This is Never Happen Before. Today we have three experts in their field with three different opinions debating the subject of porn. This is the first time I've gone on porn habit work. In one corner we have Dr. Reena Malak, the sex scientist helping millions of couples enhance their sex lives. In the other corner we have Dr. K. The psychiatrist specializing in helping people with addictions to pornography and more. Who is up against Erica Lust who runs a large pornographic production company?
No one can sit on the fence here, is pawn a benefit to people on society. That's an okay and especially for people who 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. Let me just share with you all when I'm afraid of it. It is doing way more to the brain than we ever realized. So the first thing that we know is that... But there's data to suggest that couples that use pornography together have better sexual
satisfaction rates and remember that women sexuality has been so much about pleasing others and you see it with it orgasm gap. A devil's advocate would say that there's a significant number of women interested in looking a certain way that they're often seeing on pornography. That's harmful.
I'm a bit suspicious about this because on this street that statement is from 10 years ago. There's also unrealistic expectations about performance that creates change. And small penis anxieties are real thing and it's often from watching pornography. The 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 control.
And parents can learn how to have these conversations with their kids. And there are a couple of really nice techniques that you can use. The first is that... Let's start with introductions. Dr. Reena, who are you and what you do? I'm a urologist, which is essentially a medical and surgical doctor of the gen to a urinary tract. But I see myself more as a digital opinion leader in the space of sexual health and urologic health.
Someone who can talk to and speak about complex concepts in addition to sexual health in a way that people can understand. Can you give me sort of a view of the variety of 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 confronted with in your line of work?
Absolutely. So as a urologist, we're trained to treat anything in those areas in the gen to urinary tract. So that can be kidney cancer, prostate cancer, bladder cancer, sexual health erectile dysfunction, female sexual dysfunction, kidney stones, children's issues.
But then when I did a fellowship in what's called female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery or your organ ecology. So I initially trained in dealing with voiding dysfunction and problems with bladder leakage, overactive bladder, prolapse, those sorts of things.
And subsequently extended my practice in the sexual medicine. So I take care of patients with issues with erectile dysfunction, arousal or disorders, ejaculatory dysfunction, libido issues, lubrication issues, a whole bunch of different areas of issues that people deal with when it comes to sexual health.
Dr. Kay, same question to you. Sure. So I'm a psychiatrist by training, but I had kind of a roundabout way to get there. So I failed out of college due to video game addiction and then went to India to find myself studied to become a monk for about seven years and then wound up going to medical school, becoming a psychiatrist.
And now the majority of the work that I do is actually like focused on the internet. So what I noticed when I was training was that if you look at like academic psychiatry or psychiatry we focus on things like depression or bipolar disorder 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 most of the psychiatrists weren't focused on those we kind of had an opioid epidemic that's still going on a lot of problems with alcohol and marijuana, but there are all these digital addictions that are emerging and those are the people that I work with now. Erica. Yeah. Who are you? I'm Erica. I'm independent adult filmmaker. I'm an entrepreneur. I made my first short film, explicit short film.
20 years ago. And then I developed a career in this space of indie adult cinema. And are you a director? Yes. Adult films. Yeah. I direct films. I produce films. I also run the company. So 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 statistic is that 30% of all internet traffic roughly is related to pornography.
35% of all internet 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 pornographic content. 58% of men and 30% of women watch porn at work. And pornography websites receive more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.
Interestingly, I found another statistic which said that pornography in Poland has increased 310% between 2004, which I guess is when you got into the business and 2016. Some other sort of potentially adjacent trends, which I thought were interesting whether the percentage of men aged 18 to 24 reporting no sexual activity in the past year increased from 18.9% in 2000 to over 30% in 2016 and similar increases in sexual activity are seen in men and women.
Among high school students, the percentage who have never had sexual intercourse increased from 45% in 91% to 70% in 21% and finally the average age of first exposure to pornography is now just 11 years old and 64% of young people report that they came across pornography by accident.
So I guess my first point of discussion that I wanted to raise is is pornography a benefit to people and society and I realized 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 society. It can be. It can be definitely an especially to the others who haven't really had that right to pleasure to desire to the sexuality.
Remember that women's sexuality, especially has been so much about pleasing others, I think that it can help women to find, you know, their own desire to understand their sexuality to see others what they like what they are doing and to turn their liberty on, liberty on, which is obviously one of the things that so many women are struggling with. So I think that's a good anti clockwise, Dr. K, repeat the statement is porn a benefit to people in society.
The way that porn is being produced and consumed is starting to cause way more harm than good. I mean the statistics that you really just machine gunned out right like it's like one thing after another thing after another thing of things that are, you know, very scary. Each statement that both you all made, I can think about a specific person that I worked with where it's like, yeah, I've seen that problem, I've seen that problem, you 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 this kind of stuff. And I think in a, in a good way, it can be, but what I've seen a lot of adults, you for adults, right, is that children are getting exposed. I've seen like a very scary correlation between early exposure to pornography, like seven, eight, nine years old, right. So I think your statistic was the average is 11.
That's average, which means that there are people that are higher and people that are lower. And when something I don't know what exactly, but when we get exposed to pornography very early, it makes some kind of alteration in our brain that makes us way more likely to addictions, not only pornography, but other things.
And I think that there are, you know, sexualities, a healthy part of human existence. A lot of the current research suggests that masturbation is also like relatively speaking, not unhealthy, it's somewhat healthy. And so pornography can be a part of that, I think, especially listening to Erica and how pornography can be used to elevate horizons increase awareness. There can be benefits, but I think what we're clearly seeing is a trend of it being damaging.
So I would say that I agree with Erica completely. I think there's actually some data to suggest that women who use pornography have better sexual satisfaction rates have more frequency of sexual encounters, because they're learning about their bodies.
And we can't know exactly why that is, but we know there is a correlation in that specific way. And so when people are using pornography for sexual curiosity, for pleasure, they're generally showing good for the most part without any signs of addiction or concerns of compulsion and use of pornography. They're using it in a good way and they're having better sex because of it.
Now, in terms of using it as a couple, there's also really strong correlations that couples that use pornography together have better sexual encounters and better sexual satisfaction. So I think there's a lot of ways that pornography is used in a positive way, and not to undermine that there are people who struggle with it absolutely. But I think yes, there are some benefits. It allows people to experience fantasies, to see different types of sexual cultures, as Erica mentioned.
And I think that that is an important side of pornography in terms of using that to learn what you like and learn what you want to try in your relationship if that's applicable. Much of the literature that I've read about and the studies I've read about show that if you consume pornography, you're somewhat desensitized to the real thing, i.e. sex in your relationships.
And when we look at those stats on sexlessness, people are having less sex than previous years, people are losing their virginity later and later. And I wonder if that is we've sort of been desensitized to the real thing because of pornography, really. Absolutely, so I think that there is certainly people who they use pornography as a way to achieve pleasure and that is the sole way that they achieve pleasure.
So they are constantly using pornography and sometimes correlated with a certain style of masturbation and those things cannot be replicated with penetrative intercourse of any kind or you know a manual intercourse with another person. And so in those cases, then it becomes difficult because your brain habituously to that style of stimulation and excitement and visual sensations that they're getting from watching pornography.
And so that does happen to some individuals. I would say it's not the large majority, but certainly we're seeing more of it. What is the impact though on the brain, especially a young brain that is exposed to pornography? Yeah, I mean, there's no there's no studies on kids looking at pornography. So I couldn't tell you exactly, but you may be able to talk a look more about that.
Yeah, I mean, so like a first of all, I think this is a fascinating discussion. And if I can kind of track back and freestyle for a bit. So I thought it was so interesting because Stephen asked this question, right? And he's like, you know, is pornography a problem? And then I thought it was so interesting that the two women at the table had the more positive answers. And the dude is like, it's bad.
Right. So I think the first thing to understand is that and it's so for me, it's eye opening to hear both the all talk. Because I think so much of it is like your experience of it, right? We're talking about pornography as if it's an isolated thing. But the biggest takeaway that I already have is that there is a relationship between the human and the pornography.
Erica was talking about, you know, how the pornography can be used to help the human understand sexuality become more familiar with pleasure that we have this or. And we have this orgasm gap. And then, and then you know, she's in merino saying, you 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 problems of, you know, sexuality relating to pornography or I thought you said not that common, which is, which is something that I'm not saying it's common or uncommon. I think that's just such an interesting selection difference because I work with people who have pornography and like death grip syndrome because I've never heard it discussed is like very common. What's death grip syndrome?
Exactly. It's a Twitch chat degenerate way of describing what doctor Maulick did a great medical job of describing, which is that so what happens is our body can acclimatize to a certain kind of stimulation. So when oftentimes what happens when and I haven't worked with too many women and sexual stuff way more men. So that there's a selection buys there too. But oftentimes what happens is that boys or men will start to masturbate without any kind of lubrication.
And so there's a bit they almost train their bodies physiologically to climax with a certain degree like a certain, you know, pounds per square inch of force. And a certain sensation which they get used to not only at the physiologic level, but also at the neurological level which doctor Maulick alluded to that there's a certain kind of visual stimulation that they almost get used to the brain of climatizes to in order to achieve sexual climax.
So what happens is when these people have a sexual relationship for the first time, the sensations and the from a visual perspective, you know, auditory perspective because the sounds that we hear in these big, you know, fast food, pornography, productions or nowhere near the sounds in real life.
And the inputs of an actual sexual act make it very difficult to have a satisfied sexual life. And so I think there's a lot of subtlety to you know when doctor Maulick said when couples watch porn together, there are also studies that show that as you increase your pornography consumption that correlates with relationship dissatisfaction.
And that could be a chicken or the egg problem. Am I watching more porn because I'm unhappy with the sexual relationship or does watching pornography decrease my satisfaction in the relationship. And so I think it's just like so much here to explore. Yeah. And I think your point about the couples usually, yeah, if there's a discrepancy in one partner is watching more porn than the other, then there's just just decrease satisfaction certainly.
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 this problem. Right. So you're seeing this exclusively. But I think in the general population. And maybe they're not coming to the urologist as often, right.
But certainly I'm not seeing as much of it. And it's not reported in 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. 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 because it's so nuanced, there's a big moral component.
People have a belief about what pornography is good or bad. And so when they watch pornography, if they have a moral incongruence, I mean, they think it's bad to watch pornography. They are more likely to report having a problem with pornography. So there's a lot of nuance here.
In terms of how pornography can be beneficial or harmful to a specific individual and how it affects that specific individual's brains, whether it's going to send same pathways, you know, as any sort of strong visual stimuli, the way your body sensitizes to those pathways is very individual. And what about pornography on the brain then in terms of its impact on dopamine and how that then will cascade into other areas of our lives.
Yeah, so I mean, I'll launch this one. So I think that the biggest takeaway that I 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 hear, and this is such a weird, like anecdotal statistic, is if you're, if you have an older brother and you're a younger brother, I see so many pornography addicts who have older brothers.
And the most common story that I hear is, you know, older brother is post puberty and is watching pornography, which is like a little bit more understandable and acceptable. And then your younger brother wants to do whatever you're doing and they get exposed to it at an early age. So the first thing that we know is that early exposure correlates with an increase in potential for addiction.
