The Big Porn Debate (3 Experts Debate): The Unseen Dangers Of Nofap, The Adult Industry Is Exploiting Our Brains, How Porn Will Change Your Brain!

0:00:04 This has never happened before. Today we have three experts in their field with
0:00:09 three different opinions debating the subject of porn. This is the first time
0:00:14 I’ve gone on porn habit work. In one corner we have Dr. Rena Malik, the sex
0:00:18 scientist helping millions of couples enhance their sex lives. In the other
0:00:22 corner we have Dr. K. The psychiatrist specializing in helping people with
0:00:27 addictions to pornography and more. Who is up against Erica Lust who runs a large
0:00:32 pornographic production company. No one can sit on the fence here. Is porn a
0:00:36 benefit to people and society? Definitely and especially for people who
0:00:41 haven’t really had that right to pleasure to understand their sexuality. But I
0:00:45 think what we’re clearly seeing is a trend of it being damaging. Let me just
0:00:50 share with y’all what I’m afraid of. It is doing way more to the brain than we
0:00:54 ever realized. So the first thing that we know is that. But there’s data to
0:00:59 suggest that couples that use pornography together have better sexual
0:01:04 encounters and women who use pornography have better sexual satisfaction rates.
0:01:10 And remember that women’s sexuality has been so much about pleasing others and
0:01:14 you see it with the orgasm gap. A devil’s advocate would say that there is a
0:01:18 significant number of women interested in looking a certain way that they’re
0:01:22 often seeing on pornography. That’s harmful. I’m a bit suspicious about this
0:01:27 because on the street that statement is from ten years ago. There’s also
0:01:30 unrealistic expectations about performance that creates shame. And
0:01:35 small penis anxiety is a real thing and it’s often from watching pornography. The
0:01:41 real problem is we are not giving sex education to our young people. They are
0:01:46 lost. But it doesn’t have to be an addiction. It’s the way that you relate
0:01:50 to it. It is something that people can control. And parents can learn how to
0:01:54 have these conversations with their kids. And there are a couple of really nice
0:01:58 techniques that you can use. The first is that…
0:02:09 Let’s start with introductions. Dr. Reena, who are you and what you do? So I’m a
0:02:13 urologist which is essentially a medical and surgical doctor of the
0:02:18 genital urinary tract. But I see myself more as a digital opinion leader in the
0:02:22 space of sexual health and urologic health. So someone who can talk to and
0:02:28 speak about complex concepts in addition to sexual health in a way that
0:02:32 people can understand. Can you give me sort of a view of the variety of things
0:02:36 that you’ve worked on in your career, the types of patients you’ve worked within
0:02:39 the subject matter broadly that you’ve addressed and are confronted with in your
0:02:44 line of work? Absolutely. So as a urologist, we’re trained to treat anything in
0:02:48 those areas in the genital urinary tract. So that can be kidney cancer, prostate
0:02:52 cancer, bladder cancer, sexual health, erectile dysfunction, female sexual
0:02:59 dysfunction, kidney stones, children’s issues. But then when I did a fellowship
0:03:02 in what’s called female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery or
0:03:07 urogyne ecology. So I initially trained in dealing with voiding dysfunction and
0:03:11 problems with bladder leakage, overactive bladder, prolapse, those sorts of
0:03:15 things, and subsequently extended my practice into sexual medicine. So I take
0:03:21 care of patients with issues with erectile dysfunction, arousal or disorders,
0:03:27 ejaculatory dysfunction, libido issues, lubrication issues, a whole bunch of
0:03:32 different areas of issues that people deal with when it comes to sexual health.
0:03:38 Dr. Kay, same question to you. Sure. So I’m a psychiatrist by training, but I had
0:03:43 kind of a roundabout way to get there. So I failed out of college due to video
0:03:47 game addiction and then went to India to find myself, studied to become a monk
0:03:50 for about seven years and then wound up going to medical school, becoming a
0:03:54 psychiatrist. And now the majority of the work that I do is actually like focused
0:03:58 on the internet. So what I noticed when I was training was that if you look at
0:04:02 like academic psychiatry or psychiatry, we focus on things like depression or
0:04:08 bipolar disorder or anxiety. But I saw that there was a whole lot of evolving
0:04:12 mental health problems for the digital generation. Video game addiction,
0:04:16 pornography addiction. And I noticed that most of the psychiatrists weren’t
0:04:20 focused on those. We kind of had an opioid epidemic that’s still going on.
0:04:23 A lot of problems with alcohol and marijuana, but there are all these
0:04:26 digital addictions that are emerging. And those are the people that I work with now.
0:04:34 Erika. Yeah. Who are you and what do you do? I’m Erika. I’m an independent adult
0:04:41 filmmaker. I’m an entrepreneur. I made my first short film, explicit short film,
0:04:50 20 years ago. And then I developed a career in this space of indie adult
0:04:57 cinema. And are you a director? Yes. Of adult films? Yeah. I direct films. I
0:05:03 produce films. I also run the company. To set the stage on where we are with
0:05:06 pornography, I found some statistics which I thought were quite pertinent to
0:05:10 the discussion, which is the first statistic is that 30% of all internet
0:05:13 traffic roughly is related to pornography. 35% of all internet downloads are
0:05:20 pornographic in nature. 79% of young men view pornography monthly. 64% of young
0:05:24 adults actively seek out pornography weekly or more often. One in five mobile
0:05:30 searches are for pornographic content. 58% of men and 38% of women watch porn
0:05:34 at work. And pornography websites receive more traffic than Netflix, Amazon
0:05:38 and Twitter combined. Interestingly, I found another statistic which said that
0:05:43 pornography in Poland has increased 310% between 2004, which I guess is when you
0:05:47 got into the business, and 2016. Some other sort of potentially adjacent
0:05:50 trends, which I thought were interesting, were that the percentage of men aged 18
0:05:58 to 24 reporting no sexual activity in the past year increased from 18.9% in 2000
0:06:04 to over 30% in 2016. And similar increases in sexual activity are seen in men
0:06:07 and women. Similar decreases in sexual activity have been seen in men and
0:06:10 women. Among high school students, the percentage who have never had sexual
0:06:18 intercourse increased from 45% in ’91 to 70% in ’21. And finally, the average age
0:06:22 of first exposure to pornography is now just 11 years old, and 64% of young
0:06:27 people report that they came across pornography by accident. So I guess my
0:06:35 first point of discussion that I wanted to raise is, is pornography a benefit to
0:06:39 people and society? And I realize that this question is intentionally short
0:06:43 and narrow, but that’s the basis of the first conversation. And I want to start
0:06:47 with you, Erika. Is porn a benefit to people in society?
0:06:52 It can be. It can be, definitely. And especially to the others who haven’t
0:06:59 really had that right to pleasure, to desire, to the sexuality. Remember that
0:07:04 women’s sexuality, especially, has been so much about pleasing others. I think
0:07:10 that it can help women to find, you know, their own desire to understand their
0:07:15 sexuality, to see others, what they like, what they are doing, and to turn
0:07:21 their liberty on, liberty on, which is obviously one of the things that so
0:07:26 many women are struggling with. Let’s go anti-clockwise. Dr. Kay, I’ll repeat
0:07:29 this statement. Is porn a benefit to people in society?
0:07:36 The way that porn is being produced and consumed is starting to cause way more
0:07:42 harm than good. I mean, the, the statistics that you really just machine
0:07:45 gunned out, right? Like it’s like one thing after another thing after another
0:07:50 thing of things that are, you know, very scary. Like each statement that both
0:07:52 y’all made, I could think about a specific person that I’ve worked with
0:07:56 where it’s like, yeah, I’ve seen that problem. I’ve seen that problem, you
0:08:00 know, early exposure. So when you get exposed to pornography before puberty,
0:08:04 so everyone thinks that pornography is about, you know, like sexual lust and,
0:08:08 and this kind of stuff. And I think in a, in a good way it can be. But what I’ve
0:08:12 seen a lot of, for adults, is that children are getting exposed. And I’ve
0:08:17 seen like a very scary correlation between early exposure to pornography,
0:08:21 like seven, eight, nine years old, right? So I think your statistic was the
0:08:25 average is 11. Yeah. That’s average, which means that there are people that
0:08:29 are higher and people that are lower. And when something, I don’t know what
0:08:33 exactly, but when we get exposed to pornography very early, it makes some
0:08:38 kind of alteration in our brain that makes us way more likely to addictions,
0:08:41 not only pornography, but other things. So I think that there, you know,
0:08:46 sexuality is a healthy part of human existence. A lot of the current
0:08:50 research suggests that masturbation is also like relatively speaking, not
0:08:56 unhealthy. It’s somewhat healthy. And so pornography can be a part of that. I
0:09:00 think especially listening to Erica and how pornography can be used to elevate
0:09:05 horizons, increase awareness, there can be benefits. But I think what we’re
0:09:11 clearly seeing is a trend of it being damaging. So I would say that I agree
0:09:15 with Erica completely. I think there’s actually some data to suggest that
0:09:19 women who use pornography have better sexual satisfaction rates, have more
0:09:23 frequency of sexual encounters because they’re learning about their bodies.
0:09:27 And we can’t know exactly why that is, but we know there is a correlation in
0:09:30 that specific way. And so when people are using pornography for sexual
0:09:37 curiosity, for pleasure, they’re generally showing good, for the most
0:09:41 part, without any signs of addiction or concerns of compulsion and use of
0:09:44 pornography. They’re using it in a good way and they’re having better sex
0:09:49 because of it. Now, in terms of using it as a couple, there’s also really
0:09:54 strong correlations that couples that use pornography together have better
0:09:57 sexual encounters and better sexual satisfaction. So I think there’s a lot
0:10:02 of ways that pornography is used in a positive way. And not to undermine that
0:10:06 there are people who struggle with it absolutely. But I think, yes, there are
0:10:10 some benefits. It allows people to experience fantasies, to see different
0:10:14 types of sexual cultures, as Erica mentioned. And I think that that is an
0:10:20 important side of pornography in terms of using that to learn what you like and
0:10:24 learn what you want to try in your relationship, if that’s applicable.
0:10:26 Much of the literature that I’ve read about and the studies I’ve read about
0:10:31 show that if you consume pornography, you’re somewhat desensitized to the real
0:10:36 thing, i.e. sex and your relationships. And when we look at those stats on
0:10:39 sex listeners, people are having less sex than previous years. People are
0:10:43 losing their virginity later and later. And I wonder if that is we’ve sort of
0:10:47 been desensitized to the real thing because of pornography, Rena.
0:10:53 Absolutely. So I think that there is certainly people who they use pornography
0:10:57 as a way to achieve pleasure. And that is the sole way that they achieve
0:11:01 pleasure. So they are constantly using pornography and sometimes correlated
0:11:07 with a certain style of masturbation. And those things cannot be replicated
0:11:13 with penetrative intercourse of any kind or manual intercourse with
0:11:18 another person. And so in those cases, then it becomes difficult because
0:11:24 your brain habituates to that style of stimulation and excitement and visual
0:11:28 sensations that they’re getting from watching pornography. And so that does
0:11:32 happen to some individuals. I would say it’s not the large majority, but
0:11:36 certainly we’re seeing more of it. What is the impact, though, on the brain,
0:11:40 especially a young brain, that is exposed to pornography?
0:11:44 Yeah. I mean, there’s no studies on kids looking at pornography. So I
0:11:47 couldn’t tell you exactly, but you may be able to talk a little more about that.
0:11:50 Yeah. I mean, so like, first of all, I think this is a fascinating discussion.
0:11:54 And if I can kind of track back and freestyle for a bit. So I thought it was
0:11:58 so interesting because Stephen asked this question, right? And he’s like,
0:12:01 you know, is pornography a problem? And then I thought it was so interesting
0:12:04 that the two women at the table had the more positive answers.
0:12:09 And the dude is like, it’s bad. Right? So I think the first thing to
0:12:14 understand is that, and it’s so, for me, it’s eye-opening to hear both of y’all talk.
0:12:17 Because I think so much of it is like your experience of it, right? We’re talking
0:12:22 about pornography as if it’s an isolated thing. But the biggest takeaway that I
0:12:26 already have is that there is a relationship between the human and the
0:12:31 pornography. Erica was talking about, you know, how the pornography can be used to
0:12:37 help the human understand sexuality, become more familiar with pleasure that we
0:12:41 have with your desire. Yeah. And we have this orgasm gap. And then, you know,
0:12:45 she’s, and Marina was saying, you know, we don’t, I forgot exactly what you said,
0:12:50 but something about, we don’t see it very much. Or you said that the problems of,
0:12:55 you know, sexuality relating to pornography, or I thought you said not that common,
0:12:59 which is something that I’m not saying it’s common or uncommon. I think that’s
0:13:03 just such an interesting selection difference. Because I work with people
0:13:07 who have pornography and like death grip syndrome, because I’ve never heard it
0:13:12 discussed, is like very common. What’s death grip syndrome? So it’s exactly, it’s a
0:13:19 Twitch chat degenerate way of describing what Dr. Molek did a great medical job of
0:13:24 describing, which is that so what happens is our body can acclimatize to a certain
0:13:30 kind of stimulation. So when oftentimes what happens when, and I haven’t worked
0:13:36 with too many women and sexual stuff, way more men. So that there’s a selection bias there too.
0:13:42 But oftentimes what happens is that boys or men will start to masturbate without any kind of
0:13:49 lubrication. And so there’s a, they almost train their bodies physiologically to climax with a
0:13:56 certain degree, like a certain, you know, pounds per square inch of force, and a certain sensation,
0:14:00 which they get used to, not only at the physiologic level, but also at the neurological
0:14:07 level, which Dr. Molek alluded to, that there’s a certain kind of visual stimulation that they
0:14:12 almost get used to the brain acclimatizes to in order to achieve sexual climax.
0:14:17 And then what happens is when these people have a sexual relationship for the first time,
0:14:23 the sensations and the, the, from a visual perspective, you know, auditory perspective,
0:14:29 because the sounds that we hear in these big, you know, fast food pornography productions are
0:14:37 nowhere near the sounds in real life. And so the, the inputs of an actual sexual act make it very
0:14:44 difficult to have a satisfied sexual life. And so I think there’s a lot of subtlety to, you know,
0:14:49 when Dr. Molek said, when couples watch porn together, there are also studies that show that
0:14:56 as you increase your pornography consumption, that correlates with relationship dissatisfaction.
0:15:01 But that could be a chicken or the egg problem. Am I watching more porn because I’m unhappy with
0:15:07 the sexual relationship? Or does watching pornography decrease my satisfaction in the
0:15:12 relationship? And so I think it’s, there’s just like so much here to explore.
0:15:16 Yeah. Yeah. And I think your point about the couples, usually, yeah, if there’s a discrepancy
0:15:21 in one partner is watching more porn than the other, then there’s just, just decreased satisfaction,
0:15:25 certainly. And I think that your point to saying that you’re seeing a lot of it, well, that’s,
0:15:29 these people come to you for this problem, right? So you’re seeing this exclusively.
0:15:35 But I think in the general population, and maybe they’re not coming to the urologist as often,
0:15:40 right? But certainly I’m not seeing as much of it. And it’s not reported in terms of like people
0:15:44 complaining about it in studies. And again, these studies are small numbers and they’re not
0:15:48 generalizable to the entire population. But I would say that it’s not as common as I think
0:15:53 we let on. But the other important thing to add is that there’s a, because it’s so nuanced,
0:15:59 there’s a big moral component. People have a belief about what pornography is good or bad.
0:16:04 And so when they watch pornography, if they have a moral incongruence, meaning they think it’s bad
0:16:08 to watch pornography, they are more likely to report having a problem with pornography.
0:16:15 So there’s a lot of nuance here in terms of how pornography can be beneficial or harmful to
0:16:19 a specific individual and how it affects that specific individual’s brains. While it’s going
0:16:26 to sense the same pathways, you know, as any sort of strong visual stimuli, the way your body
0:16:31 sensitizes to those pathways is very individual. And what about pornography on the brain then in
0:16:35 terms of its impact on dopamine and how that then will cascade into other areas of our lives?
0:16:43 Yeah, so I mean, I’ll launch this one. So I think that the biggest takeaway that I have
0:16:48 is it is doing way more than we ever realized. So the first thing is if you get exposed to
0:16:54 pornography early on in life, and this accidental exposure, by the way, the most common story that
0:17:01 I hear, and this is such a weird like anecdotal statistic, is if you’re, if you have an older
0:17:07 brother, and you’re a younger brother, I see so many pornography addicts who have older brothers.
0:17:14 And the most common story that I hear is, you know, older brother is post puberty and is watching
0:17:18 pornography, which is like a little bit more understandable and acceptable. And then your
0:17:22 younger brother wants to do whatever you’re doing, and they get exposed to it at an early age.
0:17:28 So the first thing that we know is that early exposure correlates with an increase in potential
0:17:32 for addiction. That’s probably somewhat neurological and potentially somewhat
0:17:38 sociological or family oriented. Because if you think about what kind of seven year old will get
0:17:42 exposure to pornography, maybe parents aren’t in the house as much. So there could be other risk
0:17:48 factors. But we absolutely know that when you activate in an artificial way the dopaminergic
0:17:55 circuitry of the brain, it sensitizes the dopaminergic circuitry and makes it more vulnerable
0:18:00 to dopamine later on. This is something called the kinling effect. We see this also, for example,
0:18:05 in like marijuana as a gateway drug. The reason marijuana is a gateway drug is not because it
0:18:10 makes you immoral. It’s because once we start activating certain circuits in the brain during
0:18:15 brain development, it changes the way that they develop. The second thing that we see
0:18:21 is that pornography is used as a method of emotional regulation. So if you look at like,
0:18:25 I was trying to figure out what effect does pornography have in the brain. And so I was
0:18:30 thinking about, okay, which part of the brain does sex come from? And it turns out that every part
0:18:35 of the brain, every neurotransmitter is involved in the sexual act because the purpose, the evolutionary
0:18:40 purpose of a human being is to procreate. So all of our circuitry is designed for this thing.
