pandemic they changed again the rules for this industry a bit and I do think that it's better that the people who are making it are receiving their
01:24:43
you know customers directly Etc and that they can make decisions for themselves I
01:24:49
think it's a good part of the industry that it works that way no fap a term I um only came across a couple of weeks ago this idea of noof FAP which is I believe and you clearly know much more
01:25:02
about this than I do Dr K but um I believe the term is it's it's proposing a solution to the pornography challenge that some people have where you completely abstain from watching
01:25:13
pornography and or masturbating at all um Reena if I recall and I don't want to mischaracterize your opinion here but I think when we spoke the first time on the podcast you made the case that masturbation does have positive impacts
01:25:27
so what is your view on this idea of noof FAP yeah so I think the the movement it's so the idea of retaining from or abstaining from masturbation or
01:25:39
watching pornography is a very individual one and it may have benefits for some people in terms of uh they may
01:25:46
because if they're using these things in a negative way abstaining from them may allow them to have more control over other portions of their life but a lot
01:25:53
of people will misinform people and say oh you're going to have a higher testosterone you're going to have all
01:25:59
these physiologic changes which have not been born out in the literature there's like a very small study looking at men
01:26:04
who abstained from um ejaculation for 21 days that saw a very small minute increase in testosterone like 10 guys so it's not generalizable it's never been repeated um and testosterone varies as
01:26:16
it is quite significantly over days and throughout the day and you know one day to the next so ultimately there's no
01:26:23
evidence to support report the fact that abstaining from anything like masturbation is actually going to have a benefit more likely than not either
01:26:30
you're going to have a nocturnal emission or you're going to body's going to absorb that cement so it doesn't
01:26:35
really change what's going on physiologically is there an impact on fertility if I masturbate or don't murate yes so fertility we do see that
01:26:42
if you abstain for about five days up to five days you're going to see some improvement in the seen qu um seen
01:26:50
volume potentially and also some characteristics of of the sperm uh but above and beyond that you start seeing DNA damage and so that can actually be negative if you abstain for too long so
01:27:02
the sperm are effectively dying in the well you're seeing like mutation so they're not as they're not as effective
01:27:08
they're they're not going to die necessarily but they're not going to create uh a healthy you know fetus or
01:27:15
embryo okay no F that is fascinating I didn't know that's really interesting um so a couple of things to understand so there are a lot of tradition that abstain from sexual activity I think um
01:27:27
we don't study those Traditions very well and I think the key thing to understand I personally think that um
01:27:33
celibacy and abstinence from sexual activity can be incredibly powerful um and so I think part of the we have to remember right so if we don't have any evidence for something why do
01:27:46
so many people believe it so some of it is there's a lot of bad information out there but people what happens on the noof fap community is that people are having some
01:27:56
experiences and they're saying this kind of thing changed my life and there's so many layers to that so the first is that
01:28:03
I think nofap is kind of a way to wrestle with any kind of Behavioral control so if we look at like you know
01:28:09
people who are addicted to pornography we talk about all of these negative impacts of this cycle of I don't have
01:28:15
anything to do any day anything today so I'm going to jerk off and then I have no mean meaning no purpose no dopamine so
01:28:21
I'm just like stuck in the cycle so they want to break the cycle and they just pick one thing and I think just
01:28:27
challenging yourself from a self-control perspective I completely agree with Dr what mik says there may not be a
01:28:32
physiological thing going on here but just challenging yourself and saying hey like this one thing messes up my
01:28:39
relationships messes up my dopamine messes up my purpose and my motivation I'm going to take control of this and
01:28:45
it'll change my life so I think if you look at it from an isolated stance of masturbation it may not have much of an
01:28:51
effect we'll talk about the exception to that rule in a second in the spiritual Traditions but I think that a lot of
01:28:57
people are just using it as a vehicle to come to terms with something challenging in their life and they're like they're
01:29:02
making a commitment right I'm going to do this thing and the benefit comes from that maybe not any physiological
01:29:08
thing um you know all the stuff about testosterone and stuff completely agree I don't think that there's a clear thing
01:29:13
there but if you look at some of the meditative Traditions one of the really common things and this is really fascinating because this is true of uh
01:29:20
meditative or religious Traditions all over the world so you'll see cibus is a part of some of the abrahamic
01:29:27
religions it's part of some of the karmic religions from the East so human beings at some point figured out that
01:29:32
abstaining from sexual activity can have different kinds of impacts in the organism so a couple of things that it
01:29:39
does is it reduces our thoughts of lust um if we do it the right way and we'll get to a couple of specific examples of what the nofap community doesn't understand so when I deprive myself of a
01:29:51
particular thing I sometimes reduce that behavioral reinforcement so if I look at someone who's addicted to alcohol you
01:29:58
know when they stop drinking alcohol at the very beginning their desire will increase but then 10 years later they
01:30:03
don't even think about it so if you are someone who is thinking about sex constantly and you stop engaging in
01:30:11
sexual perceptions so remember the thoughts in our brain come from what we perceive this is why advertising is a
01:30:18
thing because an Advertiser knows if I can show you this thing you will think about it now if I'm fapping and watching
01:30:25
pornography I'm getting this perceptual um input which is then creating thoughts in my head now I'm thinking about this
01:30:32
stuff instead of thinking about something else so there's that layer of thing too when I cut something off from my perception when I break up with
01:30:38
someone why do I block them because if I watch their social media if I get text from them that's going to enter my
01:30:44
perception and control my thoughts so they can also use it as a benefit of like thought control if I stop looking
01:30:49
at this stuff this has also been hijacked by generally speaking patriarchal structures for like you know
01:30:56
there's a particular religious sect of Hinduism where the priests are like I'm never going to see a woman like no women
01:31:02
are allowed in the house if I'm going to come visit your house right so this gets turned into some weird things but so
01:31:08
noap gives us an opportunity for self-control it gives us a chance to reduce our sensory input which reduces
01:31:14
our thoughts and then there's also these meditative Traditions which say that you know achieving esoteric spiritual
01:31:21
experiences which is a lot of what the noof fat community like talks about like they become slightly different human
01:31:26
beings celibacy is a part of that now the key thing about the meditative Traditions is that they're not taking
01:31:31
advice from randos on the internet so I'll give you all just one really simple example when you do esoteric meditations
01:31:39
spirituality celibacy kind of stuff it's usually accompanied in the Hindu tradition or Buddhist tradition with
01:31:44
certain yogic postures and one example of this is something called sidasa sidas is adapts pose and literally what you do