That's probably somewhat neurological and potentially somewhat sociological or family oriented because if you think about what kind of seven year old will get exposure to pornography, maybe parents aren't in the house as much. So there could be other risk factors, but we absolutely know that when you activate in an artificial way the dopamine orgic circuitry of the brain, it sensitizes the dopamine orgic circuitry and makes it more vulnerable to dopamine later on.
This is something called the kinling effect. We see this also, for example, in like marijuana as a gateway drug, the reason marijuana is a gateway drug is is not because it makes you immoral. It's because once we start activating certain circuits in the brain during brain development, it changes the 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 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 every part of the brain, every neurotransmitter is involved in the sexual act because the purpose, the evolutionary purpose of a human being is to procreate. So all of our circuitry is designed for this thing. So we see that there's absolutely an emotional regulation component because when we get aroused, like our brain doesn't care about, you know, anything else in our life when it comes to the act of procreation.
So we see a lot of emotional regulation, which then becomes an emotional crutch. So I see a lot of this now where people at work will watch pornography and it's not about masturbation or lust. It's about emotional regulation. I've seen a huge spike in second screen pornography. So we'll be working over here. And I'll just have porn like running over here. Like this is a really common story. And it's an emotional regulation fact.
Now the third thing that you, the question you asked about is dopamine. So here's a really fascinating thing. So absolutely messes with your dopamine. When it messes with your dopamine, it messes with your motivation because dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter involved in motivation. So as you watch more pornography, you just stop being as motivated about the other things in your life.
And the really crippling thing, the really scary thing from a relationship standpoint is that if we look at falling in love, falling in love is primarily the function of dopamine. So when we look at a relationship, there's initial attraction, which it comes from like the thalamus in our sensory inputs. What do I see? What do I hear? Oh, she smells great. Her laugh is beautiful. 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 talking. We're not doing anything. We're just holding hands and oh, I'm so in love.
So like literally what creates that 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 clinically matches with this because it's harder for people to fall in love.
When I talk to younger people now, we're in their 20s and 30s and struggling to date. You go on a couple of dates, but what's the problem? There's no chemistry. There's no spark. That comes from dopamine. So I think we're seeing all kinds of really scary downstream 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 porn addiction or compulsory behavior with pornography.
It is very related to men and that we in our society tends to see men's experiences as universal experiences. And I think that we lack a perspective of really where women get into this construction of addiction of use of pornography. And they say, Reenitz, do you see it as an addiction? So it's not in term an addiction in terms of a medical vernacular. They call it problematic porn use because it hasn't been a clear definition in terms of addiction.
They say that I think that there are certainly people who have this experience, but there are certainly many, many people who use pornography and don't develop this tolerance. And maybe it's more common in younger people because they're getting access to it sooner and more often. And that has yet to play out at least I tend to see older patients. And so that has yet to play out in older generations. But I would say that I think there's many people who use it fine and don't have an issue.
I think that while these issues do exist, there's also a whole bunch of other things are ongoing in society right now that may make it more difficult for people to connect and for people to feel intimacy with people 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 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 like, okay, if you feel like you have a problem with it and you can control pornography, that allows you to feel like you have control in one area of your life that then that control can potentially improve other areas of your 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 dopamine is one way to describe it. But there's different sensitivities and how our brain responds to the same stimuli, right?
The way I watch pornography, the way you watch pornography, the way any one of us watches pornography, our brains will respond in a different way because our receptors are either more sensitive or less sensitive. And there's no way to really test that on an individual level.
One of the things I found most interesting when I had the first conversation on this podcast about pornography is my team went out and looked at a couple of tools which pull search data. So what are people searching on the subject? And the number one most search term was how do I quit pornography?
And that's quite an interesting thing because there's a certain desperation to that question, you're going to Google to ask Google how you quit a behavior that makes me think of it in the context of an addiction. And in fact, the second most popular search term was also about how you quit this thing. And it speaks to a certain powerlessness that a certain percentage of people feel they have with pornography.
And throwing that out to everybody here. But I think this connects also to the stigma that you'd think my round sex and around porn and this idea that people have somehow that it is bad. I mean, people want to watch it. At the same time, they have the moral idea that it's bad and that they shouldn't do it. 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 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, they are saying they are not having as much sex anymore. You were talking about it before kids are not playing as much anymore outside as they used to. So I think we have a correlation 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 when we're talking about porn, most people see it as a monolithic kind of thing when if you go out on the street and you ask people what is porn, they think about the two sides. That's what that's what they have in mind. But actually there's many different kinds of porn existing. Do you think this such thing is good porn and bad porn?
It's a very difficult kind of distinction to say bad porn and good porn because if you do that, then it's your classify some type as acceptable and other types as known and you kind of you know, grow the stigma around it.
I think that we need to 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 support by intimacy coordinator talent managers where the performers have been able to be involved in the process to give feedback on what is going to be made, how it's working.
They know all the conditions beforehand, etc. They can give feedback afterwards. I think there are ways of producing pornography that are safer than what we have seen in the past. We were talking this second ago about the impact pornography has on the brain. And I know some of your work involves 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 the last couple of decades and people reporting to have erectile dysfunction. Do you think porn has played a role in increasing erectile dysfunction as it relates to when I'm with my partner in the bedroom, and I'm trying to have sex?
So I think this goes back to the people who are watching pornography and are learning what sex is through pornography. 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 respond the way they do on pornography.
And immediately they feel insecure, right? Immediately. And that leads to this psychogenic erectile 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 supposed to or maybe you're insecure about your body image or a whole host of things that come from watching maybe some of the big box pornography where we're not really showing real sex.
We're showing a produced product that is meant to entertain and 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 using pornography quite often.
And then again, are unable to get that stimulation through a partner, right? They can't get the same. They're using death grip where they're using, you know, the same is very erotic stimulus, very intense visual erotic stimuli that they can't produce with a person. And so then they're like, well, why am I not getting a rouse and why am I not getting an erection? And it's because they've now relied on this solely. So I do see that certainly as an issue in some people who are using pornography.
I don't think it's like pornography use leads to ED. I think it's these other factors on the way to having psychological concerns about your own performance that lead to issues with erections. And before we move on, Dr. K's point about motivation as well. Do you believe that there's a correlation between the amount that we watch pornography and masturbate and someone's motivation based on what you know about dopamine receptors?
You know, hard to say, I think again, it's very individual. Certainly some people will take the ease, 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 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 available to you.
And it's an easy way to emotionally regulate, right? If you're having stress in life, you're unhappy with your relationship or you're unhappy with other things, people are often using pornography as a way to avoid those negative emotions and really just participate in something else. Like take their mind off of that. And so that is sort of where it becomes this challenge for some people.
I just want to chime in. So this is fantastic because I agree with everything that y'all are saying. And I also kind of come to a slightly different conclusion. So the number one search term that we have is how do I quit porn? So when I hear that. And I think Dr. Malik has also done a great job of pointing out, you know, there's a difference between anecdotal clinical experience and what we have randomized clinical trials on.
You know, we're not exposing seven year olds to pornography and then seeing how their brain develops by doing MRI scans over the course of 10 years. So some of this research is absolutely not there. And we also have the number one search term is how do I quit porn? What that tells me is that there is literally the largest population of what people are looking at is to stop using pornography.
And I think the reason for that is, is there good porn or is there bad porn? Is it individuals that nuance completely agree with all those points? It's not a problem for everyone. But I think what I'm seeing very clearly is that it's getting worse, right? So it's not an issue of good or bad. What is the trend that we're seeing?
The trend that we're seeing is that Erica is saying, hey, pornography can be more than the tube sites. So that then begs the question, why does everyone think that pornography is the tube sites? Because they hijacked the system. Exactly. So I think that word is beautiful hijack. So I think what we're seeing what I'm seeing is that pornography is getting worse for sure. It's becoming more of a problem.
If we look at these tube sites, it's kind of like there's nutrition and then there's calories. And a lot of what I'm hearing you all talk about, Dr. Malik is saying if you watch it as part of a relationship, that's nutrition. It can be something healthy. We can learn about ourselves. We can destigmatize various things fair enough. But I think we're seeing the same trends that we see with fast food.
Where now pornography is becoming mass produced. And there are actually studies that show there's a really fascinating bizarre piece of research, right, which is where you have to go with this where I've gone to find the stuff because we don't have studies.
But there was a particular group of biologists who were noticing that a population of beetles was dying out. And they were trying to figure out like why is this population of beetles dying out? And what they discovered is there's one thing that's responsible for these beetles not mating with each other.
Which is green beer bottles that were being littered. And the green beer bottle, and then what they noticed is that the beetles were trying to go up to the green beer bottle and mate with it. And they were like, what is going on? You see this this litter that has green beer bottle and a bunch of male beetles are clustered around it. And like, they're like, what is this? And it turns out that there's this concept of something called a super normal stimulus.
So when a beetles eyes look at the environment, there are certain signals that indicate this is a fertile female. And a green glass beer bottle activates those parts of the brain. And what we're seeing with these tube sites is things are jiggly or things are louder things are slippery or right. We have these 4k high death.
So we're sort of turning we're taking what used to be nutritious and we are turning it into fast food. And 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 to the bottom. How can I create the pornography that is going to leach the most traffic away from my competitors. And they're figuring out very rapidly that there are all kinds of weird ways to activate the brain. What our brain 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 pornography for money. We're making it more. But the thing is that these companies behind these tube sites, they are not interested in humans sexually. They're not interested in sex. They're not interested in porn. They're not interested in the conditions of the people who are working in front of the camera.
I mean, they're selling 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 to watch. They look at the algorithms to see what works. Right. But this is reminds me the food industry. It's a big, big, big, big farm, big fashion, etc. Big porn is the same. How does an industry succeed if it doesn't engage in that practice though?
Because think about the food industry. 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 we think about these tube sites. Some of the stats are crazy. I mean, only fans released their earnings for last year, up 20%. I mean, 6.6 billion. And porn hub, one of the big tube sites is the eighth most traffic website in the world at the moment doing 5.5 billion monthly visits. These are the brands that people recognize.
And it's extreme. Like if we think about nutrition, high in sugar, it's extreme. So I get the most extreme sort of dopamine stimulation. It's so easy to access. I can one, I don't 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 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. I'm going to have to go get a job.
I'm going to have to get some money. I'm going to have to learn how to speak to a woman or 15 seconds. And I can see the most extreme. Yeah, 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 and congruence that leads to problematic porn news, porn addiction, whatever you want to call it, right?
That we're creating more of it by disparaging pornography, right? Like that everywhere people are saying pornography is bad, pornography is bad. You can't go on any social media platform without somebody citing a study that says pornography is leaching people's life force and their, you know, their life is falling apart because of pornography. And but right. And so, but so then we're also adding to that moral and congruence by saying that all pornography is bad.
And so, people like if you asked, like, probably the generation older to me, like, would you would you be interested in watching porn where you're seeing 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 that doesn't interest me in the slightest. But like, why is this becoming so, you know, people are watching me.
