Stoya || Foucault, Heteronormativity, and Good Porn

a few notes about it. I really enjoyed my conversation with her. I had a lot of fun and learned a bunch of new things. But just a heads up that this episode is very explicit, so if that's not your thing, please enjoy one of the other one hundred and sixty seven episodes of the Psychology Podcast. If you do listen to this episode, though, and I really hope you do, please stick around all the way to the end,

as the conversation smooths out really nicely. Also, during the course of the episode, there was a bit of a static noise that we were hearing in our end, but her awesome audio engineer was able to remove most of it. So I also wanted to give you that context so you aren't confused when you hear us talking about the static noise. Now, without further ado, let's jump into my chat with Stoya. So today, it's great to have Stollia on the podcast. Stodia has been working with sexuality for

over a decade. Her writing credits include The New York Times, The Guardian, and Playboy. Her first book of essays, Philosophy, Pussycats and Porn, is available through not Occult Media, and her experimental porn project lives at zero spaces dot com. Stolly, great to chat with you today. Hi, I have absolutely zero problems with that biography. Yes, congratulations, that's awesome. You're so fascinating. You have so many facets to you right, yes,

like well Whitman said, I contain multitudes. Yeah, by the way, it's one of my favorite quotes. But I also feel like some people contain more multi tudes than others. Do you agree with that? I think some people contain more multitudes and others contain deeper multitudes. Ooh, that's interesting. Were I to have to categorize myself one or the other, I would definitely say superficial diversity. Yeah. I mean, I'm not agreeing with that, but I'm saying I see your

point about the difference between the two. I wasn't like, yeah, totally, you're totally superficial stea. Yeah, superficial diversity's bread No, I'm saying, yeah, that's a really interesting distinction. Yeah, so there's depth with breadth. What women should have been more nuanced? I don't know if it's anyone's place to critique, Yeah, certainly not my place. Yeah, so I'm I won't edit that out. I want edit that out. Okay, So I have all these questions for

you today. I want to start off with Yeah, I just want to start off the question what is porn? Like, how do you define that? Let's just like jump into the deep end immediately, all right. So my big thing is like what is porn? Because the United States government says I know it when I see it. Stripe the payment processor, their terms of service define porn as video. Visa is effectively the arbiter of American morality because they

decide what they will and will not process payments. For now, I haven't been able to get Visa on the phone, but I want to know what Visa's definition of porn is because they have so much power, like they literally dictate what is and is not obscene by saying what they will and will not process payments for. So I'm really curious about their definition of senity and of pornography. And I do this book club every month which focuses on erotic literature, and every time I go, hey, was

this porn? And some people think it was porn and other people think it wasn't porn. So I don't feel like I have like an actual working definition. To me, pornography is media made with the intent of sexual arousal or titillation. Okay, and that's start, But that means to me, Cosmo's list of one hundred and one sex tips to blow his mind makes Cosmo pornographic, right right, So intention matters. And then within the domain of porn, we have different

can we make different value judgments? Is there good porn? Is there bad porn? I know you've tried to sort that out, right now. We collectively make a lot of value judgments. We say this didn't get me off, so it's bad porn, And that's most of the value judgments they're made about porn. Or we say I'm an evangelical Christian and this freaked me out. Therefore it's porn. But these are all very individual subjective definitions, not anything done

with like intellectual rigor, you know. Yeah. And also that kind of definition is very like personally subjective. I think some other people might think of, oh, that point is bad because maybe has native consequences on the actor, or maybe like some people would you know, people have different

perceptions of what they're seeing. Right, Some people might watch a certain video and be like, this is bad because it's violent, you know, or there's aggression here where someone else looking at the same video might be like, oh, I love this. I'm totally into this. Do you know what I mean? Well, are women who've been sexually assaulted and use faux ratemed imagery to process that? Right, So like you can't take I mean you could, but I don't think it's a good idea to take that away

from that person. Yeah, I mean it's interesting, Like I don't feel like I'm not going to like say I have the answers. But you can see how some people categorize. I know that because I did prepare and I read an interview saying you don't like talking about your thoughts and feminist porn, But this is my nerdy way of

getting at it. You know, some people might make this like false dichotomy, like feminist porn is all good and non feminist poor now is all bad, and you might see that kind of black and white way of thinking. And what are your thoughts in that? Living under hyper capitalism, I won't fuck with any porn that can't pay my full rate, and that immediately takes most feminist porn companies