0:18:48 So we see that there’s absolutely an emotional regulation component because when we get aroused,
0:18:53 like our brain doesn’t care about, you know, anything else in our life when it comes to the
0:18:58 act of procreation. So we see a lot of emotional regulation, which then becomes an emotional crutch.
0:19:04 So I see a lot of this now where people at work will watch pornography and it’s not about masturbation
0:19:10 or lust. It’s about emotional regulation. I’ve seen a huge spike in second screen pornography.
0:19:15 So we’ll be working over here and I’ll just have porn like running over here. Like this is a really
0:19:20 common story and it’s an emotional regulation fact. Now the third thing that you, the question you
0:19:24 asked about is dopamine. So here’s a really fascinating thing. So it absolutely messes with
0:19:30 your dopamine. When it messes with your dopamine, it messes with your motivation because dopamine is
0:19:35 the primary neurotransmitter involved in motivation. So as you watch more pornography, you just stop
0:19:39 being as motivated about the other things in your life. And the really crippling thing, the really
0:19:46 scary thing from a relationship standpoint is that if we look at falling in love, falling in love
0:19:52 is primarily the function of dopamine. So when we look at a relationship, there’s initial attraction,
0:19:57 which comes from like the thalamus in our sensory inputs. What do I see? What do I hear? Oh, she
0:20:01 smells great. Her laugh is beautiful, right? That’s all sensory. And then we get into the stage where
0:20:05 we’re in love when I can’t get enough of this person. I’m just sitting with this person. We’re
0:20:09 not talking. We’re not doing anything. We’re just holding hands and oh, I’m so in love. So like
0:20:15 literally what creates that feeling is dopamine. And when we start using pornography on a regular
0:20:20 basis, our dopamine stores start to deplete. We start to develop dopamine tolerance.
0:20:25 And like literally what I’m seeing clinically matches with this because it’s harder for people
0:20:31 to fall in love. When I talk to younger people now, we’re in their 20s and 30s and struggling to
0:20:34 date. You know, you go on a couple of dates, but what’s the problem? There’s no chemistry. There’s
0:20:41 no spark. That comes from dopamine. So I think we’re seeing all kinds of really scary downstream
0:20:49 effects from unregulated pornography use. I can’t help but feeling that what you’re talking about
0:20:56 is a very masculine experience somehow. Yeah. And that when we’re talking about porn addiction or
0:21:05 compulsory behavior with pornography, it is very related to men and that we in our society tends
0:21:16 to see men’s experiences as universal experiences. And I think that we lack a perspective of really
0:21:24 where women get into this construction of addiction, of use of pornography. Is it
0:21:31 Reena, do you see it as an addiction? So I think that it’s not been termed an addiction in terms
0:21:36 of a medical vernacular. They call it problematic porn use because there hasn’t been a clear
0:21:43 definition in terms of addiction, right? But I would say that I think that there are certainly
0:21:47 people who have this experience, but there’s certainly many, many people who use pornography
0:21:52 and don’t develop this tolerance. And maybe it’s more common in younger people because they’re
0:21:57 getting access to it sooner and more often, and that has yet to play out at least I tend to see
0:22:03 older patients. And so that has yet to play out in older generations. But I would say that I think
0:22:09 there’s many people who use it fine and don’t have an issue. And so I think that while these issues
0:22:14 do exist, there’s also a whole bunch of other things are ongoing in society right now that may
0:22:19 make it more difficult for people to connect and for people to feel intimacy with people because
0:22:23 it’s very difficult. Currently, more and more people are not getting married, more and more
0:22:28 people are choosing to stay single for a variety of reasons. I don’t think porn is the only factor
0:22:33 there. I do think it is something that people can control. And so they feel like, okay, if you feel
0:22:37 like you have a problem with it and you can control pornography, that allows you to feel like
0:22:42 you have control in one area of your life that then that control can potentially improve other
0:22:47 areas of your life. So I think that there is correlations here, but I think it’s very complex.
0:22:51 I think the way it affects our brains is very complex as well. And dopamine is one way to
0:22:56 describe it, but there’s different sensitivities in how our brain responds to the same stimuli,
0:23:00 right? The way I watch pornography, the way you watch pornography, the way anyone of us watches
0:23:05 pornography, our brains will respond in a different way because our receptors are
0:23:11 either more sensitive or less sensitive. And there’s no way to really test that on an individual level.
0:23:14 One of the things I found most interesting when I had the first conversation on this podcast about
0:23:19 pornography is my team went out and looked at a couple of tools which pull search data.
0:23:24 So what are people searching on the subject? And the number one most searched term was how
0:23:29 do I quit pornography? And that’s quite an interesting thing because there’s a certain
0:23:34 desperation to that question. You know, going to Google to ask Google how you quit a behavior,
0:23:39 that makes me think of it in the context of an addiction. And in fact, the second most popular
0:23:44 search term was also about how you quit this thing. And it speaks to a certain powerlessness
0:23:50 that a certain percentage of people feel they have with pornography, throwing that out to
0:23:56 everybody here. No, but I think this connects also to the stigma, the huge stigma around sex
0:24:02 and around porn and this idea that people have somehow that it is bad. I mean, people want to
0:24:08 watch it. At the same time, they have the moral idea that it’s bad and that they shouldn’t do it.
0:24:13 But I think we’re also talking here. I mean, we end up talking about porn all the time,
0:24:21 but somehow porn is now very related to technology and how technology kind of has
0:24:29 hijacked our lives. It’s not only porn we’re struggling with in that sense. And when, you know,
0:24:33 with young people, they are saying they are not having as much sex anymore. You were talking
0:24:44 about it before. Kids are not playing as much anymore outside as they used to. So I think we
0:24:51 have a correlation there that we need to think about the role of technology and then how much of
0:24:59 that space does really this pornography take up. And also to have in mind that when we’re talking
0:25:06 about porn, most people see it as a monolithic kind of thing. When if you go out on the street
0:25:11 and you ask people what is porn, they think about the tube sites. That’s what that’s what they have
0:25:18 in mind. But actually, there’s many different kinds of porn existing. Do you think there’s such a
0:25:25 thing as good porn and bad porn? It’s a very difficult kind of distinction to say bad porn
0:25:31 and good porn. Because if you do that, then it’s you classify some type as as acceptable and other
0:25:38 types as non and you kind of, you know, grow the stigma around it. I think that we need to think
0:25:45 about porn that is made with great working conditions, taking care of everybody who’s
0:25:51 involved in that process, especially the performers made with support by intimacy
0:25:57 coordinator talent managers, where the performers have been able to be involved in the process to
0:26:03 give feedback on what is going to be made, how it’s working, they have they know all the conditions
0:26:11 beforehand, etc. They can give feedback afterwards. I think there are ways of producing pornography
0:26:17 that are safer than what we have seen in the past. We were talking a second ago about the impact
0:26:22 pornography has on the brain. And I know some of your work involves dealing with people who
0:26:25 have erectile dysfunction. Some of the stats I read on erectile dysfunction show that there’s
0:26:29 been quite a significant increase over the last couple of decades in people reporting to have
0:26:34 erectile dysfunction. Do you think porn has played a role in increasing erectile dysfunction as it
0:26:39 relates to when I’m with my partner in the bedroom and I’m trying to have sex? So I think this goes
0:26:46 back to the people who are watching pornography and are learning what sex is through pornography,
0:26:50 and then they go to their sexual encounter with their partner and they don’t respond the way that
0:26:55 they do on pornography or their partner doesn’t respond the way they do on pornography and immediately
0:27:01 they feel insecure, right? Immediately. And that leads to the psychogenic erectile dysfunction where
0:27:08 you are no longer able to perform because you’re so stressed about the anxiety of being able to
0:27:12 get an erection because maybe things didn’t go the way they were supposed to or maybe you’re
0:27:17 insecure about your body image or a whole host of things that come from watching maybe some of
0:27:23 the big box pornography where we’re not really showing real sex. We’re showing a produced product
0:27:30 that is meant to entertain and captivate people for a short period of time. And so I think that is
0:27:35 one certainly issue that I do see where people start feeling this. The other thing is where people
0:27:44 are using pornography quite often and then they again are unable to get that stimulation through
0:27:47 a partner, right? They can’t get the same. They’re using death grip or they’re using
0:27:53 the same, this very erotic stimuli, this very intense visual erotic stimuli that they can’t
0:27:57 produce with a person. And so then they’re like, well, why am I not getting aroused and why am I
0:28:03 not getting an erection? And it’s because they’ve now relied on this solely. So I do see that certainly
0:28:08 as an issue in some people who are using pornography. But I don’t think it’s like
0:28:14 pornography use leads to ED. I think it’s these other factors on the way to having
0:28:19 psychological concerns about your own performance that lead to issues with erections.
0:28:25 And before we move on, Dr. Kay’s point about motivation as well. Do you believe that there’s
0:28:29 a correlation between the amount that we watch pornography and mass debate and someone’s
0:28:32 motivation based on what you know about dopamine receptors?
0:28:37 You know, hard to say. I think again, it’s very individual. Certainly some people will take these
0:28:44 like, you know, there is a availability part when it comes to any sort of addiction type behavior.
0:28:49 So when something is more available to you and you’re using it more often, it can become more
0:28:54 problematic. And so certainly I think that plays a role in terms like if you’re using it a lot and
0:28:59 it’s very available to you and it’s an easy way to emotionally regulate, right? If you’re having
0:29:03 stress in life, you’re unhappy with your relationship or you’re unhappy with other things,
0:29:10 people are often using pornography as a way to avoid those negative emotions and really just
0:29:14 participate in something else, like take their mind off of that. And so that is sort of where it
0:29:21 becomes this challenge for some people. Yeah, I just want to chime in. So this is fantastic because
0:29:26 I agree with everything that y’all are saying. And I also kind of come to a slightly different
0:29:32 conclusion. So the number one search term that we have is how do I quit porn? So when I hear that
0:29:36 and I think Dr. Malik has also done a great job of pointing out, you know, there’s a difference
0:29:42 between anecdotal clinical experience and what we have randomized clinical trials on. You know,
0:29:48 we’re not exposing seven-year-olds to pornography and then seeing how their brain develops by doing
0:29:54 MRI scans over the course of 10 years. So some of this research is absolutely not there. And we
0:29:59 also have the number one search term is how do I quit porn? What that tells me is that there is a
0:30:07 literally the largest population of what people are looking at is to stop using pornography.
0:30:11 And I think the reason for that is, is there good porn or is there bad porn? Is it individuals,
0:30:15 is it nuanced? Completely agree with all those points. It’s not a problem for everyone. But I
0:30:20 think what I’m seeing very clearly is that it’s getting worse, right? So it’s not an issue of
0:30:26 good or bad. What is the trend that we’re seeing? The trend that we’re seeing is that Erica is saying,
0:30:31 hey, pornography can be more than the tube sites. So that then begs the question,
0:30:37 why does everyone think that pornography is the tube sites? Because they hijacked the system.
0:30:42 Exactly. So I think that word is beautiful, hijacked. So I think what we’re seeing, what I’m
0:30:48 seeing is that pornography is getting worse for sure. It’s becoming more of a problem. If we look
0:30:55 at these tube sites, it’s kind of like there’s nutrition and then there’s calories. And a lot
0:31:00 of what I’m hearing y’all talk about, Dr. Malick is saying, if you watch it as part of a relationship,
0:31:05 that’s nutrition. It can be something healthy. We can learn about ourselves. We can de-stigmatize
0:31:10 various things fair enough. But I think we’re seeing the same trends that we see with fast food,
0:31:15 where now pornography is becoming mass produced. And there are actually studies that show there’s
0:31:21 a really fascinating, bizarre piece of research, which is where you have to go. This is where I’ve
0:31:25 gone to find this stuff because we don’t have studies. But there was a particular group of
0:31:30 biologists who were noticing that a population of beetles was dying out. And they were trying to
0:31:35 figure out, why is this population of beetles dying out? And what they discovered is there’s
0:31:41 one thing that’s responsible for these beetles not mating with each other, which is green beer
0:31:45 bottles that were being littered. And the green beer bottle, and then what they noticed is that
0:31:51 the beetles were trying to go up to the green beer bottle and mate with it. And they were like,
0:31:56 what is going on? You’d see this litter that has a green beer bottle and a bunch of male beetles
0:32:01 are clustered around it. And like, they’re like, what is this? And it turns out that there’s this
0:32:07 concept of something called a supranormal stimulus. So when the beetles’ eyes look at the environment,
0:32:12 there are certain signals that indicate this is a fertile female. And a green glass beer bottle
0:32:19 activates those parts of the brain. And what we’re seeing with these tube sites is things are jiggler,
0:32:27 things are louder, things are slipperier, right? We have these 4k, high def, like so we’re sort of
0:32:33 turning, we’re taking what used to be nutritious, and we are turning it into fast food. And that,
0:32:39 and why all these tube sites, why are they successful? They’re in this Darwinian war
0:32:43 that’s kind of like a race to the bottom. How can I create the pornography that is going to
0:32:49 leech the most traffic away from my competitors? And they’re figuring out very rapidly that there
0:32:54 are all kinds of weird ways to activate the brain, what our brain looks for and what it gets excited
0:33:00 about. And so it feels to me like there’s a race to the bottom, we’re making pornography for money,
0:33:05 we’re making it more addictive. But the thing is that these companies behind these tube sites,
0:33:10 they are not interested in human sexuality, they’re not interested in sex, they’re not interested
0:33:15 in porn, they’re not interested in the conditions of the people who are working in front of the
0:33:21 camera. I mean, they’re selling advertisement. And what do they need for that? They need content
0:33:28 that is extreme, that has words that are click baity, that are kind of small clips that are quick
0:33:34 to watch, they look at the algorithms to see what works, right? But this reminds me of the food
0:33:39 industry. Yeah, of course, it’s the same as big food, it’s the same as big pharma, big fashion,
0:33:45 etc. Big porn is the same. How does an industry succeed if it doesn’t engage in that practice,
0:33:48 though? Because think about the food industry, the thing that has the most sugar in,
0:33:52 that’s the most available, the cheapest is the thing that’s going to succeed the most.
0:33:56 So we think about these tube sites, some of the stats are crazy. I mean, only fans released their
0:34:01 earnings for last year, up 20%. They made 6.6 billion. Pornhub, one of the big tube sites,
0:34:08 is the eighth most trafficked website in the world at the moment, doing 5.5 billion monthly visits.
0:34:12 These sort of brands that people recognize. And it’s extreme, like if we think about nutrition,
0:34:17 high in sugar, it’s extreme. So I get the most extreme sort of dopamine stimulation.
0:34:23 It’s so easy to access. I don’t have to put my shoes on and put my aftershave on,
0:34:29 I can just, I can get on there within 15 seconds. For me to get laid, I’m going to have to put in
0:34:33 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
0:34:38 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,
0:34:41 or 15 seconds and I can see the most extreme.
0:34:44 Yeah, I think that’s the problem.
0:34:48 But I do worry to some, I’m going to play a little bit of devil’s advocate. My devil’s
0:34:52 advocate would say that because there’s so much moral incongruence that leads to
0:34:55 problematic porn news, porn addiction, whatever you want to call it, right?
0:35:01 That we’re creating more of it by disparaging pornography, right? Like that everywhere people
0:35:05 are saying pornography is bad, pornography is bad. You can’t go on any social media platform without
0:35:10 somebody citing a study that says pornography is leaching people’s life force and their,
0:35:12 you know, their life is falling apart because of pornography.
0:35:20 Right. And so, but so then we’re also adding to that moral incongruence by saying that all
0:35:24 pornography is bad, pornography is there because we’re watching it, right? And so people, like,
0:35:29 if you asked, like, probably the generation older to me, like, would you be, would you be interested
0:35:35 in watching porn where you’re seeing the things that you’re seeing now, which I mean, shocking to
0:35:39 me, right? Like, they would be like, no, I don’t want to see that, right? Like, that doesn’t interest
0:35:44 me in the slightest. But like, why is this becoming so, you know, people are watching it.
0:35:50 I mean, to me, so much of this is totally anti-erotic. I sometimes go there to
0:35:54 investigate and to kind of see what’s what’s going on and what’s happening. And I feel like, oh, no,
0:36:00 don’t show me this. I don’t want to see it. Oh, I rather throw up than, you know, feel
0:36:07 excitement and wanting to have sex. So it has an opposite effect on not just their
0:36:13 their audiences, actually. But again, what is it about? It’s about earning money and
0:36:18 concentrating power. It’s about selling advertisement. That’s what you’re doing. It’s
0:36:26 grow your dick pills. It stays the sexy Latina in your neighborhood. It’s and and as a society,
0:36:33 we have been very slow to see what has happened because these sites, they were born, you know,
0:36:40 17 years ago, 2007, they came out. It happened very, very fast.
