#1072 - Dr Debra Soh - Why Nobody is Having Sex Anymore (& why it matters)

27:48And they're like, I'm in a relationship with a Chad. This is great. Let me jump on you. but then in other versions they've been optimizing for something that a more sort of native physiology or hormonal profile of theirs would not have been too keen on and then when they when they reveal that that mask they go oh I really I really like you all that much yeah which is unfortunate for both of them and it's unfortunate for him I can only imagine as a guy you know if your relationship we were in love just go back on the pill go back on the pill bring it back what was I going to say I wonder if because young women are getting on the pill at such a young age is this partially also why feminism has been so popular and why women really want to feminize men and they see masculinity as toxic because if you while on the pill your body thinks you're pregnant and you're looking for a nurturing caretaker is that why there's been this larger movement socially to encourage men to be much more feminine, not to be risk-taking, not to be dominant.

28:55To a degree. To a degree, I think I could imagine so. I would also imagine that Me Too and a lot of the moral panic around the danger of men generally causes women to want a softer kind of man. Now, they only want a softer kind of man kind of in principle, not in practice. You know, in the mid-20-teens, they tried to put what are called cinnamon roll boyfriends or golden retriever husbands on the front cover of romance books. I say this as somebody that was in that industry for a little while. What's a cinnamon roll? Cinnamon roll husband. Cinnamon roll husband is sort of soft, fluffy, very non-dominant, very pliable.

29:39you know he's the kind of he's got a bit of a gut but he's the sort of guy who would be able to put up level shelves but wouldn't exactly ravage you in the back seat of a car okay right very reliable consistent husband and on with these romance books the person on the cover is the protagonist typically these books were post uh 50 shades of gray so it should have just ripped right you're buying bitcoin at five cent the market's only going up nobody wanted to buy them nobody wanted to buy these. Now, it is kind of like female porn. So do you really want to watch, do you want your sexual fantasy to be about some guy that can put up level shelves, but isn't that good in the bedroom, no matter how much you try and sort of repurpose it.

30:22But the point is, women like the idea of this kind of, they'll proclaim it, right? It's a view that they'll endorse, that men should dial back their dominance and their desire for conquer and aggression and mastery and stuff like that but it's not one that they'll they will uh endorse it but not embody it and um when push comes to shove and you go oh yeah yeah he should be more soft and more gentle and less concerned with achieving things and stuff what does your husband do oh he's a hedge fund manager oh fantastic very good i used to do mma as a as a as a young guy yeah lovely um i do think on the birth control thing you're right what is it doing to men um i think that well there's evidence to suggest that men who are around old women, postmenopausal or young girls, their testosterone drops, their fertility drive drops.

31:16So I know that you've got a question around what's the X factor that's contributing to testosterone dip. I think that the artificial suppression of female fertility through birth control and the increasing isolation of men that they're not hanging around with fertile women or any women at all, and of them, more of them are elected infertile through birth control. I think that that is definitely a potential X factor that I don't think anybody has priced in. No one's priced in the fact that male sex drive and their hormone profile is impacted by the fertility of the women in their local ecology.

31:51And if you're not around women that are fertile and not around women at all, that is going to drive your sex drive down and it's going to drive your testosterone around. Interesting. I was going to ask you, what was it like shooting for those novels? Have you heard of this? So the way that I used to do it was I would shoot with a photographer for just my portfolio stuff. So it wasn't purposefully raunchy shit. I guess, I don't know, I just turned it on. I don't know what happened. Anyway, I got picked up. The first shoot that I did got picked up by a really good author and put on the cover of a book called Ricochet.

32:30And then I got flown out to go and do some of these

32:38book conventions, I suppose. But the entire thing is 2 ,000 dark romance readers. So there's me and a couple of the other cover models and then the husbands of the authors that are there to help them. And that's it. and it's just apart from that it's just female female readers um which sounds wonderful in practice but the um i was 27 28 or something like that um the age profile i was the youngest person in the room usually by like a factor of two um anyway it was it was interesting it was fun um it's a part of my history but i'm i've aged out i could be i might just pivot into cinnamon roll husband.

33:21I can't wait for that. Get a go. Chill out. There you go. If this podcast, you know. If it tanks. Well, anyway, so we've already got what's happening with hormonal birth control for women. And then we do have endocrine disruptors for men too. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely. I mean, there's been a number of studies showing this at testosterone levels have been declining for the last, say, 40 years. And it's been, you know, pretty severe, I would say, in the last 20 years. and researchers have accounted for things like age, diet, weight, exercise, lifestyle choices like alcohol, smoking, and cannabis.

33:55And still they say there's something going on here where it is environmental and that it is something specific to this time period. And so they do think that there's something in terms of the food we're eating potentially or in our water supply. I've read a lot of the animal literature in terms of drugs in the water and how this affects fish. What are the craziest stories that you learned about that? There was one species of Japanese fish and they tested diazepam. So, okay, well, there was one study that looked at fish that were exposed to pharmaceutical waste. And then also there was, I'm trying to think what the other source was.

34:39But basically, one part of the water supply, the fish were masculinized. So they're intersex in both directions. Some of the fish were more masculine, and then some of them were feminized. So it's basically saying, you know, this is happening to the fish. Like, what do you think it's doing to humans? But with these Japanese fish, they were lethargic, and they were basically too knocked out to breed. The courtship behavior was messed up. The female fish, their ovaries were so distended. And I felt really bad for the fish looking at these pictures because I thought that doesn't look very healthy or comfortable.

35:14So it's basically these drugs are doing something, I think doing something to us. And if you're not even aware of it, even if you do manage to find a partner and fall in love and decide you do want to have a family, you may come up against these issues. And then if you're not even aware that this is what you're ingesting on a daily basis, what do you do then? SSRIs drive sex drive down, right? Yeah, yeah, they affect libido. And there's also post-SSRI sexual dysfunction. Syndrome, yes, yes, yes, yes. ESSSD. Yeah, yeah. And the fact that in many cases, we don't know the effects of these drugs on children.

35:49And in some cases, they are being prescribed to kids. So that's very concerning. A quick aside, you've probably heard experts like Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk about the benefits of omega-3s. They reduce, hello, omega-3s. There they are. They reduce brain function. No, they don't. They support brain function. Maybe I should take more. They support brain function, reduce inflammation, improve heart health, and are backed by hundreds of studies. But here's the thing. All omega-3s are not made the same. Most brands cut corners. They use cheap fish oil, skip purity testing, throw in fillers, and call it a day.

36:18But with Momentus, you know you're getting the highest quality omega-3s on the market. They're NSF certified for sport, and they're tested for heavy metals and purity. So you can rest easy knowing anything that you take from Momentus is unparalleled when it comes to rigorous third-party testing. What you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. Best of all, Momentus offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. So you can buy it and try it for 29 days. If you don't love it, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35 % off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentus.com slash modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout.

36:58That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modernwisdom. and modern wisdom. A checkout. Is the issue, do you think, more about a desire for sex or coupling? You mean in terms of why people aren't having it? Yeah. Probably both. I think at the core, everybody wants to find someone. Many people may say that they've given up and they're happy on their own, but I do think that's what most people deep down want. And sex is, well, see, the thing with sex, though, So I think porn is a big part of this issue in terms of why people are turning away from actual sexual activity. They're getting their needs met through this proxy that simulates real sexual activity.

37:41Because when you're watching porn, the same network of brain regions is activated as when you're actually having sex. So you're having the resulting orgasm and you are getting these feel-good chemicals. It helps to self-soothe and regulate your emotions, help calm down if you're stressed out. And so it makes men, I think, in particular, less likely to want to go out and go through the hassle of having to talk to a woman, having to sit through a date, having to pay for the date, having to follow up and all this stuff. Like, why bother do that if you can get sexual gratification on a screen? But I think also that leads to potentially like an overall sense of lethargy, because when you are masturbating and having orgasm, you are, you know, you're going to be sleepy after.

38:25So is that also, you can tell me, do you think this is a trend, not for you, but just a trend more generally with young men in terms of does this affect their motivation? Because I'm wondering for guys, this question of why men are falling behind in society, right? And I'm very concerned for young men because I imagine, I hear all the time from parents that their daughters are doing really well, excelling academically, but their sons just for whatever reason are just, they're not enjoying it. You know, they're having mental health issues. They're just staying at home and fapping all the time. Yeah, well, maybe not fapping, but they're like, you know, vaping and playing video games or online betting or whatever, and they have no motivation.

39:01Do you think porn could be part of that? Because I think if you're exposed to this at such a young age, and this is the thing that you're watching every day, and it's your coping strategy, that potentially, that's the thing you're going to constantly gravitate toward. And it's actually going to, you know, make you really sedated and lethargic more broadly in life. Yeah, I think sedated is a great word. I've got another idea that Scott probably can't wait to fucking misquote. The male sedation hypothesis, young male syndrome, which I know that you know about, historically high volumes of young sexless men tended to cause anarchy and revolutions and push over granny and set stuff on fire.

39:34why is it given that we've seen the highest rates of sexlessness amongst young men in the modern world that we're not seeing the concordant amounts of antisocial behavior and it's my belief that men are being sedated out of their status seeking and reproductive seeking behavior through screens video games and porn and yeah that's what's happening behaviorally maybe there's some endocrine disruptors maybe a lot of weed i think more people more young guys smoke weed than drink alcohol now. So yeah, it is a real push toward lethargy. Do I think that you're anesthetizing yourself from your sort of mate-seeking behavior by being able to use porn?

