986: Porn | Skeptical Sunday

0:03Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm with Skeptical Sunday co-host Michael Regilio, whose name is impossible to spell. Good luck finding him on Instagram. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers.

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1:09Today, sexually explicit content, adult entertainment, smut is a word I feel like needs to come back. Triple X or just XXX, I don't know how you would say that. Porn, whatever you call it, there's no getting around how ubiquitous porn is today. And today's porn uses high-speed internet to create an intense experience or so I have heard. and the negative effects of today's pornography are not always anticipated by the user or necessarily even considered by the user. Porn and porn flicks, they don't come with warning labels, what they used to. But can viewing pornography impact relationships, work, or self-care?

1:44Is the impact worse than society wants to admit? Comedian and porn aficionado Michael Regilio is here to talk about the ins and outs of porn. Okay, for the record, Jordan ad-libbed the porn aficionado, although researching this episode, I might well be. Hi, Jordan. Let's talk specifically, okay, about high-speed internet porn. This is not your father's porn. High-speed internet access has changed the way porn is viewed while changing our brain's wiring. It is necessary to look at the science behind pornography. Porn science. Okay, that sounds like a movie starring Anthony Michael Hall. By the way, the phrase your father's porn is something I'd rather just never, ever hear again, by the way.

2:30That's, no. Okay, all right. Well, it might come up again. But ha! The science behind porn is, of course, neuroscience. And neuroscience shows that high-speed porn changes the way our brain functions and instills addictive traits. But here's the thing. Porn has always been around. You and I were kind of talking at the top of the show. Well, it's not just porn. It's high-speed internet porn. And I'm thinking like, okay, dial up porn. Is it that much worse or better? VHS porn? This is nothing new. Playboys, wet playboys in the forest. Right. Okay. Look, although porn is nothing new, there is no comparing today's porn to anything that existed before.

3:05This isn't even your older cousin's porn. Okay. See, that's more like it. That's some porn I can get behind that doesn't make me have shivers and, you know, nightmares while I'm awake. I understand. Okay, so high-speed internet porn is a recent phenomenon that didn't exist until around 20 years ago. Porn is more accessible and more extreme than ever before. These few rain-soaked centerfold magazines that I, and apparently you, found in the park as a teenager are nothing compared to the hardcore high-def videos that everyone has access to today. Yeah, so I was hinting at the thing that it's like a code word that all guys who are probably 30, 40 years old know is that there are rain-soaked, hopefully rain-soaked, magazines in the woods stuffed in a stump at the BMX track that your parents have never been to.

3:54And my friends and I would find them and say, I think that's a boob, and the nip should be like where that torn sort of leaf dried on there, and we can't get it off without ruining it. Can we even know how many people watch porn on a regular basis? It's not something people love to talk about generally, except for right now, apparently. Yeah, well, that's true. But the National Institute of Health reports that 91 % of men and 60 % of women have viewed porn within the last month. Other statistics vary, but it's hard to get honest feedback. There's that old joke, nine out of 10 guys admit to masturbating and the 10th one is a liar.

4:29Well, that might just be the case here with who is admitting to their porn habits. So we just don't know. So those stats, they sound high, maybe not for guys, maybe 91 % sounds accurate. It does surprise me the percentage for women is that high. I would say if you quizzed me on that, I'd say low double digits or even single digits, because a lot of women I know would never admit, I'll put it that way, to watching porn. True. And the numbers going up. And evolutionary biologist Thomas Junker believes the rise in females who view high-speed porn is because more content is now being made for women.

5:02So the numbers are adding up. And by the way, the top five porn sites account for over 6 billion visits per month. No doubt, some of those visitors are definitely women. Just statistically speaking, I'm curious what the difference is between porn for men and women. I'm going to have to somehow figure out how to view porn on the internet. Man, that's going to be some research. But wow, over six billion served. There must be a lot of repeat users in this industry. Okay, yes, those numbers do account for many chronic porn users. There is hesitation to label them porn addicts, but neuroscientists see no difference in brain function between porn use and other addictive things like drugs.