I mean, to me, so much of this is totally amdiotic. 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 show it is. I don't want to see it. Oh, I rather throw up than, you know, feel excitement and wanting to have sex. So it has an opposite effect on not so there.
They're audiences actually, but again, what is it about? It's about earning money and concentrating power. It's about selling advertisement. That's what they're doing. It's grow your dick pills. It's days to sexy Latina in your neighborhood. It's and as a society, we have been very slow to see what has happened because these sites, they were born, you 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 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 neurotransmitters, they're all to help us procreate. And now what's happened is people have fundamentally hijacked all of these circuits.
And we're seeing problems. And I'm with you about the moral incongruence because we see this in other addictions as well, where we tried to like demonize like alcohol usage, right? And we know that once we separate out the moral incongruence because once I feel guilty and ashamed, this is something I see a lot.
I watch pornography. Now I feel ashamed. How am I going to cope with those emotions watching more pornography? And so you create this cycle of like more like this moral focus cycle of shame. And that actually fuels the dependence. So that's absolutely an issue. At the same time, like these companies, and they don't care about eroticness or falling in love or whatever, right? They're interested in making a buck and they're exploiting our brain.
And while we should be a little bit careful about the moralistic nature of it, I mean, I've seen it gets so much, it's getting worse. Like every time every year, and this could be selection bias, right? Because I'm an eviction psychiatrist. But I think it's like even with something like only fans because now what we're adding is a social component.
The one refuge we used to have when it comes to pornography, whether it's ethically produced or not, 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 with someone. Someone can send me a DM, hey, thank you for watching my video and jerking off. That makes me so happy.
But you know, it's an AI bot, right? Sometimes it's 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 desert. I am so alone. I feel so bad about myself. And there's a chance, right? There's a chance it's not an AI bot.
The real problem is that we are not speaking about sex. We are not speaking about intimacy. People don't have the sex education. And they are lost. And they are doing the beings they have this drive and it's need. And we had it in all cultures, right? Do you think people had the sex education? They would still be on only fans talking to what's probably because there are big agencies now.
I've seen on social media, there are big agencies of men who pretend to be these porn stars on sites like only fans. And I see them breaking about their income. So speak thing on Twitter at the moment. I've made $10,000 this month pretending to be 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 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 activating the social loneliness aspect and combining it with pornography. So now 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 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 whole scale social skills atrophy where dudes don't know how to talk to girls anymore.
Yeah. And also media porn is media. It's important to understand that it's telling us messages about the under roles, how we interact about sexuality, how our body functions, etc. And we have all this misinformation going on on this online 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 happened?
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 it should work. And then they don't connect in real life. What kind of porn do you make?
What kind of porn do I make? I make lovely porn. I make beautiful porn. I make cinematic porn. I make porn with, you know, with intentions of showing different ideas of the siren fantasy where people I try to work with 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 intimacy coordinator talent managers, producers in the background that take care of them, that's check who they are, what they like, what kind of sexuality do they have.
But if I was a consumer of your pornography, what would I notice? Probably the great cinematography would be the first thing you would notice kind of narratives that are erotic driven somehow where people explore their desire and their sexuality. You would notice.
I mean, many people tell me they go like Eric, but I watch your films. Is it really porn? Because they identify porn as something that is kind of tacky, ugly, kind of objectifying, etc. So suddenly when they see people in my films having sex coming together and everything is kind of you understand why they are desiring each other and you kind of I invite them to join this kind of erotic journey of the characters.
Then they go, but this is more like in this cinema, in the erotic cinema. Is it fair to assume that because from what I've heard that the pornography you produce has a slower story arc, which is more reflective of what. Sometimes. So I'm trying to understand because the things that you it sounds like you might have removed from the pornography you make versus the program you had find on one of the big tube streaming sites. The most 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 those streaming sites if they're incentive is purely money. The data is going to determine what people see. So that's so it feels like they've really optimized for you as a consumption where you've optimized for something around ethics.
Because I care about it for me. The money is not the most important aspect why I you know create this company why I'm making this. I really want to kind of send a different kind of message out to the world. So you'll content end up on those sites. Sometimes. Sometimes years ago it was taken on those sites, for example, changing the wording of it because it remembered that many of these sites also what they do is that they fetishize people.
They use very racist language of anistic language, etc. And my movies may have much softer kind of language and the way they are. So they obviously pirated them. They put them up and they changed kind of the wording for for the bits. It was a very hard process to take them down, etc.
What do you think is better for someone's relationship specifically a sort of man and women. Do you think no porn is better for their relationship? Do you think your porn is better for their relationship or do you think any of see this individual? I think it's a very individual decision. What works best. Sorry. I can answer. I never see one of your films. I can tell you it's her point.
I'm going to go ahead and go out on a limb and saying that if you're someone who's struggling with pornography watching an erotic film with a glass of wine with your significant other is a great way to transition from bite sized fast food calorie dense jiggly slippery loud porn to
you. How do we rewire the brain? How do we move one step at a time from this to this? And because like the word erotic seems so powerful to me. It's about anticipation. Even when we talk about differences between male and female sexuality, the lag time of parasympathetic activation and for play is so much more important biologically incorrect me if I'm wrong here.
For women than it is for men. I mean, we're like kind of ready to go and we want to make it short. And so I think like it's almost like a part of that sexual education is in understanding. Okay, how can we teach men to be erotic again instead of these like very like chicken nugget style highly processed like this is what I think it is maybe watch some of Eric is filled.
When we talk about watching pornography with your partner, I wonder if that is the role of the exception to the world, you know, because I. Yeah, I mean, so you're saying what do we do? I think we have an erotic film watch party. Right, we have anime watch parties. We have different kinds of watch parties like this thought had never occurred to me before. I'm sure it is a terrible idea.
But on that point though, if you reduce the stigma by having these watch parties, does that then because you cited earlier that it's a tool for emotional regulation. So when people are stressed or depressed or anxious, they seek it out. If we remove the stigma, does that increase the addiction.
So it's a great 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 substance becomes what or behavior becomes one to one correlated with something else. So right now the problem with pornography isn't that it it yeah it's it's so the problem is if I watch pornography that's the only method I use to regulate my emotions that will increase the addiction.
Now the flip side of it is also true. If the only reason I watch pornography is to regulate my emotions that will strengthen that addictive capability. So I'll give you all just a simple example from like alcohol. Right. So if I use alcohol after a hard days 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 used to celebrate a wedding right. So the substance can be used in different ways and the more that we use it in different ways and healthier ways.
The more it actually chips away at the addiction in some cases this is also highly individualized. So depending on your genetic predispositions dispositions and 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 qualified for an alcohol addiction in college.
And then most of those people are able to develop healthy relationships with it. And one of the biggest changes we're seeing in addiction is that there do seem to be healthy relationships that we can develop. I think it's about changing our relationship to the thing now.
So seeing someone naked, engaging in a sexual act is not solely about getting off. It's not solely about emotional regulation. It's not solely about dopamine. It can now become a film experience that we can enjoy. So we're diversifying our relationship to the object. I don't know if that makes sense.
Awareness, mindfulness, understanding of how you use that. And then I think this is also great. Like just the simple idea that like if dudes are watching this recognizing that watching an erotic film with your significant other assuming a heteronormative heterosexual relationship, you know maybe a great way for you to enhance your sexual experience.
You don't need dick enhancing pills or you know whatever else right like because that's I'm sure Dr. Malik knows better than I do but in the majority of the no I met more as a year old. I didn't think that but it worked.
So like you know my understanding from med school right so back when I was doing urology and I work with some things like vaginism and stuff like that is you know the majority of the female nerve endings 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 don't actually need a gigantic penis. I was trying to think about whether I should use some other word but you know 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 sexual pleasure.
Engaging in a relationship that pornography can be a force for good and doesn't necessarily have to be evil but and maybe like erotic film moves us in that direction and like I just got to say man like my degenerate male brain is kind of telling me like you know watching an erotic film for an hour and a half could be the best and easiest for play that I could ever do.
It would be a lot easier yeah quick but I would say I think I've been thinking about what we've been talking about this is we don't talk about erotic audio literature or erotic 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 don't know because it's not naked bodies I guess here the main problem again is back to our bodies we are somehow ashamed of our bodies of our nakedness of our sexuality. I mean women can show nipples online we know that you can I mean I'm heavily censured I can't show anything on my account my social media accounts are cut off all the time it's impossible to grow.
Do you think pornography should be banned on social media that's okay should pornography be banned on social media yes pornography should be banned I can answer it out I'm I'm making it I definitely think it should be banned but I don't think that that that the explicit images should be banned but the right to discuss about it to talk about it to give. The sexual advice or to get out discuss different topics around sexuality we should be allowed to do that we should be allowed.
What were allowed to do that no I get I get banned too really because this doesn't get banned maybe you are allowed to do it. YouTube is different Twitter is fine Instagram is fine YouTube is fine Instagram Instagram I have head talks that are censured so only people who are over 18 and have an account online have access to it. It's me talking. Yeah no it's deaf there is definitely limitations.
The thing that we've noticed is your video just doesn't appear in search in the same way but they still recommend the video so when we had for example Andrew Hughman on a couple of weeks ago and he talked about pornography because Paul was in the title in the thumbnail the video got huge recommendations by the algorithm but if you typed in Andrew
Hughman it would not come up until we took the word pull out and you type in Andrew and it comes up so that's anything we've noticed but we've been quite surprised actually by. Yeah I think it's so cool that like you know you asked me that question and she jumped in with an answer.
I think it's good I think it's like because you asked me I mean I think that's the value of this right because I don't feel nearly as passionate you asked her the question you know is it which of these is the best and I jumped in with an answer I was like this is clear to be.
And I think just a couple of things that I just want to touch on the first is that you know what Dr. Balak was saying about you know audio literature like erotic fiction or romance novels right so I think it's harder to commoditize that which goes back to Eric's point of you know like some things are more. Like I think that some things are more likely to be turned into fast food so I think that erotic literature it's like harder to do that.
I also do think that going back to this earlier point of like you know men are epidemiologically more vulnerable to addiction I think it's more complicated than that and it just.
Or problems manifest in men as addiction and look different in women when it emerges so I think it's kind of like you know so we're sort of seeing a difference in addictive quality it's easier to commoditize more sensory organs so I think that's an important point and I think in terms of you know should it be banned or not like I don't know so I work kind of like more at the individual level and arguably some at scale but like one of the key things is you know I have some ideas about what.
Should be done but I'm not too sure about that I'm curious you know I don't know like I know but I'm saying it basically because it's open for kids again this is why I'm saying if we're having social media and it's for people 18 about them we're talking about another thing but go to Twitter or it's not called Twitter anymore.