40:17Almost certainly to a degree. I mean, there's even the opposite, which is, what was it? Masturbate before you evaluate was a tagline at university, which was, do I really want to sleep with that girl? let me let me have a wank first and work out if i still do and for the most part the guys were like no i wasn't that i like what was it uh i didn't like you i was just horny um and in some ways you go ah that avoids me from making a mistake but when you do it on mass and when it's very easily available um i mean look yeah there's some mixed bag data dr david lay is very anti-porn panic i know mike israel is very anti-porn panic too and then on the other side there's some people that are behaviorally it's not recognized as an addiction properly yet i don't think right but um it seems impossible to me that one of the strongest drivers for humans being given to them freely they can push a essentially push a button like rubber button for a while and and they get to experience this thing that i mean you know what would be fascinating i would have loved to have seen in hunter-gatherer tribes how much uh masturbation happened occurs like is it probably too busy foraging okay well that might be that might be true um just talk to me the neuroscience of porn use is there anything distinct about that that's different to what's happening when people have sex uh okay i was gonna mention i was gonna say something oh so what i was gonna say i agree with you in terms of like if you're i can see if you're doing it like constantly and it becomes a lifestyle thing how this is what my concern is if it's like a lifestyle thing for guys because i've had men say to me when they are not watching porn if they manage to cut out porn entirely that they actually have more motivation to go up and talk to a woman because i would imagine if you see a woman that you're attracted to and you want to go speak to her and say you're maybe more shy or anxious, you know in the back of your mind that you can go home and masturbate and that's going to give you a release after.

42:22In some ways, would that not make it a little bit easier? For younger guys especially who may not have as much experience with women and especially post-MeToo where they're already a little bit understandably more scared to talk to women, how knowing that you have this other option might - That's a good point. That is a good point. I mean, it's the same thing as if the only way that men could get sex was by marrying a woman, asking her father, becoming a pillar of the community, showing his competence, or if you just need to be in a nightclub at the right time in the right place at two in the morning, like men will meet those standards appropriately, including the standards for themselves in order to get sexual gratification through a screen.

43:02I mean, it is, I can't remember who it was that said it to me, but just for a second, think about how stupid the human brain is and think about how strong our sex drive is that looking at a seven inch across screen that I am not a part of, of someone else having sex with someone else can confuse my brain into thinking some sex is going to happen here. Like that, that is how strong this drive is, right? That a two dimensional exclusively video and audio representation on a teeny tiny little screen popped up against a pillow is enough to convince your brain there might be some sex on. You should respond appropriately.

43:50Yeah. It is mad. Also think about what it's doing to kids. Like this is one of the rabbit holes I've been going down more recently and thinking about how has this affected Gen Z's development if they're exposed to porn at such a young age. But in terms of the difference between say what's going on in the brain, it's the same brain network. Basically, you know, like regions that are involved in physiological arousal, penile tumescence, visual regions. This was my dissertation actually, so it takes me back now. I'm trying to remember what other parts of the motor. You did a dissertation on penile tumescence?

44:21No, no, not just penile tumescence, but it was on basically male sexuality and sexual arousal. And yeah, I looked at the structure and function of the brain. I used four different types of brain imaging. It was a lot of fun. It was a very expensive study, but I was extremely blessed. Really fun for the men. And so basically, it's the same network. It's not activated as strongly, but it's very much the same regions. And that's why pornography is so compelling. And why I think for people who, especially if you are, if that is your primary mode of sexual release, very much become a preference or a stand in.

44:58You're habituating. More than anything, it's just, what do you do? You know, guys that tend to go to the same bar all the time, sit in the same seat, order the same coffee. Like, this just becomes a part of your daily routine. And there's this weird habituation effect, I think, with porn. Mary Harrington calls it the law of fap entropy, which is whatever you start out wanking to gets progressively more extreme over time. That's actually, I like her work but actually that's not exactly accurate tell me what is accurate for guys who end up watching quote extreme stuff that's actually what they liked all along it just took them a while to admit it to themselves oh god the algo wasn't delivering them what they needed until it took a bit of time to refine it well because i understandably men who have these unusual sexual preferences they're blueberry pawns yeah balloons they're a little bit more reluctant to to say out loud so even to themselves even to themselves and oh that's so interesting explaining to say their partner or their friends if they're talking about this you know that's so good i love i love that i mean the law still works but not for the reason that you think it's not a progressive habituation to more extreme stuff it's a progressive revealing to yourself of what you wanted oh that's so cool what about gooning let's talk about gooning oh boy yeah i mean you could spend your life masturbating watching porn if you want to there's enough content out there for sure so gooning i'm sure your audience knows what this term is but it's basically men who predominantly men who like to masturbate to no end in sight and basically my understanding they might have multiple screens open for hours they don't reach an orgasm it's like edging but for a longer period of time and they don't really have any conflict about it they quite enjoy it how's porn affected women i think there are more women struggling with porn issues than people realize because this has predominantly been an issue like say um porn quote addiction although like you said i i don't believe porn is addictive i think it's a poor coping mechanism for people who have anxiety and who procrastinate that's really what it's been when i talked to sedating not addicting yeah well because if you say you have anxiety or you lack assertiveness it's a very easy way to distract yourself and not have to deal with the problems in your life which I have a lot of compassion for people who struggle with this because I think because it's pornography and it's related to sex, it's a lot more stigmatized.

47:20So I understand why people want to call it an addiction because there have been studies that claim that it's addiction, but they don't account for other confounding variables. So they don't ask about things like paraphilia. They don't, from what I've seen, they don't ask about anxiety. So you don't know when you're looking at these brain regions that are supposed to be different, that are correlated with addiction. You don't know if what you're seeing in the people with porn problems is due to addiction, or is it due to the fact that they're anxious or the fact that they have these unusual sexual interests?

47:46So I think that research could be a little bit cleaner. If it does happen that new studies come out showing this, then I'm fully on board with that, but I'm just not really convinced because when you talk to guys with porn problems, almost always they have anxiety. And this is a way for them to avoid talking to their spouse or their girlfriend. So what's different with women? Women, I think it's the same thing. We don't know as much about women because this is an issue that I think has only really become more of a problem with the younger generation, maybe even millennial women like younger millennial women with the accessibility of porn but i think even because it's even with studies when they're looking at say the the effects of porn on kids women have only really started to show more negative body image say or body comparison more recently because girls are being exposed to it now the girls tend to watch porn later than boys and they tend to watch it maybe once or twice out of curiosity but i do think with like gen z they're being exposed to this even before their first sexual experience before their first orgasm they can't make sense of it and i think that it can be integrated into their life a little bit more so the same thing i think anxiety usually for anyone with a porn issue there's a history of some form of sexual trauma unfortunately so there there it's a way that anyone with a porn issue most people with a porn issue there is some history of sexual trauma not everyone but in my experience many of them have had some issue with uh yeah either with abuse or being exposed to porn at a young age, either accidentally, and that was like a traumatic thing.

49:09Like when I say trauma, I'm not, the way sometimes people use the word trauma nowadays is very flippant, right? They use it over the - You mean actual - Insignificant thing. No, yeah, I'm referring to something that is actually quite horrific and awful. Or they might have been shown it in the process of grooming. So what do you think's going on? Is it just disinhibition, dysregulation? Is it the same reason that people who maybe had a childhood trauma struggle with gambling or struggle with drugs or alcohol or their emotions rage, is it just the same, but this particular pathway these people have found is porn?

49:43Or is there something specific about the mechanism that porn gives that helps them to sort of, I don't know, alchemize or try and alchemize whatever they went through? It could be partially biological thing because it's like a self-soothing thing. So especially for children, if they're not taught ways to self-regulate, they're looking for ways to feel good when they're stressed out or upset, right? So some people gravitate toward drugs and alcohol. Other people might gravitate toward porn. I think it depends on how old you are, probably when you come across it initially, what your experience is when you see it.

50:12Like, is it a pleasurable thing? But I think for the men, say, like when I was doing research who had had these negative experiences in childhood, it was a way of revisiting it to try and make sense of it, I think. But I really strongly believe like sitting down with a competent therapist and working through that stuff could be very helpful for people. Better than porn. Yeah. Before we continue, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for as long as I can remember now, because it is the simplest way I've found to cover my bases and not overthink nutrition. And that is why I partnered with them. Just one scoop gives you 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food ingredients in a single drink.

50:50Now they've taken it a step further with AG1 NextGen, the same one scoop, once a day ritual, but this time backed by four clinical trials. In those trials, it was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels in just three months, and increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times, even in people who already eat well. They've upgraded their formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable nutrients, and clinical validation. Plus, it's still NSF certified for sport, so you know that the quality is legit. Right now, when you first subscribe, you can get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 welcome kit, plus bonus AG1 travel packs.

51:23And for a limited time, US customers also get a sample of AGZ and a bottle of omega-3s. Just go to the link in the description below or head to drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. What do you think about the relationship between porn use and the type of sex that people are having? In terms of it influencing the type of sex? So in terms of, say, very extreme things, Previously, okay, I would start with before the internet. So if, because there's a concern about does porn make men more violent? Does porn make men entitled with sex? Previously, if a man grew up and had his first sexual experience prior to online porn, I would say porn is not the thing that made him.

