Cindy Gallop - The Surprising Benefits of Staying SINGLE

30:09Yeah, exactly. And he genuinely, you know, he was in his 20s at the time, early 20s. He genuinely loved, appreciated, was very attracted to older women. So he told me that, and he was very puzzled by this because he told me that here in London, you know, he would be in a bar restaurant, he'd see an older woman. He'd sort of, you know, go up to her and try and chat her up and she would always reject him. And I said to him, and this guy is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, and I said to him, that's because she thinks you're pranking her. She thinks someone who looks like you cannot possibly be attracted to her.

30:45And so I want to say to older women, you would be so wrong. And it's really important to understand that before you even embark on, you know, dating younger men. um then um you know what's interesting paul is to be perfectly frank um i think people who want to find a soulmate would benefit from adopting my approach to finding casual sex okay so first of all um as i said i meet the younger men i date on cougar dating sites i recommend the older women go there if you just google by the way cougar dating site you'll find a ton of them you have to find the one that's right for you, you know. But like I said, my number one criteria is must be a nice person.

31:24Now, when you are looking for your soulmate, you have a dating checklist where must be a nice person is not usually number one on the list. Okay. Usually it's must have a good job, you know, must have ambition and drive, must have a sense of humor, whatever. If you're looking for your soulmate and you walk into that bar of that coffee shop and you set eyes on that person you've been talking with online for the first time, you are not thinking, are they attracted to me? You are thinking, what do my friends think if I walked into a party with this on my arm? You are looking for socially endorsed attractiveness, whether you realize that or not.

32:04I'm not because when I walk into that bar all I'm thinking is you know am I attracted to you because if I am I'm taking you home and fucking you so um so so uh yeah so so um but but what that means is that I am devoid of any you know gotta have you know gotta be six foot two gotta gotta you know um have you know clean cut jaw look like this classical good looks or whatever I don't give a shit what anybody else thinks of what he looks like all that matters genuinely is this person attracted to me? Cindy flips the typical dating checklist on its head. While most people look for things like status, ambition, or how someone will be perceived by others, she focuses on one thing.

32:46Am I genuinely attracted to this person? That's it. She doesn't care about societal standards or what anyone else might think. And honestly, I think there's a big lesson in that. When we stop prioritizing external validation and focus on what truly matters to us, We open ourselves up to real, authentic connections. It's a game changer. So if you're looking for a soulmate, one consideration I have first at IRL, Dave, and this is especially the case of women, is did we both get equal airtime? Okay. You know, did he ask me as many questions about me as I asked about him? You know, did I get to talk about myself as much as he got to talk about himself?

33:27when I am meeting my younger men for that first IRL date at the end of the day I've spent all day pitching make love not porn I am sick to death of the sound of my own voice I don't want hair time the last thing I want to do is talk about myself I want to hear all about him and you know with men in their 20s he's probably never encountered anybody as interested in him as I am okay and And what then happens, Paul, is that I hear amazing stories. Because what I love about online dating is that you get to meet people you would never meet in your usual walk of life. So I've dated, I've met with, because I don't date all of the men I meet, because not all of them make the cut, you know.

34:13But, you know, I've met younger men who are the very first person in their family ever to go to college. You know, there's a whole story behind that. younger men who are in their first jobs are supporting entire families. I've met younger men doing really dangerous jobs in the army, military intelligence, in Afghanistan, doing things that, you know, for someone in their early 20s, I'm going, bloody hell, you know, what you were doing there. You know, I just hear incredible stories, because I just want to hear their story. I'm not focused on telling mine, you know. And those stories make them even more attractive to me because, you know, I'm getting the whole person.

34:56And so, you know, those are just a few of the principles whereby I may use this to find the younger men I want to date casually, but actually think about adopting my approach to find your life partner. You know what? It makes sense. Because in essence, what you're saying is that when you use this approach, you're not seeking any type of external validation. Exactly. Exactly. And that makes it a win. Yeah. I like that. This is the Cindy method. Absolutely. The Cindy method. All right. So we've talked about in terms of rejecting social norms. So we've talked about the one, children, about nuclear families.

35:36Because I keep going back to this concept because this is a concept that, according to all of my research, this is the Western church that really made this in vogue, right? But it feels like townships were created as a result of nuclear families. So society now moves off of this concept of the nuclear family. So what's your opinion on that? Is that a norm that is damaging today? You know, I think it is. I talk very publicly about my approach because we need many more role models that demonstrate you can live life very differently to the way you expect it to. I cannot wait to die alone and I date younger men, casual, recreational sex.

36:16Now, you know, when I say I cannot wait to die alone, OK, I'm doing that lightheartedly to land a point, but also because actually I'm not going to die alone. And what I mean by that, and sorry, this is a long-winded answer to your question, is, you know, I'm very, very lucky in that I have a wonderful family. You know, I'm the oldest of four sisters. We are all incredibly close. My mother's still alive at the age of 91. And we have family all, you know, my cousins, my nephews, my nieces. I'm never going to die alone because I have a wonderful family around me. I have amazing friends and that chosen family is absolutely as valid, as loving, as wonderful, as life affirming, as any kind of nuclear family that you create according to the cultural narrative.