It's go there and it's full of porn it is it is full of porn you can you accidentally stumble across porn I was saying this to my partner a couple of weeks ago I said look at how Twitter's changed and I said watch this scroll down my timeline and I know there's a lot of things I would say if I dwell on something more often then it's going to show me more but I scroll down I scroll down I was like look porn and I was like oh look she's taking a close of scroll scroll scroll
I didn't realize I was new to the I didn't happen I've actually not seen it but I've had many people who tell me that it comes up on their feet all the time recent changed the algorithm which is prioritized again viewership time so if you want people to dwell longer show them video extreme video people being
hit by car fights pornography you increase your dwell time you increase your advertising yeah and this is just how incentives play out so much of the discussion we've had today much of my like why I refer to it sometimes is it 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 want broccoli they're going to take the cookies if the cookies are available and if you equate this to food we did put labels on food to say look this is got this much calories in it we put sugar tax on sugar in the UK we on 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 know cancers and things like this should
we be doing something similar with pornography because part of me goes just 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 but but 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 I wish all
pornography would be ethically produced I know that the industry is working towards more 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
pornography at the point of consumption like we do with cigarettes it's a bit difficult maybe I think we should we should talk about what could happen but gambling what effects like you like gambling like but but this also happened you you've been talking about gaming a lot you know there's a way of
gaming and healthy gaming right there's a way of video games that is too much and not too much I would you think yeah so I mean I think it's it's a great question so I've got like a couple of different things so I'm going to about to contradict myself so the first is that we know that
you know putting warning labels on things does move things in the right direction but I love to just share a story so when I was a medical student didn't really understand much about medicine or psychiatry or humans you know I had a patient who came in and was smoking
and so I came in and I was like you know he came in and I was like a first year medical students I was like I'm a be a doctor one day and so that this person comes in I'm like sir 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 like yeah you know I would like that sounds bad I don't want to get sort of like great we're going to give you like a prescription to help you quit and you can
get a nicotine patch and like I was like I'm a be a doctor one day so month later guy comes in and like I ask him how's the quitting smoking going he's like well I'm still smoking and then I was like I don't think you understand man it increases risk of 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 yeah oh that's bad I don't want to be of that stuff and I was like cool so like you're going to quit right and he's like yeah and so I then he comes in and I comes in the next
month he still hasn't quit and I started to try to figure out 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 cookies 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 was still blunt and I figured this out and talked to my my preceptor and stuff and then I asked this person so what's important to you and he's like oh I you know I love my
daughters and then I asked them a very bad question I was like when you and he was 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 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 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 you'll be in a wheelchair right so I was a
first year medical student kind of brutal but that actually sunk in you 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 that absolutely but it's it's it's 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 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 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 but I I'm still hopeful I think that we just do see the number one search is how do I quit porn there's a lot of energy and desire to do it they just don't have a path and I think one of these very simple things is like
emphasizing an erotic film and telling people hey if you're lonely hey if you're having trouble finding a relationship you know hey if you're if you have a problem with premature ejaculation or you're having 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-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 erotic film
and we could say that scientifically that would be incredibly successful because I think people are hungry for this right they're hungry for what we were biologically designed to do which is connect and have fulfilling sexual relationships what should take a month yeah I think that that's that would be helpful absolutely because it being telling someone to go cold turkey from having something that they do derive pleasure from right
even if they're even if they have addictive potential addictive personalities towards that behavior then giving them something else that they can still derive pleasure from and have the benefits of orgasm and have the benefits of feeling that desire and enjoyment is is a really great way when you tell someone you take something away that they've used as a crutch potentially
and they have nothing to replace it with and you know we've talked about this for giving people a purpose a lot of times people don't have purpose and so they're like they have nothing else to 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 them a purpose something else to do whether it's an erotic film or actually purpose in their life maybe it's meeting people outside in the real world
which would be even better that would help our our issues with not getting 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 either find a substitute or find purpose interestingly there's clearly a two-way relationship with purpose porn motivation etc so it we giving them a purpose one might say well then we stop porn because they don't have more motivation to put their shoes on
yeah so I think if you look at there's one study that showed the two strongest variables with pornography addiction or a sense of meaninglessness in life and I forget about the other variables maybe early age of exposure but so I think it's kind of spot on right so when I don't have a life that's worth living what happens my body and my brain become squeeze bottles of 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 mass produced super normal stimulus pornography because that squeezes more dopamine out of my neurotransmitters and the more that my life becomes that now there's a moral component now I feel ashamed now if I remember looking at some statistics on online dating profiles and like saying that you're a dude who watches porn is like an instant no
but if I'm watching pornography it's going to sat me of the motivation to pursue my purpose absolutely so if I'm extracting all my dopamine through watching pornography I'm going to have none left for behavioral reinforcement from other activities
so 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 anything all day so I might as well watch some porn not a reticule so we cancel pool then no please let us have it
the majority of my income and my brand would collapse if you started band so sure I mean I think there I think we have to I mean I think there's a lot of things we've talked about but I think sexual education I think understanding that you know explaining to younger kids and what they're watching right I think adults have a little bit more their brains are fully developed they 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 things that give them purpose maybe they have children maybe they have a family right but but the I think it's really in that young generation they're finding themselves maybe they're going out and they're not finding a partner because we know that there's less people coupling there's higher you know mismatch of expectations we've talked about that too
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 and that's a generation that probably shouldn't be watching porn anyways right and and I think that would make huge a huge difference and help parents because parents are really really worried
how do you do it I mean you you there's many way of kind of of of starting it but they what they need to know really is that you are there for 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 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 the education what age do you need to start when they're really really young you need to start when they're learning language young kids today many of them they don't know the difference between a vagina and a vulva even Billy Eilish in an interview came out saying that she wanted to put her face in in people's vaginas
you know and you go what what happened you're talking about vulva girl you know yeah no it has to start from I completely agree with everything you're saying I have kids I've talked to them about sex I think you have to start early with at least knowing the anatomy right knowing what their body parts are and what the body parts are of the opposite gender
so they know 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 come home and think what's this what's that and not being like no I'm not going to talk about that it's just like okay yeah let's have a conversation about it and realize it's not going to be one conversation it's going to be like throughout their development as they become older you're going to maybe introduce more topics
or they may have a question for you and just never shaming them and that can come even early right kids are master babies are masturbating like as young that's a soothing behavior right and so sometimes you'll see your child doing it you don't want to shame them right because that's already setting up that stage of shame and it's sort of a lot being like okay that's that's fine that you're doing that but maybe do that in private and that's something that you do in private
but you know I think it's really important to have these conversations and it's uncomfortable it's going to be uncomfortable and know that it's going to be uncomfortable but like we have a duty because they're not going to learn it at school in the right way or enough in school yeah so I completely agree with what they said so it's really interesting because the number one question so when we started talking working with gamers
what happened very quickly is parents started reaching out and they're like hey I have a son who's got this problem usually a son sometimes a daughter 70-30 and how do I talk to them so we actually started doing a study in 2020 or 2021 where we started developing different kinds of techniques and measuring what worked best so now we have four years of data a lot of those findings went into the book about how to raise a healthy gamer which is actually all about conversational techniques
for parents about how to talk to their kids so for four years here the biggest takeaways so that book is like it's conversational techniques about video game addiction but we find this works really well for pornography too so the first is like Dr. Mollick said multiple conversations so the first mistake that parents make is that they think that they have to get it all in in one conversation
that we don't learn about it's not it's lots of second thing start earlier than you think you need to so one of the biggest principles that we learn in in you know medicine is that you don't have end of life conversations when someone is dying you have to have the conversation before it's an issue so I think we were talking about you said what 64% of people get exposed to pornography at the age of 11 right so
accidentally actually still but so that what that tell parents think oh I like I can push this off and wait until they're 14 or 15 and and of course my beta is not going to watch it oh he's going he's so good not my beta we let them do that right yeah right no no no no I know you said you talked to your kids about sex if you talked to him about porn yeah okay no there one my other one nice good job you're a beta is going to be so good 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 the first is asking open ended questions and not about do you watch porn it can start with hey are you familiar with what pornography is do you know what it is what do you understand about pornography another really good evidence based technique which has been shown to be effective for talking about drugs is do you have friends who watch porn do you have friends do you know
people are kids in your school watching this yes or no what do you think about that so oftentimes 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 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 the world really is 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 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 those
tubes dreaming sites do you believe that it will cause or lead to a rise in violence between men and women because when I look at some of the statistics around this nearly one in three porn videos contains physical violence almost 90% of the most famous porn scenes are violent scenes 18 to 21 year olds out of 18 to 21 year olds 17 9% had seen pornography involving sexual
violence when they were children and almost 50% of young people say girls expect sex to involve physical aggression such as airway restriction and according to a study in 2004 of 18 to 35 year olds they found that 57% of young people aged from 18 to 35 had been strangled themselves during sex and 51% had been strangled at least once during sex and my last
down this is the BBC revealed that 38% of women under the age of 40 have experienced unwanted slapping choking and gagging during consensual sex and 42% of these women said they felt pressured or coerced into doing it so we can allow people to watch pornography but it's they're not a risk that at a very 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
and that's going to start with you. Yeah, this isn't really important discussion and I think you know I actually spoke to Debbie Herbinek who leads a lot of the studies on strangulation and so basically what they found is that very commonly young people college age students are having strangulation or during intercourse or during four plants become so common that it's almost like kissing right like this is something that is so common and often consent is not being discussed or
being able to do this. Yeah, it's all right, but it's not like a real discussion and as you guys all know and especially as fixation can lead to loss of oxygen to the brain and and sort of a whole host of things and so I think ultimately that is a concern for sure in terms of
you know we have ratings and movies for a reason right like we don't show our kids like the boys for example a Netflix right because it's violent and so similarly we would like to have ratings on pornography and they shouldn't have access to it but sometimes they see it now. Yeah, that is a concern. I don't know exactly how to rectify that maybe you have some thoughts. Is that because we wanted though.
Allerun you said but porn is there because we want it. So I'm thinking isn't strangulation in porn because that's the type of porn that people want. So there is you know some people who derive pleasure from is you know from a temporary inclusion of of breath right and so there is some people who enjoy that erotically but that doesn't mean that that's universal and and again it's fantasy so just because you watch something on pornography doesn't mean that you should be doing it.
It's a fantasy it's not real life and that's in a hopefully a controlled safe situation where they're producing that pornography. It's very important when we're starting to talk about sexual violence towards women that we understand that that 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 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 the values we have in our society I think I see porn a bit as a mirror of many of the of of the values in our 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 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 learn from what they see and then they go into their own lives and they try to reproduce what they have learned online.
So in that case then if I watch violent pornography when I meet my partner in 15 16 18 21 I'm going to have this expectation that pornography looks I'm going to think sex has to be performed in this way where I choke them I hit them I spit or whatever that whatever because that's the only sexual education I've had my got it from Twitter for example so that in that case it will lead to sexual violence unwanted sexual violence.
Not necessarily it will lead to that it might lead to a curiosity of trying it out because 42% of women said that they have been felt they were pressured or coerced into slapping choking or being gagged. Yeah and I think many women also feel coerced just to have regular sex many times in their own marriages.
So what do you think so many thoughts and agree that this is a very important discussion so like I was kind of curious about this because I've noticed there's this rise and like as fixations the first question that I asked is like why are people doing this so what I found is that there's once again not randomized control trials that we're going to take 100 people split them into two groups and you're going to you know.