01:31:52
is in this pose you place the heel of one your right foot usually up against your perenium so you put pressure on the area between your anus and your scrotum
01:32:05
if you're a man it's a slightly different location if you're a woman and then what that actually does from Anatomy I'm sure you know this better
01:32:11
than I correct me if I'm wrong is that you know we know that the blood supply to the scrotum passes through that right
01:32:17
it's on the underside it's like in that pelvic floor region so one of the really interesting things that I remember
01:32:22
learning from a yogi who was a medical doctor is that when we compress blood flow through the testes like if you have
01:32:28
gently compressed blood flow that increases over time you're going to get less blood flow to the testes you may
01:32:34
get some kind of reduction in testosterone production in semen production or whatever so there may be
01:32:39
some physiological things that people do when they're normally like try to be celibate that allow it to be healthy in
01:32:46
a in a good way so I think kind of the the key takeaway don't disagree with anything that Dr mik said I think you've
01:32:52
got to remember that nofap is not a Surefire solution to fix all your problems and at the same time some people have positive experiences also Dr
01:33:03
mik has been emphasizing this point of it's not the same for everybody and we know that there are a couple of things
01:33:09
working with this community quite a bit you know there are a couple of things that happen about self-control challenging yourself setting a goal
01:33:15
creating purpose in your life changing what your sensory inputs are so you you're not thirsty all day long and
01:33:21
thinking about being horny and all this kind of stuff like sometimes you got to kind of cut it out of your life and so
01:33:26
it's almost like this this uh cold turkey kind of approach which which can sometimes work for nicotine can
01:33:32
sometimes work for things like sex but I think like your mileage may vary and we don't really know exactly what's going
01:33:37
on yeah I think I'll add I think the the problem I have with it to some degree is when people are white knuckling it right
01:33:43
they're really and they're getting peer pressured into it like you got to stop right and so then they're they're
01:33:49
they're really trying hard not to ejaculate and so they're tensing up their pelvic muscles they're developing
01:33:55
problems because they're tensing up their pelvic floors they're developing dysfunctions they're getting pain with ejaculation they're getting pain with
01:34:02
erections or they get so much shame when they have a nocturnal emission for example nocturnal emission is a
01:34:07
nighttime ejaculation exactly so they're they're they're getting so shamed by the community because they've failed which
01:34:13
is completely out of their physiological control like you're going to have a nocturnal emission if your body wants to have one there's nothing you can do
01:34:19
about it so you know I think ultimately there is a lot of Shame and peer pressure that can sometimes create harm
01:34:25
in these situations now if you're using it in the way Dr K describes like that's fine if you're if you're deriving
01:34:31
benefit from it I have no problem but I do take issue with the people who are harming themselves because they're
01:34:36
getting a lot of pressure from the from the group if I can jump in for a second so I want to emphasize this point too so
01:34:42
this is really weird but people are white knuckling it they're they may be making their addiction actually worse so
01:34:47
there's a really interesting principle in addiction where if I'm white knuckling something like so like I let's
01:34:53
use the example of like opioid addiction right so when when I have when I'm working with an opioid addict at the very beginning what they have is like a
01:34:59
psychological craving like I want to I want to have an opiate so that I feel better mentally I feel better I feel
01:35:05
Euphoria and then if I White Knuckle it what happens is things start to get worse then I start to go into withdrawal
01:35:12
and then my body is like now I'm going into opioid withdrawal so instead of euphoria now I start to feel pain all
01:35:17
over my body and as I feel pain all over my body then finally what happens is I crack and then I use opioids and then something really interesting happens the body learns what it what it has to do to
01:35:32
you to make you use opioids again so when you White Knuckle and actually crack at the end what we find is that you're the the body jumps straight to level 10 right so it's kind of like we
01:35:44
see this also with like kids and devices Mommy Daddy can I have an iPad no and then they're like Mommy Daddy please no ah and then they start crying then they start thrwing a temper tantrum if you
01:35:55
give them the iPad when they throw a temper tantrum that encourages them to throw a temper tantrum and we see that
01:36:01
internally biologically physiologically where if you resist an addiction and then you cave at the end the body is like hey there's no point messing around
01:36:11
with the early stages let's just go to hard withdrawal way faster so I think it can be so harmful when people are white
01:36:18
knuckling it they don't realize that every time they fail sometimes what they're actually doing is train in their
01:36:24
brain to punish them way harder so their brain can get the dopamine that it wants you talk about pornography being a
01:36:31
substitute for relationships in society okay have you spoken about that I don't want to misiz your opinion um I've got a
01:36:38
quote here but your experience is is has been that pornography usage is really just a powerful coping mechanism um and it sort of scratches this evolutionary itch for relationships yeah is it
01:36:51
therefore not a bad thing for people I'm reflecting on that idea which we kind of addressed at the start but also just
01:36:56
what I see in the comment section which is people really seem to hate dating apps and pornography but they also seem
01:37:03
to use them both and I just as a podcast you we we were really surprised the first time we had a dating app CE CEO on
01:37:09
the show because I thought oh great episode we learned a lot about business and how they built the app and then I looked at the comment section and this
01:37:16
group of people had shown up with like P like pitchforks and they were expressing
01:37:21
their like desperation and they're feeling that these dating apps and pornography has very much ruined their
01:37:28
lives and so I just I'm throwing that out there because it's a reflection of the comments that I see yeah no so I I
01:37:33
didn't say okay to try to shut you I was just like let's hear the rest so so yeah I I think what was once again remember
01:37:40
that the brain every part of the brain every neurotransmitter is involved in sexuality and relationships so what's happening is when we this is the what we see is
01:37:51
that when we use technology to activate the brain there are parts of the brain that don't know the difference the
01:37:58
problem is that there are other parts of the brain that don't get activated so this is this is going to get a little bit weird but so if I think about like you know I'll give you let's just use the example of food so when I feel
01:38:09
hungry I can eat something that's calorically dense and that will satisfy my Hunger but the calorically dense food
01:38:16
may not have nutrition it may not have micronutrients it may not have fiber so when I replace something nutritious with
01:38:23
something tricks my body into thinking oh like now we're fine that can be very damaging so one of the things that we see with pornography is that if we look at like you know being horny why are
01:38:35
human beings horny it's because if we weren't horny we would never mate like that's like it's a evolutionary it's not
01:38:41
a bug it's not a problem it's a drive to help us succeed so then we have this thing called post-nut Clarity right which is like when we have post-nut Clarity our our our horniness kind of goes down and then then it changes the