5:41Many psychologists don't agree and say that porn addiction doesn't exist, while others have a more fuzzy take. It's a debate, and I don't fully understand it. So I'm just going to go with the scientists, and I'm going to say if it walks like an addiction and talks like an addiction, it's an addiction. Addiction or not, what is going on here? That's a lot of crispy socks, Michael. Wow. I wonder how many people even get that. Like, women are like, oh, crispy socks. Sadly, I think just about everybody gets it, because that stereotype's been around. And I've, yeah. That's true. The fact of the matter is it just all starts with evolutionary desires.

6:13For billions of years, the top priority for all living things has been reproduction. Now, imagine the environment in which humans evolved. Studies of the earliest human species population show that there was about one person per square mile. So a dude walking the plains of Africa 100 ,000 years ago or so had very few opportunities to interact and mate. Evolution made sure he took every opportunity available. The horniest people passed along the most DNA. And in order to maximize reproduction rates, men evolved to become super aroused by the prospect of a new mate to spread as much sperm as possible.

6:50That actually makes a ton of sense, evolutionarily speaking. And I love that the source for this or one of the sources for this is persquaremile.com, which I can only imagine someone's like, wait, what happens if we quickly need to know how many people there were per square mile 100 ,000 years ago? I need to make a website that calculates this in a flash. Yeah, it sounds like graduate student project. It does, like an intern at a think tank. So we're ancestors of the horniest humans, which is kind of funny. And also, that's not what you learn in Sunday school or whatever. Yeah, and high-speed internet porn hacks these desires and sends them into overdrive.

7:29Our brain is telling us we're doing a good thing when we watch porn because the potential for new mates seems limitless. I know this isn't your department necessarily, but it sounds like you're saying humans are not usually monogamous kind of by design, at least sexually monogamous by design. All living things are built to reproduce. Certain species are more monogamous than others. When a gray wolf alpha male picks its mate. That's for life. They are nature's power couple. Many other species are the same. Penguins, albatross, and our national bird, bald eagles, mate for life. Yeah, of course they do.

8:00Good old American family values. That's right. But there are animals like bonobos who are just constantly having sex parties. Humans seem to be a combination of those extremes. And by the way, Jordan, I've been to a few bonobo parties. Not that great. Okay. I'm not sure how you scored an invite to those, but I don't really need details. It sounds like a lot of feces tossing. So porn is, speaking of it, porn is stimulating our most primal desires. How is it affecting our brain? Is there science that says like, hey, this is, this rots your brain like the hip hop and jazz music once was thought to do?

8:36One of the most powerful things in our brains is the tremendous dopamine system. The dopamine system motivates us to do everything we need to do to survive, like eat, sleep, and reproduce. And when it comes to reproduction, the dopamine system doesn't leave anything to chance. So even if there's a slight chance of mating, our brains give us a dopamine boost to motivate us to go for it. Ah, okay. So are we, and again, this might be a little outside the research, but are we motivated to go for sex more than other desires? You know, when you hear those rat experiments, like the rat went for the cocaine water instead of food.

9:07It's like, well, surprise, surprise. But what takes precedence, food or sex, or shelter or sex? Is there like a hierarchy here that gets messed up? Well, let's just say studies show that our dopamine production for sex is two times what it is for food. Great dieting idea. The porn diet. The book writes itself. And look, the fact of the matter is dopamine is the door to addiction. And here's the thing. Dopamine isn't just the pleasure molecule. No, it's the molecule that controls wanting, cravings, and guides you to avoid those unpleasant feelings. The purpose of dopamine is to motivate you to seek behavior that produces more dopamine.

9:47I mean, who doesn't love food? And to 2x that, sign me up. So let me guess, the dopamine machine can't tell the difference between high-speed internet porn and a real-world experience, or there's some fuzzy stuff going on there? No, it's actually just the opposite. It can tell the difference, and the dopamine is motivating people to choose high-speed porn over the real world. There is more reward from high-speed porn than sex with a single partner. Because there are diminishing returns of dopamine with the same partner, high-speed internet porn offers endless opportunities to simulate a new mate.