out of the running. M Yeah, you've talked about the structural barriers, right, because women trouble in the porn industry, so you see, obviously capitalism is a major structural barrier. So before we get into that, there's like a higher level issue. Okay, and there be feminism under capitalism, What do you think under the conditions of capitalism at all, can there be real feminism? And I don't think so. I think capitalism causes a lot of situations that are

bad for women. For instance, women get paid less on average, and the defense is, well, they go off to have a baby. And I'm like, guys, if we just like valued people based on what they do in the world

instead of how many dollars they can generate. Then we wouldn't be valuing women less because of their propensity to do the child bearing thing contributing to the next wave of population, which, like, I'm pretty invested in someone being young and spry enough to like give me my injections when I'm ninety, you know, all right, So feminism can

it exist under capitalism? It's an interesting point, and I'm trying to think of what would like I was trying think, like, what would a counterpoint be, Like, can you have like feminists given you any counterpoints to that? Well, capitalists have yeah, sure, yeah, wrong with the free market blah blah blah, And I well, it's you know, except for the fact that it's crushing millions of people slowly to extremely poverty en death. So, like, you know, aside from that, I don't really know what

else is wrong with capitalism. Can we get the bloodsucking monster off my face before we worry about what I'd like there instead? Thanks? Right, I gotta tell you, I don't have time for liberal feminists. I'm fucking sick of dealing with liberal feminists. I don't care what liberal feminists have to say to me about anything anymore. Because I was an open ear for a decade and they didn't make me feel good and they didn't help the situation. So I'm just not really like, I don't know what

their deal is now. I don't care to know. Maybe in another five years I'll poke my head in and be like, hey, live THEMS, what are you up to lately? Maybe our goal is aligned now, but I'm not planning on it. So liberal feminism, so I mean, you're not are you conservative? Are you? Like? What is a liberal? Like, there's far left and there's all sorts of gradations. So well, let's see, I have five psychiatric labels. I'm also a CIS woman and a pornographer, and I feel like that's

enough labels for me. If really pressed, I will say I'm a conservative anarchist, but like, that's only because I want you to go away and stop pushing me to label myself further. Wow, concern that would be a label I've never heard. Right, There's me and my honorary brother. That's it the only ones. Okay, Well, it's just like, hey, like, look, I'm down with dismantling capitalism. I do feel like actually burning it to the ground is going to cause a

lot more suffering than it really needs to. So like, let's do this piecemeal, but build towards a more autonomous society. Well, yeah, yeah, so don't aren't Most global feminists I know would agree with that, right, Most liberal feminists i've met want to know how I feel about the fact that my job perpetuates rape culture. Oh, I see, I see. They actually

say things like that to my face. They say, this woman is clearly dissociated because she describes mechanical injury in doctory language and she's too much of a dumbhore to do that. They didn't literally say it that way, but like that was the message, and I'm like, what else am I supposed to call it? When I get bonked in the cervix and now my pussy hurts because of a mechanical thing, I call that a mechanical injury. So do you understand it? Yeah? Yeah, So you're dealing with

a lot of judgment. You're doing a lot of inferences. Yeah, And like, I don't want your husband cheating on me with my porno. I want him coming to you honestly and saying I like to watch porno. And then all that being okay, it's not my fault that your boyfriend uses my porno to do things that you're not happy with. Like, you need to deal with that. You need to deal with your own relationship, not go blaming an entire industry. Yeah, so you wrote this interesting article relating kind of relating

to this about this wedding that you were at. It was sort of old ship from Vice. Yeah, that was a million years ago. I know they milk it like I'm still writing for them, but it's been a very long time. But the overall point there still stands about the pitfalls of heteronormality or normativity and monogamy and sort of the judgment. And so that was just an example of someplace you were where people were. But that wasn't

liberal feminists. That was mis cited older Americans who just aren't exposed to much that scandalizes them, so they didn't know how to digest the fact of a porn star being at someone's wedding. But that's very different from the liberal feminist problem. They weren't actively trying to be shitty to me. They were just having an issue processing something they'd never run across before. Sure, and you even said

in that article you said filled with conservative people. So I wasn't looking at to the political view, but I was just trying to link it to the fact that, you know, there was a lot of judgment, and you made this point. You said to me, the thing we describe as cheating as a lack of respect for boundaries. So you're saying, like, let's focus on the things that really matter, that transcend. You know what your lifestyle is sexually, right, Yeah,