01:38:54
way that we see the world so part of what we see a lot with like pornography as a substitute for relationships is
01:38:59
first of all we've evolve to have these parts of the brain that get activated right relationships are a healthy thing
01:39:06
for us and now we figured out how to partially activate the brain through pornography this is getting worse with
01:39:12
things like only fans because now we develop a parasocial relationship there's usually not parasocial relationships with like you know adult
01:39:19
film actresses or maybe there are but now we have interaction I've seen more uh marriages ruined through only fans than I have through pornography and I've seen a big spike in this recently
01:39:30
because now it's not just a physical thing there's enough insecurity and physicality and problems in the bedroom
01:39:37
now there's an emotional relationship if pornography online didn't exist would we
01:39:44
have better romantic relationships in real life you've got an opinion haven't you yeah we don't know short short
01:39:50
answer is we don't know but even shorter answer is yeah things worse with pornography and here's what I look at right so like if we don't have rcts what
01:39:57
else can we look at rcts randomized control trials you know what we can look at is global Trends so what are we
01:40:03
seeing what's the global Trend in pornography and what's the global Trend in relationships now this isn't
01:40:09
causality there could be all there's all kinds of I think one thing that I really appreciated is um you know my my co-
01:40:15
guests have clearly showed how nuanced and multifactorial this issue is but generally speaking people are watching way more porn and relationships are getting worse we have declining birth
01:40:27
rates people are getting married later um you know there's we're seeing a kind of global like Zeitgeist problem between men and women and por pornography is
01:40:39
like correlated with those two things so in my mind if you H if if I say if you have to if I have to put an answer if we
01:40:46
removed allll pornography from the world would things get better I would say yes
01:40:54
but that's because the way pornography is right now and I think is and let me finish I think I'm going to tee you up so I think it's it's it's because and the reason removing it would be better
01:41:06
is because it has gotten more toxic right so as pornography becomes more harmful as it morphs and transforms into something that is more damaging removing
01:41:17
it should make things better which is inevitable because of how the brain works you said we get increasingly dis
01:41:23
so we want more extreme so if you start here you're eventually going to end up here regardless I would say for who
01:41:29
would it be better or worse because for me and my taste it would probably be worse I think that people who are searching ideas desires fantasies
01:41:46
scripts outside the kind of heteronormative male dominant pornography that's out there they have really you know had a benefit of what
01:41:57
has happened during the last years on the internet today they have access to different Role Models they have access to different stories they have access to
01:42:09
representation they you know have access to sex education that is not heteronormative and and you know kind of you know in a heteronormative script
01:42:22
when it comes to sexual debut Etc people always talk about that that is through penetrative sex that it's not necessarily true is it
01:42:36
what did we do before porn I mean were we struggling in a in a bedroom before pornography existed I mean I think
01:42:41
people were more open about sexuality the the way the frigidness around sexuality has is a modern concept right
01:42:50
like in in ancient civilizations you were watching people have sex it was in in live right like it was but it wasn't
01:42:56
easily accessible in 15 seconds and extreme so we're saying we should come off we
01:43:02
should we have to mature I think I think we are in a maturing process that porn online this way is still pretty new and we haven't talked about it much in you
01:43:14
know General Society so I think that this conversation that you are having now that you invited us to have a new conversation taking lots of time to talk
01:43:26
about different aspects that is exactly what we need yeah I agree and I would just say just back to your point I think you know yes we see the rise of all these things concurrently but if we got
01:43:37
rid of porn would there be something else that people would be turning to right like is it's is chicken or the egg right it's probably not the cause it's
01:43:44
multifactorial and so would people then turn to something else so would it be only fans instead of porn right would it
01:43:50
be I mean an only fans can be a variety of different things right but it's now a live person that's communicating with someone else or is it going to be AI
01:43:57
robots that have sex with you right like are we going to turn to something else gaming addiction or some other type of
01:44:03
addiction gambling or recreational drugs or alcohol or so it's really you're saying it's more just of a symptom of a set of challenges in society that people are using it for the emotional regulation that you described Dr K I
01:44:15
think there's a little of both right it's easily accessible it's it's free I mean your time is time but like it is
01:44:22
not costing you money um so that is that is part of the issue but I'm saying I don't think it's I think that there is a
01:44:29
bigger problem and that people are using as a scapegoat to avoid this problem just to kind of CounterPoint to that I
01:44:35
don't think you'll disagree with what I'm about to say so the other thing that we know from addictions is that people have drugs of choice right so to say
01:44:43
that it would be completely replaced I would disagree with because I think that the way that pornography affects your
01:44:49
brain uh is unique compared to video games um and at the same time we also see a
01:44:56
lot of stuff to support I agree with Dr mik is that like we're seeing a rise in video game addiction we're seeing a rise
01:45:01
in social media addiction we're seeing a rise in pornography addiction and depending on your individual makeup you
01:45:08
may be vulnerable to pornography versus social media right so when you have when
01:45:13
you need that parasocial relationship without the sexual sexual component maybe you get addicted to social media when you have that sexual component Maybe get addicted to to pornography and
01:45:25
so I I think it is I do think it's like a pretty unique thing so if we just look at the physiology of sexuality in
01:45:32
relationships that's a pretty like it's a dangerous dangerous thing to to hijack because it's so like fundamental to like life in mating so
01:45:45
you know I I think it I think it's somewhat specific I I don't think it I think if we removed it it would have
01:45:51
some effect but I I think what I'm hearing from my co- guests is that you know I think this is true of all technology it's not that oh we should ban it that's why I'm kind of reluctant when you you ask that question and I'm
01:46:02
happy to say sure on balance I'll say yes but I think the key thing to understand is that we are developing things as the human race without
01:46:08
realizing what we're building we are developing so the problem with pornography is almost like an issue of
01:46:14
like um you know when you introduce an invasive species to a new environment there are no checks and balances so I
01:46:21
think like there parts of Australia for example example where like they introduced rabbits and rabbits have like just taken over the whole continent and
01:46:27
so I think what's happened with pornography is we started letting people arguably the wrong people start building
01:46:33
all of this pornography it's ripped through our society it's changed the way that now 40s something percent of women
01:46:40
are coerced into asphixiation in college like what the [ __ ] right like this is
01:46:46
insane like how did how did we get here but it's only just the beginning you mentioned there virtual reality AI these