10:24So it's the novelty thing going on here. And by the way, that sounds like the slogan for a porn site, simulate a mate. It makes sense, though. I can't imagine that almost anybody in real life has more options for real-life mates than they do internet-simulated mates. It's here's looking at Tom Brady, right? It's like, well, that guy can walk out the door and people are like doing weird gymnastics over tables to get to him. And yet he's in his bed laying down. He's got his phone in his hand. Like it's still easier for somebody like that. It's true. I mean, maybe that should be the catchphrase for one of those sites.

10:56More sex than Tom Brady. After the FTX thing, he might not be down for any more website promos. But then again, it can't go any worse than the FTX thing. So a porn site endorsement might actually be a good way to clean his brand up a little bit. Yeah, at least porn is real. Right, true that. This is the underlying promise of porn, and high-speed porn delivers that. People are hacking this response and getting a dopamine kick for a new partner every few seconds. It's pleasure on steroids. Pleasure on dopamine anyway, I suppose. And now young guys, I've heard Scott Galloway say this, and I don't remember if it was on my show because he's been on a few times or other show, but he said now young guys basically can have more simulated partners in one lonely afternoon than most men of the previous generations have had in their entire lives.

11:41Yeah, and scientists use dopamine to measure the addictive potential of an experience. A 2019 study in Australia showed porn to subjects and measured a dopamine spike at the initial viewing. The more the subject watched the same porn, the less dopamine they released. When the researchers showed them a new porn film, the researchers said their brains and boners sprang to attention again. Well, that does explain the never-ending new content on porn sites, or so I've heard. I guess you don't re-watch your favorite ones like you do old Seinfeld episodes. Rarely do I watch Seinfeld for sexual content.

12:16There was the episode with Elaine's nipple that I rewatched several times. Can't see it. Can't see it. All right, look, it's not just the sexual content, but the novelty that sends dopamine skyrocketing. Like you just hinted at earlier, in 30 minutes, you can see more members of the opposite sex erotically displaying themselves than the total number of other mostly closed humans our ancestors could see during their entire lifetime. This is all new to the human experience, and it's the frequency of dopamine spikes that cause addiction. Everyday things become boring compared to the nonstop dopamine show a human gets in front of their laptop touching, well, the top of their lap.

12:58Thank you. Yes, it's not just a laptop, though. It's any screen, right? Are we including phones? And although desktop porn seems so comically antiquated and quaint. I have to imagine this includes phones because, again, from what I've heard from friends, most of their porn habits happen to be through their handheld devices while they're handholding their other devices. I knew you're going to go for that one. Look, the fact of the matter, for the porn addict, it's not even about the phone or the screen. You don't have to be in front of a screen to be affected by porn use. It's also the things that trigger people to go watch porn.

13:32Just seeing a woman in a bikini while driving down the street can create a strong craving for internet porn in users. I don't know why that's funny, because I guess where I'm driving, there's nobody who's just hanging out in a bikini, but dudes just see a woman in a bikini on the beach, theoretically, or whatever, and it makes them want to just go home, bust out the laptop, and then not actually engage with the woman in the bikini, but go straight home and bust up BornHub or whatever. Okay, now you get it. It's not surprising that high-speed porn has similar effects on the brain as narcotics. Daniel Lieberman points out in his book, the story of the human body that the sweetest thing an ancient hunter-gatherer could find was probably a piece of fruit about as sweet as a modern-day carrot.

14:12Now you can buy a pound of sugar for a few bucks. Farmers in the Andes chew coca leaves for a mild boost in energy, extract that energy-boosting power, and you wind up with the highly addictive cocaine. It's like we're a little too smart for our own good. We've conquered survival faster than our brains can process. We learned how to exploit the programming that paired survival and reproduction with pleasure. With a few taps on our phone, we have unfiltered pleasure, completely separated from its original purpose of survival and reproduction. That does make a lot of sense. Although I have to kind of call BS on the carrot thing.