0:36:45 So a couple of thoughts. The first is like, yeah, that’s exactly what’s going on is like,
0:36:51 so if we think about it, we have all of these, every part of our brain, right, oxytocin, dopamine,
0:36:57 serotonin, estrogen, testosterone, right, those are hormones, not brains. But, you know, every
0:37:02 circuit of the brain, all of our neurotransmitters, they’re all to help us procreate. And now what’s
0:37:09 happened is people have fundamentally hijacked all of these circuits. And we’re seeing problems.
0:37:13 And I’m with you about the moral incongruence, because we see this in other addictions as well,
0:37:18 where we we tried to like demonize like alcohol usage, right. And we know that once we separate
0:37:22 out the moral incongruence, because once I feel guilty and ashamed, this is something I see a
0:37:26 lot. I watch pornography, now I feel ashamed. How am I going to cope with those emotions? Watching
0:37:33 more pornography. And so you create this cycle of like more like this moral focused cycle of shame,
0:37:38 and that actually fuels the dependence. So that’s absolutely an issue. At the same time,
0:37:44 like these companies, and they don’t care about eroticness or falling in love or whatever, right.
0:37:49 They’re interested in making a buck, and they’re exploiting our brain. And while we should be a
0:37:54 little bit careful about the moralistic nature of it, I mean, I’ve seen it gets so much, it’s
0:37:58 getting worse, like every time, every year, and this could be selection bias, right, because I’m
0:38:03 an addiction psychiatrist. But I think it’s like, even with something like Onlyfans, because now what
0:38:08 we’re adding is a social component. The one refuge we used to have when it comes to porn
0:38:12 ography, whether it’s ethically produced or non ethically produced, is that there’s no
0:38:15 way that this person is ever going to pay attention to me. I’m just consuming something.
0:38:22 But now, now I can interact with someone, someone can send me a DM, hey, thank you for
0:38:28 watching my video and jerking off. That makes me so happy, right. But you know, it’s an AI bot,
0:38:37 right? So I know it’s an AI bot, but I am so ashamed of myself that, you know, take whatever
0:38:43 water is given to you in the desert. I am so alone. I feel so bad about myself. And there’s a chance,
0:38:48 right? There’s a chance it’s not an AI bot. The real problem is that we are not speaking about sex.
0:38:55 We are not speaking about intimacy. People don’t have the sex education. And they are lost. And
0:39:00 they are human beings. They have this drive and this need. And we had it in all cultures, right?
0:39:04 Do you think people have this education? They would still be on Onlyfans talking to
0:39:10 what’s probably, because there are big agencies now. I’ve seen on social media, there are big
0:39:16 agencies of men who pretend to be these porn stars on sites like Onlyfans. And I see them bragging
0:39:21 about their income. It’s a big thing on Twitter at the moment. I’ve made $10,000 this month pretending
0:39:28 to be this actress speaking to young men on Onlyfans. Yeah. And I think the reason that men do that,
0:39:32 part of the reason is because they know what men want to hear, right? There’s a part of us that
0:39:37 they know exactly what to say because it won’t be an AI bot. It’ll be this kind of person.
0:39:42 And now what’s happening is we’re activating the social loneliness aspect and combining it with
0:39:49 pornography. So now you actually have a relationship with maybe an AI bot, maybe a dude, right? But
0:39:54 there is like some amount of genuine human interaction over the internet. So this is getting
0:40:00 worse. And I think sex education is an excellent point. At the same time, I don’t know if sex
0:40:04 education is going to be sufficient because I think we can teach people about their bodies,
0:40:09 but we’re also seeing like a whole-scale social skills atrophy where dudes don’t know how to
0:40:15 talk to girls anymore. And also media. Porn is media. It’s important to understand that. It’s
0:40:22 telling us messages about gender roles, how we interact, about sexuality, how our body functions,
0:40:31 etc. So we have all this misinformation going on on this online huge media of free porn.
0:40:38 And we see women screaming in fake orgasms after four minutes of hard penetration. And as a woman,
0:40:44 you look at her and you say, she didn’t even use her fingers. What happened? And you just know that
0:40:50 something is wrong here, that this is fake. But then there’s lots of men out there thinking,
0:40:55 this is what my girlfriend should be doing. This is how it should work. And then they don’t
0:41:01 connect in real life. What kind of porn do you make? What kind of porn do I make? I make lovely
0:41:08 porn. I make beautiful porn. I make cinematic porn. I make porn with, you know, with intentions
0:41:18 of showing different ideas of desire and fantasy where people, I try to work with people who are
0:41:26 connecting, who show chemistry together. I ask my performers who they want to work with.
0:41:33 I try to team them up. I support them with a system of intimacy coordinator, talent managers,
0:41:38 producers in the background that take care of them, that check who they are, what they like,
0:41:42 what kind of sexuality do they have. But if I was a consumer of your pornography, what would I
0:41:47 notice? What would you notice? Probably the great cinematography would be the first thing you would
0:41:55 notice, kind of narratives that are erotic driven somehow, where people explore their desire and
0:42:04 their sexuality. You would notice, you would feel very, I mean, many people tell me, they go like,
0:42:11 “Eric, I watch your films. Is it really porn?” Because they identify porn as something that is
0:42:19 kind of tacky, ugly, kind of objectifying, etc. So suddenly when they see people in my films
0:42:26 having sex, coming together, and everything is kind of, you understand why they are desiring each
0:42:33 other. And you kind of, I invite them to join this kind of erotic journey of the characters.
0:42:37 Then they go, “But this is more like like in the cinema, in the erotic cinema.”
0:42:43 Can I, is it fair to assume that? Because you’re, from what I’ve heard there, the pornography you
0:42:48 produce has a slower story arc, which is more reflective of what- Sometimes.
0:42:53 Okay, so I’m trying to understand, because the things that you, it sounds like you might have
0:42:59 removed from the pornography you make, versus the pornography I’d find on one of the big tube
0:43:03 streaming sites, the most popular videos on the tube streaming sites. It sounds like you might have
0:43:08 put yourself at a bit of a competitive disadvantage in many respects, because those streaming sites,
0:43:15 if their incentive is purely money, the data is going to determine what people see. So that’s,
0:43:19 so it feels like they’ve really optimized for user consumption, where you’ve optimized for
0:43:25 something around ethics. Because I care about it. For me, the money is not the most important aspect,
0:43:34 why I, you know, created this company, why I’m making this. I really want to kind of send a
0:43:39 different kind of message out to the world. Does your content end up on those sites?
0:43:47 Sometimes, sometimes years ago, it was taken on those sites, for example, changing the wording
0:43:54 of it. Because remember that many of these sites also, what they do is that they fetishize people,
0:44:02 they use very racist language, chauvinistic language, etc. And my movies may have much
0:44:09 softer kind of language and the way they are. So they obviously pirated them,
0:44:16 they put them up, and they changed kind of the wording for the bits. It was a very hard process
0:44:21 to take them down, etc. What do you think is better for someone’s relationship specifically,
0:44:27 sort of men and women, do you think no porn is better for their relationship? Do you think your
0:44:31 porn is better for their relationship? Or do you think obviously there’s… I think it’s individual.
0:44:37 I think it’s a very individual decision. What works best? Sorry. Yeah. I can answer. I’ve never
0:44:41 seen one of your films. I can tell you it’s her porn. Thank you. Better than no porn. I’m going
0:44:47 to go ahead and go out on a limb and saying that if you’re someone who’s struggling with pornography,
0:44:52 watching an erotic film with a glass of wine with your significant other
0:44:59 is a great way to transition from bite-sized, fast food, calorie-dense, jiggly, slippery,
0:45:05 loud porn, to like how do we rewire the brain, right? How do we move one step at a time from
0:45:12 this to this? And because like the word erotic seems so powerful to me. It’s about anticipation.
0:45:17 Even when we talk about differences between male and female sexuality, the lag time
0:45:22 of parasympathetic activation and foreplay is so much more important biologically,
0:45:27 and correct me if I’m wrong here, for women than it is for men. I mean, we’re like kind of ready
0:45:33 to go and we want to make it short. And so I think like it’s almost like a part of that sexual
0:45:40 education is in understanding, okay, how can we teach men to be erotic again instead of these like
0:45:46 very like chicken nugget style highly processed? Like this is what I think it is. Maybe watch
0:45:51 some of Eric’s film. When we talk about watching pornography with your partner, I wonder if that
0:45:56 is the rule of the exception to the rule, you know, because I… Yeah, I mean, so you’re saying
0:46:01 what do we do? I think we have an erotic film watch party, right? We have anime watch parties,
0:46:05 we have different kinds of watch parties, like this thought had never occurred to me before,
0:46:10 I’m sure it is a terrible idea. But on that point though, if you reduce the stigma by having these
0:46:16 watch parties, does that then, because you cited earlier that it’s a tool for emotional regulation,
0:46:21 so when people are stressed or depressed or anxious, they seek it out. If we remove the stigma,
0:46:26 does that increase the addiction? So it’s a great question. So I think it kind of goes both ways.
0:46:34 And what I mean by that is see, we run into addictions when this substance becomes or behavior
0:46:39 becomes one to one correlated with something else. So right now the problem with pornography isn’t
0:46:47 that it… Yeah, it’s… So the problem is if I watch pornography, that’s the only method I use
0:46:52 to regulate my emotions, that will increase the addiction. Now the flip side of it is also true.
0:46:58 If the only reason I watch pornography is to regulate my emotions, that will strengthen that
0:47:03 addictive capability. So I’ll give you all just a simple example from like alcohol, right? So if
0:47:09 I use alcohol after a hard day’s work to get through the day and calm down, and then I stop
0:47:15 drinking for fun, whereas alcohol can be used as an emotional coping mechanism, or it can be used
0:47:22 to celebrate a wedding, right? So the substance can be used in different ways, and the more that
0:47:27 we use it in different ways and healthier ways, the more it actually chips away at the addiction
0:47:33 in some cases. This is also highly individualized. So depending on your genetic predispositions
0:47:37 and stuff like that, you may not be able to drink at weddings. But we also see the opposite,
0:47:42 which is like, you know, a huge number of people are qualified for an alcohol addiction in college,
0:47:47 and then most of those people are able to develop healthy relationships with it. And one of the
0:47:51 biggest changes we’re seeing in addiction is that there do seem to be healthy relationships that
0:47:57 we can develop. I think it’s about changing our relationship to the thing. Now seeing someone
0:48:03 naked engaging in a sexual act is not solely about getting off. It’s not solely about emotional
0:48:09 regulation. It’s not solely about dopamine. It can now become a film experience that we can enjoy.
0:48:16 So we’re diversifying our relationship to the object. I don’t know if that makes sense, psychoanalytic.
0:48:21 Awareness, mindfulness, understanding of others. Yeah, of how you use that.
0:48:27 And then I think this is also great, like just the simple idea that like if dudes are watching this,
0:48:32 recognizing that watching an erotic film with your significant other, assuming a heteronormative,
0:48:39 a heterosexual relationship, you know, may be a great way for you to enhance your sexual experience.
0:48:44 You don’t need dick-enhancing pills or, you know, whatever else, right? Like, because that’s,
0:48:49 I’m sure Dr. Mollick knows better than I do, but the majority of the, you know, I meant more as a
0:48:57 urologist. I didn’t think that, but okay. No, no, so like, you know, my understanding from med school,
0:49:01 right? So back when I was doing urology, and I worked with some things like vaginismus and stuff
0:49:06 like that, is, you know, the majority of the female nerve endings are, you know, at the
0:49:11 front end of the vagina. And if you get all the way back to the cervix, that’s like painful.
0:49:16 So you don’t actually need a gigantic penis. I was trying to think about whether I should
0:49:23 use some other word, but, you know, and so to help like, you know, and if men are the ones who are
0:49:27 primarily having this addictive problem, then let’s call it what it is, which is help men realize
0:49:34 that sexual pleasure, engaging in a relationship, that pornography can be a force for good and doesn’t
0:49:40 necessarily have to be evil. But, and maybe like erotic film moves us in that direction and like,
0:49:44 I just got to say, man, like my degenerate male brain is kind of telling me like, you know,
0:49:49 watching an erotic film for an hour and a half could be the best and easiest foreplay that I could
0:49:55 ever do. It would be a lot easier. Yeah, pretty quick. But I would say, the other thing I’ve been
0:50:00 thinking about while we’ve been talking about this is we don’t talk about erotic audio literature
0:50:07 or erotic books, which is more commonly used by women, but we don’t stigmatize that. Like,
0:50:10 women are like, oh, I love these books and I read them all the time and nobody is sitting here saying
0:50:16 like, it’s bad. I don’t know, thoughts on that? Because it’s not naked bodies. I guess here,
0:50:23 the main problem again is back to our bodies. We are somehow ashamed of our bodies, of our nakedness,
0:50:30 of our sexuality. I mean, women can’t show nipples online. We know that. You can. I mean,
0:50:37 I’m heavily censured. I can’t show anything on my accounts. My social media accounts are cut off
0:50:42 all the time. It’s impossible to grow. Do you think pornography should be banned on social media?
0:50:49 Dr Kay? Should pornography be banned on social media? Yes, pornography should be banned. I can
0:50:56 answer that. I’m making it. I definitely think it should be banned, but their explicit images
0:51:07 should be banned. But the right to discuss about it, to talk about it, to give sexual advice or to,
0:51:13 you know, discuss different topics around sexuality. We should be allowed to do that.
0:51:17 We should be allowed. Well, we’re allowed to do that. No, I get banned too.
0:51:21 Really? Because this doesn’t get banned. Maybe you are allowed to do it. You two are different.
0:51:26 Twitter’s fine. Instagram’s fine. YouTube’s fine. Instagram, Instagram, Meta’s tough.
0:51:33 I have TED talks that are censured, so only people who are over 18 and have an account online
0:51:41 have access to watch them. And it’s me talking. Yeah, no, there is definitely limitations.
0:51:46 The thing that we’ve noticed is your video just doesn’t appear in search in the same way,
0:51:50 but they still recommend the video. So when we had, for example, Andrew Huberman on a couple
0:51:54 of weeks ago when he talked about pornography, because Paul was in the title and the thumbnail,
0:51:59 the video got huge recommendations by the algorithm. But if you typed in Andrew Huberman,
0:52:02 it would not come up until we took the word porn out, and you type in Andrew Huberman,
0:52:06 and it comes up. So that’s anything we’ve noticed, but we’ve been quite surprised actually by…
0:52:11 Yeah, I think it’s so cool that like, you know, you asked me that question and she jumped in with
0:52:15 an answer. No, no, I think it’s good. I think it’s like, because you asked, I mean, I think that’s
0:52:19 the value of this, right? Because I don’t feel nearly as passionate. I mean, you asked her the
0:52:23 question, you know, is it, which of these is the best? And I jumped in with an answer. I was like,
0:52:29 this is clear to me. And I think just a couple of things that I just want to touch on. The first is
0:52:34 that, you know, what Dr. Malik was saying about, you know, audio literature or like erotic fiction
0:52:39 or romance novels, right? So I think it’s harder to commoditize that, which goes back to Erica’s
0:52:46 point of, you know, like, some things are more likely to be turned into fast food. So I think
0:52:51 that erotic literature, it’s like harder to do that. I also do think that going back to this
0:52:56 earlier point of like, you know, men are epidemiologically more vulnerable to addiction. I
0:53:03 think it’s more complicated than that. And it just psychological hurt or problems manifest in men
0:53:09 as addiction and look different in women when it emerges. So I think it’s kind of like, you know,
0:53:15 so we’re sort of seeing a difference in addictive quality. It’s easier to commoditize more sensory
0:53:21 organs. So I think that’s an important point. And I think in terms of, you know, should it be banned
0:53:27 or not? Like, I don’t know. So I work kind of like more at the individual level and arguably some
0:53:31 at scale. But like one of the key things is, you know, I have some ideas about what should be done,
0:53:36 but I’m not too sure about that. I’m curious, you know, I don’t know, like I mean,
0:53:41 no, but I’m saying it basically because it’s open for kids again. This is why I’m saying
0:53:47 if we’re having social media and it’s for people 18 about them, we’re talking about another thing.
0:53:55 But go to Twitter or it’s not called Twitter anymore. Go there. And it’s full of porn.
0:54:01 It is. It is. It is full of porn. You can you accidentally stumble across porn. I was saying
0:54:05 this to my partner a couple of weeks ago, I said, look at how Twitter’s changed. And I said, watch
0:54:08 this. Scroll down my timeline. And I know there’s algorithm. So if I dwell on something more often,
0:54:13 then it’s going to show me more. But I scroll down. I scroll down. I was like, look,
0:54:17 porn. And I was like, oh, look, she’s taking her clothes off. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Someone
0:54:22 being shocked. It didn’t happen. I’ve actually not seen it, but I’ve had many people who tell me
0:54:26 that it comes up on their feed all the time. Recent change to the algorithm, which has prioritized
0:54:32 again, viewership time. So if you want to want people to dwell longer, show them video, extreme
0:54:36 video, people being shot, someone being hit by a car, fights pornography, you increase your dwell
0:54:40 time, you increase your advertising. And this is just how incentives play out. So much of the
0:54:46 discussion we’ve had today and much of my like, why I refer to it sometimes as being idealistic,
0:54:50 because sometimes it can sound like just give them broccoli when actually if you leave them to
0:54:53 their own devices, no one’s going to want broccoli, they’re going to take the cookies if the cookies
0:55:00 are available. And if you equate this to food, we did put labels on food to say, look, this has got
0:55:05 this much calories in it. We’ve put a sugar tax on sugar in the UK. On cigarettes, we say, if you
0:55:09 smoke these cigarettes, this is what’s going to happen to your lungs. And we put explicit images
0:55:13 of how your lungs will get, you know, cancers and things like this. Should we be doing something
0:55:17 similar with pornography? Because part of me goes just saying, we should just give them broccoli,
0:55:20 this kind of like erotic, different point. They’re not going to eat it.