37:06You do have the family you didn't choose. And unfortunately, for some people, that does not work out well. But you can also have the family that you choose. And I'd love people to expand the concept of family to bring in the people that you will meet along the way who absolutely are your family. Yeah, I agree with that. You know, I often say not all family is family. And that's exactly what I'm referring to is that I found that some of my closest friends are family. So then what does that mean of my relationship? It means that they're, you know, I love them. Yeah, absolutely. So to your point, well said, well said.

37:42All right. Any other, because I'm like, you are rebels in this world, right? So you're rejecting all these norms. Any other norms that you reject? Because I feel like those are the big ones. I will tell you one that I feel particularly strongly about. Marketers believe that older people aspire to be young. We don't. Young people aspire to be us. I coach people in their 50s who believe that life is now for them a trajectory downwards. And it is so not. You know, and I always remember many years ago, I was consulting on retainer for the Japanese ad agency Hakahodo. And so I used to go to Tokyo and spend weeks there at a time working with Hakahodo.

38:28And so one week I was there and I went out to dinner with my Japanese colleagues. We went to a sushi restaurant. We all got tanked on sake. It was very jolly. And one of the Japanese colleagues, a woman, revealed that in her youth, she had been apprenticed to a very famous Japanese fortune teller, soothsayer kind of figure. And he had taught her to read poms. And it was quite a short apprentice, six months or so, apprenticeship. and so um she she'd only learned to read palms in a very limited way she would tell you your love life your career your health i think that's about it so anyway so we're all drunk and sorry we're all going around here you know so she read all our palms and obviously with everyone else she read them in japanese but she had to read mine in english and english wasn't very good which was part of the charm of this and remember she looked at my palm and she said to me you are only halfway.

39:20And I was 49 at the time. And that was exactly how I felt. I was only halfway. And so I say to the people I coach, you have as long to live again, especially given the miracles of modern science and medicine, as you've lived to date. What are you going to do with that? And equally to marketers, I go, you know, our core target is young people and the older people will follow. No, no, no, no, no. Start with older people. Lead with older people. The young will follow. Because at this age, as we've been discussing, at this age, we don't give a shit about anything. Okay. We have our own sense of personal style, home style.

39:58We know what really matters in life, relationships, friendships. We have freedom to travel. We have more disposable income. All of that is enormously aspirational to younger people. When I asked Cindy about Norm she rejects, she dropped a powerful truth. Society has it all wrong about aging. Older people aren't trying to be young. If anything, young people should be looking up to the wisdom, freedom, and confidence that comes with age. She calls for a shift in mindset, especially in marketing, to make older people the aspiration. Her point? Life at 50 isn't the end. It's often just the halfway mark what society is failing to do is flip that equation and understand that older people are aspirational and that we should be telling these stories holding them up as aspirational leading with them in every possible sense i mean you know for commercial value as well as for cultural entertainment value i just slow okay that's how you know a clap is good it starts slow And then it just, you know, there's so much I can say on that.

41:09But I'll just say this is that so being in television for over a decade, what I've noticed is this exact argument, the counter argument, right? Which is, well, we advertise, you know, the advertisers want the millennials or they want the Gen Zs. It's 18 to 25 because they have large disposable income. and therefore all of our programming begins to target them, which means that when you're casting, for example, you have contributors on these shows, the contributors are all Gen Z so that they can better relate to the... I think this is ridiculous. No, exactly. And especially because... So I was interviewed a couple of years ago for Style Like You's What's Underneath interview series.

41:56Lovely mother and daughter duo Elisa and Lily, they have this interview series where they ask the interviewee to sit on a stool. They ask a question from behind the camera. As you answer each question, you remove an item of clothing. The idea being that you metaphorically and literally strip down to what's underneath. So they asked me to do this for a series with older people, which I happily did. So I sat on the stool at the age of 62, two years ago. I took all my clothes off down to my underwear while I talked about how I like to live my life. I was blown away by the response to that. I went viral on TikTok.

42:33I wasn't even on TikTok at the time, by the way. The clips that interview have millions of views, thousands of comments. Same thing on YouTube, on Instagram. And there are so many young people, and a lot of young women, also young men, going, all my life, I've been looking for an older female role model like this. You know, phenomenal comments. And in fact, I was especially moved by one under the Instagram clip, which said, It was from a woman. It said, imagine if we had grown up seeing and hearing women live and talk like this. Imagine how different our lives will be now. Like I said, we are aspirational to younger people.

43:06Oh, my God, tap into that. And you unlock a whole world of, as I said, commercial value, let alone enormous cultural and entertainment value. And very importantly, Paul, so I coined the hashtag Live Older because that was a direct response to the Evian tagline of Live Young, you know, so's that. But also I caught another hashtag and this is another message I've been putting out for years. So I believe the opposite of what most people tend to say when they think they are countering ageism, which is age is just a number. It's not. your age is a very special number because your age is a sum total of you.