14:47What about berries? Is this guy just going to ignore the fact that fruit has existed since the dawn of time, theoretically? How is a carrot the sweetest thing that's around? Like an apple, which is not going to be a rare thing, is everywhere. And so are raspberries. They grow like weeds. And the Bible says apples have been around since the beginning. So there you go. There you go, buddy. Checkmate. Scientist. Yeah, I don't know about that. But I get where he's going with it. And also the whole coca leaf thing makes sense and extracting things from nature and then turning them into crazy. I mean, even all kinds of high fructose corn syrup would be a good example.

15:23Yeah, exactly. It's just we're refining everything and then it goes straight into your veins and it's like, wait, you were supposed to have a 1 % diluted version of this and you were supposed to absorb it 100 times slower and now you're shooting it up or smoking it. I would imagine the addiction worsens when things like a VR headset are used. I know that's sort of primitive tech, but it's so new it makes me get vertigo and want to barf instead of, you know, simulate much of anything. But I can only imagine that's going to make things worse. Yeah, I mean, VR is relatively new and it is being studied.

15:52Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK have pointed out that VR changes the experience of porn. A user goes from detached observer to virtual participant. If you're jonesing for a little release, maybe release that wallet and support one of the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers does keep the lights on. All the links, deals, and discounts and ways to support the show are all in one place. JordanHarbinger.com slash deals. You can also search for any sponsor, any promo code using the AI chatbot on the website as well.

16:24Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. I almost feel, and this is a tangent that I won't go on, but I almost feel like that's better versus watching random people get after it. At least you're kind of like, somehow being involved seems more helpful. Well, now I don't know. I'll leave it to the scientists. Continue. I mean, it's getting a little holodeck and I don't know, it's getting a little her. Yeah, with Joaquin Phoenix and ScarJo. Joaquin Phoenix, yeah. I mean, we might just reach the point where somebody goes home, puts on their headset and spends the evening with their girlfriend.

16:57I don't know. I mean, it's just not conclusive either way. Yeah, better than shooting up a shopping mall if you're like one of those violent incels. But that's another show. It's a good point. I'm convinced that there could be a correlation there too. Look, there's no doubt the VR adds to the dopamine kick and any addict will tell you the constant dopamine spikes come with a price. When we slam the pleasure center of the brain And with that much dopamine, the receptors shut down. So to get the same high, users need more and more porn. It's not unlike gambling and drugs. Anything that gives us the sweet, sweet dopamine rush.

17:28This dopamine cycle is a universal symptom of addiction. And this is exactly what scientists see in the chemistry of the minds of high-speed porn users. Behavioral addiction causes the same dopamine responses as in substance addiction. So isn't then high-speed internet addictive itself? Does surfing the web itself boost us with dopamine? Because when I first discovered the internet as a kid, and this wasn't even like clicking on colored banners, this is navigating using a keyboard and a black and white screen, I was beyond addicted to it as a kid. It was wild. And all I really had access to were certain academic papers and like crappy chat rooms that were mostly inactive that were about computers, but it still was like the coolest thing that I'd ever seen in my life.

18:15And this, again, no pictures, not even a color screen at that point. I mean, of course, yes, the internet itself can be very addicting. We know that. Even if you're just looking at innocent content, I myself have sacrificed valuable time with my family to watch way too many human beatbox videos. Seems worth it. I'm more of a Dr. Pimple Popper, Whistlin' Diesel video guy. I don't know. Okay. I have some idea of what the pimple popper thing is. And I will say that if it was around when I was 15, I would have been a fucking star. Okay. But what is Whistlin' Diesel? So my kid wants to, Jaden always likes watching videos before we go to sleep.

18:54And it's like, he just wants to watch one video with dad. And he always wants to watch car videos. And this guy, Whistlin' Diesel is like this idiot. And by idiot, I mean, brilliantly funny guy who's good at playing dumb, but is a mechanical genius. And what he'll do is he'll take, he'll buy like a Hellcat sports car, which is kind of like a souped up Charger Mustang thing. And he'll put those Amish wagon wheels on it and he'll burn it out and drive it through town. And, or he'll get like a monster truck and drive it in water. And everyone's calling it. The cops are everywhere and there's helicopters.