01:46:52
new technologies um one of the great things about these new technologies specifically AI in large language models is they can have a
01:47:02
conversation with you and this is something in technology that we couldn't really do before in such a remarkably
01:47:07
personalized way so you kind of combine these Technologies you go okay I'll add in virtual reality robotics is on the
01:47:13
rise as well we now have these large language models that can communicate with you in whatever way they need to to
01:47:18
make you feel whatever you need to feel and I I look at that and go the future's
01:47:24
not bright as it relates to sex sex relationships and pornography people you know they did a study in 2020 with
01:47:30
virtual reality and they found the researchers found in that study that virtual reality porn um made people feel
01:47:37
more desired more flirted with and more connected to the actress so the more immersive we make pornography which is
01:47:43
the direction of travel in the world generally the more it's going to be addictive the more it's going to bit feel like a better substitute than
01:47:49
having a real relationship with a real person yeah I agree I think it's it's unless we develop some checks and balances and we prioritize relationships with other
01:48:01
human beings uh as a society we're we're going to be in trouble so what do we do there do we ban
01:48:07
it do we ban virtual AI porn because there's already websites now there was three websites that I found that allowed you to make your own um partner um and they're calling
01:48:20
this Digi sexuals where you can pick their personality you can pick their physical preferences you can pick the
01:48:26
sexual fantasy that they perform and that you want to see them perform um and and uh and these are becoming
01:48:32
increasingly popular and the great thing about these according to the websites that make these sexual characters that
01:48:38
you can make yourself is it remembers all of your previous conversations so quote it can improve communication and
01:48:44
cater to what your desire is so it can really speak to what you want but it can't touch you oh it can't hug you it
01:48:52
can't kiss you but the robots can those big sexual robots can so like I know this is going
01:48:57
to sound crazy but like you know I I think we we look at the end of the human race and we look at things like climate
01:49:03
change and nuclear war and and maybe like some super bug that is resistant to all of our antibiotics like there's a
01:49:10
tiny tiny chance that what's going to end the human race is something like this and I know that's like kind of a bold statement to make but like let me
01:49:15
just share with yall what I'm afraid of so what's going on is you're right it's becoming more immersive and the whole whole problem with like technology and even the virtual world what we see in video games is that the immersive world
01:49:28
is one that we prefer to the real world right so if you kind of think about let's say only fans versus a real
01:49:34
relationship only fans like this person is financially invested to not piss me off whereas I know this is very
01:49:41
frustrating for a lot of dudes out there turns out if you're in a real relationship with a woman there's a human being who has thoughts and
01:49:47
feelings and desires of her her own I know it's tough right and and so like what happens is we and only fans like they're they're invested in making you happy and now what we're happening is AI
01:49:59
girlfriends that's just the start of it man like right now they they can try to fulfill your desires someone's going to
01:50:04
figure out that a random reinforcement schedule is better so if you want to create the most addictive virtual
01:50:10
girlfriend she's actually not going to give you what you want some of the time she's going to piss you off she's going
01:50:15
to throw a temper tantrum that is going to trick your brain into thinking this is a real relationship which comes from
01:50:21
gambling psychology right gambling psychology right and so now what I'm going to do is get more addicted to
01:50:26
technology and this is why video games are adictive there's a really fascinating study where people were like the the reason video games are addictive
01:50:33
is because of a denial of a reward so if you look at fortnite fortnite is a game that has a 100 players in Arena there's
01:50:39
one winner which means you lose 99% of the time but oh boy if you're the winner that one time the dopamine surge that
01:50:46
you get is astronomical when we deny human beings rewards and then we give it to them they're hooked this is gambling this is also why we respect people sitting at this table because we've all
01:50:58
worked hard what we did is not easy to do that's why everyone values it someone's going to figure this out with AI girlfriends and then this is the thing they can't hug us but they can so
01:51:10
this is happening so this technology was actually developed in the early 2000s for medical reasons so when we were
01:51:15
seeing um clinics in remote parts of the world that would have these things called haptic feedback gloves so this is
01:51:22
back uh when if you look at like a doctor who was this was specifically a technology developed around detecting
01:51:27
breast cancer so what happens is I put on a glove I'm a doctor and someone else puts on a glove somewhere else in the
01:51:33
world and then they do a breast exam so they feel the breast okay and then based on the lumps that you feel whatever
01:51:40
their glove feels I'm wearing a glove that makes me feel the same things so we have some of these sexually assistive devices like you know for both men and women now when we combine haptic
01:51:51
feedback and they start throwing temper tantrums like I really think it could be like there's this tiny chance it's just the end of the human race cuz we're not
01:51:58
like why bother with another human when I can get touch and I can get activated and you can get irritated every so often every so often which makes it so much sweeter right makeup
01:52:10
sex is great the end of the human race scary I don't I don't want to go with there I I think we have to actively work at it right like we have to teach our children that like relationships are
01:52:23
hard and worth it and you know like like it has it's hard though it's it's really
01:52:28
hard but I think um yeah I think it's it's going to be a challenge and we have to have some checks and balances and we
01:52:34
on our own have to work in our own little microcosm to try to continually have the younger generation see the
01:52:41
value of relationships and procreation and all those things because that's uh you know on the decline don't people in
01:52:48
life typically just go for the path of least resistance when left to their own devices you know I was thinking as you
01:52:54
speaking about when I was in primary school they came in and taught me about your five a day so like you meant to have like five fruit and vegetables a
01:53:00
day or whatever but then if they they tell you that information but then they put you in a food environment where um
01:53:06
every shop is selling me candy and you know processed foods because it's it's more nutritious my brain spikes more
01:53:12
there's no it doesn't matter if what you told me it doesn't matter if I know fight for fruit and vegetable but we still have like this obesity crisis and
01:53:18
I think if you went up to the average American and said what food is healthy I think a good proportion of them would be able to say what's healthy and what's
01:53:24
not but then if you ask them what they consume it's a very different answer irrespective of pricing because your
01:53:30
brain especially in a more stressed world than ever before is really driving driving you so I'm picking up the the
01:53:36
soda I'm picking up and I think about the same in pornography we can know something is not good for us but if it's
01:53:42
readily available and it's low friction to access it the incentives are going to win out over the long term and I think
01:53:48