43:48Your age is the sum total of all of your lived experience to date, all of your expertise, everything you've grown up absorbing and learning and doing. Your age is what makes you valuable. Your age is a sum total of the value that you bring. And so I coined the hashtag, say your age, because I say my age as often as possible. I shout it from the rooftops and I want to encourage everybody else to do the same. Yes, yes. I wish I had a collection plate. I could just pass it around the studio because everything you're saying, this is gospel. This is gospel. It's the eternal struggle most of us face, building a fulfilling, successful career, but also being an available partner, parent, and friend.

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45:16Free up some of your time in life. Head to Fiverr.com, that's F-I-V-E-R-R.com, or click the link in the description and use code Paul, that's P-A-U-L, at checkout for 10 % off your first order. When it comes to love, we're all on our own journey. And that means any advice we're given should be tailored to our love goals, not someone else's. This is where my show and Tinder, who sponsor this podcast, have teamed up to help you. Each week on We Need to Talk, I'll explore love and relationships through a different lens, so you can get the advice that relates to your romantic situation. Tinder is for all types of relationships, and I truly believe it has the best tools to help you form the connections you're looking for.

46:06That might be long-term commitment or short-term experiences. Maybe it's friendship. But regardless of which part of the journey you're on, Tinder and I are here to support you. Their app is full of possibilities, and it's designed to help you explore every kind of connection. It starts with a swipe. So download Tinder today. Now, Cindy, I see, even though I know how you feel about children, I see that you do have a baby. Did you know about this baby? This is news, Paul. Where's this baby? No, no, no. Your baby is clearly... Oh. Make love, not poor. My goodness. Absolutely. No, no, no. You're right.

46:49Right, Paul, because that is my child. That is my legacy, actually. That is what I want to leave to the world. See? You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. So can we begin with the story of how do you create a company called Make Love, Not Poor? And the answer is by complete and total accident. This is your life. You need to write a book by complete and total accident. It absolutely is. Because my ex-boss in the advertising world, the wonderful Sir John Hegarty of BBH, has this great mantra. John says, do interesting things and interesting things will happen to you. And that's very much how I've lived my life.

47:26So, you know, I began accidentally dating younger men. And dating younger men is what led me to accidentally start Make Love Not For. because, you know, 16, 17 years ago, I began realizing through dating younger men that I was encountering an issue that would never have crossed my mind if I had not encountered it very intimately and personally. I realized that I was experiencing what happens when two things converge. And I stress the dual convergence because most people think it's only one thing. I realized that I was experiencing what happens when today's total freedom of access to hardcore porn online meets our society's equally total reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex it's when those two factors converge that porn becomes sex education by default in not a good way so I found myself encountering a number of sexual behavioral memes in bed I went well Well, I know where that behavior is coming from.

48:27I thought, gosh, if I'm experiencing this, other people must be as well. I didn't know that because 16 years ago, no one was talking about this. No one was writing about it. This was me in isolation as a naturally action-oriented person going, well, I'm going to do something about this. And I'm curious, what were you seeing in the bedroom that was alarming to you? So this was, I put all of this into Make Love Not Point's original incarnation. Um, because what I did, um, and I'll, I'll tell you, um, so 15 years ago, I put up this tiny clunky website at makelovenotporn.com on no money that was kind of a public service announcement.

49:07Okay. Porn world versus real world. Here's what happens in the porn world. Here's what really happens in the real world. And every one of those porn world versus real world, um, incidents happen to me. Okay. So porn world, women have no hair down there. Real world, actually, some women like to shave and wax everything. Some women don't. Equally, some men, you know, like we know natural, some don't. It's very much a matter of personal taste. That is not the way it has to be. Porn world, all men love coming women's faces. All men love having their faces come on. Real world, some people like this, some people don't.

49:43Good idea to find out before you spring it on suddenly. I mean, very much in that vein, you know. So things like porn world, it's all about the camera angles. And so, you know, the bodies are adapting to that. Real world, skin on skin, you know, get really close. It's an amazing feeling. You're not going to see that in porn because it's all about get the camera in really close, you know, etc, etc. So I launched Make Love Not Porn at the TED conference in 2009. I became the only TED speaker to say the words come on my face on the TED stage, six times a succession. The talk went viral as a result of that and it drove this extraordinary global response to my tiny website that I had never anticipated.

50:30Thousands of people wrote to me from all around the world, young and old, male and female, straight and queer, pouring their hearts out, telling me things about their sex lives and their porn watching habits they'd never told anyone before. And I realized I'd uncovered a huge global social issue. And so that was when I went, oh my God, I now have a personal responsibility. I have to take Make Love Not Porn forwards in a way that will make it much more far-reaching, helpful, and effective. And so I turned it into a business designed to do good and make money simultaneously, which is what I want the future of all business to be ultimately.

51:06And what I decided to do was, I've said for 15 years, the issue isn't porn, the issue is that we don't talk about sex in the real world. Because if we did, people could then bring a real world mindset to the viewing of what is simply performative, produced, manufactured entertainment. And so I went, okay, you know, I need to take this forward in a way that will make it easier for everybody in the world to talk openly and honestly about sex. And so I decided very simply to take every dynamic in social media and apply them to this one area of universal human experience that no other social network platform allows.