0:55:28 No, but also again, adults, I think they have the right to watch pornography,
0:55:35 whatever kind of pornography it is, as long as it’s legal and well done. I wish all pornography
0:55:41 would be ethically produced. I know that the industry is working towards more standards,
0:55:47 etc. Because, you know, we have been as a society talking about it, they don’t have
0:55:52 much of a choice, because if they don’t go that way. Should we tell them about the harms of
0:55:57 pornography at the point of consumption, like we do with cigarettes? It’s a bit difficult,
0:56:07 maybe. I think we should talk about what could happen. Like gambling. What effects, like gambling,
0:56:13 like, but this also happens. You’ve been talking about gaming a lot, you know. There’s a way of
0:56:19 gaming and healthy gaming, right? There’s a way of video games that is too much and not too much.
0:56:25 What do you think, Dr. K? Yeah. I think it’s a great question. I’ve got a couple of different
0:56:30 things, so I’m about to contradict myself. The first is that we know that putting warning labels
0:56:35 on things does move things in the right direction. But I’d love to just share a story. When I was a
0:56:38 medical student, I didn’t really understand much about medicine or psychiatry or humans.
0:56:45 I had a patient who came in and was smoking. He came in and I was like a first-year medical
0:56:49 student, so I was like, “I’m going to be a doctor one day.” This person comes in and I’m like,
0:56:53 “Sir, do you know that smoking is dangerous? It can cause lung cancer. It can do this. It can do
0:56:57 this. It can do this.” The person’s like, “Yeah, that sounds bad. I don’t want to be a doctor one day.”
0:57:02 I was like, “Great. We’re going to give you a prescription to help you quit and you can get
0:57:06 a nicotine patch.” I was like, “I’m going to be a doctor one day.” A month later, a guy comes in
0:57:10 and I ask him, “How’s the quitting smoking going?” He’s like, “Well, I’m still smoking.”
0:57:14 Then I was like, “I don’t think you understand, man. It increases the risk of heart disease
0:57:18 and stroke and all these kinds of things. It’s going to do all this stuff.” He’s like,
0:57:23 “Yeah, oh, that’s bad. I don’t want any of that stuff.” I was like, “Cool.” You’re going to quit,
0:57:28 right? He’s like, “Yeah.” Then he comes in and comes in the next month. He still hasn’t quit.
0:57:33 I started to try to figure out what’s going on. One of the key things that we’ve learned is that
0:57:40 if you want someone to eat broccoli instead of cookies, telling them that cookies are unhealthy
0:57:44 for you isn’t good enough. We need, generally speaking, when you look at recovery from addiction
0:57:51 and behavioral change, you have to have a good enough reason to do it. I was still blunt and I
0:57:56 figured this out and talked to my preceptor and stuff. Then I asked this person, “What’s important
0:58:01 to you?” He’s like, “Oh, I love my daughters.” Then I asked them a very bad question. I was like,
0:58:07 “Tell me about your daughters.” He was like, “I can’t wait. I’ll know. I can die a happy person
0:58:11 once I’ve walked them down the aisle and they’re married.” Then I asked him a question. I was like,
0:58:15 “When you walk down the aisle, do you want to be carrying an oxygen tank behind you?”
0:58:19 He was like, “What?” I was like, “If you keep smoking, that’s what’s going to happen.”
0:58:24 Or maybe you’ll be in a wheelchair. I was a first-year medical student, brutal, but that actually
0:58:29 sunk in. You have to connect with people with what they care about. That is still a warning,
0:58:34 though, isn’t it? You’ve put a warning on that. Absolutely. It’s a little different. It’s individualized,
0:58:39 but even now, when I stream on Twitch and I try to get people to stop playing video games,
0:58:44 which is like holding an AA meeting in a bar. What I’ve discovered is I’m with you.
0:58:49 We’ve lost a lot of faith in humanity. If you give them a broccoli and a cookie,
0:58:54 they’re going to take a cookie. I’m still hopeful. I think that we do see the number one
0:59:00 search is, “How do I quit porn?” There’s a lot of energy and desire to do it. They just don’t have
0:59:06 a path. I think one of these very simple things is like emphasizing an erotic film and telling people,
0:59:11 “Hey, if you’re lonely. Hey, if you’re having trouble finding a relationship. Hey, if you have
0:59:16 a problem with premature ejaculation or you’re having difficulty engaging in a sexual act
0:59:22 and can’t achieve orgasm, what you need to do is slow it down. Don’t make sex a three-minute
0:59:29 jiggly slippery experience. Slow it down. Watch an erotic film. Reprogram your brain.
0:59:34 Like, I bet you money that if we somehow figured out, if we told people you can reprogram your
0:59:40 brain by watching erotic film and we could say that scientifically, that would be incredibly
0:59:44 successful because I think people are hungry for this. They’re hungry for what we were biologically
0:59:48 designed to do, which is connect and have fulfilling sexual relationships.
0:59:49 What’s your take on that?
0:59:54 Yeah, I think that that would be helpful, absolutely, because I’ve been telling someone
1:00:01 to go cold turkey from having something that they do derive pleasure from. Even if they have
1:00:06 addictive potential or addictive personalities towards that behavior, then giving them something
1:00:11 else that they can still derive pleasure from and have the benefits of orgasm and have the
1:00:16 benefits of feeling that desire and enjoyment is a really great way. When you tell someone,
1:00:20 you take something away that they’ve used as a crutch potentially and they have nothing
1:00:25 to replace it with. We’ve talked about this for giving people a purpose. A lot of times,
1:00:29 people don’t have purpose. They have nothing else to do and they’re like, oh, I’ll just do
1:00:33 this thing because I’m bored. One of the reasons people watch porn is because they’re bored.
1:00:39 You give them a purpose something else to do, whether it’s an erotic film or actually purpose
1:00:43 in their life. Maybe it’s meeting people outside in the real world, which would be even better.
1:00:48 That would help our issues with not getting married, having high divorce rates, and not
1:00:53 having kids. I think those would be great solutions if we could come up with ways to get people to
1:00:58 either find a substitute or find purpose. Interestingly, there’s clearly a two-way
1:01:03 relationship with purpose, porn, motivation, etc. Giving them a purpose, one might say, well,
1:01:07 then we stop porn because then they’ll have more motivation to put their shoes on.
1:01:12 Yeah. I think if you look at, there’s one study that showed the two strongest variables with
1:01:19 pornography addiction or a sense of meaninglessness in life. I forget what the other variable is,
1:01:26 maybe early age of exposure. I think it’s spot on. When I don’t have a life that’s worth living,
1:01:32 what happens? My body and my brain become squeeze bottles of dopamine because what is the joy of
1:01:39 life? I try to just extract as much dopamine as I can for my brain so that I have some joy in the
1:01:46 day, some kind of pleasure. Then I watch more of this mass-produced supernormal stimulus pornography
1:01:52 because that squeezes more dopamine out of my neurotransmitters. The more that my life becomes
1:01:58 that, now there’s a moral component. Now I feel ashamed. Now, I remember looking at some statistics
1:02:03 on online dating profiles and saying that you’re a dude who watches porn is like an instant no.
1:02:07 But if I’m watching pornography, it’s going to sat me of the motivation to pursue my purpose.
1:02:11 Absolutely. If I’m extracting all my dopamine through watching pornography,
1:02:19 I’m going to have none left for behavioral reinforcement from other activities. Reading
1:02:25 books becomes not as much fun. Going to a park becomes not as much fun. It’s absolutely this
1:02:29 vicious cycle where meaninglessness, I have no reason to do anything all day. I might as well
1:02:43 watch some porn. So we cancel porn then? No. No, please. Let us have it. The majority of my
1:02:52 income and my brand would collapse if you started banning so short. I think there’s a
1:02:57 lot of things we’ve talked about, but I think sexual education, I think understanding that
1:03:03 explaining to younger kids what they’re watching, right? I think adults have a little bit more,
1:03:08 their brains are fully developed. They understand what they’re watching. They know it’s a produced
1:03:13 product. They presumably have already gone through the process of finding a job and doing other things
1:03:17 that give them purpose. Maybe they have children, maybe they have a family, right? But I think it’s
1:03:21 really in that young generation, they’re finding themselves. Maybe they’re going out and they’re
1:03:27 not finding a partner because we know that there’s less people coupling. There’s higher, you know,
1:03:32 mismatch of expectations. We’ve talked about that too in terms of dating. And so, you know,
1:03:36 it’s very easy for those people when they’re still trying to figure out what to do with their
1:03:41 lives to fall into something like that. And I think if we really focus on that generation,
1:03:44 I think, and that’s a generation that probably shouldn’t be watching porn anyways, right?
1:03:50 And I think that would make a huge difference. And help parents because parents are really,
1:03:59 really worried. I mean, there’s many ways of starting it, but what they need to know really
1:04:06 is that you are there for them. You are open. If they have any kind of doubt, situations,
1:04:12 you are going to be there for them. This is not a subject that you are going to, you know,
1:04:18 bail out because you feel too ashamed or you can’t handle difficult questions.
1:04:22 I would tell parents, educate yourself. If you’re having kids, you’re going to have to
1:04:27 talk to them about sex. So if you didn’t get the education, what age? You need to start when
1:04:31 they’re really, really young. You need to start when they’re learning language. I mean, young
1:04:35 kids today, many of them, they don’t know the difference between a vagina and a vulva.
1:04:41 Even Billie Eilish in an interview came out saying that she wanted to put our face in people’s
1:04:47 vaginas. And you go, “What? What happened? You’re talking about vulva, girl.” You know?
1:04:51 Yeah. It has to start from, I completely agree with everything you’re saying. I have kids,
1:04:56 I’ve talked to them about sex. I think you have to start early with at least knowing the anatomy,
1:05:01 right? Knowing what their body parts are and what the body parts are of the opposite gender,
1:05:06 so that they know that they’re different and all that stuff. And then honestly being open,
1:05:09 they’re going to ask you questions. Like kids are curious and so they’ll come home and be like,
1:05:13 “What’s this? What’s that?” And not being like, “Oh, no, no, no. I’m not going to talk about that.”
1:05:16 It’s just like, “Okay, yeah. Let’s have a conversation about it and let’s talk about it.”
1:05:19 And realize that it’s not going to be one conversation. It’s going to be like throughout
1:05:23 their development, as they become older, you’re going to maybe introduce more
1:05:28 topics or they may have a question for you and just never shaming them. And that can come even
1:05:33 early, right? Kids are masturbating. Babies are masturbating like as a young, that’s a soothing
1:05:38 behavior, right? And so sometimes you’ll see your child doing it. You don’t want to shame them,
1:05:43 right? Because that’s already setting up that stage of shame. So sort of a lot being like,
1:05:46 “Okay, that’s fine that you’re doing that, but maybe do that in private and that’s something
1:05:50 that you do in private.” But I think it’s really important to have these conversations and it’s
1:05:53 uncomfortable. It’s going to be uncomfortable. I know that it’s going to be uncomfortable,
1:05:58 but we have a duty because they’re not going to learn it at school in the right way or enough in
1:06:03 school. Yeah. So I completely agree with what they said. So it’s really interesting because the
1:06:07 number one question. So when we started talking, working with gamers, what happened very quickly
1:06:11 as parents started reaching out and they’re like, “Hey, I have a son who’s got this problem,
1:06:18 usually a son, sometimes a daughter, 70, 30.” And how do I talk to them? So we actually started
1:06:24 doing a study in 2020 or 2021 where we started developing different kinds of techniques and
1:06:30 measuring what worked best. So now we have four years of data. A lot of those findings went into the
1:06:34 book about how to raise a healthy gamer, which is actually all about conversational techniques
1:06:40 for parents about how to talk to their kids. So for four years, here are the biggest takeaways.
1:06:44 So that book is like, it’s conversational techniques about video game addiction,
1:06:48 but we find that this works really well for pornography too. So the first is, like Dr. Mollick
1:06:55 said, multiple conversations. So the first mistake that parents make is that they think that they
1:06:58 have to get it all in in one conversation. The sex talk. All that we all heard about.
1:07:03 No, it’s lots of them. Second thing, start earlier than you think you need to.
1:07:09 So one of the biggest principles that we learn in medicine is that you don’t have end-of-life
1:07:14 conversations when someone is dying. You have to have the conversation before it’s an issue.
1:07:19 So I think we were talking about, you said what, 64% of people get exposed to pornography at the
1:07:24 age of 11, right? Accidentally. Accidently. Still, but so that what parents think, oh,
1:07:30 I can push this off and wait until they’re 14 or 15. And of course, my beta is not going to watch it.
1:07:35 Oh, he’s good. He’s so good. Not my beta. Those bad kids. We don’t let them do that.
1:07:39 You know, right? Yeah. No, not at all. Yeah. I noticed you said you talked to your kids about
1:07:43 sex. Have you talked to them about porn? Yeah. Okay. My other one. My other one. Nice. Good job.
1:07:50 Your beta is going to be so good. So I think it’s going to be multiple conversations. Start
1:07:54 earlier than you need to. And then there are a couple of really nice techniques that you can use.
1:07:59 So the first is asking open-ended questions and not about do you watch porn. It can start with,
1:08:04 hey, are you familiar with what pornography is? Do you know what it is? What do you understand
1:08:08 about pornography? Another really good evidence-based technique, which has been shown to be effective
1:08:15 for talking about drugs, is do you have friends who watch porn? Do you have friends? Do you know
1:08:21 people or kids in your school watching this? Yes or no? What do you think about that? So oftentimes,
1:08:25 you don’t want to ask the kid directly. You want to ask about what’s happening around you.
1:08:30 And then you can ask them, what do you think about that? Do you have questions?
1:08:36 So make yourself a resource and signal to them that, hey, we can have this conversation.
1:08:43 And it’s preparing them for the world, really. It’s giving them the tools to be able to manage
1:08:50 situations that will come up. Because sex is not easy and they’re going to be in difficult moments.
1:08:56 And if they have been prepared, they’re going to know better how to respond to those moments.
1:09:00 If they’re watching that pornography, though, the type that’s available on those tube streaming
1:09:08 sites, do you believe that it will cause or lead to a rise in violence between men and women?
1:09:12 Because when I look at some of the statistics around this, nearly one in three porn videos
1:09:17 contains physical violence, and almost 90% of the most famous porn scenes are violent scenes.
1:09:24 18 to 21-year-olds, out of 18 to 21-year-olds, 79% had seen pornography involving sexual
1:09:29 violence when they were children. And almost 50% of young people say girls expect sex to involve
1:09:38 physical aggression, such as airway restriction. And according to a study in 2024 of 18 to 35-year-olds,
1:09:45 they found that 57% of young people aged from 18 to 35 had been strangled themselves during sex,
1:09:53 and 51% had been strangled at least once during sex. And my last stat on this is the BBC revealed
1:09:58 that 38% of women under the age of 40 have experienced unwanted slapping, choking and gagging
1:10:05 during consensual sex, and 42% of these women said they felt pressured or coerced into doing it.
1:10:09 So we can allow people to watch pornography, but is there not a risk that at a very young age,
1:10:14 at the age of 11, we’re going to learn that sex is a violent act and that’s going to make
1:10:18 us more violent? We’re going to start with you. Yeah, this is a really important discussion.
1:10:22 And I think, you know, I actually spoke to Debbie Herbert, who leads a lot of the studies on
1:10:27 strangulation. And so basically what they found is that very commonly, young people,
1:10:33 college age students are having strangulation during intercourse or during four planets,
1:10:38 become so common that it’s almost like kissing, right? Like, this is something that is so common
1:10:42 and often consent is not being discussed. Or it’s like, okay, can I do this? Yeah, it’s all right.
1:10:46 But it’s not like a real discussion. And as you guys all know, and especially asphyxiation,
1:10:51 it can lead to loss of oxygen to the brain and sort of a whole host of things. And so I think,
1:10:57 ultimately, that is a concern for sure in terms of, you know, we have ratings in movies for a
1:11:03 reason, right? Like we don’t show our kids like the boys, for example, on Netflix, right? Because
1:11:08 it’s very violent. And so similarly, we would like to have ratings on pornography and they
1:11:13 shouldn’t have access to it. But sometimes they see it now. Yeah, that is a concern. I don’t know
1:11:17 exactly how to rectify that. Maybe you have some thoughts. Is that because we want it though?
1:11:21 Earlier on, you said porn is there because we want it. So I’m thinking isn’t strangulation
1:11:25 important because that’s the type of porn that people want. So there is, you know, some people
1:11:33 who drive pleasure from, you know, from a temporary occlusion of breath, right? And so there is some
1:11:39 people who enjoy that erotically. But that doesn’t mean that that’s universal. And again,
1:11:43 it’s fantasy. So just because you watch something on pornography doesn’t mean that you should be
1:11:50 doing it. It’s a fantasy. It’s not real life. And that’s in a hopefully a controlled safe situation
1:11:53 where they’re producing that pornography. But I think it’s very important when we’re starting
1:12:01 to talk about sexual violence towards women that we understand that that doesn’t come from porn,
1:12:11 that existed long before porn. Sexual violence towards women is a systemic problem we have
1:12:19 in our society. And we all know that the most dangerous place for a woman is her own home.