about this in company culture I say to people all the time I say you know as a CEO you can stand there and tell your group of people how you want the team to
01:53:53
behave but it's almost uh it's really naive to assume over any long long period of time that people will act outside of their incentives so you can say I want you guys to Al to innovate
01:54:04
but if your job description is literally rewarding you to do your current job and your bonuses are rewarding you to do
01:54:10
your current job you're going to do your current job regardless of what the co is barking you know at you I think about the same in porn like we can't just we
01:54:17
can't just rely on telling people that it's bad people do people do do things for delayed gratification right we went
01:54:24
to medical school there is a lot of delayed gratification in medical school you're a CEO you're a producer like
01:54:30
these are not easy things to start right and you do it because you know there's potential reward at the end of it so
01:54:36
there is you know human psychology and I'm sure Dr K can talk more about that like where you can foster this
01:54:42
appreciation for delayed gratification and also with good food you know when you eat well when you eat green Etc you
01:54:49
feel much better and that gives your energy and then you want to keep going the stats just the Obesity stats are
01:54:54
just horrifying in the in the US in particular it's a country where you know education education education we tried that you know in school I was told that vegetables are good and this is good but
01:55:06
then obesity stats since the time I was in school have just gone in One Direction Still yeah that maybe it's
01:55:12
about the practice we have to learn you know how to get into the right practice of things and this is a question really
01:55:18
about is it the individual that has to find this discipline or this this sort of selfcontrol or at Social level do we
01:55:25
need to put things in place to make the environment easier to operate in so couple of thoughts the first so the first is I think the answer to that question which we learn in medical school is there's never an either or the
01:55:38
answer is always both it's always multifactorial so I think um I'm with you that so like I when I think about like you know what what is my life's work it's I work on the individual level
01:55:49
so when you ask me should we ban something it's like I I don't know cuz my thought is that we got to save a couple people the good news about the
01:55:54
human race dying out is that you know if a couple people continue to have sex with each other then all the people who
01:56:00
are vulnerable to AI relationships will actually not procreate and Humanity will
01:56:05
survive right so maybe we're okay but I I think that the other thing you have to
01:56:10
keep in mind so this is maybe a little bit more of a spiritual event so I'm with you that there's an obesity crisis I'm with you that human beings it's kind
01:56:17
of like we treat human beings like the lowest common denominator right we're like oh human beings
01:56:22
if we give them broccoli and cookies like they're going to eat cookies but I think that there two things the first
01:56:28
thing is that like Dr Malik said you know I think even if we look at this podcast like the people who are watching
01:56:34
this are not interested in eating cookies and there is an appetite why have podcasts exploded because people
01:56:41
tried to educate kids in school and what we have organically evolutionary discovered is there is a different way to communicate information that that creates behavioral change that's the
01:56:54
first thing so we're seeing the counterbalancing force of obesity like the whole world became obese because we had people making calorically dense food without an awareness of it but I also
01:57:05
see the highest amount of like whole grain advertisement that I've ever seen before now we know it's a problem and now humanity is fighting back the other thing so this is what I think really
01:57:17
separates human beings from animals and maybe this is an argument that a more competent biologist will will say I'm
01:57:24
wrong here this is more of a spiritual perspective but I think human beings are the only species on the planet that may
01:57:30
be able to run against our programming right and you can argue that this is even a deeper level of programming but
01:57:36
like the whole point to Being Human the cool thing about being human is my brain can drive me like you said in One
01:57:43
Direction but I can say hey even though my brain is driving me in this direction I don't want to go in that direction
01:57:51
human beings are it's really interesting right because we're the ones that like so I remember you know watching this Tik
01:57:57
Tok or something about a vegan dog and someone was like oh yeah you know my dog is vegan they don't even like food Let's
01:58:03
do an experiment there's one piece of meat and one piece of some weird corn broccoli chowder right dog sniffs both
01:58:11
has never had meat for the last two years and eats the meat so if we look at animals like animals it's not clear to
01:58:16
me that animals are able to regulate their impulses in the way that human beings do why have human beings
01:58:22
dominated the planet it's because when we feel like having a cookie we have broccoli when we feel like yelling at
01:58:28
someone we restrain ourselves and there may be some deeper biology evolutionary kind of thing going on there but I I'd
01:58:34
ask each and every one of you to look at your experience for a second forget about biology when you have an
01:58:40
Impulse does that impulse control you or can you fight back I fight right we all
01:58:46
fight that's The Human Experience The Human Experience is fighting against our impulses every [ __ ] day and then we
01:58:52
try to learn how can I get better at this because what my tongue wants I'm talking about calories not sex for a
01:58:59
second you know what my tongue wants is not there's a part of me that says this is not good for me in the long run this
01:59:06
is delayed gratification how many of our impulses do you actually think we're winning the fight against because I
01:59:12
would argue that we're losing pretty much all of the fights against our impulses in fact the fact that we're all
01:59:18
sat here is probably us following our impulses the rise in social media usage is us being a slave to our impulses the
01:59:25
rise in obesity globally is US failing losing the fight to our impulses the rise in pornography is US losing our
01:59:31
fight to our impulses the rise in gaming gambling alcohol whatever is US losing our fight with our impulses yes alcoholic people so this is going to sound wild I think we're getting better
01:59:42
at it so I know you're saying we're losing the war right human beings self-control is increasing and the reason why we're losing the war right now but the enemy is coming up with
01:59:55
better and better weapons technology is getting sophisticated pornography is getting sophisticated social media is getting
02:00:02
sophisticated and yet the human race in some ways we're collapsing but we're also like operating in some ways at the
02:00:08
best level that we ever have so we're getting outgunned but I actually think human beings on the whole what I see in
02:00:14
the community what's the top search how do I quit pornography so there's something happening like on a Humanity
02:00:21
level where we're like as human beings we're like we got to start fighting back this podcast is is a consequence of that this
02:00:28
is human beings fighting back so are we losing the war yeah but I think we've been like we got caught by surprise we
02:00:34
got caught with our pants down right which may be a weird analy in this context but you know so so like I'm with
02:00:41
you that there's a lot of reasons to be scared and also like the reason that people pay attention to me and Dr Malik
02:00:47
and Erica is because we're fighting back right that's why we're here Stephen this is brilliant man because here you are
02:00:53
and what are you what are the questions you're asking us we're all screwed we're doomed isn't all screwed right so you've