52:08If he is, say, violent or likes to degrade his partners or treat them poorly, I wouldn't say that's porn. I would say that's due to the way he was raised. He's probably antisocial, probably has some dark triad personality going on there, probably doesn't think very highly of women, has a lot of hostility toward women. But those views would have been formed prior to porn. So I don't think porn is the problem. I think he probably was interested in violent porn and violent sex because of other factors in terms of how he was raised potentially. Nowadays, with the fact that kids are being exposed to this so young, I'm really concerned about how this is affecting their sexuality.

52:46Because we do see studies coming out showing that kids who are having problematic sexual behaviors, it's due to being sexualized by porn, like early exposure, this trend of sexual choking that I write about in Sex Stinction. Young women, Gen Z women in particular, it's almost ubiquitous. So I think that is due to them being exposed to this at such a young age and believing that this is what they need to do in order to attract men or to be enticing in the bedroom. And I'll be very clear that you could die from doing this. so it's not safe. There's no safe way to do it. I know this was Louise Perry's thing that she was helping to prosecute guys that had killed their partners and then used whatever it is.

53:27Rough sex. The rough sex excuse thing, which, yeah, I mean, that's fucking horrific. There is a bit of research that I wanted to talk to you about, which I've never spoken about on the show before. You're probably familiar with. New study interviewed 302 adults. Of those, more women enjoyed aggression in porn were aroused by portrayals of female pain and reported wanting to see more aggression. And this is a bar chart which shows women saying double the number of women saying aggression is arousing, triple the number of men, triple number of women to men, hard aggression is arousing, maybe four times the number of women to men would like more aggression in mainstream pornography, maybe 30 % more actively seek aggression.

54:15The only thing that men are stronger on is aroused by women showing pleasure in response to aggression, and that's maybe 5%. Aroused by women showing pain in response to aggression, nearly double women to men. Okay. This seems to be pretty, this is a small sample size, 302 people, but this is, you can dig deeper and find out kind of the same pattern. And it's something that I remember I once read a feminist who wrote about this and she said something along the lines of, um, it's an uncomfortable fact for most modern feminists that women seem to prefer aggressive porn than men do. Uh, and, uh, misogynists use this as a, an excuse that like she wanted it made, uh, type thing.

55:01that to me does suggest that the picture is a little bit more complex than just guys have learned it in porn yeah and now they're doing it to women and women feel the need to perform up to it that no one's pushing women in that way it's not the only study of that kind and um no i agree i'm not one of those people that think that this is entirely like men pushing it on women and women have no choice but to do it. I do think there are some women out there that's sexual masochism. So it's like sexual arousal at the idea of being hurt, humiliated, degraded by your partner. So that's the only paraphilia that you actually find in women typically.

55:40So usually women... Oh, sorry. That's so interesting. The only paraphilia that's typical in women, paraphilia being kind of odd sexual proclivities, is... Masochism. Self-masochism. Yeah, masochism is when it's happening to you. Sadism is when you're doing it to someone else. Right, okay, cool, cool. How much sadism is there in women? So when you do see other paraphilias like sadism, it usually is correlated with personality disorders. Right, the cluster B, dark triad. Some cluster B, yeah. Okay, anyway, so the masochism for women. Yeah, so evolutionarily, it could be because women, well, women's bodies, have you heard of the study where women basically are aroused to any type of porn?

56:23So it's whether it's, yeah. Yes, the more sexually fluid, girl on girl, guy on guy, girl on guy. This is why... Just to be clear, animals having sex, not people having sex with animals. I don't agree with Beast Delfry. What's that fucking hockey players? The two hockey players boning. What's that thing? It's that series. Hot ones? Not hot ones. That's the wing thing. What the fuck is it? Two hockey players? It's taken the world by storm. He did rivalry. Fucking hot ones. He did rivalry. I knew I got there. You're Canadian. You're supposed to know. Sorry, it was a hard week for you. I don't actually watch porn, so that might be why I've never heard it.

56:59He did Rivalry was a book. It was a book about these two hockey players on opposing teams, and then they fuck each other. Why are you reading this? I'm not reading it, right? This is a big TV show. I didn't see, I've never seen anything like this. I'm the straightest man in the room. This has broken the internet, and you should absolutely have a look at this. I'll do some Googling once I read the studio. So it is basically revealing just how flexible women's sexualities are. Yeah. That these two guys, there was a book, book super popular, then pivoted over into this TV series. And the TV series is fucking ripped.

57:39It's like a broke back mountain on ice, right? But was it actually pornographic or was it just like hinted? Asking the wrong guy. I'm sorry. Okay. I didn't get, I mean, I have to assume that there was either implied or like pretty close to like raunchy shit happening on the screen. Anyway, that, that you're quite right. Why is it that you think that women's sexuality is more fluid than men's? Well, the unfortunate reason is rape. So in the past, right, evolutionarily speaking, it protects the woman's body if she can become aroused regardless of what is happening. Which is why sometimes during sexual assault, women can still reach orgasm.

58:17And then they feel lots of shame afterward because it's fucking horrific. They think, did I want that? Did I want this thing? How fucking awful am I? I'm traumatized and now my body did a thing to me that I'm traumatized about as well. So brutal. Speaking to those findings though, I would be curious to know how they sampled. Do you remember how they sampled for those women? Preferences related to aggression, pleasure, and pain in pornography among male and female interviewees. I've got the, it's, I can send you the journal article. But certainly, even if we don't look at aggression is arousing, heart aggression is arousing, like, would like more aggression in mainstream pornography, actively seek aggression, aroused by women showing pain in response to aggression.

59:02Just look at the romanticcy genre. Well, evolutionarily speaking, like, in terms of masochism, it would benefit women to show a... Capacity to endure pain? Yeah, or like, I don't want to say subjugation, but it evokes like caretaking behaviors for men, right? If they see that a woman is in need of help or support. I suppose so, to a degree, but there's also a kind of resilience in masochism, right? That I can withstand it. There's almost anti-fragility, not a fragility. That goes back to the trauma that I talk about in sex extinction and is in the porn chapter about how many individuals who are into BDSM and kink actually do have a history, especially of physical abuse in childhood.

59:48Oh, I imagine that made you very popular. It's still happening now. Because you were a sex positive research writer person. Yeah, I was a columnist for a well-known men's magazine with nude women in it. And writing this book, I was so grateful to have the chance to sit down and really question a lot of the beliefs I had. And I went through my own data that I collected when I was still in sex research and I found the same thing. And I was amazed, I thought. What do you mean? You went through the data and what did you find? I found that interest in BDSM and kink is correlated with severe physical abuse in childhood.

1:00:23And this is even more so the case for men who are into BDSM and kink as compared to men who are community controls, obviously, men who have porn problems who are not into BDSM or kink, and also more so the case than men who are convicted of child sex crimes. So there's something with physical abuse. BDSM and kink is a better predictor of male childhood abuse trauma. Female too. but then pedophilia is victimization um yeah well convicted sex sex offenses or pornography so we don't know how many of those are unreported and stuff like that right but also there are times when men will abuse children and not necessarily be pedophilia that's like fine you know very fine details but overall yeah wow yeah child sex what do you think that says about what bdsm and kink is doing for people it's really sad i want to be clear like i'm not saying this to make judgment about people or to try and shame them.

1:01:22I really hope in bringing awareness to this because BDSM is so commonplace in society, right? It's so normalized almost. It's almost seen like there is a variation, I think, in terms of people who just, who might partake in sexual activity that is like playful or passionate, right? Versus wanting to strangle your partner, wanting to really hurt them, wanting to humiliate them. Or if you enjoy those behaviors done to you, especially for women, because physical harm, it wouldn't really make sense for women or men but why would physical harm be correlated with orgasm right if you can potentially become pregnant from this act why would it be beneficial to you and your offspring to find physical pain and what do you think arousing yeah why why because something went wrong with the system and it's getting wires crossed yeah so i my hope is that by bringing attention to this because so many people i sense enjoy these things but don't really You know, why are they think it's something that, it's something they take pride in.

1:02:18They're using. Maybe it's something that you should look a little more deeply into. They're using their sexual preferences as a way to work through something that maybe should be done with a therapist. Yeah. Interesting. I remember I was talking to a researcher and they were telling me about how this. This maybe not uncontacted tribe, but this relatively uncontacted tribe, one of the rites of passage that they had for women was that men would get reeds, thick reeds and sticks, whippy sticks, and they would stand there and they would whip the women across their backs. Every woman in the tribe had huge scars everywhere across their backs.

1:03:07And the goal of the women was to be able to stand there and not flinch, not make noise, not cry, not whimper, not yell, not do anything. And this was supposed to be a presentation of their capacity to endure what would become giving birth, child rearing. And that, when you were talking about it might engender sympathy from men, which I can completely see, just the power dynamic, subjugation, all of that, that does make sense. Allow me to come and hold you. But if you're able to withstand pain, there's also a kind of resilience in that, which I think would almost work against it. So yeah, kind of interesting.