1:12:28 It’s her own husband or her boyfriend or her relatives around her, etc. So the way I see it,
1:12:35 porn reflects the values we have in our society. I think I see porn a bit as a mirror of many of
1:12:43 the values in our society amongst them, sexual violence towards women. But then it’s also true,
1:12:50 obviously, that nowadays, as porn has become more popular, we’re getting into a bigger problem,
1:12:58 right, where their attitudes are also provoked by what they are seeing. So now it’s not that easy
1:13:04 anymore to say that porn is just a reflection. Because obviously, they also learn from what they
1:13:11 see. And then they go into their own lives and they try to reproduce what they have learned online.
1:13:17 So in that case, then if I watch violent pornography, when I meet my partner at
1:13:23 15, 16, 18, 21, I’m going to have this expectation that pornography looks, I’m going to think sex
1:13:28 has to be performed in this way where I choke them, I hit them, I spit or whatever, whatever,
1:13:32 because that’s the only sexual education I’ve had, and I got it from Twitter, for example.
1:13:35 So in that case, it will lead to sexual violence, unwanted sexual violence.
1:13:43 Not necessarily, it will lead to that. It might lead to a curiosity of trying it out.
1:13:52 Because 42% of women said that they have been, felt they were pressured or coerced into slapping,
1:13:57 choking or being gagged. Yeah, and I think many women also feel coerced just to have
1:14:01 regular sex, many times in their own marriages. What do you think, Dr. Gaye?
1:14:08 So many thoughts. And I agree that this is a very important discussion. So I was kind of curious
1:14:12 about this because I’ve noticed there’s this rise and asphyxiation. So the first question that I
1:14:16 asked is like, why are people doing this? So what I found is there’s, once again, not randomized
1:14:20 control trials that we’re going to take 100 people, split them into two groups and you’re going to,
1:14:25 you know. And so the first thing is the physiology is actually like fascinating. So I know this is
1:14:29 going to sound random. We don’t really know exactly what’s going on. But so it’s really
1:14:33 interesting because if you look at states of meditation, right? So these are states of like
1:14:38 bliss. So something changes in our brain when we’re in a meditative state. And what the hell does
1:14:43 that have to do with asphyxiation? So one of the most common trends of esoteric and deeply spiritual
1:14:49 meditation practices are a very low respiratory rate, right? So one practice that I did had a
1:14:54 respiratory rate of one breath every eight minutes. So that’s like, you know, the regular
1:15:00 respiratory rate is 13 to 14 times a minute. So what we know is that when the brain runs out of
1:15:04 oxygen, as long as we don’t damage it, and that’s the big problem with asphyxiation is that there’s
1:15:08 no consent, there’s no preparation, people feel coerced into it. What we know in meditation is
1:15:16 that a high CO2 level and a low O2 level cause alterations in the brain that will probably
1:15:21 lead to something like a psychedelic experience, a blissful experience, things like that. So when,
1:15:25 when we’re talking about asphyxiation, something is going on in the brain where we’re altering the
1:15:31 state of consciousness, we’re cutting off airflow to the brain. It can be lethal. It can be damaging,
1:15:38 permanently damaging. And something can change in the brain that will enhance the experience of
1:15:44 sexuality that is experienced, that people have. So somewhere along the way people got into this
1:15:49 idea, I think the other thing, the other base basic trend that we’re seeing is that we’re getting
1:15:55 sexually desensitized. So if you look at the, this is not just sexual, but like if you look at,
1:16:01 you know, pornography, what tends to happen is what I find arousing will drift over time.
1:16:07 So I need to watch more and more hardcore porn to get the same level of arousal. So there’s also
1:16:12 something that show that there’s, uh, you know, studies that show that if you’re vulnerable to
1:16:18 an addiction, you’re also vulnerable to risk taking behavior. So when you take, when you engage in
1:16:23 risk, what happens is like, I don’t know if this kind of makes sense, but you know, I had a patient
1:16:28 once who was working in a jail and he was telling me about when he commits a crime. And what he loved,
1:16:33 he has a really bad ADHD. And what he loves about committing a crime is he is completely dialed in.
1:16:41 Because of the risk, he has a survival reason to pay attention to every single detail. He is so
1:16:45 focused on the task. And we know that things like flow states involve an intense amount of focus.
1:16:52 And so when we’re taking a risk, it’s activating our dopamine way more. We feel when I’ve talked to
1:16:57 patients who engage in this kind of behavior, they feel the most alive because of the danger.
1:17:03 So there’s a lot of stuff that is being activated if it’s done in a healthy way. Now there’s all
1:17:08 kinds of unhealthy stuff going on. I think the statistics kind of speak for themselves. Like
1:17:13 my gut check is that while everyone, it doesn’t necessarily increase the risk for everyone. I
1:17:17 think we’re seeing the intersectionality of a couple of things. So the first thing is that
1:17:24 men are angry. So we have incels, we have school shooters, um, you know, men are resentful towards
1:17:29 women. So I think part of the reason we’re seeing this violence against women in the pornography
1:17:36 is because there’s an angry incel who’s home alone, who doesn’t believe they’re ever gonna have sex,
1:17:44 believes that women are gatekeeping this. And so the, the, the masculine predatory systemic,
1:17:51 I’m gonna teach this woman a lesson. She doesn’t get to say no to me. So these kinds of feelings
1:17:58 are being, someone has figured out on a tube site that if I give men this fantasy, they are
1:18:03 going to watch it more and more. And this is what we see, punish fucking of women. We see
1:18:09 punish fucking on women all the time. I’m gonna destroy you. I’m gonna, you know, banging and
1:18:13 smashing and, and. But you’re saying that’s a social problem, not a porn industry problem.
1:18:17 Well, so I think what the porn industry is, is doing, yeah, the porn industry is figuring out,
1:18:20 this is what all technology is doing. The machine learning is figuring out. Machine learning is
1:18:26 figuring it out. So as you cited some statistic about, you know, sexual activity, like more
1:18:31 virgins than ever before, more sexual frustration than ever before, more frustration with life
1:18:38 than ever before. And so let’s give you this extreme thing that’s checking a couple of different boxes.
1:18:43 But interesting within this, I heard something, which is, you basically have described
1:18:48 soft core pornography as a gateway drug. It’s a hard core pornography because the brain gets
1:18:53 desensitized, it looks for a bigger kick like it was heroin or something else. You need a bigger,
1:18:58 more extreme experience to get the same high. So if we start people on erotic porn, the broccoli,
1:19:05 they’re eventually going to get to the cookie. That’s a great assumption. I think it’s different,
1:19:10 because I think the desensitization, it’s different circuits of the brain.
1:19:15 There’s a patience to it. There’s an emotional component to it. So I don’t think, I think you’re
1:19:19 right that if we talk about squeezing out dopamine, could it be a gateway drug? Absolutely.
1:19:23 But part of the reason that in this moment, I think it could be part of the solution
1:19:29 is erotic is moving away from dopamine. Erotic is not about the orgasm. The dopamine is the
1:19:34 orgasm. Erotic is about everything else except for the organism. So even when I’m working with
1:19:39 patients who have unhealthy relationships with sexuality, the point is, let’s move away from
1:19:45 orgasm. Let’s recognize that the sexual act and speaking of the orgasm gap, if you’re a dude,
1:19:49 you can have sex and not have an orgasm, and it can still be a positive experience.
1:19:54 And this kind of goes back to the sexual violence. What really scares me is that
1:19:59 as people watch this stuff for whatever reason, what’s going to happen is they are going to
1:20:03 start to think, and I’ve seen this a lot recently, it’s amazing how much this is spiked,
1:20:08 how normalized this has become. Oh, I thought women liked it. This is what I’m supposed to do,
1:20:13 right? And then you feel coercion from the side of women. I think it’s interesting, right? I
1:20:18 wouldn’t be surprised if, I wouldn’t be surprised, and this is a bias in the literature. We ask,
1:20:23 do you feel women, as a woman, do you feel coerced into doing this? I don’t think we ever ask men,
1:20:28 do you feel pressured into doing this? We don’t even ask men what they feel coerced in, right?
1:20:34 Because there are not that many masculine scripts either of having sex. There’s basically
1:20:43 one and it’s their penetrative sex machine. That’s the script we are being sold.
1:20:48 That must be a reflection of the demand. Well, I think it’s a reflection of who’s making the
1:20:53 content and who’s been making even traditional media, right? Like movies where you see how
1:21:00 people have intimate acts, even though they’re not showing the act, right? It’s always penis and
1:21:05 vagina. Within minutes, the female orgasms and that’s it, right? That’s the whole thing. That’s
1:21:11 not real life. And it’s been made by men. I think it’s this two-way dance, but really. So I think
1:21:17 there’s a certain demand that exists because of whatever’s going on in the world. And then we
1:21:24 meet that demand with conversation, which enhances sometimes the demand for that content or subject.
1:21:28 And it’s this kind of two-way dance where there’s more content about it. So the demand increases
1:21:33 and people get more interested in it and all sees rise. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that that’s
1:21:38 exactly what’s going on here. There’s some preset demand, but right now the problem is that the
1:21:44 only people who are fulfilling that demand are making highly processed, calorically dense,
1:21:51 orgasm, masturbation-focused pornography. We even see this in other dimensions. If you look at
1:21:59 literature right now, the fantasy genre has an injection of female authors. So fantasy has
1:22:03 changed completely in the last 10 or 15 years. YA has changed completely in the last 10 or 15
1:22:08 years. I think maybe what we need is dudes writing romance novels. And consumers, they always have
1:22:15 power. Remember that people who are watching porn, they are part of this industry. They are voting
1:22:21 with their attention, their time, their clicks online, hopefully with their money, because
1:22:28 everybody should pay for their porn, because porn should not be out there for free for anyone.
1:22:35 People are working in this. They have lives, they have kids, they have to pay their rent,
1:22:41 their food on the table, their schools, etc. We have to respect the work of those people.
1:22:45 Sorry, I couldn’t help but laugh. I just realized you said porn shouldn’t be free. We live in a
1:22:50 world where food is not a human right, water is not a human right, healthcare is not a human right,
1:22:55 but porn is free for everybody. Is porn free? Because it’s behind a different advertising.
1:23:00 It’s just an advertising model, which means you are the product. So if you’re consuming adverts,
1:23:03 you’re basically paying with your attention. It’s just a different currency we’re paying with.
1:23:09 There’s no porn that’s free if you think about it. Fair enough. You’re paying with your attention
1:23:12 either way. You’re looking at an advert beforehand, you’re scrolling past a display advert on the
1:23:15 right hand side of the page, or even on Twitter. If you’re on Twitter, you’re consuming ads when
1:23:19 you stumble across porn. It’s a different advertising model. But not the right people are
1:23:28 getting the money. The people making the content. Exactly. It’s the dealers who are getting it.
1:23:33 When you look at Onlyfans, interestingly, 6.6 billion they made this year, and about 5 billion
1:23:41 of that went to the creators. Onlyfans has been a real phenomenon in the culture of the last couple
1:23:47 years. I mean, if we look at the porn industry, so it changed a lot. I’ve been in this industry
1:23:55 now for 20 years. When I started, there was sites, online pay sites, tubes didn’t exist,
1:24:01 etc. And then when Onlyfans came around and when they become big in the pandemic,
1:24:09 they changed again their roles for this industry a bit. And I do think that it’s better that the
1:24:19 people who are making it are receiving their customers directly, etc. And that they can make
1:24:25 decisions for themselves. I think it’s a good part of the industry that it works that way.
1:24:32 Nofap, a term I only came across a couple of weeks ago. This idea of Nofap, which is, I believe,
1:24:39 and you clearly know much more about this than I do, Dr. K, but I believe the term is it’s proposing
1:24:45 a solution to the pornography challenge that some people have, where you completely abstain
1:24:51 from watching pornography and all masturbating at all. Rena, if I recall, and I don’t want to
1:24:55 mischaracterize your opinion here, but I think when we spoke the first time on the podcast,
1:25:00 you made the case that masturbation does have positive impacts. So what is your view on this
1:25:09 idea of Nofap? Yeah, so I think the movement, so the idea of retaining from or abstaining from
1:25:15 masturbation or watching pornography is a very individual one. And it may have benefits for
1:25:20 some people in terms of they may, because if they’re using these things in a negative way,
1:25:24 abstaining from them may allow them to have more control over other portions of their life. But
1:25:29 a lot of people will misinform people and say, oh, you’re going to have a higher testosterone.
1:25:34 You’re going to have all these physiologic changes, which have not been borne out in literature.
1:25:40 There’s like a very small study looking at men who abstained from ejaculation for 21 days that
1:25:45 saw a very small, minute increase in testosterone, like 10 guys. So it’s not generalized. Well,
1:25:51 it’s never been repeated. And testosterone varies as it is quite significantly over days and throughout
1:25:56 the day and one day to the next. So ultimately, there’s no evidence to support the fact that
1:26:01 abstaining from anything like masturbation is actually going to have a benefit. More likely
1:26:06 than not, either you’re going to have a nocturnal emission or your body’s going to absorb that
1:26:11 semen. So it doesn’t really change what’s going on physiologically. Is there an impact on fertility
1:26:15 if I masturbate or don’t masturbate? Yes. So fertility, we do see that if you abstain for
1:26:22 about five days, up to five days, you’re going to see some improvement in the semen volume,
1:26:29 potentially, and also some characteristics of the sperm. But above and beyond that,
1:26:34 you start seeing DNA damage. And so that can actually be negative if you abstain for too long.
1:26:38 So the sperm are effectively dying in the scrotum? Well, you’re seeing the commutation. So they’re
1:26:43 not as effective. They’re not going to die necessarily, but they’re not going to create
1:26:50 a healthy fetus or embryo. That’s okay. No fat. That’s fascinating. I didn’t know that.
1:26:56 Really interesting. So a couple of things to understand. So there are a lot of traditions
1:27:01 that abstain from sexual activity. I think we don’t study those traditions very well. And I
1:27:08 think the key thing to understand, I personally think that celibacy and abstinence from sexual
1:27:15 activity can be incredibly powerful. And so I think part of what we have to remember, right?
1:27:20 So if we don’t have any evidence for something, why do so many people believe it? So some of it is
1:27:26 there’s a lot of bad information out there. But people, what happens on the no fat community
1:27:32 is that people are having some experiences and they’re saying this kind of thing changed my life.
1:27:37 And there’s so many layers to that. So the first is that I think no fat is kind of a way to wrestle
1:27:43 with any kind of behavioral control. So if we look at people who are addicted to pornography,
1:27:47 we talk about all of these negative impacts of this cycle of I don’t have anything to do
1:27:52 anything today. So I’m going to jerk off and then I have no meaning, no purpose, no dopamine.
1:27:57 So I’m just like stuck in the cycle. So they want to break the cycle and they just pick one thing.
1:28:02 And I think just challenging yourself from a self-control perspective. I completely agree with
1:28:07 Dr. Mollick says there may not be a physiological thing going on here, but just challenging yourself
1:28:13 and saying, Hey, like this one thing messes up my relationships, messes up my dopamine,
1:28:18 messes up my purpose and my motivation. I’m going to take control of this and it’ll change my life.
1:28:23 So I think if you look at it from an isolated stance of masturbation, it may not have much
1:28:27 of an effect. We’ll talk about the exception to that rule in a second in the spiritual traditions.
1:28:32 But I think that a lot of people are just using it as a vehicle to come to terms with something
1:28:36 challenging in their life. And they’re like, they’re making a commitment, right? I’m going to do this
1:28:42 thing. And the benefit comes from that maybe not any physiological thing. You know, all the stuff
1:28:45 about testosterone and stuff completely agree. I don’t think that there’s a clear thing there.
1:28:49 But if you look at some of the meditative traditions, one of the really common things,
1:28:53 and this is really fascinating because this is true of meditative or religious traditions
1:28:59 all over the world. So you’ll see celibacy is a part of some of the Abrahamic religions. It’s
1:29:04 part of some of the karmic religions from the East. So human beings at some point figured out that
1:29:11 abstaining from sexual activity can have different kinds of impacts in the organism. So a couple of
1:29:17 things that it does is it reduces our thoughts of lust if we do it the right way. And we’ll get to
1:29:22 a couple of specific examples of what the NOFAP community doesn’t understand. So when I deprive
1:29:28 myself of a particular thing, I sometimes reduce that behavioral reinforcement. So if I look at
1:29:32 someone who’s addicted to alcohol, you know, when they stop drinking alcohol at the very beginning,
1:29:37 their desire will increase. But then 10 years later, they don’t even think about it. So if you
1:29:45 are someone who is thinking about sex constantly, and you stop engaging in sexual perceptions.
1:29:50 So remember, the thoughts in our brain come from what we perceive. This is why advertising is a
1:29:54 thing. Because an advertiser knows if I can show you this thing, you will think about it.
1:30:01 Now, if I’m fapping and watching pornography, I’m getting this perceptual input, which is then
1:30:06 creating thoughts in my head. Now I’m thinking about this stuff instead of thinking about something
1:30:10 else. So there’s that layer of thing too, when I cut something off from my perception, when I
1:30:14 break up with someone, why do I block them? Because if I watch their social media, if I get text from
1:30:19 them, that’s going to enter my perception and control my thoughts. So they can also use it as
1:30:24 a benefit of like thought control if I stop looking at this stuff. This has also been hijacked by
1:30:30 generally speaking patriarchal structures for like, there’s a particular religious sect of
1:30:34 Hinduism where the priests are like, “I’m never going to see a woman. No women are allowed in the
1:30:38 house if I’m going to come visit your house.” So this gets turned into some weird things.