02:00:59
become so sophisticated that everyone who's listening to us you're pulling out the strongest messages of hope that the three of us can muster you're figuring out how to give people hope because you
02:01:12
keep on asking these pessimistic pessimistic pessimistic questions so this is what it takes man it takes like
02:01:18
people who are like figuring out how this works maybe you're controlling their impulses who knows no no I have to represent whatever the opposite of
02:01:24
whatever you say is if you say left I'll say right yeah right but so that's beautiful so think
02:01:30
about it when you were at school did anyone ever tell you there's a conflict between broccoli and cookies no they
02:01:35
said eat broccoli so we have figured out as a human race that we need to represent both sides of the conflict to
02:01:41
get the best out of a human being that's a critical principle for addiction treatment too you can't tell them it's good you have to weigh the good and the
02:01:49
bad is there any such thing as too much point Dr Reena so I think it's really about how you feel about it so in all the data about problematic porn use it's like people who feel bad about it like
02:01:59
they're like oh I really don't I think I use too much then you probably use too much right but if you use it and you
02:02:04
don't feel bad about it and you're still able to go to work and you're still able to maintain your relationships and have sex with your partner or Partners or
02:02:11
whatever then it's not a problem right so I think it's really it's it's comes down to how you feel about it and usually you're right about it usually if you feel like something's wrong and you're using too much then probably
02:02:23
abstaining or trying a different alternative may be beneficial so just to conclude then if I made you Prime
02:02:29
Minister President of the United Kingdom the world let's say and you had to put legislation in place to make our relationship with pornography healthier or to make it a net more positive force
02:02:42
for society or impact on society what exactly would you do Dr Reena this is a tough question so
02:02:49
I think I would have some mandatory self analysis of your porn use that everyone has to take every so often so that
02:03:00
people can actually have to look at it with an objective like not watching porn but seeing like how many hours do you
02:03:06
use it and how often are using it and again frequency is not always related to problem but it is one marker that we can
02:03:14
measure and then you know maybe again have a warning to them that this seems like a lot of use are you still and then
02:03:21
they if they have a certain marker of use maybe are you finding that you're having difficulties in relationships and whatever and and that would hopefully
02:03:29
alert some red flags to people who may need some assistance and and hopefully we'd have some sort of intervention for
02:03:34
them what about you Dr K uh honestly what I do is resign like the first thing I would do um but if you're asking for like a single policy change I can get behind one thing so I think the biggest
02:03:45
thing that we need right now from a policy level is social and emotional skills training for all children I think
02:03:52
we need to reevaluate what we teach in schools and what what people actually need to learn
02:03:58
today so school when knowledge and information was not easily accessible school was about learning information but I don't need to learn the capital of any state or country now because I can
02:04:10
look it up so I think what we really need is social and emotional skills training there are also studies that
02:04:15
show that this is very very helpful for people so how do you regulate your emotions how do you form connections
02:04:21
with other people these are the two biggest things that we need because our emotions when they get out of whack they're the birth of all addiction and
02:04:28
media straightening so young people can understand what they actually are watching and that media is sending out
02:04:35
messages to the world and that we are decoding those messages I think that is absolutely necessary but what I would do I I I think porn should be behind a payment barrier for me
02:04:48
that's I believe that that's the way it should be and better sexual education better sexual education I would add that I add that to the Mandate yeah absolutely I don't know how to say this
02:04:59
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02:05:59
important thing we should have talked about but we didn't talk about as it relates to the work that you do and what you've seen as it relates to Sexual Health relationships love and
02:06:07
dating um I think what we didn't spend enough time on is how pornography changes our body Images so I think there's a significant number of people
02:06:19
men interested in increasing panal length women interested in maybe labioplasty or looking a certain way
02:06:25
that they're often seeing on pornography and I think that creates a lot of dissatisfaction a lot of Shame a lot of
02:06:33
um you know small penis anxiety is a real thing and it's it it is very detrimental people are so um so focused
02:06:42
on the size of their penis that they are now thinking about it ruminating about it um potentially doing harm to
02:06:49
themselves to try to increase Penal and so I think that this is something we didn't talk about but that is another
02:06:55
potential harm of seeing people who have chosen to be pornography actors who have you know on the high standard deviations
02:07:02
of size that's not normal right and so they're not seeing normal anatomy and I think that's that's potentially harmful
02:07:09
I I agree partly but then also I hear many people when they're talking about porn they're saying porn creates unexpected kind of ideas of of your
02:07:19
bodies and Etc but I'm I'm a bit suspicious about this because honestly look at Fashion what is fashion doing I think it's worse I really think it's worse many time I I I in porn there are
02:07:32
so many different people today different body types different ages different you know different everything
02:07:39
that are being represented so I think that that statement might be you know from 10 years ago or something where
02:07:47
does that statement come from just I mean we know that there is small pieing we know that people are St concern my
02:07:53
highest viewed video is about increasing panut length there's over 30 million views so it is um clearly something that
02:08:00
people are searching now is it from pornography 100% no not necessarily but that's where they're seeing these very
02:08:07
large organs is typically on pornography yes you can see a whole host of a variety of different types of people but
02:08:13
I think they're seeing it there and feeling probably when it comes to men there are less Variety in porn than when
02:08:21
it comes to women Erica do you use large penises in your work I don't know how to
02:08:27
say that is part of your sort of do you shoose them by the size no I do not I look for I look for people's personality that's what I'm after I'm I'm looking for people who who feel like real people
02:08:42
I'm I I I mean Beauty and energy and passion and chemistry these sort of things but does the penis size matter no to me it doesn't matter but then if we're gonna be 100% honest it's true
02:08:57
that many of the performers have slighter bigger penises than what is considered average what's the average penis length it's about 5.1 to 5.5 in
02:09:09
erect and uh is there a a gap in the perception there do men think the average penis length is bigger yeah
02:09:15
actually both genders do so when you look at um studies where people like look at a penis and estimate the size
02:09:21
both genders tend to um tend to overestimate average penal length but they also are not really great at looking at a penis and telling the size so sometimes they'll see like a five and a half inch penis and think it's six
02:09:33
inches um you know up to an inch in variability basically when you get on the the above average sizes so there is
02:09:40
you know obviously perception issues but ultimately I think the people who tend to want to be and correct me if I'm