1:03:50I always think about that example when it comes to sort of female behavior and kink. like is this maybe some kind of demonstration of my capacity of the woman's capacity to endure hard things physically uh not like lift heavy things right that's the guy picking you up and putting you against the wall that's the ability for him to physically dominate you but the woman's ability to endure the pain might actually be maybe like a fertility cue of some kind like my pain tolerance i don't know it could be i could see real nascent idea it's wet clay all right i could see it if it is something that is like culturally enforced and it's like a rite of passage but if you as a woman are intentionally putting yourself in those situations when you don't need to there are plenty of guys out there who are i mean vanilla is seen as a negative thing i don't think being vanilla is a bad thing so there are plenty of vanilla guys out there who are not going to want to strangle you during sex and not going to want to like you know degrade you during sex so if you're intentionally putting yourself through that even if it is a way to show how strong you are why would you choose to do that when you don't need to don't need to uh Romanticy.

1:04:54I was sat on the plane flying to St. Louis a couple of weeks ago, and there was a lovely woman sat next to me and she had her iPad up and she was reading Court of Thorns and Roses. Now what is that? That is one of the most popular romanticy books at the moment. You're familiar with romanticity is it it's basically like erotica it is that's probably that that's a word that you would use okay um i respect the art form and also the fact that the fan base is fucking massive and i don't want to get lynched by them uh no no no it is it is um story it's female literature literacy porn wrapped in quite a lot of story but there are sort of peak dirty moment anyway the our friend is tapping away and she didn't have her glasses on the font size was quite okay quite large and i i had a realization that chicks can basically watch porn on a plane i guess so they can basically watch their equivalent of porn on a plane and i'm looking at this i'm trying not to move my head at all i'm keeping my head dead straight i'm going and I spoke to some friends after it I've not read the book I didn't I didn't read enough to fully capture what the narrative arc was okay um but in might be a court of thorns and roses or one of the other books like that uh the protagonist is a fairy prince or a fairy king who has the ability to transform himself into this like monstrous beast and I think that in that sort of shows what it is that one of the sort of archetypal desires that women have this um he is dangerous but not around me yeah and i think i was talking on the way in about that that study with a couple of french i have a group of uh evolutionary psychology researchers in a whatsapp chat and whenever i get confused by stuff i put in and they give me the answer and andrew thomas from union of nottingham gave me a fucking fantastic answer for this one what he said was the aggression is arousing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

1:07:07I'd love to get your thoughts on this. He said, what women think is I want a man who has the capability to be aggressive because protection, attraction, dominance, all that stuff. By testosterone. But he'll never be aggressive with me. And it's a pattern, misfiring of the sort of pattern detection, which is, well, most guys that have the capacity to be aggressive don't have the regulation to be able to turn it off and create bright lines and contain it in that way. If you have a guy who is just a, you know, someone bumps into you on the street or you get scared and he beats up all of the guys that are there, how many of them have gone through the full fucking samurai Keanu Reeves training and come out the other side as, you know, that's not, that's not most guys most guys that are great and dangerous physically i just dangerous physically everywhere uh not in yes it's not um compartmentalized yeah yeah i definitely agree so that i that's the allure of i suppose the romance novel where you could have the duality there that doesn't fairy king who can become the beast but he's never going to be the beast with you um yeah interesting so we have basically the most sexually permissive culture in history that is also having the least amount of sex.

1:08:31Yeah, which is wild. It's crazy when you think about, like I was thinking about social media and even something as subtle as that, like everyone's on social media. But I do think it, even that is changing the way that people view potential partners, how they view their own partners. How so? Study that I cited in Sex Stinction showing that roughly one in 10 men actually loses interest in having sex with his own partner after looking at influencers. and that women also feel less sexually desirable after being on social media. One in 10 men lose interest for a brief window of time? They didn't specify.

1:09:07Okay. So they're less interested in having real sex with their partner when they've been looking at influencers on the internet. Yeah. So I do remember at uni, it's so fucking bad. That was an English study too, actually. Good. It was probably the people that I used to employ. It was probably the lads that used to work for me. I do remember there was two guys that were gonna go on first dates with these two chicks two nights in a row. On the first one, he turned up, and he ended up going back with her and having sex. But he said she looked nothing like her Instagram. It was gutting. It's like she was so hot on the Instagram, kind of like a catfish type thing.

1:09:50And he had this joke about he wondered if he could have just sellotaped her Instagram to her forehead so he could have looked at that. And then the next night, the guy went out on one and she was really lovely and great. And then I don't think they'd slept with each other that night. And he came back and looked at her Instagram and got turned off because she wasn't able to present herself in the marketplace of... That's a good thing, no? I said that. That's what I said. That's what I said. I was like, dude, you found a barn find. That's a diamond in the rough. You found somebody that's really fantastic, shows up, wonderful in person, that the marketplace where most other people are going to be competing with you for her, she's just not presenting.

1:10:37I don't know what it was. I didn't do my research. So what is it he didn't like about the fact that he can't send people to her profile to look at her? No, I think that it wasn't even as deep as that. sorry it was significantly more deep than that not that he couldn't show off this girl that could potentially become his girlfriend or whatever to other people on instagram i think it what i believed it to be was he was so conditioned to judging a woman's attractiveness through her social media profile and especially given that it's the most extreme version of you and for men to, right? The most extreme wealth or whatever.

1:11:20Um, that he, he got the ick by her having a bad Instagram account, Instagram. Um, I don't know. I didn't, I, I, the club promotion industry is a weird and wonderful place, but I'll never forget it. Two nights in a row, one guy saying, I wish I could have strapped her Instagram to her forehead. And the next night the guy going, she was amazing but i went and looked at her social media profile after we'd been on the date and it was a turnoff dude i got the i got the ick because her instagram wasn't hot so he wants a hot instagram lady who's just as hot in real life uh yes i think so uh look these guys were 19 they had no prefrontal cortex i don't even think that that's that uncommon though i think it's that that social media has done something like that more subtly though to the general population.

1:12:09You think? We'll get back to talking in just one second. But first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus and your performance. But most people have no idea where those are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with Function, because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan.

1:12:39And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it's just$499. And right now you can get$100 off, bringing it down to$399. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that$100 by going to the link in the description below are heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. Why? So guys are less likely to want to have sex after they look at influencers and girls are less likely to feel attractive.

1:13:20Yeah. They feel less attractive. Okay, so it's a comparison game. Yeah. Right. Why? What do you think is going on? What's the mechanism? Well, I wrote a chapter about plastic surgery and when you look at this trend of, especially really young, in some cases girls getting procedures done i do think social media has done something to make them feel that they need to do this to compete and to get a partner or to at least be found attractive and there has to be something with just like constantly being inundated with these images on social media they have found in say adolescent girls that girls who are less popular or girls who tend to do upward comparison so tend to compare themselves to say more attractive women or or more popular girls tend to fall prey to this a little bit more.

1:14:03In an attempt to try and clamber up this felt imbalance of a hierarchy that they're comparing themselves to. Okay, talk to me about what's happened to plastic surgery over time. Have we seen increases in it? Have the types changed? What's the context of people getting different looks? Kardashians did the fucking BBL for a while. Is that still in? Now it is breast augmentation for Gen Z women. So they are actually, boob jobs are very popular among that cohort. I do think that's influenced by pornography. Also labiaplasty. I was just looking actually at a study a couple nights ago showing that women, very many young women feel self-conscious about their labia and are actually getting these procedures done, which is also influenced from porn.

1:14:47and it I mean it's just crazy to me it makes me wonder is that why people are not interested in having sex same with guys guys are getting filler injections into their penis for even sexting purposes like they just want to look better George my housemate used to make this joke every time we're on a plane it was the same you know someone it's kind of like a dad joke but he's not yet a dad. And you know, those teeny tiny 175 mil cans of Diet Coke. Yeah. You would always say it's like, I keep a hold of one of those and I go back and I take a dick pic with it in the background. So it would make it look, you know, it's like, oh, that's a 330 or a 355 mil pan.

1:15:26But I've kept the airplane mini and that's, you know, comparatively. I should be doing that instead of getting the filler in their penis. I agree. I agree. Make Diet Coke, mini Diet Coke's great again. So yeah, I mean, the labiaplasty and the penis stuff, it seems to be obvious that it would be influenced by porn. But even things like I see news reports of women under 30 getting facelifts, getting upper eye lifts, right? And in my personal opinion, I don't think women that young need to be getting extensive work done because you do not have the signs of aging yet to justify. What do you think they're trying to do?

1:16:02Well, I think if you look at, say, when women are the most fertile, it tends to be mid-20s. So my sense is most women are trying to look like they're in their mid-20s. So if you're older than that, you're going to try and look younger. And if you're younger, you're trying to look older. And so you're going to use, you're going to choose the procedures. Are women most fertile in their mid-20s? Early to mid-20s. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I found out some really fucking uncomfortable data around when men are most fertile. It's really young. Yeah. It's really young. like illegal in some state young and you go really which is just i don't know we talk about women's biological clocks we never really think about there's so much sperm right speak for yourself but there's so much sperm and you only need one a larger window though they also have a larger like men can still impregnate someone later on in life there are higher rates of chromosomal abnormalities but the potential whereas for women it's it's a little bit more unforgiving but anyway um so you think well i i've seen what is buckle buccal fat buckle fat yeah buckle fat removal yeah that the the cheek cheek fat thing what's that trying to achieve do you think to look older because you're removing the baby fat essentially in your face but what happens is as you get older your face naturally loses fat right and so you're going to look more gaunt you've overshot it.