51:46And so I turned MakeLoveNapoi into what we are today, which is the world's first and only user-generated and importantly 100 % human-curated social sex video sharing platform. So we're kind of what Facebook would be if it allowed you to openly, healthily, sexually self-express, which it clearly doesn't. The way to think about us is, if porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie, Make Love Not Porn is the badly needed documentary. We are a unique window onto the funny, messy, loving, wonderful sex we all have in the real world. We are socializing, normalizing, and destigmatizing sex, bringing it out of the shadows into the sunlight to promote consent, communication, good sexual values and behavior.

52:36We are literally sex education through real world demonstration. Now, you would also be David versus Goliath here, because when I look at some of these stats around the pornography as an industry, they're mind blowing. Right. 58 percent of adults have watched porn at least once in their life. 11 percent watch porn daily. 30 ,000 people watch porn every second, every second. The global porn industry is worth over ninety seven billion dollars annually. that is larger than the economy of Portugal. And it seems to me that what you're doing is you're combating the industry in essence. Do you know, not really, Paul, actually.

53:22So the reason I use the movie versus documentary analogy is because make love not porn is not a competitor to porn. We are the only real world counterpoint and compliment. People are watching movies, people are watching documentaries. Sometimes I move for a movie, sometimes I move for a documentary. But it's really important to have the documentary so that people know the movie is not real. And that's the role that we fulfill that nobody else ever had. What I'm doing is something actually, to be frank, even bigger than porn, which is, you know, I'm pioneering what I call the social sex revolution.

54:04The revolutionary part is not the sex. It's the fact we're finally making it social. Do you know those stats you just quoted are understating the value of what we currently call porn and what I'm broadening into mainstreaming adult content, okay, because it's not all porn. The first area obviously is, oh, my God, they might be made out of sex. We all have it. We all enjoy it. Recession-proof. Market never ever goes away. But the second area is, oh my God, the money to be made out of socially acceptable sex. Because when you do what we're doing, take the shame, guilt and embarrassment out of sex, socialize it, de-stigmatize it.

54:46you then normalize people being really willing to openly publicly buy your products goods services then publicly do what they do with everything else recommend share advocate badge themselves as brand ambassadors and that's the trillion dollar financial future i'm going after when you bring sex out of the shadows and into the sunlight. And that's a much bigger vision than relates to porn. True point. So where is the social sexual revolution that comes from make love, not porn? So as a unique business, make love, not porn has a unique capability. We have the power to change people's sexual attitudes and behavior for the better in a way that very few other things can.

55:40So, for example, in the 11 years that we've been operating, we've discovered that we have been able to teach countless young people that porn is not sex in the real world. Gen Z loves us. We have saved numerous marriages and relationships. And that is literally how people write to us. You saved my marriage. Hadn't had sex in years. Watch your videos together. We inspired communications breakthroughs. Kaboom. parents increasingly are buying their teenage 20-something children's subscriptions to make love not porn they tell us i want my kids to see what happy healthy loving sexual relationships actually look like um as with any disruptive technology use cases emerge the founder never dreamt of so i was blown away when we began hearing from survivors of rape sexual assault sexual abuse we hear from female survivors male trans non-binary survivors they tell us that make Love Not Porn help them reclaim their bodies.

56:37We help them feel able to be sexual again post-trauma in a situation where porn is too triggering. And it's not just people who watch our videos. We have a number of our contributors, Make Love Not Porn stars, as we call them, who tell us being able to share themselves sexually in a completely safe and trustworthy space has enabled them to process and heal from sexual trauma. I never thought of that as a use case when I came up with this. I'm so happy it is. But here's something especially interesting, Paul, because I designed Make Love Not Porn to be fully diverse and inclusive, and we are. We're a global platform, so all racist ethnicities, our members of our Make Love Not Porn stars range in age from 18 to 80.

57:17You know, male, female, trans, non-binary, straight, LGBTQ, asexual. But in the 11 years we've operated, we've discovered Make Love Not Porn is especially a revelation to men. More men send us grateful emails, if you've appreciated comments to anybody else. By the way, women love us too, but this is especially noteworthy. This is interesting. Because we are something utterly unique that men will find nowhere else on the internet, which is a safe space where men can be and watch other men being open, emotional, and vulnerable around sex. You would not believe the number of men who write to us regularly and say, I just watched my first video Make Love Not Porn and afterwards I cried.

57:58I've said for years I wish society understood the opposite of what it thinks is true. Women enjoy sex just as much as men, and men are just as romantic as women. Yet neither gender is allowed to openly celebrate either fact. We would all be so much better off if they were. All right. Whether you agree with Cindy or not, her platform Make Love Not Porn is undeniably provocative. Cindy explains that it's shown Gen Z that porn is not real life sex. It saved marriages and even helped survivors of sexual trauma reclaim intimacy in a safe space. Now, most strikingly, she says it's been a revelation for men, offering something they can't find anywhere else online, a place to be vulnerable, emotional, and open about sex.

58:44Cindy's vision challenges us to rethink intimacy and proves that when we remove shame, we open the door to deeper love and connection. this is not at all what you hear when you hear people talk about pornography right you hear these uh i mean i've read studies where pornography literally rewires the brain uh and i don't know what your opinion is on on on that but um but you but but you hear this movement towards how damaging pornography could be we had a guest on uh who i specifically asked about pornography and she said It's much better to have many casual relationships than it is to watch pornography.