And so the first thing is the physiology is actually like fascinating so the I know this is going to 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 meditation right so these are states of like bliss so something changes in our brain when we're in a meditative state and what the hell does that have to do with that fixation so one of the most common trends of esoteric and deeply spiritual meditation practices are a very low respiratory rate right so one practice that I did had a respiratory rate of one breath every day.
So that's like you know the regular 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 don't damage it that's the big problem with this as fixation is that there's no consent there's no preparation people feel coerced into it.
We know in meditation is that a high CO2 level in a low O2 level cause alterations in the brain that will probably lead to something like a psychedelic experience of blissful experience things like that so when when we're talking about us fixation something is going on in the brain where we're altering state of consciousness we're cutting off airflow to the brain it can be lethal it can be damaging permanently damaging and something can change in the brain that will enhance
the experience of sexuality that is experienced that people have. So somewhere along the way people got into this idea I think the other thing the other basic trend that we're seeing is that we're getting sexually desensitized so if you look at this is not just sexual but like if you look at you know pornography what tends to 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 something that show that there's studies that show that if you're vulnerable to an addiction you're also 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 make sense but you know I had a patient was it was working in a jail and he was telling me about when he commits a crime and what he loved he has really bad ADHD and what he loves about committing a crime is he is completely dialed in because of the risk of the risk of the risk of the risk of the risk of the risk.
Because of the risk he has a survival reason to pay attention to every single detail he is so focused on the task and we know that things like flow states involve an intense amount of focus and so when we're taking a risk it's activating our dopamine way more we feel when I've talked to patients who engage in this kind of behavior they feel the 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 now there's all kinds of unhealthily.
So all kinds of unhealthy stuff going on I think the statistics kind of speak for themselves like my gut check is that while everyone it doesn't necessarily increase the risk for everyone I think we're seeing the intersectionality of a couple of things so the first thing is that men are angry so we have in cells we have school shooters 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 in cell who's angry and I think that's the most important thing is that we're seeing the same thing.
So I think in cells who's home alone who doesn't believe they're ever going to have sex believes that women are gatekeeping this and so the the the masculine predatory systemic I'm going to teach this woman a lesson she doesn't get to say no to me so these kinds of feelings are being someone has figured out on a tube site that if I give men this fantasy they are going to watch it more and more.
I'm going to try you I'm going to bang and smashing and and but you're saying that's a social problem not a porn industry problem. Well, I think what the porn industry is doing yeah the porn industry is figuring out this is what all technology is the machine learning is figuring out of machine learning is figuring it out so as you cited some statistic about you know sexual activity like more virgins than ever before more sexual frustration than ever before.
More frustration with life than ever before and so let's give you this extreme thing that's check a check a checking a couple of different boxes.
Interesting within this I heard something which is you basically have described soft core pornography as a gateway drug to hardcore pornography because the brain gets the sensitize it 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 erotic porn the broccoli they're eventually going to get to the cookie.
That's a great assumption I think it's different because I think the desensitization happy it's different circuits of the brain there's a patience to it there's an emotional component to it so I don't think I think you're right that if we talk about squeezing out dopamine could it be a gateway drug absolutely.
But part of the reason that in this moment I think it could be part of the solution is erotic is moving away from dopamine 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 patients who have unhealthy relationships with sexuality the point is let's move away from orgasm let's recognize that the sexual act and speaking of the orgasm gap if you're a dude you can have sex and not have an orgasm and it can still be a positive experience.
And this kind of goes back to the sexual violence what really scares me is that as people watch this stuff for whatever reason what's going to happen is they're going to start to think and I've seen this a lot recently it's amazing how much this is spiked how normalize this has become oh I thought 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 interesting right I wouldn't be surprised if I wouldn't be surprised and this is a bias in the literature we ask a question I think the question I think it's interesting.
We ask do 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 doing this we don't even ask men what they feel coerced because not that many masculine scripts either of of having sex there's basically one point and it's you know the penetrative sex machine that's the script we are doing so that must be reflection of the demand.
Well I think it's a reflection of who's making the content and who's been making even traditional media right like movies where you see how people have intimate acts even though they're not showing the act right it's always. Me penis in 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 made by men.
I think it's this two way dance before 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 conversation which enhances sometimes the demand for that content or subject and this is 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 know yeah absolutely so I think that that's exactly what's going on here there's some preset demand but right now the problem is that.
The only people who are fulfilling that demand are making you know highly processed calorically dense 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 injection of female authors so fantasy has changed completely in last 10 or 15 years why a has changed completely last 15 years I think maybe what we need is dudes writing romance novels.
In consumers they always have power remember that people who are watching porn they are part of this industry they are voting with their attention their time their clicks online hopefully weather money because everybody should pay for their porn because porn should not be out there for three for anyone.
It's a good 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 etc we have to respect the work of those people.
I just realized you said orange should be free we live in a world where food is not a human right water is not a human right healthcare is not a human right but porn is free for everybody is porn free because it's behind a different advertising is just advertising model which means you are the you are the product like you're consuming adverts you're basically paying with your attention is just a different currency with a place there's no porn that's free if you think about it.
Fair enough I mean yeah you're paying with your attention either way you're looking at an advert before hand your scrolling past a display advert on the right hand 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 right people are getting the money. People making the content exactly.
I mean the dealers who are getting it when you look at only fans interestingly 6.6 billion they made this year and about 5 billion of that went to the creators. And that's you know only fans has been the real phenomenon in culture I mean if we're look at the porn industry so it changed a lot I've been in this industry now for 20 years when I started you know there was.
Sites online pay sites tubes didn't exist etc and then when only fans came around and when they become big in the pandemic they changed again the rules for this industry of it and I do think that it's better that the people who are making it are receiving their you know customers directly etc and that they can make decisions for themselves. I think it's a good part of the industry that it works that way.
No fat a term I only came across a couple of weeks ago this idea of no fat which is I believe and you clearly know much more about this and I do Dr K but I believe the term is it's proposing a solution to the pornography challenge that some people have where you completely abstain from watching pornography and all masturbating at all.
And if I recall and I don't want to mischaracterize your opinion but I think when we spoke the first time on the podcast you made the case that masturbation does have positive impacts so what is your view on this idea of no fat.
Yeah so I think the the movement it's so the idea of retaining from or some abstaining from masturbation or watching pornography is a very individual one and it may have benefits for some people in terms of they may because if they're using these things in a negative way obtaining them may allow them to have more control over other portions of their life but a lot of people will misinform people and say oh you're going to have a higher testosterone you're going to have all these physical.
All these physiologic changes which have not been born out in literature there's like a very small study looking at men who abstained from ejaculation for 21 days that saw a very small minute increase in testosterone like 10 guys so it's not generalize what's never been repeated and testosterone varies as it is quite significantly over days and throughout the day and you know one day to the next so ultimately there's no evidence to support the fact that abstaining from anything like masturbation is actually going to have a benefit.
More likely than not either you're going to have an external emission or you're going to body is going to absorb that seem and so doesn't really change what's going on physiologically is there an impact on fertility if I masturbate or don't masturbate. Yeah so fertility we do see that if you abstain for about five days up to five days you're going to see some improvement in the seeming.
In the same volume potentially and also some characteristics of this firm but above and beyond that you start seeing DNA damage and so that can actually be negative if you abstain for too long so this sperm are effectively dying in the. Well you're seeing the commutation so they're not as they're not as effective they're not going to die necessarily but they're not going to create a healthy you know fetus or embryo.
That's okay that's fascinating and I know that's really interesting so a couple of things to understand so there are a lot of traditions that abstain from sexual activity I think we don't study those traditions very well and I think the key thing to understand I personally think that.
Celibacy and abstinence from sexual activity can be incredibly powerful and so I think part of that we have to remember right so if we don't have any evidence for something why do 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 no fat community it is that people are having some 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 I think no fat is kind of a way to wrestle with any kind of behavioral control so if we look at like you know people who are addicted to pornography we talk about all these negative impacts of the cycle of I don't know anything to do any day anything today so I'm going to jerk off and then I have no meaning meaning no purpose no dopamine so 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.
Challenging yourself from a self control perspective I completely agree with Dr. what mollux says there may not be a physiological thing going on here but just challenging yourself and saying hey like this one thing messes up my relationships messes up my dopamine messes up my purpose and my motivation i'm going to take control of this and 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 effect we'll talk about the exception to that rule in a second in the spiritual traditions but I think that a lot of people are just using it as a vehicle to come to terms with something challenging in their life and they're like they're making a commitment right i'm going to do this thing and the benefit comes from that maybe not any physiological thing.
You know all the stuff about testosterone and stuff completely agree I don't think that there's a clear thing 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 meditative or religious traditions all over the world so you'll see celibacy is a part of some of the Abrahamic religions it's part of some of the carmic religions from the east so human beings at some point figured out that abstaining from sexual activity can have different kinds of impacts in the organism.
So a couple of things that it does is it reduces our thoughts of lust if we do it the right way and we'll get to a couple of specific examples of what the no fat community doesn't understand so when I deprive myself of a particular thing I sometimes reduce that behavioral reinforcement so if I look at someone who's addicted to alcohol you know when they stop drinking alcohol at the very beginning their desire will increase but then 10 years later they don't even think about it so if you are someone who is.
So if you are thinking about sex constantly and you stop engaging in sexual perceptions so remember the thoughts in our brain come from what we perceive this is why advertising is a thing because an advertiser knows if I can show you this thing you will think about it.
Now if I'm fapping and watching pornography I'm getting this perceptual input which is then creating thoughts in my head now I'm thinking about this stuff instead of thinking about something else so there's that layer of things to when I cut something off from my perception when I break up with 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 perception and control my thoughts.
So they can also use it as a benefit of like thought control if I stop looking at this stuff this is also been hijacked by generally speaking patriarchal structures for like you know there's a particular religious sect of Hinduism where the priests are like I'm never going to see a woman like no women 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 no fat gives us an opportunity for self control it gives us a chance to reduce our sensory input which reduces our thoughts and then there's also these meditative traditions which say that you know achieving esoteric spiritual experiences which is a lot of what the no fat community like talks about like they become slightly different human beings.
I have a lot of the other part of that you know the key thing about the meditative traditions is that they're not taking advice from random is on the internet so I'll give you all just one really simple example when you do esoteric meditations spirituality cell of the kind of stuff it's usually accompanied in the Hindu tradition with the tradition with certain yogic postures in one example of this is something called Sidhasa.
Sidhasa is a debt's pose and literally what you do is in this pose you place the heel of one of your right foot usually up against your perinium so you put pressure on the area between your anus and your scrotum if you're a man it's a slightly different location of your woman.
And then what that actually does from anatomy I'm sure you know this better 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 it's on the underside it's like in that pelvic floor region.
So one of the really interesting things that I remember learning from a yogi who was a medical doctor is that when we compress blood flow through the testes like if you have gently compress blood flow that increases over time you're going to get less blood flow to the testes you may get some kind of reduction in testosterone production and semen production.