1:30:45 So NOFAP gives us an opportunity for self-control. It gives us a chance to reduce our sensory input,
1:30:49 which reduces our thoughts. And then there’s also these meditative traditions, which say
1:30:55 that achieving esoteric spiritual experiences, which is a lot of what the NOFAP community like
1:31:00 talks about, like they become slightly different human beings, celibacy is a part of that. Now the
1:31:05 key thing about the meditative traditions is that they’re not taking advice from randos on the internet.
1:31:10 So I’ll give you all just one really simple example. When you do esoteric meditations,
1:31:15 spirituality, celibacy kind of stuff, it’s usually accompanied in the Hindu tradition or Buddhist
1:31:20 tradition with certain yogic postures. And one example of this is something called siddhasana.
1:31:27 Siddhasana is a debt’s pose. And literally what you do is in this pose, you place the heel
1:31:36 of your right foot usually up against your perinium. So you put pressure on the area between your anus
1:31:40 and your scrotum if you’re a man. It’s a slightly different location if you’re a woman. And then
1:31:44 what that actually does from anatomy, I’m sure you know this better than I correct me if I’m wrong,
1:31:49 is that we know that the blood supply to the scrotum passes through that, right? It’s on the
1:31:53 underside. It’s like in that pelvic floor region. So one of the really interesting things that I
1:31:58 remember learning from a yogi who was a medical doctor is that when we compress blood flow through
1:32:04 the testes, like if you have gently compressed blood flow that increases over time, you’re going
1:32:09 to get less blood flow to the testes. You may get some kind of reduction in testosterone production
1:32:13 and semen production or whatever. So there may be some physiological things that people do when
1:32:19 they’re normally like trying to be celibate that allow it to be healthy in a good way.
1:32:23 So I think kind of the key takeaway, don’t disagree with anything that Dr. Malik said.
1:32:30 I think you’ve got to remember that NOFAP is not a surefire solution to fix all your problems.
1:32:36 And at the same time, some people have positive experiences. Also, Dr. Malik has been emphasizing
1:32:41 this point of it’s not the same for everybody. And we know that there are a couple of things
1:32:46 working with this community quite a bit. There are a couple of things that happen about self-control,
1:32:50 challenging yourself, setting a goal, creating purpose in your life, changing what your sensory
1:32:55 inputs are. So you’re not thirsty all day long and thinking about being horny and all this kind
1:32:59 of stuff. Like sometimes you got to kind of cut it out of your life. And so it’s almost like this
1:33:04 cold turkey kind of approach, which can sometimes work for nicotine, can sometimes work for things
1:33:09 like sex. But I think like your mileage may vary. And we don’t really know exactly what’s going on.
1:33:14 And I think I’ll add, I think that the problem I have with it to some degrees, and people are
1:33:17 white knuckling it, right? They’re really, and they’re getting peer pressured into it,
1:33:23 like you’ve got to stop, right? And so then they’re really trying hard not to ejaculate.
1:33:28 And so they’re tensing up their pelvic floor muscles, they’re developing problems because
1:33:32 they’re tensing up their pelvic floor, they’re developing dysfunctions, they’re getting pain
1:33:36 with ejaculation, they’re getting pain with erections, or they get so much shame when they
1:33:40 have a nocturnal omission, for example. A nocturnal omission is a nighttime ejaculation.
1:33:45 Exactly. So they’re getting so shamed by the community because they’ve failed,
1:33:48 which is completely out of their physiologic control. Like you’re going to have a nocturnal
1:33:51 omission if your body wants to have one, there’s nothing you can do about it. So,
1:33:56 you know, I think ultimately there is a lot of shame and peer pressure that can sometimes
1:34:01 create harm in these situations. Now, if you’re using it in the way Dr. K describes, like that’s
1:34:06 fine. If you’re deriving benefit from it, I have no problem. But I do take issue with the people
1:34:11 who are harming themselves because they’re getting a lot of pressure from this, from the group.
1:34:15 If I can jump in for a second. So I want to emphasize this point too. So this is really weird,
1:34:19 but people are white-knuckling it, they may be making their addiction actually worse.
1:34:23 So there’s a really interesting principle in addiction where if I’m white-knuckling something,
1:34:28 like so like, let’s use the example of like opioid addiction, right? So when I’m working
1:34:32 with an opioid addict, at the very beginning, what they have is like a psychological craving,
1:34:37 like I want to, I want to have an opiate so that I feel better. I mentally, I feel better,
1:34:42 I feel euphoria. And then if I white-knuckle it, what happens is things start to get worse.
1:34:46 Then I start to go into withdrawal. And then my body is like, now I’m going to opioid withdrawal.
1:34:52 So instead of euphoria, now I start to feel pain all over my body. And as I feel pain all over my
1:34:58 body, then finally what happens is I crack. And then I use opioids. And then something really
1:35:06 interesting happens. The body learns what it, what it has to do to you to make you use opioids again.
1:35:13 So when you white-knuckle and actually crack at the end, what we find is that your, the body jumps
1:35:18 straight to level 10, right? So it’s kind of like, we see this also with like kids and devices.
1:35:23 Mommy, daddy, can I have an iPad? No. And then they’re like, mommy, daddy, please, no. And then
1:35:27 then they start crying. Then they start throwing a temper tantrum. If you give them the iPad when
1:35:34 they throw a temper tantrum, that encourages them to throw a temper tantrum. And we see that internally,
1:35:40 biologically, physiologically, where if you resist an addiction and then you cave at the end,
1:35:45 the body is like, hey, there’s no point messing around with the early stages. Let’s just go to
1:35:50 hard withdrawal way faster. So I think it can be so harmful when people are white-knuckling it,
1:35:55 they don’t realize that every time they fail, sometimes what they’re actually doing is training
1:36:00 their brain to punish them way harder so their brain can get the dopamine that it wants.
1:36:07 You talk about pornography being a substitute for relationships in society. Okay. Have you spoken
1:36:12 about that? I don’t want to misjudge your opinion. Yeah. I’ve got a quote here. Yeah, yeah. But your
1:36:17 experience has been that pornography usage is really just a powerful coping mechanism.
1:36:21 And it sort of scratches this evolutionary itch for relationships. Yeah.
1:36:26 Is it therefore not a bad thing for people? I’m reflecting on that idea,
1:36:30 which we kind of addressed at the start, but also just what I see in the comments section,
1:36:35 which is people really seem to hate dating apps and pornography, but they also seem to use them
1:36:41 both. And I just, as a podcast, we were really surprised the first time we had a dating app CEO
1:36:45 on the show, because I thought, oh, great episode. We learned a lot about business and how they built
1:36:51 the app. And then I looked at the comments section, and this group of people had shown up with pitch
1:36:57 forks, and they were expressing their desperation, and they’re feeling that these dating apps and
1:37:02 pornography has very much ruined their lives. And so I just want to throw that out there,
1:37:06 because it’s a reflection of the comments that I see. Yeah. So I didn’t say, okay,
1:37:11 to try to show you. I was just like, let’s see the rest. So yeah, I think what was once again,
1:37:17 remember that the brain, every part of the brain, every neurotransmitter is involved in sexuality
1:37:25 and relationships. So what’s happening is when we, this is what we see is that when we use technology
1:37:30 to activate the brain, there are parts of the brain that don’t know the difference. The problem is
1:37:36 that there are other parts of the brain that don’t get activated. So this is, this is going to get a
1:37:39 little bit weird. But so if I think about like, you know, I’ll give you all, let’s just use the
1:37:45 example of food. So when I feel hungry, I can eat something that’s calorically dense, and that will
1:37:49 satisfy my hunger. But the calorically dense food may not have nutrition. It may not have
1:37:55 micronutrients. It may not have fiber. So when I replace something nutritious with something that
1:38:01 tricks my body into thinking, oh, like now we’re fine, that can be very damaging. So one of the
1:38:05 things that we see with pornography is that if we look at like, you know, being horny,
1:38:11 why are human beings horny? It’s because if we weren’t horny, we would never mate. Like that’s
1:38:17 like, it’s an evolutionary, it’s not a bug, it’s not a problem, it’s a drive to help us succeed.
1:38:22 So then we have this thing called post-nut clarity, right? Which is like, when we have post-nut clarity,
1:38:28 our hornyness kind of goes down, and then it changes the way that we see the world. So part of what
1:38:33 we see a lot with like pornography is a substitute for relationships is first of all, we’ve evolved
1:38:38 to have these parts of the brain that get activated, right? Relationships are a healthy thing for us.
1:38:44 And now we figured out how to partially activate the brain through pornography. This is getting
1:38:48 worse with things like OnlyFans, because now we develop a parasocial relationship. There’s usually
1:38:53 not parasocial relationships with like, you know, adult film actresses or maybe there are. But now
1:39:00 we have interaction. I’ve seen more marriages ruined through OnlyFans than I have through pornography.
1:39:05 And I’ve seen a big spike in this recently, because now it’s not just a physical thing.
1:39:08 There’s enough insecurity and physicality and problems in the bedroom.
1:39:09 And emotion.
1:39:11 Now there’s an emotional relationship.
1:39:18 If pornography online didn’t exist, would we have better romantic relationships in real life?
1:39:19 You’ve got an opinion, haven’t you?
1:39:24 Yeah, we don’t know. Short answer is we don’t know. But even a shorter answer is,
1:39:27 yeah, things are worse with pornography. And here’s what I look at, right? So like,
1:39:32 if we don’t have RCTs, what else can we look at? We can randomize control trials.
1:39:37 You know, what we can look at is global trends. So what are we seeing? What’s the global trend
1:39:42 in pornography? And what’s the global trend in relationships? Now, this isn’t causality. There
1:39:47 could be all, there’s all kinds of, I think one thing that I really appreciated is, you know,
1:39:52 my, my co-guests have clearly showed how nuanced and multifactorial this issue is.
1:39:58 But generally speaking, people are watching way more porn and relationships are getting worse.
1:40:03 We have declining birth rates. People are getting married later. You know, there’s,
1:40:09 we’re seeing a kind of global like zeitgeist problem between men and women.
1:40:13 And pornography is like correlated with those two things.
1:40:18 So in my mind, if you have, if I say, if you have to, if I have to put an answer,
1:40:26 if we removed all pornography from the world, would things get better? I would say, yes. But
1:40:33 that’s because the way pornography is right now, and I think is, let me finish, I think I’m going
1:40:39 to tee you up. So I think it’s, it’s, it’s because in the reason removing it would be better is because
1:40:46 it has gotten more toxic, right? So as pornography becomes more harmful, as it morphs and transforms
1:40:50 into something that is more damaging, removing it should make things better.
1:40:54 Which is inevitable because of how the brain works. You said we get
1:40:57 increasingly desensitized, so we want more extreme. So if you start here,
1:40:59 you’re eventually going to end up here regardless.
1:41:08 I would say for who would it be better or worse? Because for me and my taste, it would probably
1:41:19 be worse. I think that people who are searching ideas, desires, fantasies, scripts outside the
1:41:27 kind of heteronormative, male-dominant pornography that’s out there, they have really, you know,
1:41:34 had a benefit of what has happened during the last years on the internet. Today they have access
1:41:41 to different role models. They have access to different stories. They have access to representation.
1:41:50 They, you know, have access to sex education that is not heteronormative and, and, you know,
1:41:57 kind of, you know, in a heteronormative script, when it comes to sexual debut, et cetera,
1:42:06 people always talk about that that is through penetrative sex. It’s not necessarily true,
1:42:12 is it? What did we do before porn? I mean, were we struggling in the bedroom before pornography
1:42:18 existed? I mean, I think people were more open about sexuality. The way the frigidness around
1:42:24 sexuality is a modern concept, right? Like in ancient civilizations, you were watching people
1:42:30 have sex. It was in live, right? Like it was, but it wasn’t easily accessible in 15 seconds
1:42:37 in extreme. So we’re saying we should come off. We should, we have to mature, I think. I think we
1:42:45 are in a maturing process that porn online this way is still pretty new. And we haven’t talked
1:42:51 about it much in, you know, general society. So I think that this conversation that you are having
1:42:58 now that you invited us to have a nuanced conversation, taking lots of time to talk
1:43:03 about different aspects, that is exactly what we need. Yeah, I agree. And I would just say,
1:43:08 just back to your point, I think, you know, yes, we see the rise of all these things concurrently,
1:43:12 but if we got rid of porn, would there be something else that people would be turning to,
1:43:17 right? Like it’s chicken or the egg, right? It’s probably not the cause. It’s multifactorial.
1:43:21 And so would people then turn to something else? So would it be only fans instead of porn, right?
1:43:25 Would it be, I mean, and only fans can be a variety of different things, right? But it’s
1:43:29 now a live person that’s communicating with someone else, or is it going to be AI robots that
1:43:32 have sex with you, right? Like, are we going to turn to something else?
1:43:39 Gaming addiction or some other type of addiction gambling or recreational drugs or alcohol or,
1:43:43 so it’s really, you’re saying it’s more of just a symptom of a set of challenges in society that
1:43:47 people are using it for the emotional regulation that you described, Dr. Kay.
1:43:52 I think there’s a little of both, right? That it’s easily accessible. It’s free. I mean,
1:43:58 your time is time, but like it is not costing you money. So that is part of the issue. But I’m
1:44:03 saying, I don’t think it’s, I think that there is a bigger problem and that people are using as
1:44:08 a scapegoat to avoid this problem. Just to kind of counterpoint to that, I don’t think you’ll
1:44:12 disagree with what I’m about to say. So the other thing that we know from addictions is that people
1:44:17 have drugs of choice, right? So to say that it would be completely replaced, I would disagree with,
1:44:23 because I think that the way that pornography affects your brain is unique compared to video
1:44:30 games. And at the same time, we also see a lot of stuff to support. I agree with Dr. Malik,
1:44:34 is that like we’re seeing a rise in video game addiction. We’re seeing a rise in social media
1:44:39 addiction. We’re seeing a rise in pornography addiction. And depending on your individual
1:44:45 makeup, you may be vulnerable to pornography versus social media, right? So when you have,
1:44:51 when you need that parasocial relationship, without the sexual component, maybe you get
1:44:57 addicted to social media. When you have that sexual component, maybe you get addicted to pornography.
1:45:01 And so I think it is, I do think it’s like a pretty unique thing. So if we just look at
1:45:08 the physiology of sexuality and relationships, that’s a pretty like, it’s a dangerous, dangerous
1:45:18 thing to hijack, because it’s so like fundamental to like life in mating. So, you know, I think it,
1:45:22 I think it’s somewhat specific. I don’t think it, I think if we removed it, it would have
1:45:28 some effect. But I think what I’m hearing from my co-guests is that, you know, I think this is
1:45:32 true of all technology. It’s not that, oh, we should ban it. That’s why I’m kind of reluctant
1:45:36 when you ask that question. And I’m happy to say, sure, on balance, I’ll say yes.
1:45:40 But I think the key thing to understand is that we are developing things as the human race
1:45:45 without realizing what we’re building. We are developing, so the problem with pornography is
1:45:51 almost like an issue of like, you know, when you introduce an invasive species to a new environment,
1:45:54 there are no checks and balances. So I think like there are parts of Australia, for example,
1:45:59 where like they introduced rabbits. And rabbits have like just taken over the whole continent.
1:46:03 And so I think what’s happened with pornography is we started letting people,
1:46:08 arguably the wrong people, start building all of this pornography. It’s ripped through our society.
1:46:14 It’s changed the way that now 40-something percent of women are coerced into asphyxiation in college.
1:46:20 Like, what the fuck? Right? Like, this is insane. Like, how did, how did we get here?
1:46:24 But it’s only just the beginning. You mentioned their virtual reality, AI, these new technologies.
1:46:32 One of the great things about these new technologies, specifically AI and large language
1:46:37 models, is they can have a conversation with you. And this is something in technology that we couldn’t
1:46:42 really do before in such a remarkably personalized way. So you kind of combine these technologies,
1:46:47 you go, okay, I’ll add in virtual reality. Robotics is on the rise as well. We now have these large
1:46:51 language models that can communicate with you in whatever way they need to to make you feel whatever
1:46:58 you need to feel. And I look at that and go, the future’s not bright as it relates to sex,
1:47:03 relationships, and pornography. People, you know, they did a study in 2020 with virtual reality.
1:47:09 And they found, the researchers found in that study that virtual reality porn made people
1:47:13 feel more desired, more flirted with, and more connected to the actress. So the more immersive
1:47:17 we make pornography, which is the direction of travel in the world generally, the more it’s
1:47:21 going to be addictive, the more it’s going to feel like a better substitute than having a real
1:47:27 relationship with a real person. Yeah, I agree. I think it’s it’s unless we develop some checks
1:47:36 and balances, and we prioritize relationships with other human beings as a society where we’re
1:47:42 going to be in trouble. So what do we do there? Do we ban it? Do we ban virtual AI porn?