59:22So what is your opinion on the rewiring of the brain and how your platform is different? Sure. So first of all, Paul, I don't subscribe to the theory of porn addiction, which, by the way, is not a recognized, you know, WHO thing. and I say that because for the past 15 years I've had a front row seat to the enormous human misery and unhappiness caused by the shame, guilt and embarrassment that we imbue sex with half the problem is the guilt I remember years ago a journalist was interviewing me about porn and he said to me very earnestly and this is an indication of how ridiculous we are as a society about this he went, so Cindy why do you think we like to watch people having sex and I just burst out laughing I rode around the floor I went oh my god we are all sexual beings of course we like to watch people having sex you know my work absolutely sits at the intersection of sexual health and mental health and mental health has been destigmatized a lot these days still not not fully but people are not willing to look at how much how fucked up we are about sex impacts people's mental health you know in that scenario as well um now very importantly you know as our name suggests make love not porn is not porn as our tagline says we are pro-sex pro-porn pro-knowing the difference and so the revelation we bring is that we answer the question everyone has asked since the dawn of time which is what is everybody else really doing in bed and now we show you and and that is the revelation, I picked up a wonderful Twitter exchange sometime back between two men.

1:01:09The first man had tweeted, as a joke, obviously, hey guys, got this really weird fetish. I've got this kink where I want to watch porn where people are honest, loving, loyal, decent and really like each other. Hit me up with the hottest things, please. And another man replied and said, there's this website called Make Love Not Porn where you can watch real couples making love. He said, I watched a video where the woman said to her man, I love you while they're making love. He said, sincerely, I cried when I heard that. We are one of the solutions to toxic masculinity. And that's really important, Paul, because our mission is what nobody else's mission is.

1:01:47Our mission at Make Love Not Porn is to help end rape culture globally. And that may sound like a very big mission, but we have 11 years of proof of concept at a micro level. We end rape culture by showing you how wonderful great consensual communicative sex is in the real world. We eroticize consent. One man left a comment saying, this video makes me want to be a better man in the bedroom and in life. We can do that. This is where your platform is substantially different than everything that I've seen that exists. Consent is a major issue as it relates to not just dating and relationships, but to your point, rape and sexual violence.

1:02:29So when you think about consent, first is how do you even define it? Because I hear it defined like 16 different ways now. How do you define consent? And then how is the platform in particular, how is the platform helping to illustrate what consent looks like? So I define consent, Paul, as starting way further back than the bedroom. So I readily ask people this question. What are your sexual values? And nobody can ever answer me because we're not taught to think like that. Our parents bring us up to have good manners, a work ethic, sense of responsibility, accountability. Nobody ever brings us up to behave well in bed.

1:03:11But they should. Because in bed, values like empathy. sensitivity generosity kindness honesty trust respect are as important as those values are in every other area of our lives where we're actively taught exercise them so for me consent starts with inculcating educating on good sexual values and good sexual behavior and what's important about this is people say to me when I make this point, oh, but Cindy, you know, if you have good values in life and those translate into the bedroom, no, they don't. Okay. Again, as you heard me say earlier, I'm very select about whom I date. I only date utterly lovely younger men with great values.

1:03:58And nevertheless, when we get into bed, I see them modeling the body language that says my dick is the center of the universe and it's all about them. And that's because they have unconsciously internalized what male lens porn has taught them as sex education by default. So at Make Love Not Porn, we are building a community around shared good sexual values and good sexual behavior. And we are very clear that that is what we stand for. That's what our content is all about. We attract people who want that. And so when you are operating good sexual values and good sexual behavior, consent starts there because you know when someone's not feeling it and you don't push it any further.

1:04:39So many people think consent means you get into the bedroom and you go, is it care if I do this? Is it care if I do that? No wonder people say it kills the mood. Of course that will bloody kill the mood. But when you have good sexual values and you're living them, you don't have to do any of that because you're not even in the bedroom unless both of you want to be there equally. Then, you know, to your point, everybody right now, quite rightly, is talking about consent. Everyone's writing about consent. Lots of thoughtful, nuanced, insightful things piece about consent out there. Here's the problem.

1:05:09Nobody knows what consent actually looks like in bed. Because the only way you educate people fully as to what is great consensual communicative sex is by watching people actually having that kind of sex. And MakeLoveNotPorn is the only place on the internet where you can do that. Show people what consent actually looks like and how bloody hot, arousing, and sensational it is. Yes, yes. So on that note, too, of demonstration, what is it about the demonstration that would, say, help a couple, and not just the couple viewing? You are simply sharing a privileged glimpse into your real-world sex life.

1:05:51Okay, okay. The young white male founders of the giant tech platforms that dominate all our lives today, They are not the primary targets, online or offline, of harassment, abuse, sexual assault, racism, violence, rape, intimate image abuse. Therefore, they did not and they do not proactively design for the prevention of any of those things on their platforms. And we see the results of that around us every day. Those of us who are most at risk every day, women, black people, people of colour, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, we design safe spaces and safe experiences, but we don't get funded. Only 1.7 % of all venture capital last year went to female founders.