Or whatever so there may be some physiological things that people do when they're normally like try to be celibate that allow it to be healthy in a in a good way. So I think it kind of the key takeaway don't disagree with anything that doctor malloc said I think you've got to remember that no fat is not a sure fire solution to fix all your problems. And at the same time some people have positive experiences also doctor malloc has been emphasizing this point of it's not the same for everybody.
And we know that there are a couple of things working with this community quite a bit there are a couple of things that happen about self control challenging yourself setting a goal creating purpose in your life. Changing what your sensory inputs are so you you're not thirsty all day long and 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 it's almost like this this cold turkey kind of approach which which can sometimes work for nicotine can sometimes work for things like sex. But I think like your mileage may vary and we don't really know exactly what's going on.
Yeah, I think I'll add I think that the problem I have with it to some degrees and people are white knuckling it right there really and they're getting peer pressured into it like you got a stop right and so then they're they're really trying hard not to ejaculate.
And so they're tensing up their pelvic floor muscles they're developing problems because they're tensing up their pelvic floor they're developing this function is getting pain with ejaculation they're getting pain with directions or they get so much shame when they have an octonal emission for example it's not
mission is a nighttime ejaculation exactly so they're they're they're getting so shamed by the community because they failed which is completely out of their physiologic control like you're going to have an octonal emission if your body wants to have one there's nothing you can do about it so.
You know I think ultimately there is a lot of shame and peer pressure that can sometimes create harm in these situations now if you're using it in the way Dr. K described like that's fine if you're deriving benefit from it I have no problem but I do take issue with the people who are harming themselves because they're getting a lot of pressure from this is from the group.
If I can jump in for a second so I want to emphasize this point to so this is really weird but people are white knuckling it there they may be making their diction actually worse so there's a really interesting principle in addiction where if I'm white knuckling something like so like I let's use the example of like opioid addiction right so when when I'm working with an opioid addict at the very beginning what they have is like a psychological craving like I want to I want to have an opiate so that I feel better I mentally I feel better I feel you for you and then if I white knuckle it what happens is things start to get worse.
Then I start to go into withdrawal and then my body is like now I'm going to opioid withdrawal so instead of you for you and now I start to feel pain all over my body and as I feel pain all over my body then finally what happens is like crack.
And then I use opioids and then something really interesting happens the body learns what it what it has to do to you to make you use or opioids again so when you white knuckle and actually crack at the end what we find is that your the body jumps straight to level 10 right so it's kind of like we 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 and then they start crying and they start throwing a
temperature if you give them the iPad when they throw a temper tantrum that encourages them to throw a temper tantrum and we see that 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 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 knuckling it they don't realize that every time they fail sometimes what they're actually doing is training their brain to punish them way harder so their brain can get the dopamine that it
is what you talk about pornography being a substitute for relationships in society okay have you spoken about that I don't miss your opinion yeah I've got a quote here yeah yeah yeah so your experiences is has been that pornography usage is really just a powerful coping mechanism and it sort of scratches this evolutionary itch for relationships yeah is it therefore not a bad thing for people I'm reflecting on that idea which we kind of
do not but also just what I see in the common section which is people really seem to hate dating apps and pornography but they also seem to use them both and I just as a podcast you we were really surprised the first time we had a dating app CEO on the show because I thought great episode we learned a lot of business and how they bought the app and then I looked at the comments section and this group of people had shown up with like pick like pitch for
and they were expressing their like desperation and they're feeling that these dating apps and pornography has very much ruined their lives and so I just want to throw that out there because it's a reflection of the comments that I see yeah you know I so I didn't say okay to try to check you I was just like let's hear the rest so so yeah I think what was once again remember 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 that when we use technology to activate the brain there are parts of the brain that don't know the difference the 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 all let's just use the example of food so when I feel hungry I can eat something that's calorically dense and that will satisfy my hunger but the chlorically dense food may not have nutrition it may not have micronutrients it may not have fiber so when I replace something nutritious with something that 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 human beings horny it's because if we weren't horny we would never make like that's like it's a evolutionary it's not a bug it's not a problem it's a drive to help us succeed so then we have this thing called post not clarity right which is like when we have
post not clarity are our horningous kind of goes down and then it changes the way that we see the world so part of what we see a lot with like pornography is a substitute for relationships is first of all we evolved to have these parts of the brain that get activated right relationships are a healthy thing for us and now we figured out how to partially activate the brain through pornography this is getting worse with things like only fans because now we develop a
parasocial relationship there's usually not parasocial relationships with like you know adult film actresses or maybe there are but now we have interaction I've seen more marriages ruined through only fans than I have to pornography and I've seen a big spike in this recently because now it's not just a physical thing there's enough insecurity and physicality and problems in the bedroom now now there's an emotional relationship if pornography online didn't exist would we have bad
relationships in real life you've got an opinion haven't you yeah we don't know short short answers we don't know but even shorter answers yeah things are worse with pornography and here's what I look at right so like if we don't have RCTs what else can we look at what's on
CTs randomized control trials you know what we look at is global trends so what are we seeing what's the global trend in pornography and what's the global trend in relationships now this isn't causality there could be all there's all kinds of I think one thing
really appreciated is you know my my co-gasts 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 rates people
are getting married later you know there's we're seeing a kind of global like zeitgeist problem between men and women and pornography is like correlated with those two things so in my mind if you have if I say if you have to if I have to put an answer if we removed all pornography from the world would things get better I would say yes but that's because the way pornography is right now and I think is
I think I'm in T.U. up so I think it's it's it's because in the reason removing it would be better 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 it should make things better which is inevitable because of how the brain works you said we get increasingly desensitized so we want more extreme so if you start here you're eventually going to end up here regardless
I would say for who 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, scripts outside the kind of heteronormative male dominant pornography that's out there they have really you know how to benefit or what you think is the right way to do it
you know how to benefit or what 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 representation they you know have access to sex education that is not heteronormative and you know kind of you know in a heteronormative script when it comes to sexual debut etc people always talk about that that is through penetrative sex but it's not necessarily true is it
what did we do before porn I mean what we struggling in the in the bedroom before pornography existed I mean I think people were more open about sexuality the way the frigidness around sexuality has is a modern concept right like in ancient civilizations you were watching people have sex it was in life right like it was it wasn't easily accessible in 15 seconds
and extreme no we're saying we should come off we 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 know general society so I think that this conversation that you are having now that you invited us to have a nuanced conversation taking lots of time to talk 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 rid of porn would there be something else that people would be turning to right like is it is chicken or the egg right it's probably not the cause it's multifactorial and so would people then turn to something else so would it be only fans that have porn right would it 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 robots that have sex with you right like are we going to turn to something else gaming addiction or some other type of addiction gambling or recreational drugs or alcohol or so it's really you're saying it's more of just a
bit more of a set of challenges in society that people using it for the emotional regulation that you described Dr. K. Yeah I think it is a little of both right that it's easily accessible it's it's free I mean your time is time but like it is not costing you money 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 bigger problem and that people are using as a scapegoat to avoid this problem
just to kind of counterpoint to that I don't think you'll disagree with or about about to say so the other thing that we know from addictions that people have drugs of choice right so to say that it would be completely replaced I would disagree with because I think that the way that pornography affects your brain is unique compared to video games
and at the same time we also see a lot of stuff to support I agree with Docuomalic is that like we're seeing a rise in video game addiction we're seeing a rise in social media addiction we're seeing a rise in pornography addiction and depending on your individual makeup you may be vulnerable to pornography versus social media right so when you have when you need that parasocial relationship without the sexual sexual component maybe you get
addicted to social media when you have that sexual component maybe you get addicted to pornography and so 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 relationships that's a pretty like it's a dangerous dangerous thing to hijack because it's so like fundamental to like life in mating so you know I think it I think it's
somewhat specific I don't think it I think if we removed it it would have some effect but I I think what I'm hearing from my co-gasts is that you know I think this is true of all technology it's not that we should ban it that's why I'm kind of reluctant when you ask that question and I'm 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 realizing what we're building we are developing so the problem with pornography is almost like an issue of like you know when you introduce an invasive species to a new environment there are no checks and balances so I think like their parts of Australia for example
would like they introduced rabbits and rabbits that like just taken over the whole continent and so I think what's happened with pornography is we started letting people arguably the wrong people start building all of this pornography it's ripped through our society it's changed the way that now 40 something percent of women are coerced into asphyxiation in college like what the fuck right like this is insane like how did how did we get here
it's only just the beginning you mentioned that virtual reality AI these new technologies one of the great things about these new technologies specifically AI in large language models is they can have a conversation with you
and this is something in technology that we couldn't really do before in such a remarkably personalized way so you kind of combine these technologies you go okay I'll add in virtual reality robotics is on the rise as well we now have these large language models that can communicate with you in whatever way
they need to to make you feel whatever you need to feel and I look at that and go the future's not bright as it relates to sex sex relationships and pornography people you know they did a study in 2020 with virtual reality and they found the researchers found in that study that virtual reality porn made people feel more desired more flirted with and more connected to the actress so the more immersive we make pornography which is the direction of travel in the world generally
the more it's going to be addictive the more it's going to be feel like a better substitute than having a real relationship with a real person yeah I agree I think it's it's and unless we develop some checks and balances and we prioritize relationships with other human beings as a society we're going to be in trouble so what do we do there do we ban it do we ban virtual a i porn because there's already websites now there was three websites that I found that allowed you to make your own partner
and that they're calling this did you sexuals where you can pick their personality you can pick their physical preferences you can pick the sexual fantasy that they perform and that you want to see them perform
and and and these are becoming increasingly popular and the great thing about these according to the websites that make these sexual characters that you can make yourself is it remembers all of your previous conversation so quote it can improve communication and cater to what your desire is so it can really speak to what you want but it can't touch you can't target can't kiss you but the robots can those big sexual robots can so like I know this is going to sound crazy
but like you know I think we we look at the end of the human race and we look at things like climate change and nuclear war and and maybe like some super bug that is resistant to all of our antibiotics like there's a 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 just share with you all what I'm afraid of
so what's going on is you're right it's becoming more immersive and the whole problem with like technology and even the virtual world what we see in video games is that the immersive world 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 relationship only fans like this person is financially invested to not piss me off
whereas I know this is very 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 feelings and desires of her own I know it's tough right and and so like what happens is we in only fans like they're they're invested in making you happy and now what we're happening is AI girl friends that's just the start of it man
like right now they they can try to fulfill your desire someone's going to figure out that a random reinforcement schedule is better so if you want to create the most addictive virtual 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 to throw a temper tantrum that is going
to trick your brain into thinking this is a real relationship which comes from gambling psychology right gambling psychology right and so now what I'm going to do is get more addicted to technology