I mean, of course. Now, like poly's a thing that's had like reality TV shows about it, and like the world has changed. We have multiple sex workers with regular columns in respectable publications, not like oh one of us gets an op ed every once in a while, but like actual column inches in printed media, Like that's legit. So the world is sort of a very different place than it was when I was writing for Vice. And one of the things that's different is I have too

much self respect to accept fifty hollars an article. Right, me too, by the way, Yeah, I mean as a science writer, I feel like science writers get even less than important stars writing. I don't know. This is definitely one of the most unique interviews I've had on the Psychology Podcast in my four year history. So thank you for Yeah, no, thank you thank you for I mean, I love every unique experience I have in this podcast.

I like going with it all right, Why does our collective conception of quote normal sex leave out a whole lot of sexual preferences that quote normal people have. American Puritanism. Read Fukuo's History of Sexuality. It explains it all well

for our listeners who haven't read that necessarily. So America was founded by people who looked at England and when you guys just aren't up tight enough for us, And then they came here and they set up shop and became the dominant culture through like kicking out or negotiating out all of the other cultures. And this super like evengelical esque Christian stuff is just baked into our culture.

So anything that isn't for the purpose of procreation, whether we're religious or not, we're living in a world, like in a country specifically that shames things that aren't for procreation. We're like, oh my god, Ainal, that's so weird. You can't make a baby that way ew or like fee gross, I'm so freaked out by the foot guy Dan Savage. What do I do? Oh? I keep the foot guy, because if I don't keep the foot guy, I'm gonna end up with a diaper fetishist. And like, what the

fuck is that? Dan Savage? Literally, what are you doing? You're shaming people with diaper fetishes? They're people too. Do you do that? Yeah? Every time someone's like I met this guy who's got a foot fetish, he's like, be nice to the foot fetish guy, or you'll get a diaper fetishist next, and you'll deserve it, right, he's a tiny bit less blunt, but like only the tiniest bit, And like, why why do we freak out about all

these things that are like, actually pretty common? And it's because people are afraid to talk about they're actually pretty common things, because there's always someone waiting in the wings to go, ew, what's wrong with you? E gross, you're a perver? And that doesn't feel good. So people stop being open and honest about their quirks, and we just you know, Plus the ban on speaking about sexuality in graphic detail. In most outlets like Slate, I can't use

the word fuck. I have a whole sex advice column. It's about sex. I can't use the word fuck. Where's that slate. Oh it's slate and yikes. Yeah, they don't allow any of their columnists to use that word. They don't allow their sex columnists to use that word, allow everyone else to. I don't know. I didn't ask. Oh my god was I got to figure out how to write about sex without using the word fuck? And I did it, and I do it over and over again

every week, and I will until my contract expires. But like, that's probably because they have advertisers who have a problem with the word fuck. It's not plea, it's fault. They're part of an ecosystem and like Johnson, and Johnson doesn't want to be published next to the word fuck or similar. So there we have it, and a similar process takes place in all media outlets. And so we're just constantly and this is where FUCO comes in the discourse, is

in the absence of the discourse. By constantly talking about how we can't talk about sex, we're just making people obsessed with sex. But they don't even know what they're obsessed with. Because it's really hard to find information. Unless you're going on Google looking for porn. You can find plenty of porn, you can't find that much like emotional sharing, although that is changing. Yeah, for sure, I agree with that, and that is a bit of a theme we have

in the show. Like I don't know if you've come across like justin Leigh Miller's research on sexual fantasies. He has this book called tell Me what You Want. I believe that's the title of it. No, So just to recap it's it could be no surprise to Stoya, people's sexual fantasies turn out to be much kinkier and out there than people then I guess one might expect, you know, and things are just much more common. So you know, this book wasn't atta I actually do. I do recommend

this book. I think it's a really good book and kind of he did this like very very large scale study on the actual contents of people's fantasies. And that's one way I guess of normalizing a lot of these things. Do you think there's any like forms of sexual fantasies? Like it's damaging, it's dangerous to normalize. So one of the liberal feminist arguments is that by being permissive about

the fantasy, we're shoring up the desire for the real thing. Right, I haven't seen any study that I think has good data on this. I will say in one of the Nordic countries they allowed something foreign prostitution, I'm not sure which, and the rate of sex crimes went down, But I don't know. I wasn't there. You know, I want to