1:06:30And that is why we have still not seen what the future of the internet could be when it's designer built through the female lens at scale. And I say that because I designed MakeLoveNotPorn through the female lens to be the safest place on the internet. And that's our power. There is no self-publishing of anything on MakeLoveNotPorn because I designed it around 100 % human curation. Our curators watch every frame of every video submitted from beginning to end before we approve or reject and we publish it. No one else does that. We review every post on every member profile, every comment on every video before we approve or reject and we publish that.

1:07:06No one else does that either. We can vouch for every single piece of content on our platform in a way that nobody else can. And by the way, we're tiny bootstrapping, have no money, we've human created everything for 11 years. Imagine what Facebook, Instagram, TikTok do their billions that they chose to. safe in the internet. It's not a matter of our ability, it's a matter of will. We exist to celebrate the full-gras spectrum of human sexuality, but that is why the vast majority of our Make Love Not Porn stars have never filmed themselves doing anything sexual before ever. They are sharing their real-world sex lives with us for the first time anywhere because they trust us and they too want to create a more open, healthy, at-home dialogue around sex.

1:07:44And then that is also why we are transformative for the people watching our videos. Because we are socializing all this, normalizing it. Couples say to us, you know, watching your videos, we found it so easy to talk about what was happening in them. It was like watching Netflix or TV. And then it was a short step from talking about what we just watched to talking about our own sex life. Yes. And making that breakthrough accordingly. Yes. So I went on to Make Love, Not Porn. Oh, excellent. Yes. Oh, my God. Tell me. And by the way, feel free to be honest. Yeah, I had to do my research. I had to do my research.

1:08:21And something that I've heard you talk about, and I thought it was so refreshing that it was beautiful, and is that you saw real breast sizes, real penis sizes. And I think that's, to your point of normalizing, this is so incredibly important. Oh, my God, it is because, you know, we exist, Paul, to to show something that, you know, I can't believe people don't understand for themselves when it's all around them. And what I mean by that is, you know, we celebrate real world everything in a world where every message popular culture sends us, tells us, you know, you are not hot, unless you are this skinny, six pack abs, look like this.

1:09:09you know our members write to us and say you made me feel better about my own body years ago um love island announced its newest season you may remember this particular episode because they they announced the casting and the internet came down on their heads because everybody was you know gorgeous and you know non-diver and non-body diverse and non-racially diverse and the producer made the big mistake of you know being publicly interviewed and going well we have to call something attractive okay and i was one of the many people who responded to that you know with a tweet that actually the daily mail published in fact in an article about this because i tweeted back at him and i went um walk through any park in any big city in the summertime look at the couples holding hands sitting on the grass cuddling kissing and you will see what people really find attractive in the real world.

1:10:02And Paul, it's all around us. Okay, on the tube, you know, on the street, look at couples who are mad in love with each other in the real world. One woman left a comment in a video where we have larger Make Love That porn stars saying, you know, it was so empowering to see a woman of my body size being sexual. Thank you so much. She said, all my life, I've been told my vulva's ugly. It's too flappy. It's too meaty. It's too big. She went, I don't agree. And so I thought, what the hell? I'm going to video myself. I'm going to show it on here. I'm going to see what you think. Our community is amazing.

1:10:39Video goes up in less than an hour. There's a student call that's going, oh, my God, you're gorgeous. What are they talking about? You're so beautiful. We want to see more. And so it is tremendously affirming for our Make Love Not Porn stars. Couples, by the way, tell us it transformed their relationship. because when you decide to film yourselves having sex, you have to talk about it. When you talk about it, it doesn't matter how long you've been together. The conversation goes places it's never ever gone before. You know, couples write and say, we thought we were open, but doing this just took our relationship to a whole new level.

1:11:08Yes, yes, absolutely. And, you know, I tell you what, there's a million different places I can go, but I know we have limited time. So the last place I'd like to go to is a continuum from this conversation. And I believe this is truly the legacy. And this is around the education piece and what you're building for the under 18s. What I love so much about these interviews is I have open dialogue with my wife and my two boys about the topics and the guests that are coming in. And there was one particular stat. Let me see if I can find it where this is around. Oh, yeah, here it is. So I read these stats out loud and then it then initiated a conversation in my household.

1:11:51So this stat was that the average age of the first exposure to porn is 12 years old. 97 % of girls and 100 % of boys have viewed porn by the age of 15. By the age of 13, 50 % of kids have been exposed to porn. So my son just turned 14. So I turned to him. I said, okay, you know, have you seen pornography before? And what was interesting is he wasn't trying to be coy. He didn't know what it was. He didn't know how to define it. So I had to then start to define it for him. And what I realized is, A, not only had he seen pornography, but my 10-year-old had seen pornography. And I thought, okay, if I had the option between them being exposed to Make Love Not Porn or them being exposed to this video floating in WhatsApp that their friends sent them, which would I rather, without question, I would want them to see Make Love, Not Porn.