and this is why video games are addictive there's a really fascinating study where people were like the reason video games are addictive is because of a denial of a reward so if you look at fortnight fortnight is a game that has a hundred players in arena there's 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 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 worked hard what we did is not easy to do that's why everyone values it someone's going to figure this out with a i girl friends and then this is the thing they can't hug us but they can so this is happening so this technology is actually developed in the early 2000s for medical reasons so when we were seeing clinics in remote parts of the world that would have these things called haptic feedback gloves so this is back when you if you look at like a doctor who is this specifically
technology developed around detecting 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 world and then they do a breast exam so they feel the breast okay and then based on the lumps that you feel whatever 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 feedback and they start throwing temper tantrums like I really think it could be like there's a tiny chance it's just the end of the human race
because we're not 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 make up sex is great the end of the human race scary I don't I don't want to go with her I think we have to actively work at it right like we have to teach our children that like relationships are hard and worth it and you know
it's hard though it's it's really hard but I think yeah I think it's it's going to be a challenge and we have to have some checks and balances and we on our own have to work in our own and we have to have some time to try to continually have the younger generation see the value of relationships and procreation and all those things because that's you know on the decline
don't people in life typically just go for the path of least resistance when left their own devices now I was thinking as you're speaking about when I was in primary school they came in and taught me about your five a day so like you know you know you know it's not like I was in primary school that I was a day or whatever but then if they they tell you that information but they put you in a food
environment where every shop is selling me candy and you know process foods because it's it's more nutritious my brain spikes more there's no it doesn't matter if what you told me it doesn't matter if I know five fruit and vegetable but we still have like this obesity crisis and I think if you went up to the
them would be able to say what's healthy and what's not. But then if you ask them what they consume, it's a very different answer irrespective of pricing because your brain, especially in a more stressed world than ever before, is really driving, driving you. So I'm picking up the 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 readily available and it's low friction
to access it, the incentives are going to win out over the long term. And I think 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 behave. But it's almost, 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 all to innovate. But if your job description is literally rewarding you to do your current job and your bonuses are rewarding you to do your current job, you're going to do your current job regardless of what the CEO is barking at you. I think about the same in porn. Like we can't just, we can't just rely on telling people that it's bad. People do, people do do things for delayed
gratification, right? We went to medical school. There is a lot of delayed gratification medical school. You're a CEO, you're a producer. Like 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 there is, you know, human psychology. I'm sure Dr. K can talk more about that. Like where you can foster
this appreciation for delayed gratification. And also be good food. You know, when you eat well, when you eat green, etc. You feel much better and that gives you energy and then you can want to keep going. The stats, the beastie stats are just horrifying. 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 then at beastie
stats, since the time I was in school, have just gone in one direction still. But maybe it's about the practice we have to learn, you know, how to get into the right practice of things. And this is a question really about, is it the individual that has to find this discipline or this sort of self-control or at social level? Do we need to put things in place
to make the environment easier to operate in? So a 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 answer is always both. It's always multifactorial. So I think I'm with you that, so like, when I think about like, you know, what, what is my life's work? It's, I work on the individual level. So when you ask me, should we ban something? It's
like, I don't know. Because my thought is that we got to save a couple people. The good news about the human race dying out is that, you know, if a couple people continue to have sex with each other, then all the people who are vulnerable to AI relationships will actually not procreate and humanity will survive. Right? So maybe we're okay. But I think that the other thing you have to keep in mind, so this is maybe a little bit more of a spiritual
bit. So I'm with you that there's an obesity crisis. I'm with you that human beings, it's kind of like, we treat human beings like the lowest common denominator, right? We're like, oh, human beings, if we give them broccoli and cookies, like they're going to eat cookies. But I think that there are two things. The first thing is that like Dr. Malik said, you know, I think even if we look at this podcast, like the people who are watching this are
not interested in eating cookies. And there is an appetite. Why have podcasts exploded? Because people tried to educate kids in school and what we have organically, evolutionarily discovered is there is a different way to communicate information that creates behavioral change. That's the first thing. So we're seeing the counterbalancing force of obesity, like the whole world became obese because we had people making colorically dense food without
an awareness of it. But I also 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. And the other thing, so this is what I think really separates human beings from animals. And maybe this is an argument that a more competent biologist will say I'm wrong here. This is more of a spiritual perspective. But I think human beings are the only species on
the planet that may be able to run against our programming. Right. And you can argue that this is even a deeper level of programming. But like the whole point to being human, the cool thing about being human is my brain can drive me, like you said, in one 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. Human beings are, it's really interesting, right? Because we're the ones that like, so I remember, you know, watching this TikTok or something about a vegan dog. And the someone was like, oh, yeah, we know my dog is vegan. They don't even like food. Let's do an experiment. There's one piece of meat and one piece of some weird corn broccoli chowder, right? Dogs sniffs both. It's 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 me that animals are able to regulate their impulses in the way that human beings do. Why have human beings dominated the planet? It's because when we feel like having a cookie, we have broccoli. When we feel like yelling at someone, we restrain ourselves. And there may be some deeper biology, evolutionary kind of thing going on there. But I'd ask each and every one of
you to look at your experience for a second. Forget about biology. When you have an impulse, does that impulse control you or can you fight back? I fight. Right? We all fight. That's the human experience. The human experience is fighting against our impulses every fucking day. And then we try to learn how can I get better at this? Because what my tongue wants, I'm talking about calories, not sex for a second. 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 is delayed gratification. How many of our impulses do you actually think we're winning the fight against? Because I would argue that we're losing pretty much all of the fights against our impulses. In fact, the fact that we're all sat here is probably us following our impulses. The rise in social media usage is us being a slave to our impulses. The rise in obesity globally is
us failing, losing the fight to our impulses. The rise in pornography is us losing our fight to our impulses. The rise in gaming, gambling, alcohol, whatever is us losing our fight with our impulses. Workaholic people. This is going to sound wild. I think we're getting better at it. I know you're saying we're losing the war. Human being self-control is increasing. The reason why we're losing the war right now, but the enemy is coming
up with better and better weapons. Technology is getting sophisticated. Pornography is getting sophisticated. Social media is getting sophisticated. Yet the human race in some ways we're collapsing, but we're also operating in some ways at the best level that we ever have. We're getting outgunned, but I actually think human beings on the whole, what I see in the community, what's the top search? How do I quit pornography? There's something happening on a humanity
level where we're as human beings, we're like, we got to start fighting back. This podcast is a consequence of that. This is human beings fighting back. Are we losing the war? Yeah, but I think we've got caught by surprise. We got caught with our pants down, which may be a weird analogy in the context. I'm with you that there's a lot of reasons to be scared, and also the reason that people pay attention to me and Dr. Malik and Erica is because we're
fighting back. That's why we're here. This is brilliant, man, because here you are. What are the questions you're asking us? We're all screwed. We're doomed. Isn't we all screwed? You've 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 keep on asking these pessimistic, pessimistic, pessimistic
questions. This is what it takes, man. It takes people who are figuring out how this works. Maybe you're controlling their impulses. Who knows? No, no, I have to represent whatever the opposite of whatever you say is. If you say that, I'll say right. That's beautiful. Think about it. When you were at school, did anyone ever tell you there's a conflict between broccoli and cookies? No, they said to eat broccoli. We figured out as a human race that we need to
represent both sides of the conflict to 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 bad. Is there any such thing as too much corn, Dr. Arena? I think it's really about how you feel about it. When all the data about problematic porn use, it's like people who feel bad about it. 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 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 your partners or whatever, then it's not a problem, right? I think it's really, it 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 abstaining or trying a different alternative may be beneficial.
So just to conclude then, if I made you Prime 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 a net more positive force for society or impact on society, what exactly would
you do? Dr. Arena. This is a tough question. So I think I would have some mandatory self-analysis of your porn use that everyone has to take every so often so that people can actually have to look at it with an objective, like not watching porn, but seeing how many hours do you use it and how often you're using it. And again, frequency is not always related to problem, but it is one marker that we can measure. And then maybe again have a warning to them that this seems like a lot of
use, are you still? And that if they've had a certain marker of use, maybe are you finding that you're having difficulties in relationships and whatever, and that would hopefully alert some red flags to people who may need some assistance. And hopefully we'd have some sort of intervention for them. What about you, don't you? Honestly, what I do is resign. But if you're asking for like a single policy change, I can get behind one thing. So I think the biggest thing that we need right
now from a policy level is social and emotional skills training for all children. I think we need to reevaluate what we teach in schools and what what people actually need to learn 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 look it up. So I think what we really need is social and emotional skills training. There are also studies that show
that this is very, very helpful for people. So how do you regulate your emotions? How do you form connections 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 media training. So young people can understand what they actually are watching and that media is sending out messages to the world and that we are decoding those messages. I think that is absolutely necessary. But what I would do,
I think porn should be behind a payment barrier. For me, that's I believe that that's the way it should be. And better sexual education. Better sexual education. I would add that to the mandate. Yeah, absolutely. Quick one. I want to say a few words from our sponsor NetSuite. One of the most overwhelming parts of running your own business as many of your entrepreneurs will be able to attest to is staying on top of your operations and finances, whether you're just starting out, whether you're
managing a fast growing company, the complexities only increase. So having the right systems in place is crucial. One which has helped me is one called NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system bringing accounting, financial management inventory and HR into one fluid platform. With this single source of truth, you'll have the visibility and control to make fast informed decisions, which is crucial in business. I remember
the chaos of scaling my first business and trying to keep everything in order. It was an absolute nightmare and it's tools like NetSuite that make this easier. So if you're feeling the pressure, let NetSuite lighten the load head to NetSuite.com slash Bartlett and you can get a free download of the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's NetSuite.com slash Bartlett. I don't know how to say this in a way that you're going to understand, but Perfected is banging. I'm an investor in the
company. I drink it every day. The whole team drinks Perfected every day. We have a Perfected fridge in the office. Here's why I like Perfected. Typical energy drinks used to give me these crashes and as a podcast of the last thing you want to do is be crashing in a conversation. The founders of Perfected wanted to create an energy drink that wouldn't create that horrible crash cycle that many of us go through. So they used matcha as the energy source and somehow they
also made it really, really delicious. They've just come out with this new flavor called juicy peach and it is banging. If you try Perfected's juicy peach and it's not banging, feel free to get in my DMs and custom it out. You can pick it up at Tesco's all weight shows or you can get it online and here's a secret that you've got to keep yourself. I'm going to give you 40% of Perfected just so you can try juicy peach yourself. Go to Perfected.com and at checkout put in the code
diary40. I'm going to leave that up for some time, not forever. That's Perfected.com and then use code diary40 at checkout. When you try it, make sure you tag me on Instagram and say, Steve, you are right, it's banging. What's the most 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 dating. I think what we didn't spend enough time on is how pornography
changes our body images. I think there's a significant number of people, men interested in increasing penile length, women interested in maybe labia plastic or looking a certain way that they're often seeing on pornography. I think that creates a lot of dissatisfaction, a lot of shame, a lot of small penis anxieties are real thing and it is very detrimental. People are so so focused on the size of their penis that they are now thinking about, or ruminating about it,
potentially doing harm to themselves to try to increase penile length. I think that this is something we didn't talk about but that is another potential harm of seeing people who have chosen to be pornography actors who have on the high set of deviations of size that's not normal, right? And so they're not seeing normal anatomy and I think that's that's potentially harmful.