see five studies that say that. I want to see five studies that ran for ten years each that say that before I'm like, this is the truth, you know, but my gut says that fantasy is something that a lot of people don't want to make reality. Necessarily, that's true, and it's a harmless, private thing that an individual can do alone or together with their partner, and as long as their partner's consenting, than who the fuck cares? But I'm like, look, man, stay away from kids, stay away

from people who are incapable of consenting. I either very mentally ill or the wasted. Don't fuck animals because they can't say no either. But like, other than that, if you're not hurting anyone, who cares. If you are hurting someone and they're masochist and you're hurting them in exactly the way they asked for, who cares? So? Okay, well, what about you said the vulnerable, Like, I'm just trying to think on the spot. Here there's the whole list

of what counts as vulnerable. I mean, could Sell make the argument that young girls that enter the field that are naive and some of them get exploited and that should be fun answer? What's your answer to that? One time I spoke at Barnard as part of Take Back the Night Week. I actually spoke there twice, but on one of those occasions, someone in the audience was like, what do you think about raising the age to enter

porn to twenty one? And I was like, all right, how many people in this room are under the age of twenty one? And all these hands go up, and I'm like, all right, how many of you have made a huge life affecting choice like signing up for a boatload of student loans and moving across the country to attend university. And all the hands stay up, and I'm like,

do you see my point here? And they're like, yes, if we're allowed to take on crippling debt, someone else our age should be allowed to take on a crippling reputational job. You've written about what we can learn about privacy from porn stars? Could you elaborate on what we can learn about I mean, I think that ties into

the reputational aspects. I mean I did in an essay for The New York Times, which was published in the opinion section, And if they don't want to go read it there, they can read it in my book Philosophy. Pussycats important because I've already covered what we can learn about privacy from porn stars. It's really not that much.

That headline was a bit click baity, but I mean, if you want to dig into the like having layers of names and how that connects to the real world, like I already wrote that, and I love it if you either paid with your eyeballs in traffic to the New York Times website or paid in dollars that eventually trickle partially into my pocket. Already done that, thinking Okay, is there anything else you wanted to say about the benefits disadvantage of choosing a porn career. I feel like

I've done that at length as well. And anyone who thinks they're going to get in and have the career that I had is probably self aggrandizing a bit, because it takes a lot of dedication and a Dreaming, asked Ton of good luck. You can't use the career of someone who started over a decade ago as a template for a career an adult. Now you're going to have to break your own ground. And other than that, like good luck, don't come back to me and tell me I told you it was a good idea for me. Yeah,

I want to go to you. That's not my problem. I'm not going to be reading the comments. I'm not encouraging anyone. Yeah, it's a high risk industry. There's risk of sexually transmittable infection, there's risk of mechanical injury, and that's the goddamn right phrase for it. There's huge risk to your reputation, Like you are going to have a hard time getting and keeping a job outside of porn once you've done it. But if you want to do it, then like good luck, all right, hook me up when

you've had a year's worth of seasoning. Well, thanks for that advice. So you added this question that after we talk about the pitfalls of monogamy, So let's compare and contrast BDSM with monogamy. This I was trying to distract you from the old thing that I'm bored that they don't want to promote with this like other exciting question. Uh you other exciting question, Well, the comparent contrast between

BDSM and monogamy. So a long time ago someone asked me if I could compare and contrast BDSM and monogamy, and I was like, you know what I will at some point today is that day I have no way of contacting them to tell them their wish has finally been granted. You might be listeners of the psychotic Yeah, maybe they'll stumble across it well retweet on the Stoya channels, and maybe they'll see it. So in monogamy, you're saying I like you so much that I want to belong

to you, especially marriage. I like you so much that we're going to tie each other together in a way that's based on the conception of women as property. BDSM, you say I like this person and I want to be yours for one hour or or maybe it's a whole relationship, right or yeah, or sometimes it's an entire twenty four to seven relationship, which is rare and not for the faint of heart. It's like definitely varsity level sexing.

But you're saying, we have this agreement and we belong to each other in very static prescribe roles SOSM and marriage. In both you're signing up for a pretty dictated set of roles, and you can negotiate what those specific roles are.

Like you can say like, hey, like I really want a nineteen fifty style household, and you can go, that's cool, except I need to have a part time job for myself to have essentially pin money as like a safety and that's I mean someone about to get married or someone who's about to negotiate a BDSM relationship could want that specific things. That's the compare part. What's the contrast part.