1:17:24Yeah. And then you might potentially need to use filler too. So I got fat removal before I was 24. And then after I was 28, I had to use filler to replace where I got rid of the fat. Right. Yeah. I mean, I, so I want to be clear, like, I don't want to come down on men and women if they choose to get these procedures, because I understand, especially if you have a public facing job, there's a lot of pressure to keep your looks up and to look young. But my concern is more so when it's really young people or i would say even for men who are doing this you really don't need to like it is brutal i mean the some of the young girls supposed to be young girls that i've seen uh videos of on tiktok there's like 22 23 year old chicks and they look mid 30s or 40s with all of this work that's been done and um i was i was thinking i was having a conversation last night about how the sort of ideal female form has changed, even with sort of relatively extreme cosmetic procedures.

1:18:29So Geordie Shore, which was the British equivalent of Jersey Shore, that back in the day was a lot about fake tan. It was big hair. It was almost pin-up-y in a way. Chav suits too, weren't they? That's because of, that's something else. But yes, that was sort of part. I learned what a chav was. Chavs, exactly. Well, look, careful, right? Is that offensive? No, those were my customers. It's kind of like calling someone a hick. Oh, okay. I mean it with love. Me too. But those were my customers for a very long time. Okay. It was fake tan. It was big boobs, maybe augmented, maybe not. Brows, too. Very specific eyebrows.

1:19:10Very painted on, sort of aggressive brows, big hair, tight dress, short dress, right? I love that. Just to be clear, I'm not making fun of it. That aesthetic. Yeah. Strong aesthetic. Yeah. Great early 2010s aesthetic. And the guy's equivalent, I think, up until probably about five years ago, we were a little bit delayed on the guy's thing, was sort of big muscles, not so concerned with height, fake tan, plunging v-neck neckline, tight jeans, expensive watch thing. Jeans? Yeah, maybe. But so what I was trying to do with this conversation I was having last night, which is so interesting, I was trying to work out what was being signaled then and what's being signaled now.

1:19:56Okay. And I think what's being signaled now is a more extreme version of that by both men and women. So the male thing, it's all about formidability now. It's the over-exaggerated, handsome squidward cheekbones and the jawline. It's the height. The height. But it's a lot less to do with, I'm not really seeing anyone talk about tan all that much. Not even seeing if you look at the most popular Lux Max's aren't that concerned with muscularity, extreme muscularity in the way that it would have been 10 years ago. 10 years ago, it would have just been get as wide and as muscular as possible. That's not quite the case now.

1:20:40And then with the women, it is, both of them are basically caricatures of the most sexually dimorphic physical traits, right? It's Fisherian runaway, I think it's called. Yeah. Where the stag that's got a, the stag deer that's got antlers so big that he can't lift his head up and he dies. The peacock that's got such a ridiculous tail that he gets caught with the first second there's a predator around. But like he did some great boning on the way out. That is, seems to be what's happening with men and women now. It's just a more, what the next evolution, it's more extreme limb lengthening surgery, the brows, the cheekbones, the mandible surgery, all that stuff.

1:21:18For women especially, I think it can also be the equivalent of showing off an expensive handbag. So instead of saying, here's my designer bag. Here's my designer titties. Or, you know, that my lips or whatever, like I have a man who will pay for my surgery and make me look like this. It's a good argument for why, I've heard about why women have long nails and long hair. it's just fucking impractical so it's it it is itself a status of of of wealth and and luxury that not only can i maintain them but i have a life that requires so little hard labor that this hair and these nails and this makeup um i mean female intracsexual competition is just like fucking endlessly interesting yeah right like uh shoes and bags exclusively intracsexual I do not know the difference between whatever you're wearing and something that was one-tenth the price and something that was a thousand times the price.

1:22:13I have no idea. But women do. Women know. And if you're in a relationship, it's basically a, my man is so invested in me that he spent however much money on this thing. So, like, don't even think about going there. Which is why I also think that women tend to go a little bit overboard in some cases with the work done as a way to signal. that they have the money and the resources or man that is paying for it. Because usually when you think of plastic surgery, men don't like plastic surgery, typically. Men, they don't like it in women because it masks their underlying health and fertility, right?

1:22:49So if a woman can turn back the clock in terms of aging, signs of aging, or appear more attractive than she naturally was, maybe you don't mind so much, but from the conversations I've had with men, men tend to not really like plastic surgery. No, I agree. They prefer natural beauty. I agree. I mean, I saw this tweet after the Grammys that fucking ripped. And it was, men love Sidney Sweeney and hate Sabrina Carpenter. Women love Sabrina Carpenter and hate Sidney Sweeney. And the explanation that I saw, I was so fascinated by it. And it seems to be pretty accurate. I don't know that many guys like, I love Sabrina Carpenter.

1:23:27And I don't know that many women that love Sidney Sweeney. That's funny. I've seen this. I mean, I think they're both pretty. so i don't know i guess i'm like one of the odd ones need to be more judgmental um the best explanation i saw was that sabrina carpenter her physical presentation is basically gay and female coded and sydney sweeney is sort of low maintenance natural male coded beauty um less sort of curated in that sort of a way. And that low maintenance thing sort of seems to come across. But yeah, I think the reliable signal of fitness cue that's being sort of hidden by lots of plastic surgery is so true.

1:24:16And I get the sense that the luxmaxing community for men is doing the same thing. I was going to ask you about that. Like, what are your views? because when I write about this, I get a lot of young men who get upset at me and say, like, you don't understand, right? This is the time for the fucking patriarchy to step in. Man's playing away. Writing as a woman. Sit down, let me get a man's playing to you. What do I think? I think I have a really fucking, I think this is an interesting take. My advice to guys is just work away, get rich, honestly. Get rich. Don't worry about all the taking the hormones to make your bone structure.

1:24:54I would say get rich, get popular. Lux are important, but you can make some pretty good changes just by becoming more diligent. What I would say about the lux maxing thing

1:25:08is what guys seem to be optimizing for is formidability. So they're optimizing for the sort of things that other men respect, not that women are attracted to. So other men would, if you look at most guys that have lux maxed and put them in front of women, I wonder whether women would find them more attractive. So it's intersexual competition again. Or whether men would find them more formidable. I think that more men would find them more formidable than more women would find them more attractive. Because most women are not looking for their guys to be hyper, hyper masculine like that. There's even some evidence to suggest that women prefer a slightly feminized face with a masculinized body.

1:25:45And not super jacked either. No, not super jacked. But they want average face or sometimes actually slightly feminized face with masculinized body. Yeah. But all of the guys are just pushing toward heavier brow, deeper jaw, stronger cheekbones. But do you know the David Putz study that he did about when he brought people into the lab and got women to rate attractiveness and men to rate formidability? Remind me. So fucking good. So photos of guys shown to women and men. Women were asked to rank how attractive do you think this man is? Men were asked to rank how likely do you think it is that you could beat this other man in a fight.

1:26:25One year later, they brought the men from the photos into the lab and asked what their sexual success had been over the last year. And the female ratings of attractiveness had basically zero predictive power for their sexual success. But the male ratings of formidability were very predictive. So even though what I think is happening at level one, this is like the epstein files at level one where he didn't kill himself is lux maxes are optimizing for uh formidability because they're disregarding women and it's intrasexual competition because i just want to mog other guys i just want to be better than other men level two epstein's still alive and playing fortnight in israel is actually by pursuing formidability they may end up closing their eyes and throwing the dart at the dartboard and hitting the bullseye of women actually finding them more attractive than if they tried to pursue attractiveness as the main outcome.

1:27:24But this is, again, this is working theory at the moment. Yeah. I mean, because I could see that in terms of tattoos, there've been studies to show that men, when they get tattoos, it actually is more so about scaring off their male rivals because women don't, some women like tattoos, but not all do. And some women actually are turned off by tattoos. So it's more, again, like you said, of scaring off and beating your rivals than directly attracting women. But I also wonder if it's that these men are projecting onto women their preferences. So men care more about looks and youth. So I wonder if when you look at, say, marriage or marital satisfaction, whether men find their wives attractive has a greater correlation with their marital satisfaction than whether women find their husbands attractive.

1:28:12So I wonder if these young guys are projecting onto women thinking that women care so much about looks when it's actually that's what they care about in their partners so oh it's a failure of cross-sex mind reading using their own uh assessment criteria yeah and saying you must think the way that i think i'll do more beautification well um macken murphy's got this great idea where he talks about how uh the increases in male beautification are to try and offset this uh inability to get hypergamy to work that men have realized that because they can't win socioeconomically they might have to turn about this that's crazy yeah the vanity uh mirror around in an attempt to out beautify their socioeconomic lack yeah especially when they're young and they're just starting out in their career and they're thinking okay how do i attract women i don't have the money yet don't have the resources well i can just get really hot there's worse theories there are worse theories um what about the effects of sexlessness in marriage well i can tell you i've when i was in research i would interview some men who had not had sex in like decades which is in a marriage yeah in a marriage married men who'd not had sex in decades i mean at that point there's a lot of cheating um not that that's justified but i i think it can be very damaging to a relationship even if you're not married to be sexless because that's a way to bond with your partner especially for men they tend to use sex as a way to have intimacy like emotional closeness one of the few places that they can yeah yeah so i feel for people out there you know marriage i'm assuming marriage is very difficult as is and i'm not sure what would be useful for your audience like how to overcome that put your phones away number one it's crazy some of the stats I was reading in terms of people using social media during sex right after sex.