02:09:46
wrong um who want to be performers who are male will generally have something they want to show off and they will
02:09:52
think they have a larger penis what about the length of sex though is there disparities between how long we think sex should be and how often we should
02:09:59
think we should be having it which causes a lot of sort of dissatisfaction in relationships yeah absolutely so there's um the average time to
02:10:06
ejaculation for a man is about five five to six minutes the average time to orgasm for a woman during partnered intercourse is about 14 minutes so there's definitely a disparity there
02:10:19
that um needs to be addressed if you want the if you have average duration in your relationship then the part the
02:10:25
female partner needs to be prioritized so she can reach Climax and that's not the end all goal for everybody you can
02:10:31
still have a great relationship and have a great experience without an orgasm but if you want both people to climax you
02:10:36
need to stimulate the female partner a little longer you're going to say something that don't care yes I it's
02:10:43
just when she was saying you know that's not the priority she look at Eric so so there's just I'm sorry like
02:10:50
my brain grew up on the internet and like there's like a subtrack that's running this whole time but so I I think
02:10:56
you know what I what I teach my patients is almost identical so if you look at the average sexual intercourse like
02:11:03
people don't realize it's three to seven minutes um is what's really even really fascinating is that speaking of
02:11:09
misperceptions about 50% of women start uh don't want sex longer than 15 minutes so I didn't know what the average time to female and male orgasm was but I know what people prefer
02:11:21
and half of women like they don't want you know if you watch like a a two film or something like sure sometimes there's
02:11:27
shorts and stuff but there's also like you know porno is like 45 minutes of all kinds of stuff like it's like 3 to seven
02:11:33
minutes and women start complaining after 50 seconds so I see a lot of this um you know this like uh body dysmorphia
02:11:41
almost it's like getting to that level in both men and women unrealistic expectations about body unrealistic
02:11:47
expectations about performance that creates shame once I feel feel shame then I want to watch pornography then
02:11:54
you know I want to watch Dr Malik's video that has 30 million views or get pills to increase my penis size on the advertisers you know so I I think that
02:12:01
there's just a lot of bad information out there so does this mean that we need to make pornography that is reflective
02:12:06
of reality i. make it 3 to five minutes long for men and 14 minutes for women but also um does it mean that we need to
02:12:15
introduce pornography that's reflective of all body Images because again I go back to this like broccoli cookie analogy so I don't think it has to be
02:12:22
pornography so I had an interesting experience so like I was in Europe and I went to a coed SAA right so like we
02:12:28
don't have that here in the United States and the coet was like mostly like older people so you see like you know
02:12:34
the majority of people there were like 60 plus so you see like you know a hundred naked bodies of like old men and
02:12:40
women and it really puts things in perspective I think part of the problem is with things like fashion and things
02:12:45
like pornography we don't you know we just don't see what a normal naked body looks like so what what's the only we
02:12:51
see two kinds of naked bodies we see our own and then we see you know highly produced or highly selected we don't see normal naked but if I made a porn porn film that had reality in it would
02:13:05
anybody buy it well I think if you made a porn film explain yeah that would sell out what are you
02:13:12
talking about no but but but the answer the answer here is yes I made a film with a
02:13:19
couple who are 70 plus and it's very successful people there's a very popular older female I don't know her but I've seen her on social media who's a porn porn actress and she's you know she's
02:13:32
normal looking quite many actually uh but why don't the industry make videos then of people with normal bodies and normal sized penises but those videos aren't the popular ones according to the data not necessary if you go on any
02:13:46
streaming website and you click the popular button what you'll see is idyllic bodies now if people were searching out the pornography you're
02:13:51
saying those would be the most popular because the the companies would make more money from them I mean there's so
02:13:57
much content I think that that really lots of it is is is popular I I I mean there's you know one of the things that they are doing on this size on the sites is that they are categorizing people by
02:14:10
their primary features kind of so you can look for porn with bigger bodies for example and it's quite a popular category actually actually but you can also look for tiny teens you can look
02:14:26
for mils you can look for for cougars you I mean people many people they have kind of gotten away from what is kind of desire and connecting people and has
02:14:40
gotten into this way of kind of having their favorite kind of people their favorite kind would your business be more or less successful if the bodies were reflective of soci society and the
02:14:51
penises were reflective of society would your business be more or less successful in my case I don't I don't think so I
02:14:57
think we already show a great diversity of people is it reflective of society 100% not but who is is Netflix reflective of society is Vogue magazine
02:15:11
reflective of society Etc I mean I think that we do tend to look for beauty somehow but beauty doesn't mean uh stereotyped model liked
02:15:23
people yeah just to chime in so I I I I I think I challenge your question just a little bit because I think when you say
02:15:29
like I'm I get what you're saying but I think we can also see the amateur porn is on the rise yes and if we look at
02:15:35
when you say only fans made 6.6 billion I think a big appeal in only fans is that you have much more normal looking people and so when when we look at the success of a business or not I I think
02:15:46
there's also like a you know a varied market so people are looking for different things and I I think we're
02:15:52
seeing that there like even as porn becomes highly overly produced and stuff there's kind of this like almost paradoxical upswing in amateur content
02:16:03
in things like only fans where you have someone who really is closer to the girl next door when we're talking about a
02:16:08
heteronormative sort of situation and and I think we can also see that in in we see that Trend all over the place
02:16:15
right so as we get short form content we're also seeing an explosion in podcasts so I think there's a variable
02:16:21
consumer there I was looking as you were speaking at the top 10 earners on only fans and I have to say none of them
02:16:28
look like they reflect the average person yeah so the top 10 earners won't top 20 no no no you can't look at the top you have to look at what percentage of the six billion comes from the top 10
02:16:40
earners and what percentage comes from other people I right so so is only fans of the kind of thing where it's like you know the majority of the revenue is earned by the top 10 earners or is it
02:16:51
this kind of thing where the top 10 earners get maybe uh 50% but then 50% is like a pretty wide variety that's the
02:16:58
statistic you need to look at I can tell you that what we do see is that people search a lot on our sites for real sex it's a a concept that people are really
02:17:10
looking for I also looked at PornHub this is the first time I've gone on PornHub at work just to see again that
02:17:16
that the the most viewed uh porn stars on PornHub and it's the same reflection none of them look like the average person you know I'm looking at the heterosexual so I'm looking at women and
02:17:26