1:47:48 Because there’s a ready websites now, there was three websites that I found that allowed you to
1:47:55 make your own partner. And they’re calling this digisexuals, where you can pick their personality,
1:48:00 you can pick their physical preferences, you can pick the sexual fantasy that they perform and that
1:48:05 you want to see them perform. And, and, and these are becoming increasingly popular. And the great
1:48:10 thing about these, according to the websites that make these sexual characters that you can make
1:48:16 yourself, is it remembers all of your previous conversations. So quote, it can improve communication
1:48:21 and cater to what your desire is. So it can really speak to what you want. But it can’t touch you.
1:48:28 It can’t hug you, it can’t kiss you. But the robots can, those big sexual robots can. So like,
1:48:33 I know this is going to sound crazy. But like, you know, I think we look at the end of the human
1:48:38 race. And we look at things like climate change and nuclear war and maybe like some super bug that
1:48:43 is resistant to all of our antibiotics. Like there’s a tiny, tiny chance that what’s going to end the
1:48:47 human race is something like this. And I know that’s like kind of a bold statement to make. But like,
1:48:53 let me just share with y’all what I’m afraid of. So what’s going on is you’re right, it’s becoming
1:48:57 more immersive. And the whole problem with like technology and even the virtual world, what we
1:49:03 see in video games is that the immersive world is one that we prefer to the real world. Right. So
1:49:08 if you kind of think about, let’s say, only fans versus a real relationship, only fans like this
1:49:14 person is financially invested to not piss me off. Whereas I know this is very frustrating for a lot
1:49:18 of dudes out there. Turns out if you’re in a real relationship with a woman, there’s a human being
1:49:24 who has thoughts and feelings and desires of her own. I know it’s tough. Right. And so like, what
1:49:30 happens is we, in only fans like they’re, they’re invested in making you happy. And now what we’re
1:49:35 happening is AI girlfriends. That’s just the start of it, man. Like right now, they can try to fulfill
1:49:39 your desire. Someone’s going to figure out that a random reinforcement schedule is better. So if
1:49:44 you want to create the most addictive virtual girlfriend, she’s actually not going to give you
1:49:48 what you want. Some of the time she’s going to piss you off. She’s going to throw a temper tantrum.
1:49:52 That is going to trick your brain into thinking this is a real relationship.
1:49:56 Which comes from gambling psychology. Right. Gambling psychology. Right. And so now what I’m
1:50:01 going to do is get more addicted to technology. And this is why video games are addictive. There’s
1:50:05 a really fascinating study where people were like, the reason video games are addictive is because
1:50:09 of a denial of a reward. So if you look at Fortnite, Fortnite is a game that has 100 players in
1:50:15 arena. There’s one winner, which means you lose 99% of the time. But oh boy, if you’re the winner
1:50:22 that one time, the dopamine surge that you get is astronomical. When we deny human beings rewards,
1:50:28 and then we give it to them, they’re hooked. This is gambling. This is also why we respect
1:50:33 people sitting at this table. Because we’ve all worked hard. What we did is not easy to do.
1:50:38 That’s why everyone values it. Someone’s going to figure this out with AI girlfriends. And then
1:50:43 this is the thing they can’t hug us, but they can. So this is happening. So this technology was
1:50:50 actually developed in the early 2000s for medical reasons. So when we were seeing clinics in remote
1:50:54 parts of the world that would have these things called haptic feedback gloves. So this is back
1:50:59 when if you look at like a doctor who was this specifically technology developed around detecting
1:51:04 breast cancer. So what happens is I put on a glove, I’m a doctor, and someone else puts on a glove
1:51:09 somewhere else in the world, and then they do a breast exam. So they feel the breast. Okay. And
1:51:15 then based on the lumps that you feel, whatever their glove feels, I’m wearing a glove that makes
1:51:20 me feel the same things. So we have some of these sexually assistive devices like, you know, for
1:51:25 both men and women now, when we combine haptic feedback and they start throwing temper tantrums,
1:51:29 like I really think it could be like there’s a tiny chance it’s just the end of the human race.
1:51:37 Because we’re not like, why bother with another human when I can get touch and I can get activated.
1:51:41 And you can get irritated every so often. Every so often, which makes it so much sweeter, right?
1:51:49 Makeup sex is great. The end of the human race. Scary. I don’t want to go there.
1:51:52 I mean, I think we have to actively work at it, right? Like we have to
1:51:56 peach our children that like relationships are hard and worth it. And you know,
1:52:04 it’s hard, though, it’s really hard. But I think, yeah, I think it’s going to be a challenge. And
1:52:09 we have to have some checks and balances. And we on our own have to work in our own little microcosm
1:52:16 to try to continually have the younger generation see the value of relationships and procreation
1:52:19 and all those things because that’s, you know, on the decline.
1:52:24 Don’t people in life typically just go for the path of least resistance when left to their
1:52:27 end devices? You know, I was thinking as you’re speaking about when I was in primary school,
1:52:31 they came in and taught me about your five a day. So like, you meant to have like five fruit and
1:52:35 vegetables a day or whatever. But then if they tell you that information, but then they put
1:52:41 you in a food environment where every shop is selling me candy and, you know, processed foods,
1:52:45 because it’s more nutritious, my brain spikes more. It doesn’t matter if what you told me.
1:52:49 It doesn’t matter if I know five fruit and vegetable, but we still have like this obesity
1:52:53 crisis. And I think if you went up to the average American and said, what food is healthy,
1:52:56 I think a good proportion of them would be able to say what’s healthy and what’s not.
1:53:01 But then if you ask them what they consume, it’s a very different answer, irrespective of pricing,
1:53:06 because your brain, especially in a more stressed world than ever before, is really driving,
1:53:11 driving you. So I’m picking up the soda I’m picking up. And I think about the same in pornography.
1:53:16 We can know something is not good for us. But if it’s readily available, and it’s low friction
1:53:20 to access it, the incentives are going to win out over the long term. And I think about this
1:53:23 in company culture, I say to people all the time, I say, you know, as a CEO, you can stand there and
1:53:29 tell your group of people how you want the team to behave. But it’s almost, it’s really naive to
1:53:33 assume over any long, long period of time that people will act outside of their incentives.
1:53:37 So you can say, I want you guys to all to innovate. But if your job description is literally
1:53:42 rewarding you to do your current job, and your bonuses are rewarding you to do your current
1:53:46 job, you’re going to do your current job, regardless of what the CEO is barking at you.
1:53:51 I think about the same in porn. We can’t just rely on telling people that it’s bad.
1:53:58 People do do things for delayed gratification. We went to medical school. There is a lot of
1:54:03 delayed gratification in medical school. You’re a CEO, you’re a producer. These are not easy
1:54:07 things to start, right? And you do it because you know there’s potential reward at the end of it.
1:54:13 So there is, you know, human psychology. I’m sure Dr. K can talk more about that, like where
1:54:17 you can foster this appreciation for delayed gratification. And also good food. You know,
1:54:23 when you eat well, when you eat green, et cetera, you feel much better and that gives your energy,
1:54:27 and then you want to keep going. The stats just, the obesity stats are just horrifying.
1:54:34 In the U.S. in particular, it’s a country where, you know… Education, education, education.
1:54:38 We tried that. You know, in school, I was told that vegetables and goodness is good,
1:54:43 but then obesity stats, since the time I was in school, have just gone in one direction still.
1:54:48 But maybe it’s about the practice. We have to learn, you know, how to get into the right
1:54:52 practice of things. And this is a question really about, is it the individual that has to find this
1:54:59 discipline or this sort of self-control? Or at a social level, do we need to put things in place
1:55:05 to make the environment easier to operate in? So a couple of thoughts. The first… So the first
1:55:09 is, I think the answer to that question, which we learned in medical school, is there’s never an
1:55:16 ERO, or the answer is always both. It’s always multifactorial. So I think I’m with you that…
1:55:20 So, like, when I think about, like, you know, what does my life’s work, it’s… I work on the
1:55:23 individual level. So when you ask me, should we ban something? It’s like, I don’t know.
1:55:27 Because my thought is that we got to save a couple of people. The good news about the human race
1:55:31 dying out is that, you know, if a couple of people continue to have sex with each other,
1:55:36 then all the people who are vulnerable to AI relationships will actually not procreate,
1:55:42 and humanity will survive, right? So maybe we’re okay. But I think that the other thing you have
1:55:46 to keep in mind, so this is maybe a little bit more of a spiritual bent. So I’m with you that
1:55:51 there’s an obesity crisis. I’m with you that human beings… It’s kind of like, we treat human beings
1:55:55 like the lowest common denominator, right? We’re like, oh, human beings, if we give them broccoli
1:56:00 and cookies, like, they’re gonna eat cookies. But I think that there are two things. The first thing
1:56:05 is that, like Dr. Malik said, you know, I think even if we look at this podcast, like, the people
1:56:11 who are watching this are not interested in eating cookies. And there is an appetite, why have podcasts
1:56:18 exploded? Because people tried to educate kids in school. And what we have organically,
1:56:23 evolutionarily discovered is there is a different way to communicate information
1:56:29 that creates behavioral change. That’s the first thing. So we’re seeing the counterbalancing force
1:56:35 of obesity. Like, the whole world became obese because we had people making calorically dense
1:56:41 food without an awareness of it. But I also see the highest amount of, like, whole grain
1:56:46 advertisement that I’ve ever seen before. Now we know it’s a problem and now humanity is fighting
1:56:51 back. And the other thing, so this is what I think really separates human beings from animals. And
1:56:57 maybe this is an argument that a more competent biologist will say I’m wrong here. This is more
1:57:02 of a spiritual perspective. But I think human beings are the only species on the planet that
1:57:07 may be able to run against our programming. And you can argue that this is even a deeper level
1:57:12 of programming. But the whole point of being human, the cool thing about being human is my brain
1:57:19 can drive me, like you said, in one direction. But I can say, hey, even though my brain is driving
1:57:25 me in this direction, I don’t want to go in that direction. Human beings are, it’s really interesting
1:57:31 because we’re the ones that, like, so I remember watching this TikTok or something about a vegan
1:57:35 dog. And someone was like, oh, yeah, you know, my dog is vegan. They don’t even like food.
1:57:40 Let’s do an experiment. There’s one piece of meat and one piece of some weird corn broccoli
1:57:45 chowder, right? Dogs sniffs both. They’ve never had meat for the last two years and eats the meat.
1:57:50 So if we look at animals like animals, it’s not clear to me that animals are able to
1:57:54 regulate their impulses in the way that human beings do. Why have human beings dominated the
1:58:00 planet? It’s because when we feel like having a cookie, we have broccoli. When we feel like yelling
1:58:04 at someone, we restrain ourselves. And there may be some deeper biology, evolutionary kind of thing
1:58:08 going on there. But I’d ask each and every one of you to look at your experience for a second.
1:58:16 Forget about biology. When you have an impulse, does that impulse control you or can you fight back?
1:58:21 I fight. Right? We all fight. That’s the human experience. The human experience is fighting
1:58:27 against our impulses every fucking day. And then we try to learn how can I get better at this?
1:58:31 Because what my tongue wants, I’m talking about calories, not sex for a second.
1:58:37 What my tongue wants is not, there’s a part of me that says this is not good for me in the
1:58:42 long run. This is delayed gratification. How many of our impulses do you actually think we’re
1:58:48 winning the fight against? Because I would argue that we’re losing pretty much all of the fights
1:58:52 against our impulses. In fact, the fact that we’re all sat here is probably us following our impulses.
1:58:58 The rise in social media usage is us being a slave to our impulses. The rise in obesity globally
1:59:03 is us failing, losing the fight to our impulses. The rise in pornography is us losing our fight
1:59:08 to our impulses. The rise in gaming, gambling, alcohol, whatever is us losing our fight with
1:59:14 our impulses. Workaholic people. So this is going to sound wild. I think we’re getting better at it.
1:59:18 So I know you’re saying we’re losing the war, right?
1:59:25 Human being’s self-control is increasing. And the reason why? We’re losing the war right now,
1:59:29 but the enemy is coming up with better and better weapons. Technology is getting sophisticated.
1:59:34 Pornography is getting sophisticated. Social media is getting sophisticated.
1:59:39 And yet the human race, in some ways, we’re collapsing, but we’re also operating in some
1:59:45 ways at the best level that we ever have. So we’re getting outgunned, but I actually think
1:59:49 human beings on the whole, when I see in the community, what’s the top search? How do I quit
1:59:55 pornography? So there’s something happening like on a humanity level where we’re like,
1:59:59 as human beings, we’re like, we got to start fighting back. This podcast is a consequence of
2:00:04 that. This is human beings fighting back. So are we losing the war? Yeah, but I think we’ve been
2:00:09 like, we got caught by surprise. We got caught with our pants down, right, which may be a weird
2:00:14 analogy in this context, but you know, so like, I’m with you that there’s a lot of reasons to
2:00:20 be scared. And also like the reason that people pay attention to me and Dr. Malik and Erica is
2:00:24 because we’re fighting back, right? That’s why we’re here. Stephen, this is brilliant, man,
2:00:29 because here you are. And whatever the questions you’re asking us, we’re all screwed. We’re doomed.
2:00:34 Isn’t it all screwed, right? So you’ve become so sophisticated that everyone who’s listening to us,
2:00:39 you’re pulling out the strongest messages of hope that the three of us can muster.
2:00:45 You’re figuring out how to give people hope because you keep on asking these pessimistic,
2:00:50 pessimistic, pessimistic questions. So this is what it takes, man. It takes like people who are
2:00:54 like figuring out how this works. Maybe you’re controlling their impulses. Who knows? No, no,
2:00:57 I have to represent whatever the opposite of whatever you say is. If you say left, I’ll say
2:01:03 right. Yeah, right. And so that’s beautiful. So think about it. When you were at school,
2:01:07 did anyone ever tell you there’s a conflict between broccoli and cookies? No, they said
2:01:13 eat broccoli. So we figured out as a human race that we need to represent both sides of the conflict
2:01:17 to get the best out of a human being. That’s a critical principle for addiction treatment too.
2:01:20 You can’t tell them it’s good. You have to weigh the good and the bad.
2:01:24 Is there any such thing as too much porn, Dr. Reena?
2:01:29 So I think it’s really about how you feel about it. So in all the data about problematic porn use,
2:01:33 it’s like people who feel bad about it, like they’re like, oh, I really don’t, I think I use too
2:01:37 much. Then you probably use too much, right? But if you use it and you don’t feel bad about it and
2:01:41 you’re still able to go to work and you’re still able to maintain your relationships and have sex
2:01:46 with your partner or your partners or whatever, then it’s not a problem, right? So I think it’s
2:01:51 comes down to how you feel about it and usually you’re right about it. Usually if you feel like
2:01:56 something’s wrong and you’re using too much, then probably abstaining or trying a different
2:02:02 alternative may be beneficial. So just to conclude then, if I made you prime minister,
2:02:08 president of the United Kingdom, the world, let’s say, and you had to put legislation in place to
2:02:15 make our relationship with pornography healthier or to make it a net more positive force for society
2:02:20 or impact on society, what exactly would you do, Dr. Reena?
2:02:28 This is a tough question. So I think I would have some mandatory self-analysis of your porn use
2:02:34 that everyone has to take every so often so that people can actually have to look at it with an
2:02:40 objective, like not watching porn, but seeing like how many hours do you use it and how often
2:02:45 are you using it. And again, frequency is not always related to problem, but it is one marker
2:02:50 that we can measure. And then, you know, maybe again, have a warning to them that this seems
2:02:55 like a lot of use. Are you still, and if they’ve had a certain marker of use, maybe are you finding
2:03:01 that you’re having difficulties in relationships and whatever? And that would hopefully alert some
2:03:06 red flags to people who may need some assistance. And hopefully we’d have some sort of intervention
2:03:13 for them. What about you, Dr.? Honestly, what I do is resign. The first thing I would do. But if
2:03:17 you’re asking for like a single policy change, I can get behind one thing. So I think the biggest
2:03:22 thing that we need right now from a policy level is social and emotional skills training for all
2:03:29 children. I think we need to reevaluate what we teach in schools and what people actually need
2:03:36 to learn today. So school, when knowledge and information was not easily accessible, school
2:03:41 was about learning information. But I don’t need to learn the capital of any state or country now
2:03:46 because I can look it up. So I think what we really need is social and emotional skills training.
2:03:50 There are also studies that show that this is very, very helpful for people. So how do you
2:03:54 regulate your emotions? How do you form connections with other people? These are the two biggest
2:03:58 things that we need because our emotions, when they get out of whack, they’re the birth of all
2:04:05 addiction. And media training. So young people can understand what they actually are watching and
2:04:12 that media is sending out messages to the world and that we are decoding those messages. I think
2:04:18 that is absolutely necessary. But what I would do, I think porn should be behind the payment barrier.
2:04:25 For me, that’s, I believe that that’s the way it should be. And better sexual education.
2:04:29 Better sexual education. I would add that. I add that to the mandate. Yeah, absolutely.
2:04:33 I don’t know how to say this in a way that you’re going to understand, but perfected
2:04:38 is banging. I’m an investor in the company. I drink here every day. The whole team drinks
2:04:41 perfected every day. We have a perfected fridge in the office. Here’s why I like perfected.
2:04:45 Typical energy drinks used to give me these crashes. And as a podcaster, the last thing you
2:04:48 want to do is be crashing in a conversation. The founders of perfected wanted to create an
2:04:53 energy drink that wouldn’t create that horrible crash cycle that many of us go through. So they
2:04:57 used matcha as the energy source and somehow they also made it really, really delicious.