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 your bodies and etc but 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 times. I'm in porn. There are so many different people today, different body types, different ages, different, you know, different everything that are being represented. So I think
that that statement might be, you know, from 10 years ago or something. Where does that statement come from? I mean, we know that there is small penis anxiety. We know that people are shooting in my highest viewed video is about increasing pain. I like there's over 30 million views. So it is clearly something that people are searching. Now is it from pornography 100%? No, not necessarily but that's where they're seeing these very large organs is typically on pornography.
Yes, you can see a whole host of a variety of different types of people but I think they're seeing it there and feeling it. But probably when it comes to men there are less variety in porn than when it comes to women. Okay, do you use large penises in your work? I don't know how to say that. It's part of your sort of, do you choose 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 looking for people who who feel like
real people. I'm I mean beauty and energy and passion and chemistry. These sort of things. But does a penis size matter? No, to me, it doesn't matter. But then if we're going to be 100% honest, it's true that many of the performers have slightly bigger penises than what is considered average. What's the average penis length? It's about 5.1 to 5.5 inches erect. And is there a gap in the perception that demand think the average penis length is bigger?
Yeah, actually both genders do. So when you look at studies where people look at a penis and estimate the size, both genders tend to overestimate average penile length. But they also are not really great at looking at a penis and telling the size. So sometimes they'll see like a 5.5 inch penis and they get six inches up to an inch in variability basically when you get on the
above average sizes. So there is obviously perception issues. But ultimately, I think the people who tend to want to be correct me from wrong, who want to be performers who are male will generally have something they want to show off and they will 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 think we should be having it, which causes a lot of sort of dissatisfaction
in relationships? Yeah, absolutely. So the average time to ejaculation for a man is about five to six minutes. The average time to orgasm for a woman during partner dinner course is about 14 minutes. So there's definitely a disparity there that needs to be addressed if you want the, if you have average duration in your relationship, then the female partner needs to be prioritized. So she can reach climax and that's not the end goal for everybody. You can still have a great
relationship and have a great experience with that orgasm. But if you want both people to climax, you need to stimulate the female partner a little longer. You're going to say something that I'm saying. Yes, I think this is what she was saying. You know, that's not the priority. She looked at Eric and it's okay. I'm sorry, like my brain grew up on the internet and like there's like a subtract that's running this whole time. But so I think, you know, what I what I teach my patients
is almost identical. So if you look at the average sexual intercourse, like people don't realize it's three to seven minutes. Is it what's really even really fascinating is that speaking of misperceptions, about 50% of women start don't want sex longer than 15 minutes. So I didn't know what the average
time to female or male orgasm was, but I know what people prefer. And half of women, like they don't want, you know, if you watch like a, a, a, a two film or something, like sure, sometimes there's shorts and stuff. But there's also like, you know, a porno is like 45 minutes of all kinds of stuff. Like,
it's like three to seven minutes and women start complaining after 50 seconds. So I see a lot of this, you know, this like body dysmorphia almost, it's like getting to that level in both men and women unrealistic expectations about body unrealistic expectations about performance. That creates shame. Once I feel shame, then I want to watch pornography. Then, you know, I want to watch Dr. Malik's video
that has 30 million views or get pills to increase 5 penis size on the advertisers. You know, so I think that there's just a lot of bad information out there. So does this mean that we need to make pornography that is reflective of reality? I make it three to five minutes long for men and 14 minutes for women. But also, does it mean that we need to introduce pornography? That's reflective of all body images because they're going to go back to this like broccoli cookie analogy.
So I don't think it has to be pornography. So I had an interesting experience. So like I was in Europe and I went to a co-ed sauna, right? So like, we don't have that here in the United States. And the co-ed sauna was like mostly like older people. So you see like, you know, the majority of people there were like 60 plus. So you see like, you know, 100 naked bodies of like old men and women.
And it really puts things in perspective. I think part of the problem is with things like fashion and things like pornography, we don't, you know, we just don't see what a normal naked body looks like. So what's the only, we 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 film that had reality in it, would anybody buy it? Well, I think if you made a porn film,
don't explain it. That would sell out. Are you talking about it? No, but it's a bad day. But the answer, the answer here is yes, I made a film with a couple who are 70 plus. And it's very successful. There's a very popular older female. I don't know her, but I've seen her on social media, who is a porn actress. And she's, you know, she's a normal, a different white. Many actually. But why don't the industry make videos that have people with normal bodies and normal side
penises? But those videos aren't the popular ones, according to the data. If you don't want any 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 saying, those would be the most popular, because the companies would make more money from them. I mean, there's so much content. I think that
that really lots of it is popular. I mean, there's, you know, one of the things that they are doing on this site, on the sites is that they are categorising people by their primary features, kind of. So you can look for porn with bigger bodies, for example. And it's quite the popular category, actually, actually. But you can also look for tiny teens. You can look for
milves. You can look for for cool girls. You, I mean, people, many people, they have kind of gotten away from what is kind of deciphering, connecting people and has gotten into this way of kind of having their favorite kind of people, their favourite kind of porn. Would your business be more or less successful if the bodies were reflective of society and the 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 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 reflective of society, etc? I mean, I think that we do tend to look for beauty somehow, but beauty doesn't mean stereotype, modern-like people. Yeah, just a chime in. So I think I challenge your question just a little bit, because I think when you say 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 when you say only fans made 6.6 billion, I think a big appeal in only fans is that you have much more male-mo looking people. And so when we look at the success of a business or not, I think there's also like a varied
market. So people are looking for different things. And I think we're seeing that they're like, as porn becomes highly overly produced and stuff, there's kind of this like almost paradoxical upswing in amateur content in things like only fans where you have someone who really is closer to the girl next door when we're talking about a heteronormative sort of situation. And I think we can also see that in, we see that trend all over the place, right? So as we get short form
content, we're also seeing an explosion in podcasts. So I think there's a variable 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 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 6 billion comes from the top 10 earners and what percentage comes from other people.
So it's 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 this kind of thing where the top 10 earners get maybe 50%, but then 50% is like a pretty wide variety. That's the statistic you need to look at. I can tell you that what we do see is that people search along on our sites for real sex.
It's a concept that people are really looking for. I also looked at porn hub. This is the first time I've gone on porn hub at work just to see again that the most viewed porn stars on porn hub. And it's the same reflection. None of them look like the average person. You know, I'm looking at the heterosexuals, I'm looking at women and men and they all look like mannequins. All 30 of them. Well, I think you and your team need to do more research. You can't accept the answer. It's valentous.
Okay, closing statements, closing thoughts. We've talked about a lot today. So I want to go clockwise starting with Dr. Reena Malik. What are your closing thoughts and statements to the wide 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 time dealing with Dr. K. What are your closing thoughts for them? But also we have a lot of people that are in
government that listen. And we only found that out because sometimes they reach out to us. Doctors reach out to us. People in parliament, in Congress, etc. Reach out to us. So what would your statement be to all of those people? My closing thoughts are invest in education about your body and about sex. So whether that means learning what your anatomy is and learning what
real sex is. And I think that is of paramount importance to having a successful relationship with yourself and your partners that you can enjoy sex and use pornography for curiosity and not for boredom. Yeah, I think remember that your body is learning all the time. And that we think about pornography and its negative effect, which it can have a negative effect. So I'd start with really understanding what pornography is doing for you, what's the root of your relationship with
it. And also recognize that I mean, I really do think after this conversation that pornography can be a force for good. And many of the reasons that you may be watching it, if you transition to a erotic film, if you use it in a sexual relationship, it doesn't have to be a bad thing. It's the way that you relate to it. And really think about how you can utilize it in a healthier way.
And if you are a consumer, think about what you are watching. See, if there's a about page, can learn anything about that company, about these directors, producers, 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 not all porn is monolithic. There's
many different kinds out there. And there's many great people working in this industry to spread the sex positivity and better acceptance of our desires, fantasies, sexual lives who are interested in the erotic aspects of sexuality.
I also think it's worth saying we've talked widely about the subject of pornography. 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 only fans as a website and as a platform, is allowing porn stars and, you know, adult actresses and actors to have a safer way to make their money and to do their business.
And previously what you'd seen is there was much of the escorting industry, which was much more of a dangerous industry, have now moved over towards these platforms, which do provide greater safety for a behaviour that is going to happen irrespective of whether there's a ban in place or not. We have a closing tradition on this podcast, as you all know. You might not know this. Where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. And because the last guest was
you, I'm going to skip past it. And I opened up the book to a question that's landed before that. So I'm going to ask you all this question individually. And I'd love to hear your answers. What can 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 know what their bodies are doing and how they can relate to the opposite sex if they're heterosexual
in order to have a satisfying sex life. It's not just an extracurricular activity. It's something that we do that's a part of our innate biology and it's important and valuable. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm showing up tomorrow is like the most important thing, not here, but like to 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 thing that I can do
is just showing up and continuing to do what I think is best. The most important thing that all of us can do is just continue showing up. The majority of the people that I work with in my community, the biggest problem I have is sometimes not showing up. I would say connect with other people
on a deep level. There to have difficult conversations. There to be wrong because I also think that we live now in a society where so many people are so 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're point, 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 ideologically attached to a certain position. Typically the position that's associated with whatever their job is or, you know,
their incentive structure. I think sometimes it's important to have these open nuanced discussions like we've had today because we can all start to learn a little bit about other people's worlds and bring down some of those sort of ideological walls that keep us imprisoned. All progress, I think, is happens when you have this conflict of ideas. But with the purpose not of proving someone is wrong or you're more intelligent or whatever, but through the purpose and the lens of progress.
And that's why this conversation has been so enlightening to me because I get to see a bunch of 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 by saying that my opinion of pornography has actually changed in this conversation because there was clearly parts of my understanding of pornography that were in the dark and those lights have been turned on. So I have a more contextual
picture of the industry. Thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate it. It's, as I said, a second ago, it's super inspiring and super enlightening for me to get all of these perspectives and to use all of this new information to reform my own opinion on the subject matter in a much more naive sort of biased way. So I really, really appreciate the time that you've all given us today and on behalf of all my audience as well. Thank you so much. Appreciate all of you.
Thank you. Thanks, Lavin. Isn't this cool? Every single conversation I have here on the diave is here. The very end of it, you'll know. I asked the guest to leave a question in the diave CEO. And what we've done is we turned every single question written in the diave CEO into these conversation cards that you can play at home. So you've got every guest we've ever had, their question and on the back 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 answered the question. The brand new version two updated conversation cards are out right now at the conversation cards.com. They sold out twice instantaneously. So if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards, I really, really recommend acting quickly. Quick one. I want to say a few words from our sponsor NetSuite.
One of the most overwhelming parts of running your own business as many of your entrepreneurs will be able to attest to is staying on top of your operations and finances, whether you're just starting out or whether you're managing a fast growing company, the complexities only increase. So having the right systems in place is crucial. One which has helped me is one called NextWeat.
They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform. With this single source of truth, you'll have the visibility and control to make fast informed decisions, which is crucial in business. I remember the chaos of scaling my first business and trying to keep everything in order. It was an absolute nightmare and it's tools like NetSuite that make
this easier. So if you're feeling the pressure, let NetSuite lighten the load. Head to NetSuite.com slash Bartlett and you can get a free download of the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's NetSuite.com slash Bartlett.