1:12:54So talk to me about the education piece, because I think this is critically important. No, it absolutely is. And actually, Paul, I'll tell you that I quote a Bitdefender survey of 19 ,000 parents done worldwide, which identified that the average age in which a child stumbles across porn, first sees it, is six years old. Six years old. And that survey was done 11 years ago. okay so honestly those ages are higher than you know when I first launched make love not porn I got an email from a woman who said I my first exposure to porn was eight years old and it was a gangbang so so so children are stumbling across horrific things and so that's why literally from day one of make love not porn parents and teachers began writing to me as they have for 15 years begging me for the zero to 18 and beyond sex education expansion.

1:13:47Yes. There are two pieces of advice I've had to give to parents over the years. And I'm going to put these on Make Life Call Academy so that everyone has access to them. The first one is I say to parents today, you cannot begin talking to your child about sex too early. When I say that, I don't mean literally talk about sex. What I mean is the very first time your child asks where babies come from, plays with their genitals, the most important thing isn't even what you say as much as how you say it. Never ever get flustered, you know, never get visibly embarrassed, never shut them up, you know, change the topic, leave the room.

1:14:24Instead, answer your child calmly, straightforwardly, honestly, because by doing that, you will open up a channel of communication between the two of you that will be there for them for the rest of their lives. The one thing every parent wants is for their child to be happy. This area will impact your child's happiness more than almost anything else. And so you want to open up that channel where they can talk about sex to you at any point in their lives going forwards. Then the second thing I say to parents is, now again today, sadly, when you talk to your child about sex, you must also at the same time talk to your child about porn.

1:15:02This is much easier to do than most parents think, because all you have to do is say a version, what I'm about to share with you. Then you dial it up or down depending on the age of the child. So you go, so darling, we just talked about sex. And you know how together we watch movies and videos and cartoons where things happen that aren't real? Well, there are also movies and videos about sex and they're not real either. And because of that, they can be quite confusing. So we'd rather you watch until you're older. But if you ever come across anything like that or somebody shows something like that to you, come and talk to us, come and talk to me, we, I can explain it.

1:15:42That's all you have to say. You can end the conversation right there because just by saying that, you've done two very important things. The first is that you've set them in their minds when they stumble across porn as they will, it's not real. And the second thing you've said is, come and talk to me about it because what they stumble across may be utterly traumatizing. Yes, very, very helpful. That's it. So yeah, we are building makelovenotporn.academy. So our vision is laid out of that URL. And this is what I characterize as the Khan Academy of Sex Education. Because Khan Academy, the online tutoring platform, tutors on every other topic and some except this one.

1:16:20Yes. Educational technology, edtech, as a category, exploding. Not in this area. So we're building Make Love Not Porn Academy on the same principles as Make Love Not Porn. We're inviting sex educators from all around the world to share with us their own content. You know, course materials, books, videos, comic strips, whatever it may be. And I use the term educator very broadly. Secretary of Health and Wellness experts, therapists, health professionals, podcasters. Human eyes will vet every educator, every piece of content to make sure it's safe. We endorse it. We have a very broad filter. You know, on Make Love Not Porn, our curatorial filter is simply, it's got to be legal, consensual and real.

1:17:01Then everything goes. for the academy it is it's got to be educational fact-based and non-judgmental interesting and then and then everything goes and we are then going to make all of this content searchable by age appropriateness so if you're a parent freaking out going oh my god my six or just what do i say we're going to give you the tools and content to be able to have that conversation with a six-year-old if you're a teacher the class of 14 year olds here are age-appropriate teaching materials. If you're an adult, access all areas. Adults are just as desperate for this. But importantly, Paul, we are designing the academy to be accessible by children, young people without parental teacher gatekeeping.

1:17:43And I'll tell you why that's important. I have a friend who's a mother. And as you have to these days, she monitors her kids' browsing history. This happened a few years ago. Her son was eight years old. And she saw to a horror that on the family computer, he had Googled sex for children. So she freaked out, but did the right thing. You know, stayed calm, sat him down, darling, you know, I happened to see that you had talked me through why. And Paul, this anecdote is adorable and horrifying in equal measure because her son wanted to learn about sex. He was a child. He knew he was a child. He wanted to learn about sex in a child-appropriate way.

1:18:17He sweetly, innocently Googled sex for children. You can imagine what came back utterly traumatized. So the Academy would be where an eight-year-old boy can enter his age, we would only serve him age-appropriate sex education. And importantly, we'll also, you may be able to search by cultural sensibility. We have Christian sex education, Jewish sex education, Muslim sex education. And equally importantly, because we are bringing all this together in one place, you pick and choose according to your comfort level. We are going backwards as a society because open, healthy sex is being censored, blocked, and deplatformed everywhere.

1:18:52My friends get their content blocked on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, their accounts suspended, they're banned from advertising. They can't even make a living doing this. I want to promote their work, help them sell their books and their courses and whatever, because this is enormously valuable work. And so I've said to my team, our aim with the Academy is to help organize the world's sex education information. That is a deliberate paraphrase of Google's original mission statement, which was organize the world's information, because they're not. The algorithm is biased. And I want to bring all this together to be the Google of sex education, to make the algorithm change when people see at a glance how brilliant, informative, educational, healthy, and non-threatening all this is.