19:24And he's like, well, we checked. This is actually legal, but they don't like it. It's dumb. But you know, there's a reason he gets 23 million views on a video because it's amazingly fun and funny and seemingly mostly innocent. Wow. I don't know how we got on this, but yeah, the videos that we see online on TikTok that are not porny, a lot of them are also kind of addicting. I'm not addicted to Whistling Diesel, but you see outrage content or just nonsense conspiracy stuff. There's got to be an addiction element to that stuff, because otherwise it's I mean, it is destroying people's lives and relationships and people choose that over like their family.

19:57I know. I mean, that's another episode altogether that I've had friendships fall apart over this stuff. But look, there's a lot to say about internet addiction. But there's no doubt high-speed porn makes it worse. Viewing porn is associated with the erosion of the prefrontal cortex, which drives things, again, like our impulse control and willpower. When you combine the already addictive nature of the internet with the fact that our brains make us super motivated by anything sexual, you see how high-speed porn can have such negative effects. So you said it erodes the prefrontal cortex. Tell me more about that, because that sounds like one of those things you read in a science article, and it's like, well, it doesn't actually erode, and it's not actually the prefrontal cortex, and it's not true at all.

20:37It's a good question, and I looked into that one a lot. And I guess right now where the science is, there's no causal link that is conclusive, but there is no doubt from dozens of studies that erosion of the prefrontal cortex and reduced gray matter correlates with porn use. So look, we've said it before, we'll say it again. I'm not an expert. This is past my pay grade. I'm trying to learn here, though. But what remains unclear is whether porn use is shrinking the gray matter of dudes or dudes with small gray matter watch more porn. I'm guessing also the younger you are, the more negative the effects.

21:10Do we know the age kids are seeing this content? Because the outrage internet that I'm addicted to would say that 12-year-olds are watching porn, which doesn't surprise me at all. Because if I was 12 and I had a smartphone or a computer with internet, I would be seeking this stuff out for sure. I'm sure I would have. Absolutely. And I mean, just in my own life, when one of my 12-year-old nieces grabs my phone, she can navigate into parts of my phone I didn't even know exists. She hands it back to me two seconds later. It's got a different screen, different buttons. I'm signed up. They are quick.

21:39They are good. So they're going to see it. And the fact of the matter is studies show most children view porn by the age of 13. But 15 % they viewed pornography online before the age of 11. Again, this is difficult to conduct. So the numbers could be higher. I mean, who's going to admit, like even to a researcher, I started looking at that stuff when I was seven. Or my kids are looking at it because I'm a terrible parent and can't stop them from doing it. Even though you're not a terrible parent, because even if you won't let your kid use the internet or have a phone, some shithead kid at school has a phone and the parents don't care that he's showing porn to all the girls because they scream and run away when he does.

22:14I mean, that's the whole thing. It's just way too young. And there is some innocence lost in the coming of age with high-speed porn for sure. It's amazing how much has changed since those old mags in the woods. And I know you and I've probably had a similar conversation, but whenever you talk to guys or gals your age now, does it not come up where you're like, I'm so glad the dumbest thing I did was not posted on social media because it didn't exist. Like the time that I did this horrible thing or that this horrible thing was done to me, there were no camera phones. Nobody really knows about it except who was there.

22:42And those two out of the five people have already forgotten about it. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is a side topic, but yeah. Whenever I see like a breaking story or just something online about 17 year old says outrageous thing, I'm like, don't care. I don't care. You should get a full pass for everything. I got a full pass because I did and said stupid things and it was never recorded and just disappeared into the ether. These kids have a permanent record of it. So let young kids be stupid. Like if you're 17 and you said something outrageously stupid, I don't care. I don't care. You get a pass. I'm with you.

23:16Because it's easy for us to follow the progression of porn use. The first issue of Playboy was published in 1953. An entire industry of adult magazines was thrust into mainstream America. Thrust. When VCRs became the thing in the 1980s, porno movies came right into the home. In the 90s, the brand new World Wide Web allowed porn to flow into the home endlessly. For the first time, people could access porn whenever they wanted with just a few clicks of a mouse, and they often chose porn. A decade after this, smartphones were in everyone's hand, and porn was more accessible, affordable, and anonymous than ever, which, by the way, are known as the three A's of addiction.