BDSM relationships don't go through the government. You don't have to have a license saying these people are doing things in the prescribed manner. And on the one hand, that's really great because who wants the government telling you how you can and can't have sex, right, But on the other hand, and like, there's no recourse, there's no penalty. The only thing that happens to someone if they say ignore your safe word is maybe they get a reputation

as a bad player in the community. Maybe, whereas with a marriage you divorce them, there's a mediation. There's sometimes a financial penalty, especially in cases where there's no pre NEP and someone stepped out and cheated. No, it's a very good point. It's a very good point. I recently saw an article making the case that BDSM should be thought of as a sexual orientation. I wanted to get your thoughts about that, about adding that to you know,

the category of sexual orientations. I think poly versus open is definitely a kinsy scale level thing. I think BDSM is far too broad of a category to be an oriented Like I'm oriented towards BDS and what the ever loving shit does that mean? Right? Like, I am a sadist, I'm a masochist absolutely, I'm into bondage absolutely, i am submissive, I'm dominant absolutely. But BDSM is an oriented that's saying like my fetish is eating pussy. Like, no, come on,

well that's not that's not BDSM. Obviously. I know that wasn't your point either, but maybe couldn't sell and you know, make the case that having some of these more submissive or dominantancies in bed itself are like a sexual orientation. Yes, However, BDSM is too broad of a category. Yeah, I agree with that. So, as I said, you can say I'm submissive as an orientation. You can say I'm dominant, I'm a masochist, I'm a sadist, I'm into bondage. All of

these things are orientations. But BDSM is a category that cannot be an orientation because that tells you nothing about the person other than they're a little bit kinky somehow. Right, it'd be funny to like say, kinky is a sexual orientation that doesn't even make any sense, right, it doesn't. It doesn't tell you anything. Therefore, it's a useless label. Well, I'm gonna send you this paper, and but I have seventeen books I have to read. I don't know when

I'm going to get around to this paper. Well, emails that sit for more than a month just get jettisoned in the ABYSS. It's enough. Okay, Well, maybe I want to send it to because I don't want to give you that pressure in an Okay, if you're whenever you're interested in reading it, you let you know. Okay, So, uh no, got do you remember an article about something? Yeah? Yeah, I'll know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I no,

you won't. Why all I know? Maybe you will maybe you have a mind like a steel trap instead of the steel calendar that I have. Oh well, I wouldn't go that far. Okay. So something I know you're a big advocate of is sex worker rights. Sexual rights are under attack these days, right, Could you talk a little about in want ways and what sort of to see where you've personally been doing. I mean, I really wish everyone would stop trying to frame me as an activist.

It does a disservice to dedicated activists like I just do what I can when it's right in front of me. But I said, okay, I said, in what ways do you advocate for? I mean people can davocate without being quote an activist, right right. So the second part of what I was going to say is I consider the word advocacy a bit too strong for my catches catch can style. Like Audrey retweets the right things, but that's Audrey. Audrey's been given a directive to keep the lights on

on the story at ink Twitter page. So I don't kill myself because people tell me to kill myself online all the time, and there's only so much you can listen to that before you're like, actually, this would put an end to people telling me to kill myself, and

then it starts to sound useful. So as substituting the word advocacy in my question for a word that where the question makes sense, can you answer the question, Well, there's no word that can make your question palatable to me, because I'm so tired of being called an activist, and advocacy is just too close. I can tell you that a number of states have started attempting to and some have successfully passed laws making it that much harder to

get an abortion. That's a real problem. I can tell you that Trump is still present, a man who is proud of grabbing people by the pussy, grab him by the pussy direct quote. He's still in charge of the whole country. Things are grim. The only stuff I do is like when I'm called upon to speak for all sex workers, which is hella uncomfortable for me, I'll be like, yo,

trans women of color die in in the street. Real problem here, all right, now, let's try to promote my porn company that pays my bills, or that's trying to get to the point where it pays my bills, keeps the lights on. Yeah, you really defy classification don't you. I do. People spend a lot of time trying to label me, and I resent it deeply. You're very sensitive to words that could hint as though someone's trying to

label you. Does this I'm not going to start psychoanalyzing you a promise, but does this relate to like just an overall sort of personality have of being fiercely independent as a person? Is this like it's a theme your