1:19:36Now, in order to do all of this, you need funding. Absolutely. Yeah. Back in the day, my first career was investment banking. So I understand how imperative funding is. But what I find to be just, it just blows my mind is the challenges that you personally have around this. I mean, given your background, given what you've achieved thus far, given how large the market size is. So why do you believe it is so hard to raise money in this space for you? Sure. So this is and always has been my challenge, Paul. I know that my investors are out there and there are a ton of them. And there are a ton of them in every country in the world, by the way.

1:20:17They are impossible to find by conventional means because they all have one thing in common. Your willingness to fund Make Love Not Porn is entirely a function of your personal sexual journey. It's a function of your personal lens on sex and sexuality that's being shaped by your experience of it. And obviously, I have no way to research and target for that. interesting especially as sex is the one area where you cannot tell from the outside what anybody thinks on the inside the people who look like they would totally get it don't the people look like people prudes do and so my strategy has to be i put what i'm doing out there all the time you know across all my socials you know do all the media interviews i asked to because i have to make synaptic connections happen that will attract those investors to me this is a long slow painful and highly inefficient process.

1:21:13It does regularly work, but it's very slow going. Because, you know, what I find astonishing is, I've been a tech entrepreneur for many years. I have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley. And yet, the VCs and angel investors whom I know are hosting and participating in sex parties, hitting the orgy tent at Burning Man, you know, proud to proclaim themselves polyamorous, they will not invest in anything to do with sex. You know, sex more than any other area proves the truth that's saying, we do not see things as they are, we see things as we are. And so I have to find my kind of investor. And my kind of investor is very hard to find when, as I say, you can't research and target in the usual way.

1:21:57But why would that investor not invest? someone who seems to be so liberal in their, you know, with the sex that they have? Why would they not invest? Do you know, that takes us right back to the beginning of this conversation, which is the social dynamic that I call fear of what other people think. And again, that operates around sex unlike any other area. That's a battle I've fought for the past 15 years. Yeah, I see it. I see you fighting that, you know, and I think that's why, I think It is brilliant that you want the crowdfunding source. And hopefully you continuing to be on these platforms will definitely help the cause.

1:22:37So I tell you what, one question that I ask everyone, and I cannot wait to hear your answer to this, is that you've had some incredible conversations, clearly, all throughout your life, right? When you think back to the most profound conversation, who was it with and what did you talk about? Oh, my God. That's a real toughie, Paul. Gosh. Honestly, I would really say – I can't have an unjust one. But I will honestly say that they are the conversations that I've had to do with Make Love Not Porn and people's response to it. And I say that, by the way, Paul, because as I said earlier, you know, all of this happened by accident.

1:23:31As the saying goes, the path appeared. I did not choose this path. It's a bloody challenging one to be on. It chose me, but now it is my path. But I say that because, first of all, people have opened up to me around Make Love Not Porn in a way that they have never, ever spoken to anybody else about how profound what they've dealt with around their sexuality has been. When people find that I'm somebody who is just completely normally going, I know this is going on, I'm changing it, the floodgates open. Yes. And I hear things people have never told anybody in their entire lives before. And I feel very privileged.

1:24:14I always say light heartily, but I mean it, that when we achieve our mission at Make Love, Not Porn, one side benefit will be that we will see productivity shoot up in offices worldwide. Right. And so I'm sorry I can't pin that down to just one conversation, but the conversations I've had where people have shared with me exactly what MakeLoveNotPorn is helping them with what I'm tackling have been the most profound of my entire life. Yeah, I believe it. You know, Cindy, what I truly appreciate about you is that I do think that you're bold, fearless, unapologetic. I do think that your brand, you are your brand, right?

1:24:47I do think that is your brand. But you are, for me personally, you're very aspirational. Oh, thank you. Very much so. And I believe that what you are building is not only helping the world, but will help to change the world. So continue to do what you do. Thank you so much. I enormously appreciate that, Paul, and I've really, really enjoyed this conversation. So thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Wow, what a unique and inspiring episode. And as always, here are my top takeaways. Number one, authenticity and independence are the keys to owning your future and finding true happiness.

1:25:28Now, Cindy emphasizes that fear of what others think is the most paralyzing force in life and work. By rejecting societal pressures, staying self-aware, and living in alignment with your values, you unlock the freedom to live and work authentically, which she calls the true secret to happiness. The next takeaway. The value of self-defined happiness lies in living a life aligned with your own values, not societal expectations. Now, Cindy challenges us to ask this question. What would really make me happy? Brutally and honestly. She believes that if more people did this, they'd realize that they don't truly want what the world tells them to want and instead pursue what genuinely fulfills them.

1:26:13And the next one, and I love this, is expanding the concept of what family means by embracing the idea of a chosen family. These are relationships built outside the traditional structures that are just as valid and meaningful. It was moving to hear Cindy say the following, I cannot wait to die alone, but also because actually I'm not going to die alone. I have amazing friends in a chosen family that is absolutely as valid, as loving, as wonderful, as life-affirming as any nuclear family. So what's the lesson? The lesson is that family isn't defined by bloodlines, but by the love and support and connection we intentionally cultivate with those who truly enrich our lives.

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