2:05:02 They’ve just come out with this new flavor called juicy peach and it is banging. If you try
2:05:07 perfected’s juicy peach and it’s not banging, feel free to get in my DMs and cuss me out.
2:05:11 You can pick it up at Tesco’s or Waitrose or you can get it online. And here’s a secret that you’ve
2:05:16 got to keep to yourself. I’m going to give you 40% off perfected just so you can try juicy
2:05:21 peach yourself. Go to perfected.com and at checkout, put in the code diary40. I’m going to leave that
2:05:26 up for some time, not forever. That’s perfected.com and then use code diary40 at checkout. When you
2:05:30 try it, make sure you tag me on Instagram and say, Steve, you were right. It’s banging.
2:05:33 What’s the most important thing that we should have talked about, but we didn’t talk about,
2:05:36 as it relates to the work that you do and what you see and as it relates to sexual health,
2:05:44 relationships, love and dating. I think what we didn’t spend enough time on is how pornography
2:05:51 changes our body images. So I think there’s a significant number of people, men interested in
2:05:57 increasing penile length, women interested in maybe labiaplasty or looking a certain way
2:06:03 that they’re often seeing on pornography. And I think that creates a lot of dissatisfaction,
2:06:10 a lot of shame, a lot of small penis anxiety is a real thing. And it is very detrimental.
2:06:18 People are so focused on the size of their penis that they are now thinking about or
2:06:24 ruminating about it, potentially doing harm to themselves to try to increase penile length.
2:06:28 And so I think that this is something we didn’t talk about, but that is another potential harm of
2:06:33 seeing people who have chosen to be pornography actors who have, you know, on the high standard
2:06:39 deviations of size that’s not normal, right? And so they’re not seeing normal anatomy. And I think
2:06:45 that’s potentially harmful. I agree partly, but then also I hear many people when they’re talking
2:06:52 about porn, they’re saying porn creates unexpected kind of ideas of your bodies and
2:06:59 etc. But I’m a bit suspicious about this because honestly, look at fashion. What is fashion doing?
2:07:05 I think it’s worse. I really think it’s worse many times. In porn, there are so many different
2:07:12 people today, different body types, different ages, different, you know, different everything that are
2:07:19 being represented. So I think that that statement might be, you know, from 10 years ago or something.
2:07:22 Where does that statement come from? Just, I mean, we know that there is small
2:07:26 piece anxiety, we know that people are sure you can say my highest viewed video is about
2:07:32 increasing penile length has over 30 million views. So it is clearly something that people
2:07:37 are searching. Now, is it from pornography 100%? No, not necessarily, but that’s where they’re
2:07:43 seeing these very large organs is typically on pornography. Yes, you can see a whole host of
2:07:47 a variety of different types of people, but I think they’re seeing it there and feeling
2:07:55 but probably when it comes to men, there are less variety in porn than when it comes to women.
2:07:59 Erica, do you use large penises in your work? I don’t know how to say that.
2:08:08 It’s part of your sort of- Do you choose them by the size? No, I do not. I look for people’s
2:08:17 personality. That’s what I’m after. I’m looking for people who feel like real people. I mean,
2:08:22 beauty and energy and passion and chemistry, these sort of things. But does the penis size
2:08:29 matter? No, to me, it doesn’t matter. But then if we’re going to be 100% honest, it’s true that
2:08:36 many of the performers have a slightly bigger penises than what is considered average. What’s
2:08:44 the average penis length? It’s about 5.1 to 5.5 inches erect. And is there a gap in the perception
2:08:49 that men think the average penis length is bigger? Yeah, actually, both genders do. So when you look
2:08:56 at studies where people look at a penis and estimate the size, both genders tend to overestimate
2:09:01 average penile length. But they also are not really great at looking at a penis and telling the size.
2:09:08 So sometimes they’ll see a 5.5 inch penis and they get 6 inches up to an inch in variability,
2:09:14 basically, when you get on the above average sizes. So there is obviously perception issues.
2:09:18 But ultimately, I think the people who tend to want to be, and correct me if I’m wrong,
2:09:24 who want to be performers who are male will generally have something they want to show off,
2:09:28 and they will think they have a larger penis. What about the length of sex, though? Is there
2:09:31 disparities between how long we think sex should be and how often we think we should be having it,
2:09:36 which causes a lot of sort of dissatisfaction in relationships? Yeah, absolutely. So there is
2:09:44 the average time to ejaculation for a man is about five to six minutes. The average time to
2:09:50 orgasm for a woman during partner-intercourse is about 14 minutes. So there’s definitely a
2:09:57 disparity there that needs to be addressed. If you have average duration in your relationship,
2:10:01 then the female partner needs to be prioritized so she can reach climax. And that’s not the
2:10:05 end goal for everybody. You can still have a great relationship and have a great experience
2:10:10 without an orgasm. But if you want both people to climax, you need to stimulate the female partner
2:10:16 a little longer. You’re going to say something better. Yes. This is what she was saying. That’s
2:10:23 not the priority. She looked at Erica. I’m sorry. My brain grew up on the internet,
2:10:30 and there’s a subtract that’s running this whole time. So I think what I teach my patients is
2:10:35 almost identical. So if you look at the average sexual intercourse, people don’t realize it’s
2:10:43 three to seven minutes. Even really fascinating is that, speaking of misperceptions, about 50%
2:10:50 of women don’t want sex longer than 15 minutes. So I didn’t know what the average time to female
2:10:57 and male orgasm was, but I know what people prefer. And half of women, if you watch a two
2:11:01 film or something, sure, sometimes there’s shorts and stuff, but there’s also a porno
2:11:06 is like 45 minutes of all kinds of stuff. It’s like three to seven minutes, and women start
2:11:14 complaining after 50 seconds. So I see a lot of this body dysmorphia almost. It’s like getting
2:11:20 to that level in both men and women, unrealistic expectations about body, unrealistic expectations
2:11:25 about performance. That creates shame. Once I feel shame, then I want to watch pornography.
2:11:29 Then I want to watch Dr. Malik’s video that has 30 million views or get pills to increase
2:11:35 my penis size on the advertisers. So I think that there’s just a lot of bad information out there.
2:11:39 So does this mean that we need to make pornography that is reflective of reality,
2:11:43 i.e. make it three to five minutes long for men and 14 minutes for women? But also,
2:11:50 does it mean that we need to introduce pornography that’s reflective of all body images because
2:11:52 they’re going to go back to this like broccoli cookie analogy?
2:11:57 So I don’t think it has to be pornography. So I had an interesting experience. So like I was
2:12:02 in Europe and I went to a co-ed sauna, right? So like we don’t have that here in the United States,
2:12:06 and the co-ed sauna was like mostly like older people. So you see like, you know, the majority
2:12:12 of people there were like 60 plus. So you see like, you know, 100 naked bodies of like old men
2:12:17 and women, and it really puts things in perspective. I think part of the problem is with things like
2:12:21 fashion and things like pornography. We don’t, you know, we just don’t see what a normal naked
2:12:26 body looks like. So what’s the only, we see two kinds of naked bodies. We see our own, and then
2:12:31 we see, you know, highly produced or highly selected. We don’t see normal naked.
2:12:37 But if I made a porn porn film that had reality in it, would anybody buy it?
2:12:39 Well, I think if you made a porn film.
2:12:44 That would sell out. What are you talking about?
2:12:52 No, but the answer here is yes, I made a film with a couple who are 70 plus,
2:12:58 and it’s very successful people. There’s a very popular older female,
2:13:03 I don’t know her, but I’ve seen her on social media who is a porn actress and she’s, you know,
2:13:07 she’s a normal looking person. There’s quite many actually.
2:13:13 But why don’t the industry make videos then of people with normal bodies and normal sex penises?
2:13:15 But those videos aren’t the popular ones according to the data.
2:13:19 Not necessary. If you go on any streaming website and you click the popular button,
2:13:24 what you’ll see is idyllic bodies. Now, if people were searching out the pornography you’re saying,
2:13:28 those would be the most popular because the companies would make more money from them.
2:13:35 I mean, there’s so much content. I think that really lots of it is popular. I mean, there’s,
2:13:42 you know, one of the things that they are doing on this site is that they are categorizing people
2:13:51 by their primary features kind of. So you can look for porn with bigger bodies, for example,
2:13:58 and it’s quite a popular category actually, but you can also look for tiny teens. You can look
2:14:07 for milfs. You can look for cougars. I mean, people, many people, they have kind of gotten away
2:14:15 from what is kind of desire and connecting people and has gotten into this way of kind of having
2:14:18 their favorite kind of people, their favorite kind of porn.
2:14:23 Would your business be more or less successful if the bodies were reflective of society and
2:14:27 the penises were reflective of society? Would your business be more or less successful?
2:14:33 In my case, I don’t think so. I think we already show a great diversity of people.
2:14:41 Is it reflective of society? 100% not, but who is? Is Netflix reflective of society?
2:14:48 Is Vogue magazine reflective of society, et cetera? I mean, I think that we do tend to look for
2:14:55 beauty somehow, but beauty doesn’t mean a stereotyped, model-like people.
2:15:00 Yeah, just to chime in. So I think I’d challenge your question just a little bit,
2:15:05 because I get what you’re saying, but I think we can also see amateur porn is on the rise.
2:15:11 Yes. And if we look at when you say Onlyfans made 6.6 billion, I think a big appeal in Onlyfans
2:15:17 is that you have much more minimal-looking people. And so when we look at the success of a business
2:15:22 or not, I think there’s also a varied market. So people are looking for different things,
2:15:30 and I think we’re seeing that as porn becomes highly, overly produced and stuff,
2:15:36 there’s kind of this almost paradoxical upswing in amateur content in things like Onlyfans,
2:15:40 where you have someone who really is closer to the girl next door when we’re talking about a
2:15:47 heteronormative sort of situation. And I think we can also see that trend all over the place.
2:15:51 So as we get short-form content, we’re also seeing an explosion in podcasts.
2:15:56 So I think there’s a variable consumer there. I was looking as you were speaking at the top 10
2:16:03 earners on Onlyfans, and I have to say none of them look like they reflect the average person.
2:16:08 Yeah. So the top 10 earners won’t. Top 20? No, no, no. You can’t look at the top.
2:16:13 You have to look at what percentage of the 6 billion comes from the top 10 earners,
2:16:18 and what percentage comes from other people. Right? So it’s only fans of the kind of thing
2:16:23 where it’s like the majority of the revenue is earned by the top 10 earners, or is it this kind
2:16:29 of thing where the top 10 earners get maybe 50%, but then 50% is like a pretty wide variety.
2:16:35 That’s the statistic you need to look at. I can tell you that what we do see is that people
2:16:43 search a lot on our sites for real sex. It’s a concept that people are really looking for.
2:16:46 I also looked at Pornhub. This is the first time I’ve gone on Pornhub at work,
2:16:53 just to see again that the most viewed porn stars on Pornhub, and it’s the same reflection.
2:16:57 None of them look like the average person. I’m looking at the heterosexuals. I’m looking at
2:17:05 women and men, and they all look like mannequins, or 30 of them. Well, I think you and your team
2:17:11 need to do more research. You can’t accept an answer based values.
2:17:17 Okay, closing statements, closing thoughts. We’ve talked about a lot today, so I want to go
2:17:22 clockwise starting with Dr. Reena Malik. What are your closing thoughts and statements to the wide
2:17:25 variety of people that would have clicked on this video for the wide variety of reasons,
2:17:29 whether they’re parents, whether they’re the young men that struggle that, you often spend your time
2:17:33 dealing with Dr. K. What are your closing thoughts for them? But also, we have a lot of people that
2:17:37 are in government that listen, and we only found that out because sometimes they reach out to us.
2:17:41 Doctors reach out to us, people in Parliament, in Congress, etc. reach out to us. So what would
2:17:45 your statement be to all of those people? My closing thoughts are invest in education about
2:17:51 your body and about sex. So whether that means learning what your anatomy is and learning what
2:17:57 real sex is. And I think that is of paramount importance to having a successful relationship
2:18:03 with yourself and your partners that you can enjoy sex and use pornography for curiosity and not for
2:18:11 boredom. Yeah, I think remember that your body is learning all the time, and that we think about
2:18:15 pornography and its negative effect, which it can have a negative effect. So I’d start with really
2:18:21 understanding what pornography is doing for you, what’s the root of your relationship with it.
2:18:27 And also recognize that, I really do think after this conversation that pornography can be a force
2:18:32 for good. And many of the reasons that you may be watching it, if you transition to erotic film,
2:18:38 if you use it in a sexual relationship, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It’s the way that you
2:18:44 relate to it. And really think about how you can utilize it in a healthier way. And if you are
2:18:52 a consumer, think about what you are watching, see if there’s an about page, can learn anything about
2:18:58 that company, about these directors, producers, performers, can you watch them behind the scene,
2:19:07 footage, something that makes you feel that you align with the values of the people who are creating
2:19:14 it. Because not all porn is monolithic. There is many different kinds out there. And there’s many
2:19:26 great people working in this industry to spread the sex positivity and better acceptance of our
2:19:37 desires, fantasies, sexual lives, who are interested in the erotic aspects of sexuality.
2:19:41 I also think it’s worth saying, you know, we’ve talked widely about the subject of pornography.
2:19:47 But one of the things that I really did come to believe and I saw when there was a call to ban
2:19:55 OnlyFans was that OnlyFans as a website and as a platform is allowing porn stars and, you know,
2:20:02 adult actresses and actors to have a safer way to make their money and to do their business. And
2:20:07 previously what you’d seen is there was much of the escorting industry, which was much more
2:20:11 of a dangerous industry, have now moved over towards these platforms, which do provide greater
2:20:17 safety for a behavior that is going to happen irrespective of whether there’s a ban in place
2:20:22 or not. We have a closing tradition on this podcast, as you all know. You might not know
2:20:27 this. Where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. And because the last guest was you,
2:20:32 I’m not going to skip past it. And I opened up the book to a question that’s sort landed before
2:20:36 that. So I’m going to ask you all this question individually. And I’d love to hear your answers.
2:20:43 What can you do to improve humanity and the life of all the people that are listening?
2:20:53 I think continue educating people and empowering people to know what their bodies are doing and
2:20:59 how they can relate to the opposite sex, if they’re heterosexual, in order to have a satisfying
2:21:02 sex life. It’s not just an extracurricular activity. It’s something that we do that’s
2:21:07 a part of our innate biology, and it’s important and valuable.
2:21:14 Yeah, I mean, I think showing up tomorrow is like the most important thing. Like not here,
2:21:20 but just, you know, if we think about improving humanity, like decisions are made by those who
2:21:25 show up. So I think the most important thing that I can do is just showing up and continuing
2:21:29 to do what I think is best. The most important thing that all of us can do is just continue
2:21:33 showing up. The majority of the people that I work with in my community, the biggest problem
2:21:41 they have is sometimes not showing up. I would say connect with other people on a deep level,
2:21:50 dare to have difficult conversations, dare to be wrong, because I also think that we live
2:21:57 now in a society where so many people are so afraid of being wrong, of saying something wrong,
2:22:04 of that sometimes they don’t even dare to connect on a deeper level with other people.
2:22:11 Your point, Erika, your answer about being okay to be wrong, I think is really,
2:22:15 really important to a lot of the conversations we’ve had today, because most of the time people
2:22:19 don’t want to have these conversations because they’re sort of ideologically attached to a certain
2:22:23 position, typically the position that’s associated with whatever their job is or their incentive
2:22:27 structure. And I think sometimes it’s important to have these open, nuanced discussions like we’ve
2:22:31 had today, because we can all start to learn a little bit about other people’s worlds and bring
2:22:36 down some of those sort of ideological walls that keep us imprisoned. And all progress, I think,
2:22:43 is happens when you have this sort of conflict of ideas, but with the purpose not of proving
2:22:47 someone is wrong or you’re more intelligent or whatever, but through the purpose and the lens
2:22:52 of progress. And that’s why this conversation has been so enlightening to me, because I get
2:22:55 to see a bunch of different worlds from a bunch of different perspectives, and I can use that to
2:23:01 form my own opinion on the subject of pornography. And I will start by saying that my opinion of
2:23:07 pornography has actually changed in this conversation, because there was clearly parts of my understanding
2:23:12 of pornography that were in the dark. And those lights have been turned on. So now I have a more
2:23:17 contextual picture of the industry. Thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate
2:23:22 it. It’s, as I said a second ago, it’s super inspiring and super enlightening for me to get
2:23:26 all of these perspectives and to use all of this new information to reform my own opinion on the
2:23:32 subject matter in a much more naive, sort of biased way. So I really appreciate the time that you’ve
2:23:36 all given us today. And on behalf of all my audience as well, thank you so much. Appreciate
2:23:46 all of you. Thank you. Thanks. Isn’t this cool? Every single conversation I have here on The
2:23:51 Diary of a CEO, at the very end of it, you’ll know, I asked the guest to leave a question
2:23:57 in The Diary of a CEO. And what we’ve done is we’ve turned every single question written in The
2:24:04 Diary of a CEO into these conversation cards that you can play at home. So you’ve got every guest
2:24:11 we’ve ever had their question. And on the back of it, if you scan that QR code, you get to watch
2:24:18 the person who answered that question. We’re finally revealing all of the questions and
2:24:24 the people that answered the question. The brand new version two updated conversation cards are
2:24:30 out right now at theconversationcards.com. They’ve sold out twice instantaneously. So if you are
2:24:35 interested in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards, I really, really recommend
2:24:49 acting quickly.