men and they all look like manakins all 30 of them well I think you and your team need to do more research you can't you can't accept an
02:17:38
answer his values okay closing statements closing thoughts we've talked about a lot today
02:17:45
so I want to go clockwise starting with Dr Reena Malik um what are your closing thoughts and statements to the wide
02:17:50
variety of people that would have clicked on this video for the wide variety of reasons whether they're parents whether they're the young men that struggle that you often spend your
02:17:57
time dealing with Dr K what are your clothing closing thoughts for them but also we have a lot of people that are in government that listen and we only found
02:18:03
that out because sometimes they reach out to us doctors reach out to us people in Parliament um in Congress Etc reach
02:18:08
out to us so what would your statement be to all of those people my closing thoughts are invest in education about
02:18:13
your body and about sex so whether that means learning what your Anatomy is and learning what real sex is and I think
02:18:21
that is of Paramount importance to having a successful relationship with yourself and your partners that you can
02:18:27
enjoy sex and use pornography for curiosity and not for boredom yeah I I think um remember that your body is learning all the time and
02:18:38
that we think about pornography and its negative effect which it can have a negative effect so I I'd start with
02:18:43
really understanding you know what pornography is doing for you what's the root of your relationship with it and
02:18:49
also recognize that I mean it's I I really do think after this conversation that pornography can be a force for good and many of the
02:18:56
reasons that you may be watching it you know if you transition to erotic film if you use it to in a sexual relationship
02:19:03
like it doesn't have to be a bad thing it's the way that you relate to it and you know really think about how you can
02:19:09
utilize it in a healthier way and if you are a consumer think about what you are
02:19:16
watching see if there's an about page can you learn anything about that company about these directors producers
02:19:24
performers can you watch them behind the scene footage something that makes you feel that you align with the values of the people who are creating it because
02:19:36
not all porn is monolithic there's many different kinds out there and there's many great people working in this industry to spread sex positivity
02:19:51
and a better acceptance of our desires fantasies sexual lives uh who are interested in the erotica the erotic
02:20:03
aspects of sexuality I I also think it's worth saying you know we've talked widely about the subject of pornography
02:20:09
um but one of the things that I really did come to believe and I saw when there was a call to ban only fans was that
02:20:17
only fans as a website and as a platform is allowing porn stars and you know adult actresses
02:20:24
and um actors to have a safer way to make their money to do their business and previously what you'd seen is there was um much of the escorting industry which was much more of a dangerous
02:20:35
industry have now move over towards these platforms which do provide greater safety for a behavior that is going to
02:20:42
happen irrespective of whether there's um a ban in place or not we have a closing tradition on this podcast as you
02:20:48
all know um you might not know this um where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest and because
02:20:54
the last guest was you I'm going to I'm going to skip past it and I opened up the book to a question that's sort
02:21:00
landed before that so I'm going to ask you all this question individually and I'd love to hear your answers what can
02:21:05
you do to improve humanity and the life of all the people that are listening I think continue educating people on and empowering people to to
02:21:19
know what they're bodies are doing and how they can relate to the opposite sex if they're heterosexual um in order to
02:21:26
have a satisfying sex life it's not just an extracurricular activity it's something that we do that's a part of
02:21:31
our innate biology and it's important and valuable yeah I mean I I think um showing up tomorrow is like the most important thing like not here but like
02:21:43
Ju Just you know if we think about improving Humanity like human like you know decisions are made by those who show up so I think the most important
02:21:50
thing that I can do is just showing up and continuing to do what I think is best the most important thing that all
02:21:56
of us can do is just continue showing up uh the majority of the people that I work with in my community the biggest
02:22:01
problem they have is sometimes not showing up uh I would say connect with other people on a deep level uh dare to have difficult
02:22:14
conversations there to be wrong because I also think that we live now in a society where so many people are so
02:22:21
afraid of being wrong of saying something wrong of that sometimes they don't even dare to connect on a deeper level with other people you your point
02:22:34
um Erica your answer about being okay to be wrong I think is really really important to a lot of the conversations we've had today because most of the time people don't want to have these conversations because they're sort of
02:22:45
ideologically attached to a certain position typically the position that's associated with whatever their job is or
02:22:51
you know their incentive structure and I think sometimes it's important to have these open Nuance discussions like we've had today because we can all start to
02:22:57
learn a little bit about other people's worlds and bring down some of those sort of ideological walls that keep us
02:23:02
imprisoned and all progress I think is happens when you have this sort of com this conflict of ideas but with the
02:23:10
purpose not of you know proving someone is wrong or you're more intelligent or whatever but through the purpose and the
02:23:15
lens of progress and that's why this conversation has been so enlightening to me because I get to see a bunch of
02:23:21
different worlds from a bunch of different perspectives and I can use that to form my own opinion on the subject of pornography and I will start
02:23:27
by saying that my opinion of pornography has actually changed in this conversation because there was clearly
02:23:34
parts of my understanding of pornography that were in the dark and those lights have been turned on so now I have a more contextual picture of the industry thank you so much for your time today I really
02:23:45
really appreciate it it's um as I said a second ago it's super inspiring and super enlightening for me to get all of
02:23:50
these perspectives and to use all of this new information to reform my own opinion on the subject matter in a much
02:23:55
more naive sort of biased way so I really appreciate the time that you've all given us today and uh uh on behalf
02:24:03
of all my audience as well thank you so much appreciate all of you thank [Music] Youk isn't this cool every single
02:24:13
conversation I have here on the D CEO at the very end of it you'll know I asked the guest to leave a question in the the
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Diary of a CEO and what we've done is we've turned every single question written in the Diary of a CEO into these
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conversation cards that you can play at home so you've got every guest we've ever had their question and on the back
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of it if you scan that QR code you get to watch the person who answered that question we're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that
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answered the question the brand new version two updated conversation cards are out right now at Theon conversation cards.com theyve sold out twice instantaneously so if you are interested
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in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards I really really recommend acting quickly
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[Music] [Music]