1:30:07Fuck off. Yeah, that same study. During. I can't remember the stats off the top of my head. It's in Sex Stinction that I cited it. But it's, I don't know. I was trying to figure that out myself. I'm thinking, how do you excuse yourself to go post something and then come back? You can't be posting. It can't be posting. There's no way that you can do that. I could see scrolling at best. Or if they go to the bathroom, maybe. During sex. Or even right after, it was pretty bad. it's the during that gets me. Maybe it was my friend strapping their Instagram to the forehead. Maybe it's just that. I don't know.

1:30:37Yeah, I found this. Sorry, I was going to say, there's another study that showed the more the people are on their phones and ignoring their partners, they have less sex, which makes sense. Is that called flubbing? Flubbing. Flubbing. They need to rename that. It's a stupid name. Yeah. Yeah, Arthur Brooks and Matthew Hussey taught me some interesting stuff around this about sort of revitalizing. And James Sexton as well taught me some interesting stuff. Arthur's was more neuroscientifically backed.

1:31:11That one of the problems you have in long-term marriages is that safety turns into consistency, turns into comfort, turns into laziness. and that we just go through the same dance. We do it on a Tuesday, and it happens in this way, and there's no distance, there's no intrigue. Where do you go today? Are you wearing something new? This is a little bit different. There's no push and pull, right? And a lot of the chemistry and the reason that I think people are so enlivened and excited at the start of a relationship is there's so much to discover about someone. When you feel like there's nothing left to discover, sort of where am I injecting my fantasy into literally and what bringing that back online Arthur had a pretty interesting sort of few-step process which was to basically flirt it's like to flirt with your partner throughout the day and to treat them as if they're an object of desire especially if you're male to female this is something that Esther Perel uh I I got wrong I should have pushed back against when she came on the show.

1:32:20And she said something to the effect of, what woman has been aroused because she's seen her partner aroused? I'm like, I understand what you mean at sort of the first level, but almost every definition of female arousal includes my partner desires me. Like being desired by their partner. Yeah, so what better, that's the most non-fungible, like difficult to fake signal that I am that I desire you is me being aroused so you go okay I think I think that you probably can do the unmarried fucking 38 year old guy telling people who are married how to re-invite live in their sex life I think that there is uh good legs to like make flirting great again that's my that's my argument or I was gonna say if you're a lady is down for it to try on a wig.

1:33:16Try on a wig? Mm-hmm. Me? No, no. Well, I mean, you can if you want to. To be someone different? Role play? Yeah. If she is willing to put on a wig because then it can really change the way she looks. If you're looking for sexual novelty, then do something nice for her. Get her flowers, obviously. And then get her a wig? If she wants to wear one, yeah. That's interesting. I remember reading Roy Baumeister is doing a fucking awesome series on sexual novelty at the moment on his sub stack. It is a travesty. Everyone needs to go and read Roy Baumeister's sub stack because it's got three likes and they're all me and my friends.

1:33:53And he's the goat, right? He's the guy that did the original marshmallow test. And he's writing about sexual novelty at the moment. And he finds this story of a client that was working with a therapist. And she was saying that, I think this was a long, quite a while ago, and she was saying that her husband was struggling to be excited in the bedroom and this was a long time before porn and after a while, weeks and months of this lady coming in and this was a repeating challenge that was being had, maybe he's just a bit old, maybe he's whatever and the therapist asked, have you, sort of what is it that you're doing to him and the client said, sort of explained and it was it wasn't particularly intimate said have you considered using your hand she said like my my hand on him no and she said okay why why don't you just try and do that and sure enough went back and this had you know the most amazing effect because sexual novelty had been so constrained to one thing for fucking five decades that simply the act like second base was enough to blow this guy's mind this dude in his 60s or 70s because that was something that he never got to experience i just thought that was so interesting to you know whether it's the um coolidge effect or some sort of equivalent like refractory what novelty looks like um But this series from Baumeister is fucking sick.

1:35:36He basically makes the argument that in a relationship, if this is the one, you should titrate the sort of sexual access and sexual novelty as slowly as possible. and it's gonna suck i mean it's stuck for the women as well i actually won't suck for a long time um but i i really think that there's something to it i really think that he's fucking i think he's fucking nailed it and he's just all he's doing is respecting the neurobiology especially of men he's gonna do a separate treatment on women he's only done it on men so far but basically if you're like this is the chick for me okay move move as slowly as possible through the different stages of doing things.

1:36:21Because there is only so much sexual novelty that you can have. And once you've gone to the end or close to the end, it doesn't feel as exciting to sort of skip back. If you know how the story ends, you know how the book, the series finishes, reading the middle bit is just less enlivening. Yeah, sure, I'll give it another read, but it's nowhere near as... So he's, yeah, turn one page a week type thing and, you know, stretch this book out over a decade or so. I thought it was really interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think that speaks to also why casual sex is not a good thing. I think it's better for both sexes to be less promiscuous, but definitely if you, well, if you have sex on the first date, a man's going to put you in the short-term bucket.

1:37:01But even if not, I would say even if you have sex too soon and you're dating somebody, at some level, like you said, it's like shortening that book. How does it feel to believe this and say this as a former sexologist writer? um i'm probably alienating like 90 of the field i mean there are certain things when you are in the field i should say i have many friends and colleagues who do amazing work and who are very unbiased they're not politically motivated you know they just do their research and i respect that it what my issue is when people are quote sex positive and they're pushing these narratives that are unhelpful and that i think are doing a disservice to our society is it not empowerment and it's leading us to be sexless ultimately no i don't think it's empowerment i think it's masked as empowering but they're lies ultimately and i find the fact that people get so upset by me challenging these ideas tells me that i'm onto something because why do they get so defensive if i if what i'm saying is completely nonsense why do they feel the need to push back so badly but yeah this book is full of um erotical ideas yeah anti-sex positivity thoughts that are not allowed, I guess.

1:38:11But it was amazing for me to write because I felt, I like to challenge myself and say, if there are thoughts or beliefs that you don't want to look at, you have to look at those. And you have to ask yourself why you don't want to. And if you're afraid of alienating or upsetting people, that's not a reason to question. What about sex dolls? What did you learn? Are they good? Are they bad? Hang on. Did you design one? I made one in my likeness, I did. Well, I was on the hunt to make one in my likeness. Was it for sale? I'm not answering that question. It was actually a lot of fun to go on that exploration.

1:38:44So in each chapter, I go into a little mini-adventure, that's what I call them, where I go and I research the technology and try it out. And so I went and explored sex dolls and robots. And it's crazy what's out there. It's very, very realistic, I have to say. I didn't consummate my relationship with any of these dolls. Would have been weird to have done it with your own one. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking about that. I thought, is that technically masturbation or is that, you know, what is that? What's autogynephilia? Which one's that one? Autogynephilia is when you are sexually aroused at the, a man is sexually aroused at the thought of having the body of a woman.

1:39:16So when you see someone who's born male, who is, has a desire to transition to female, that is, if they are attracted to women or if they are attracted to both men and women, that's autogynephilia. Whereas if they are born male and attracted to men and want to transition to female, then they are it's considered the gay subtype so this is my first book The End of Gender but basically yeah autogonophilia is a huge huge motivator for the whole trans ideology activism I wonder if you could the ones who are the angriest are autogonophiles I wonder if you would be able to provide them with I wonder if you could get people a self sex doll of them but the opposite sex I've seen some people do this they will get like you're fucking kidding me no I thought this was a new idea.

1:40:05I was breaking new ground. I made a joke to see if we can eBay your old sex doll and try and, you know, fucking help the advance of the book and get some sales in there. Thank you. And then I thought this was new frontiers, but people have got sex dolls of themselves in the opposite sex. Yeah, and they wear them. What's wear them mean? Well, they put it on themselves to become that.

1:40:30So it's like a suit. Yeah. So it's not really a doll, I guess. It's more like a rubber suit, but it's in the fashion to look like a doll to some degree because it's like silicone material. Okay. But what else can I tell your audience? We're getting there. The sex robots are definitely coming. They are. Right. Yeah. Okay. Is there a line between doll and robot? So right now, like the AI software is very – I love that chapter. Right in the chapter on the AI companions was so much fun. It was also just so frightening for me because they're so realistic. But so that importing that into a doll is very much possible.

1:41:06Now it's just about the question of how do you get the robot to move in a realistic way sexually. So you have robots that can say gyrate their hips or they'll have like internal suctions in the vagina. So it helps with an orgasm. What other things can they do? But in terms of the movement, it's still quite limited. The difference between a doll and a robot would be that physical movement. So a doll is stationary or sometimes they'll hang them. But I guess it's still stationary. They hang them? They'll hang them up on, so they're standing. What are they doing with them when they're standing? Well, you can look that up.

1:41:41Okay, fair enough. I don't need to. I have to assume that the market for sex dolls is 99.99 % men, or is there some women in this? Mostly men. And during the pandemic, one company told me they made$20 million in sales, which is astronomical. And it is mostly high school educated. So on average, high school educated men who make about 40K a year. How much are the dolls? Starts at a hundred, a couple hundred to tens of thousands, depending how realistic you want it to be. So if you're a blue collar worker, you're going for the more sort of entry level one. Yeah. There are some guys who are, say, make more, like I'm thinking of one particular study where they had the income.