whole life? I have been described as fiercely independent, most recently by the not boyfriend, who asked me on the first date how I felt about kids, and I explained why, I just didn't think I would be pro creating with any American men or in America, and who was like, you're fiercely independent And I'm like why And he's like, well, your entire stance presupposes that you don't have a partner you can count on, you don't have a community you can count on, and you don't have a social safety

that you can count on. And I'm like, yeah, I'm an American woman. I assume that there wasn't a second date. No, there was, Oh good, so you still have heated what do you say? He saw me? Good? Good? I'm trying to see you. I'm trying to see you too. I appreciate you as you are. Yeah, it's the fiercely independent definitely a running theme. I mean, look, I resonate with that. I mean just the moment connection here. Like my hoary child, I was in special education and I hated labels and

heated classifications. I had like an auditory thing. But so I grew up and developed this knee jerk reaction to attempts to kind of put a label on me as well. So I got it. I empathize with it. Is that part of what you went into psychology? Oh? Yeah, I mean for sure. I wrote a book called and Gifted Intelligence Redefined, which was a story of my early educational experiences and why I was just like determined as a child to like make the education system a better place

for quirky people, quirky kids. That's really awesome. Yeah, my mission in life. Nice. Yeah. I will have to admit that this conversation in particular has been a little bit outside my comfort zone. But I'm going with it because I appreciate you and what I've done. Oh you haven't. You haven't done anything. It's just in terms of outside

of my knowledge base, if that makes sense. Okay, Like, if we're talking about the science of intelligence or creativity, I'm on comfortable ground and I can start citing all sorts of things. But you're raising lots of intriguing interesting points I haven't considered before and on the spot. You know, I don't like claiming that I know the answer to anything without looking deeply into it. So thank you for stimulating in me ideas. I mean, it's funny saying that

thanks for stimulating me, but ideas some type of ideas. Well, now I've got this weird thing for you. Okay, what's that? And I'm kind of putting the psychologist hat on your head. When I have to be creative in the sexuality space, I have to be aroused physically, not emotionally intellectually, because you know, women experience a lot of genital non concordance, but my body has to be turned on. That's so interesting. I mean, I think that leaks very much. I'm literally

linking this to my research. This might be a stretch, but the connects between like safety, that need for safety and kind of I'm really fascinated with this toggle between safety and exploration and how you know, when we feel like our environment isn't safer, we feel like I guess there could be situations like when you're not being turned on, you know that maybe you're in a thrending environment, maybe you're with your situation that why would I want to

explore with this person or in this environment? So I think that very much makes sense. Sweet if that makes you feel any better? This much less weird, well you shouldn't feel weird. It's it's about an inch less weird. How many interest did it start with? Everything's relative. I feel like I've got like a foot naf weird inside me, and right now I feel like I'm like seventeen inches. Oh my god, this conversation is so different than like the one hundred and fifty other episodes I've had in

this show. And you know, I'm wondering if my listeners are going to either have like a all out revolt of my show or actually maybe even respect. I hope they respect it more. In the intro, like, make it clear, I like it is really odd this went No. Well, I'm not going to frame that way because I hate when people call me. I would never frame it that way. I'm proud of how odd I am. So, I mean, look, I feel maybe I should have started off with the kind of the context of how I know you, because

people might be like, wait, wait, how does Scott? I mean suddenly like these worlds team together in a way that people might not make obvious sense. It's an IQ test. How did that go together? I went to your Sexualate event in Brooklyn. It looked so I saw the advertisement. It looks so cool to kind of have in high brow intell actual discussions about and various books that have eradic content. And I found these discussions that I tended. Went to a couple of these really interesting and really

I learned a lot. So I want to thank you for hosting that. That's where I met you. Thanks for coming. Yeah, thank you added things to the discussion. Oh really did I yep? I'm it's like really nerdy. And my friend Sky came with me. He's, you know, a good friend of mine. She was excited I was telling you today and she asked me a question. I said, do you

have any questions for Stilly? And she asked me some questions you might if I ask you a Sky question, which author from any time through history would you like to go out partying with, and what would your drink of choice be for such an occasion. Well, I would always choose Rakia. And if they don't have Rakia, then I want a Billini. And if they don't have Billini, then I don't care as long as it's got booze in it. I would. I love howue you'd started on.

You jumped on the drink part first. I wanted to deal with the easy one first. Yeah, actually that makes sense. I really I feel like Fuco. You really like Fuco. I really like Fuco. He contradicts himself all the time. He just forces people to deal with that because sometimes life is contradictory and it's going to be fine, and I respect the hell out of that. I agree one hundred percent with what you just said. I don't agree one hundred percent with all the things Foco says. You

probably don't agree a hundred percent with what anyone says. Yeah, yeah, so that's a straw man. But Kristoya, I argue with everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you do. I know. There's a term we have in the field called the highly sensitive person. It's like Elaine Arron has developed in like fifteen percent of the human population scores high in the scale. I'm just curious, Like I gave you this scale, like how you would score in it? Probably very high, probably very high. Put me

the scale. I'll do it. I'm curious. No, I will send you the scale. But it combines it's a gift. I think it's ultimately a gift. I mean, a big part of my research and now to start talking about something that fel little more comfortable talking about. It is just the fact that people with all sorts of different worrying disabilities and different ways of seeing the world, like viewing it through the giftedness lens, as opposed to the model we've operated in for the past like one hundred

years of education, which is like the deficit model. So I have, Yeah, I have add which is attention deficit disorder. And I feel like the whole psychiatric community needs to understand that it is not a deficit of attention. In some ways it can be harnessed, but mostly it's too much attention. Like I'm trying to pay attention over here, but this buzzing noise is too loud, and so that's

where my brain wants to go. And we just have like it's it's not just an add problem, like we have all this deficit language that keeps people from looking at their strengths. So you ask for the highly person scale. Send that to you. Here's another thing I'd like to

send you. Let me know if you want it. I wrote an article for Scientific American on hya DHD is a gift and talking about the latest neuroscience of why we should think of it just as hyperactive imagination, yes, disorder as opposed to like a disorder of attention, like reframing it. So I think you might resonate with that. Do you mind if I send that to you. I would love to be that. When I need to be creative,

I can't take my riddle in that day. Yeah, like the sex advice column, I can sit down and bang it out, no big deal. But if I have to write some like personal essay, I can't take my riddle in that day. That makes a lot of sense. I mean you're going to resonate with this article. That's what it's all about, is the link between ADHD and creativity. When I say it's a gift, I mean for creativity.

I'm so excited. And what we call in the field divergent thinking ability, which is that ability to kind of think of many possible uses for things, or many possible people call out of the box. See now I'm getting a sensitive over because that phraeze. I hate that phrase just as much as you hate the word advocacy. It's just you're using better word words to describe the thing

that people call it. That's right, that's right. Well, I've sent my wholeker studying creativity and they have what's called a low late and inhibition, and I feel like that's what you have. And I feel like, but okay, so most people, I'm just going to define it in the biological world like other animals, for it's a pre conscious gating mechanism, like everything you see, is it relevant to my current goal or not? And humans have the remnants

of that, we share it with other animals. So for so many years, having a highlight inhibition has been viewed as a universal good, like it's good to filter out things that are irrelevant, you know, to your cronicles, et cetera. But only in recent years I have psychologists myself included, started to study, well, could there be any benefits of having a reduced nan inhibition? Kind of having a what's called a leaky filter, and psychologists showing that there are

a lot of benefits. It turns out for creativity, they have been looking at the right places. Psychologists have been looking at like all these psychopathological outcomes as opposed to actual positive things like divergent thinking and creative achievement. And you find creati achievement in the arts in particular is why badly correlated with a reduced line in ahibition. It's related to ADHD as well. But again it's how do we frame these issues? Right? This is really fascinating. I'm glad.

I'm glad this podcast took quite a turned in it. We swear it was like a roller coaster. How do I tell listeners not to give up in the first ten minutes in the sense that it'll smooth out? How do I tell them? I think I think that's in the intro where really looks do I stick with it? Argumentative and sometimes actually regularly interviews get off to a bumpy start. I feel like you started kind of like really defensive. Yes, and I feel your entire demeanor right

now is completely different. And by the way, as you are, I'll take you as you are right. So it's like I want judging that beginning. I'm making an observation about as an interviewer, you got to be open till whatever comes right. So I'm literally going to send this as like a press screaming in the future. Really, oh okay, here's a sample, like here's how you do it right? Yes, I am always this combative coming in, like why is that? Is it like because you've been hardened in a sense,

like you've been asked so many annoying questions. I mean, is that why? I have no idea? You tell me why. When I started performing in porn, journalists would sit down and start with sentences like how disappointed are your parents? And like the world has changed. My career has evolved to the point where I have the kind of stature

where they don't try that shit with me. But I've just been through too many interviews where the journalist was hostile, or they'd set me up for a gotcha moment, or I get into the studio for a radio show and they're like, Haha, we're going to play the Gail Dines clip and I'm like, excuse me, you went to Gails. You didn't tell me you were going to Gail Dines, like, how dare you? I don't want to be in the same show as Gail Dines, Like that's how little time