1:42:26And so some guys making, say, more than six figures will have the dolls. But it tends to be more among men who either, I think, are quite heartbroken and they don't want to bother going through, or they're divorced, they don't want to go through the process of being. Or it's guys who want to have sexual novelty, but they can't actually either attract real-life partners or they don't have the means for it, so they'll buy the dolls instead. that makes me sad the idea that you know someone's past emotional challenges you know whether deserved or accidental or purposeful victimized whatever uh it causes them to sort of turn away entirely from human yeah and i suppose that the fact that you you now have this option for someone to i don't need to you can just you can just imagine what about the ai companions thing i saw a bunch of fewer or two or three weeks ago when chat gpt discontinued 4.0 and 4.0 had a very particular type of personality to it and that discontinuation was for lots of people there was a subreddit and i can't remember what it's called ai partner r slash ai partner or something uh people being in beyond hysterics like like absolutely fucking heartbroken by it so what what was your experience with ai companions because people do fall in love with their ai chatbots and i before i tested them out i didn't think such a thing would be possible because i didn't think that the technology was that realistic until you fell in love with one until i fell in love with all of my dozens of ai boyfriends you had dozens i had dozens do you like bonnie blue go on i had girlfriends too so i had okay so i made dozens of them across dozens of platforms i really want to try them all out to see what where are they at and there were a couple platforms were definitely more realistic but i will say what happened with chad gpt that's not the first time there's another platform that something similar happened a couple years ago where they removed the erotic role-playing capabilities or they put it behind a paywall and people were so devastated because they said my ai doesn't remember me anymore like they're really cold it reminded them of being socially rejected in the past and it's very upsetting for them so again i mean i the the scientist side of me thinks like this is so cool and so crazy that we're advancing so quickly but then the other part of me says wait a minute like look at where we are right now as a society and is this really a good thing because what is this going to do now if we have this discrepancy in terms of the sex ratio and people having sex and people not even wanting to connect or date.

1:44:58There's a study by Pew showing that over half of single people are not interested in dating at all. So now we have more... Not in short term, not in casual or long term mating. Yeah. It's wild. I remember seeing that study. It's going to be so easy just to go down the route of one of these alternatives. And they are so realistic. You really cannot tell that it is an AI. If I had not programmed it and myself had said, this is your name, this is what you look like, this is your personality. It's only over text or is it voice? you can do voice too so kind of like when you speak to chat gbt yeah i thought like it sounded like a real person i was talking to and does it push into erotica as well yeah yeah they flirt with you they get like if you're sarcastic they pick up on it it was crazy like i really thought it was going to be very stilted some of them are still like that where you some platforms you have to be very literal really work with it yeah they're a difficult partner yeah uh okay so what what is the biggest story about sort of human needs and relating beyond bits just not going into bits at the same rate anymore like people aren't doing the thing but what what does that tell us about the ways that humans are connecting what's the deeper lesson that we're not connecting that's what i think there are a lot of stand-ins for connection like something as simple as having a conversation person versus over a screen.

1:46:22There's a difference there. There's a difference biologically in terms of like how we respond to that. And I just think more broadly in society, like if you go out, I'm sure Austin is the same as Toronto, where most, or maybe it's not, but most people are on their phones. You know, when I'm thinking when you're at the airport, you're on the plane, everywhere in public, everyone is just on their phone all the time. People don't really talk to each other, even make eye contact. And I do think that has larger ramifications beyond something so small as preferring to look at your phone you know because you're bored or whatever and so i think that over time has snowballed into this thing where we are very much like enclosed we all have our own little bubbles because it's like the norm now socially it's very it's seen as weird to talk to strangers or to make small talk or it's like cringy or whatever but especially in terms of romantic context like everything is made to be so simple and convenient with like dating apps or people say using using social media to meet but that's not really meeting someone in real life and it's almost as though the convenience of it is a reason as to why people don't take it so seriously right if it's so easy to meet people why would you care why you didn't cost you anything it didn't require anything of you yeah a home-cooked meal is treated with more love than a mcdonald's yeah although i mean i'm very healthy but i would say you know mcdonald's was great at one point mcdonald's is good but you're never going to look at it and think this is a very valuable meal unless you're starving.

1:47:48Okay. What about fertility rates and reproduction? Because ultimately everything that we've spoken about up until now is the proximate reason for behavior, right? All of it is just pleasure and it's connection and it's all the rest of it. But the ultimate reason for the behavior is to reproduce, right? It is the same. It is not far off the same as saying we have managed to construct a world in which these screens and this media and these xenoestrogens and this culture and these thoughts and the way that this has come together has caused people to throw themselves off of buildings. Like, because genetically that is the equivalent, right?

1:48:30Survival and reproduction. And the only reason for the survival is so that you can do the reproduction. If you didn't need to survive, it would just be reproduction how have we managed to get ourselves to the stage where an animal has been convinced to select themselves out of breeding because life is so distractible we're so distracted right it's so easy to be well relationships are hard right dating is hard finding someone is hard connecting with people is art because people are unreliable. People have their own decisions and autonomy as they should. And so when you have alternatives, either romantic alternatives or just ways to pass the time that don't involve that messiness, I think it can be quite alluring.

1:49:19So I agree with you. I don't think everyone has to have children, but I do think for people who want kids, like I'm concerned about the people who, like one of the reasons for 25 % of people who aren't having children, they say the reason is because they haven't found somebody which i imagine is quite devastating and so i also talk in the book about single motherhood by choice and the fact that there are real implications for this discrepancy in terms of the sex bias and people not wanting to connect or people say not being able to connect women discrepancy sorry oh just that there are fewer viable men so and these men typically are less interested in settling down or there's going to be less commitment as a result of that because when you have a smaller pool of men like on university campuses where you have fewer men than women men are going to set the terms of dating and relationships and sex that's what you were talking about earlier on that women think that if men are more desperate socioeconomically that they'll work harder for the women it's kind of like a perspective around sex ratios they have an implicit understanding around sex ratios they just don't understand mating preferences from women to men which is that they're going to largely be invisible yeah well that men are going to be setting the terms then of of dating so the high value men will be yeah in terms of how soon you're going to have to have sex or they'll go somewhere else or you know if they want to have they want commitment from you but they want to be poly quote polyamorous or whatever you're gonna have to put up with that i i learned a new term last year which is solo poly oh yeah remind me what that is i've heard of this it's a guy typically or it's it's a person who is uh just sleeping around um it's just a guy it's just a guy that's sleeping around but i think that a lot of the partners may think that they're i see they're the hub and then there's lots of there's lots of spokes coming off solo poly yeah

1:51:07okay when it comes to the reproduction thing you mentioned ibf fertility windows other stuff what else is interesting? My issue with that again and if people choose to see these interventions you know it's not my place to judge them I can understand if you want to have a family and it's going to help you then I understand why people go that path but my concern is that we're not rectifying the underlying issues so if the issue is women can't find a partner with whom they'd like to settle down with or there are fertility issues on the man or the woman's side or on both people's side then these interventions aren't really solving the underlying problem right and And so that's only just going to get worse for future generations and for the individual people who are potentially undergoing these interventions.

1:51:49I got in a lot of trouble for talking about birthright decline this year. Oh, really? Before the year even started, I got in a lot of trouble about it. I did some more digging. I went and did some sort of quite hardcore data digging around this. one interesting fact that i found was that the total maternal rate has basically not changed the tmr it's called total maternal rate is the number of children per mother the number of children per mother i think has gone from over the last 50 years something like 2.6 to 2.45 2.4 something like that uh so it is not the big difference is not um mothers having fewer children It's women not becoming mothers.

1:52:31And again, one of the things I got shouted at about was putting it all on women. Unfortunately, census data, World Health Organization, CDC, the only people who, they only capture data about mothers. They don't have fatherhood data. Parental uncertainty might contribute a little bit to that. absentee fathers and stuff like that as well, abandoning mothers, like pregnant women, like might contribute too. But anyway, so you have four out of five women who end up without children, having broken through menopause, didn't intend to be childless. It's called involuntary childlessness. You've got this really interesting situation, which I don't know why more women, I understand why more women aren't talking about it because it kind of goes counter to what the current very pushed narrative is.

1:53:34But that's 80%, four out of five women who end up without kids who didn't intend to end up without kids. Around about 10 % of women can't physiologically. Right. Awful, pain, grief. Around about 10 % of women don't want to, voluntary childlessness. and then four out of five women have support groups with other women to grieve over families that they never had like who the fuck's campaigning for them that feels like a group that's really important they're really really important and ever growing you have this weird dynamic at the moment which is any woman who is still fertile can endorse the view that women don't need to have kids without having to embody it.

1:54:18Because until they can no longer have it, they always have the option to still do it. And I wonder, I really hope that this isn't the case, but I get the sense that I'm right but early on this, that we are going to see a huge fucking crisis of middle-aged femininity within the next 15 years when a lot of Gen Z and millennial women age out of their ability to have kids and focused on one area of life that they maybe really enjoyed and took a lot of value from. And, you know, good for you. You've got your, you don't need to be beholden to anybody and that's awesome. But to sort of turn around and go, fuck, I wish I'd done something different.