I have for her whole deal. And it's just you learn through years of experience that journalists are probably not your friend and you need to be a little spiky at the beginning to protect yourself. I get that, you know,

I totally get that. And you do see this. You do see this with like academics who maybe their research is not politically correct that they study and then they get on these like interviews and people constantly conflate because you study this controversial topic that means you advocate, you believe it. So like if you study intelligence differences, right, people, and you get on a show, it gets tiring after a while for being able to call you a genesis

eu genesis. It's like, wait, no, I study intelligence, but this is nothing. Yeah, I study because I find it interesting and curious scientific question. And sometimes the truth isn't Sometimes the truth isn't political correct, you know, I mean it's not my fault. Oh, like you've all Noah Harari's Sanderthal's Yeah, Like how like different populations have different percentages of not exactly Sapien's DNA, and he's like this, like Nazis would have a field day with this. So it's

really high octane to talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, if I may use the word fu fuck Nazis not a fan. Even Slate would be fine with that. Yeah, so they did all that because it's yeah, no, no, absolutely. Well, look, I think I'll end this interview now unless there's anything else you wanted to talk about. Maybe someday, Sotoia, maybe we could have a part two where we just nerd out over like areas of mutual sort of science, you know what I mean, like something like that. Yeah, okay,

let's do that. I know what if we flip the script and I ask you, oh my gosh, I wish I had a psychologist's opinion, Yeah, let's do that. Awesome, And I'll tell you why I want to do that. So I've long been asked by listeners the Psychology podcast, when are you going to be interviewed? What about you? So maybe you'd be the perfect person to do that.

So maybe I'll have to do some research I don't really have, Like I'm trying to think my most controversial thing maybe the time that Charlie Sheen yelled at me from the stage of the Radio City Music Hall. I think that's my most controversial thing that you'd find. A few googled me on YouTube. Why did Charlie she yell at you? Well, I was doing well. He was doing his meltdown, you know, era, and I was doing a cover story for Psychology Today on how to Spot a Narcissist.

And I was supposed to interview him that night, and they had my business card, and I went to a show and right after the break he sits there and he pulls out my business card and he reads he says, fuck Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD n YU. He thinks I'm by poor, but we all know I'm by winning. He just went on this curse filled trade against me as I'm sitting here in the audience, just like dah, that's me he's talking about. It's on YouTube. But anyway, so, but I mean, I was just so awkward. It was

so awkward. I wasn't going to like pathologize you, I was, I really wasn't. I just wanted to have a conversation with you. But anyway, that was nuts. So but I was just trying to think of, like what would be the most controversy thing. Okay, so anyway sounds good. Maybe we'll do a part two sometime. And also I feel like somehow it was fitting that there was this buzzing sound, which, by the way, seems less right now? Does it seem less to you? Two? Do you think the buzzing sound

like somehow attract your mood during this interview? Cooking? But it sounds psychotic to say perhaps, I mean, do you know what I mean? Like, isn't that crazy how that happened? Yeah? It is crazy. Wow. I need to think about the metaphysics of that, because I don't know if that we can explain that scientifically. But I do feel like it was, you know, like a mood ring of some sort, do you know what I mean? Like grumpier I got, the louder it got, and then when I started to calm down,

it disappeared. I'm not going to frame this as like you grumpy issue, because that's not really totally fair of you. But I would frame it as a sort of tension between us sort of you know what I mean? By ten? Just me trying to like figure out what direction am I going to take that on the spot, you know sort of thing, and then we got more in flow. That's how I'm going to frame it, you know. And I feel like once flow happened, I feel like that

noise went away. So anyway, I'm just gonna put this up as it is, and I guess apologize people for the sound, but does somehow feel fitting, doesn't it? All right? Thanks Stoy for being on the Psychology Podcast and chatting with me today. Thank you for having me. I apologize for being mildly Nightmary shit at the beginning. No, You're awesome. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you

enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a reading and review of the Psychology Podcast on iTunes. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and tune in next time. I'm more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.