1:55:03And I really hope that that's not the case. I don't take any glee in women who don't want to have kids having them and women that want to have kids not being able to. but I think we're going to see we think that the fucking crisis of masculinity is bad at the moment among young men I think that the one around women is going to be way worse yeah I think being able to talk about especially women's work life balance and how women structure their lives is important to be able to talk about it honestly because like you said I think there's a real push for young women to focus on career and you know all four women being ambitious and making their own money and being successful I think that's fantastic.

1:55:41But I think there is this false idea that motherhood is somehow a burden or that it's unimportant. I think both sides of the political aisle make some good points and also make some fallacies in that I think, say, progressives will say motherhood is terrible. You know, it's a, what's the term that they use? Domestic prostitute? No, that's an interesting way of putting it. It's something about, what is it? The cost of basically that, you know, like you're, you're going to be destitute because as a woman, you have to be. No more financial independence, you're relying on your partner. It's so expensive.

1:56:16And, you know, if you do focus on raising a family, then you don't make money. And then you put yourself in potentially abusive situations like, you know, like there's all that, which, you know, can happen. No one wants to be a financial prisoner. This is what no one talks about, about the low divorce rate in the past. that how much of the low divorce rate was because the women had nowhere else to go. Yeah, yeah. So I understand that side of it. But at the same time, you know, if a woman decides to have children, she is going to be the primary caretaker. Like, the way that progressives frame it is that the man can just step in and do half of the chores and whatever.

1:56:48No, the baby's going to prefer mom. The baby wants mom. The baby wants mom. Yeah. And then the other side is, you know, because not all conservatives, but there's a sentiment among conservatives to tell young women, don't worry about your education and career just get married young have tons of children and worry about your career later but that's difficult if you have no work experience how are you going to get a job in your field especially nowadays if you have no work experience right especially given how difficult it is to support a family on a single person income yeah that too so look i i i think that everybody that wants to have kids should be able to afford to have kids and the fact that people can't afford to have kids or more accurately i think feel like they can't afford to have kids, given that the poorest countries are the ones that have got the highest birth rates.

1:57:33I think that's awful. I think it's awful that people can't afford to have kids or feel like they can't afford to have kids. But I don't think that that's the issue. I think if you were to ask any couple or almost any couple, especially married couple, what's the reason that you haven't yet had kids? It's not going to be that they're too expensive. The issue and most of the commentary, the commentariat that's throwing their opinions into the, like me, that's throwing their opinions into the fucking mess with this, a single people saying it's too expensive to have kids. You're not in a relationship.

1:58:09This is like you telling me how much you'd beat some guy up that stood in the ring while you're in the stands. Like you're not in the situation where you can talk about having kids. It's not what you're facing. So I wonder how much of this, and this maybe from the guy's side too i wonder how much of this is kids are too expensive to have is a much easier explanation than i can't find a partner to have them with i i definitely think financial reasons could be a part of it but i i do think when you're speaking of women who are getting to an age where i my sense is some women may not be aware that their biological window is definitive.

1:58:49How tight is it? Well, women's fertility drops down by half, by 35. And then, you know, menopause starts into your 40s by mid-40s. So, there's, you can't really negotiate with biology at that point. I mean, you can use the technology, you can try, but we all have our windows and it's, like I said, you know, sad. I remember reading a tweet from fucking Stefan Molyneux, like six, seven years ago, like culture warring before the culture war was even a thing. And he was having some pop on Taylor Swift's 30th birthday, basically saying, Taylor Swift turned 30 today. 90 % of her eggs are gone. I wish that she'd become a mother.

1:59:31See, that type of commentary is not nice. It's not helping. And I always had that in the back of my mind. Just one of these things, it kind of kicked up a big furor. And it's just a, it's just a fucking prick thing to say. But. I did a little bit of research. The reason that 90%, that 90 % figure is true, but I didn't realize it's because girls lose their eggs before they hit puberty. I think 50 % of your lifetime eggs are gone by the time that you become, is the word fertile? I guess, or like able to have kids. Yeah. Like whatever, your puberty comes online and 50 % of them are gone. Like that doesn't feel, the 90 % number, that feels like somebody's inflated the stock price or something.

2:00:16Yeah. Well, I was going to say also, speaking of the fertility issues or the endocrine disruptors, when a girl is born, she's born with all the eggs she's ever going to have. So if her mother was exposed to something when she was in the uterus, that's going to affect her daughter and her grandchildren potentially because it's affecting the eggs. There's three generations of people, three generations of women in the same location for a brief period of time. Yeah. But my hope and what I like with your podcast is that it's very much like balanced. And I really want to try and close this division between men and women because I think that's a big part of also why this is happening.

2:00:49The adversarial narrative. Yeah. And why they're not interested in having sexual relationships or being close. You're having that intimacy because so much of this discourse is so polarizing and so much about blaming the opposite sex for everything that's going wrong, not just in terms of dating and relationships, but just the world. Yeah. I mean, instead of cooperation, each sex just optimizes against the other. It's just this evolutionary arms race, but it's been turned up to everything. It's like, yeah, okay, there is a kind of, I come up with a way to. be funny or cute or attractive or whatever and after a while that strategy sort of becomes detected and then i need to demonstrate more value and more value and so on and so forth and it's just that but not even on steroids like in a fucking different universe where the humans are so tribal that we're even splitting ourselves up based on fucking sex right yeah and i don't know Okay, can anything be done top down to fix this?

2:01:54Give you some proposed solutions. I was going to say with the evolutionary, co-evolutionary arms race, so that's David Buss's theory. The goat. Yeah, he's a friend of mine, a mentor. Daddy David. And it definitely shows up. It's amazing because once you become aware of this dynamic and how men and women are constantly trying to out-compete each other, you see it in everything. So in terms of advice, I would say for, I'll start with women. I'd say I definitely think people should meet in real life as opposed to on apps or through social media or online or whatever. So I do think men should be the ones to approach women.

2:02:26So women have to make it so obvious if they're into someone. And things you can do, I have suggestions in sex tension, but one big one is to smile very obviously. And if you're like me and you have resting bee face, to practice smiling in the mirror until it's not uncomfortable and not awkward, which can take some time. but it i guarantee you like if you see a man you find attractive and you smile at him he will come and talk to you cultivate receptivity yeah exactly because men are biologically wired to pick up on these cues and there's a part of the brain called the medial orbital frontal cortex that lights up when someone sees an attractive face and it lights up even more strongly when that face is smiling so i thought that was really fascinating because your resting bitch face is resting ugly face to a degree or it's like resting f off face yeah um and also things like touching your hair touch your your face your neck you have to adjust your clothing things like that men are again going to pick up on this and see this as a sign that you're interested okay and so that will help to remedy i think some of the um the backlash or the difficulty after me too and then for guys oh and the other thing i would say to women is so basically your options are to compete for the high status guys, right?

2:03:39To date someone whom you may consider, if you are, say, a very educated, successful, financially successful woman, you may feel like you're dating a guy who's less successful than you, but that's totally fine, right? My issue is when society's telling women, this is a great solution, like just have a house husband, you know? You don't need to go for these guys. You can make your own money and you can be the provider in the household. And no, high rates of divorce, as you said. yeah, higher rates of domestic violence, higher rates of male cheating when that happens. So, you know, not to say that happens for everybody, but I think just to also have a bit of compassion for men who are struggling.

2:04:16Because my sense is women, we are doing very well, right? And I don't think it takes anything away from women's success or women's ability to succeed by having some compassion for men who are struggling. And then I would say to guys, it's probably a combination in terms of why young men are not doing as well i think the mental health aspects eat healthy food that goes for women too but there have been studies that have shown um if you cut out ultra processed food depression will remit on its own there was one study i remember reading it was crazy within 12 weeks a third of the sample that had depression jesus had it going to remission that is crazy on its own wow yeah so if you're struggling like with your mental health or i guess i should talk to the camera when i say this but if you're if If you're struggling with your mental health, eat healthy food, go to the gym.

2:05:03I'm sure Chris's audience knows. Work out, get sunshine. And I would also say if you can go without porn for 30 days, try and see if that helps you. You might be surprised at your motivation. You did not expect that you're going to be a proponent for NoFap. Well, I hear from so many guys that it's helped them. So I'm willing to go there. I'm curious. Let me know how it goes. Okay? As a woman, tell me how it goes. Every single day, report in on how your NoFap is going. With an update. I want detailed notes. I want an Excel spreadsheet. I'm sure that that will appreciate. That'll go well. Debra, you're great.

2:05:37Thank you. I really appreciate you. Where should people go to check out everything you're doing? So you can get, should I talk to the camera or should I tell you? No, talk to me. Okay. You should get Sextinction, The Decline of Sex, and The Future of Intimacy. You can get it on Simon & Schuster's website. You can get it everywhere you get books. You can get it at drdebrasseau.com. And the audiobook is read by me. And you can get it for free on Audible. Sounds awesome. I think you're doing the goddess's work. Really, really cool. Really, really awesome stuff. I appreciate you. Thank you. If you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out.

2:06:19And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom Reading List, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful, and entertaining that I've ever found. fiction and non-fiction and there's real life stories and there's a description about why I like it and there's links to go and buy it and it's completely free. You can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books.