Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #095 _STORY INSPIRE: Decisions that transforman with Rowan Jacobsen

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#095 _STORY INSPIRE: Decisions that transforman with Rowan Jacobsen · INSPIRE STORY

0:04
Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
0:06
Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
0:12
All right. Very nice to meet you, man. You too.
0:15
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me. Thank you.
0:16
Speaker 2: And thanks for doing this work because you want to
0:18
talk about a subject that's confused so many people. Is
0:22
the sun good for you? Is the sun killing you?
0:24
Why does it give you vitamin D if it's bad
0:26
for you? Why do people get skin cancer if it's
0:29
good for you?
0:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's super complicated, and the messaging has not sort
0:34
of admitted that, and that was, yeah, a big impetus
0:36
for the book.
0:38
Speaker 2: What was your opinion of sun exposure before you started
0:41
writing this?
0:43
Speaker 3: So I had inherited the conventional wisdom from the institutions
0:48
that it was really bad. At the same time, I
0:51
will admit that my instincts were that maybe it wasn't
0:56
as bad as they were leading me to believe because
0:58
whenever I was in the sun, I felt good. And
1:01
I live in Vermont. By the time winter was reaching
1:04
like month six, I felt bad, right?
1:07
Speaker 2: Right.
1:07
Speaker 3: So I was like, there's more here than we're being told.
1:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my wife's opinion. She's like, the sun
1:13
can't be bad. It always feels good when you go
1:15
out there. I'm like, oh, well, it's a little more
1:18
complicated than that. But that is the instinct. Like, it
1:21
feels great when you're in the sun. Like, ah. It's
1:24
like your body wants it.
1:25
Speaker 3: Your body wants it. I mean, we now know that
1:27
it literally triggers the release of opiates in the brain.
1:30
Speaker 2: Sunlight.
1:31
Speaker 3: So yeah, your body wants it and your body rewards
1:34
you when you get it.
1:35
Speaker 2: So what is the issue? Well, let's go back to
1:37
the beginning. So you had this idea that sun exposure
1:41
is probably giving people cancer and sunscreen is good. You
1:44
need to wear sunscreen, stay out of the sun. So
1:47
when you started going into the research, what made you
1:50
shift your opinion?
1:52
Speaker 3: So it really started for me like seven or eight
1:54
years ago. I was on this like science journalism fellowship.
1:57
So I was just doing research and Some of those
2:00
studies hit, the one about opiate release in the brain
2:02
and other studies showing that when light hits skin, cognition
2:08
actually improves. Like your metabolism cranks up a little bit
2:12
when the body feels sunlight coming in. And I thought,
2:16
that's interesting. That's all good stuff. Then I came across
2:20
a couple other studies that seemed to indicate that sunlight
2:24
could lower blood pressure, which was really interesting. So then
2:27
I still had the sense... sunlight bad. Right. So then
2:31
I remember just like Googling, like, so how much does
2:34
sunlight like shorten your lifespan? And like the punchline is
2:39
sunlight seems to extend your lifespan. So when I hit that,
2:43
I was like, why are we not hearing this? So
2:45
that was the beginning.
2:46
Speaker 2: And so then, so what is the problem? Like what,
2:50
what is the issue with sunlight? Like when you think
2:53
about skin cancer, what are the confounding factors that lead
2:57
to skin cancer? Are we completely aware of that?
3:00
Speaker 3: It's more complicated than we thought. So sunlight does increase
3:05
your risk of skin cancer. But depending on the type
3:08
of skin cancer you're talking about, it's not necessarily like
3:11
a linear relationship. So yes, in general, too much sun
3:17
increases your risk of skin cancer. But yeah, the question is,
3:20
what are the confounding factors? How important is skin cancer
3:23
compared to these other things? If sunlight reduces your risk
3:25
of other diseases, how does that weigh against the risk
3:29
of skin cancer. So it's not the type of thing
3:34
that can be done in a 30-second PSA.
3:37
Speaker 2: Right. So sun exposure that does cause skin cancer, what
3:46
is causing it? Why is it happening?
3:49
Speaker 3: So ultraviolet light, which is the most energy-intense part of
3:52
the solar spectrum, when those photons of light hit your skin...
3:58
They go inside. We absorb all wavelengths of light to
4:02
a greater or lesser degree. And that super high energy
4:06
ultraviolet light, if it hits a DNA molecule, it can
4:09
mess up the DNA molecule. And then that can lead
4:11
to mutations and skin cancer. Then it can also indirectly
4:16
cause skin cancer by creating what are called reactive oxygen species,
4:21
which are free radicals, basically. So it energizes these atoms
4:26
that start to steal electrons from other atoms and cause
4:30
a little chain reaction, which is what a free radical is.
4:33
So ultraviolet light can increase your free radicals, and it
4:37
can directly damage DNA. So that's why it could cause
4:41
skin cancer. So it was basically learning that one fact
4:44
back in the 40s and 50s that made scientists start
4:49
to say, uh-oh, light skin cancer, maybe we should think
4:53
about how much sun we're getting.
4:54
Speaker 2: But this wasn't universally accepted, right? There were some people
4:59
that even back then thought that sun exposure was very
5:03
healthy for you. When did we figure out that sun
5:05
causes the body to produce vitamin D?
5:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was an important part. And it's a big
5:09
part of the story, I think, because that was really
5:11
back in the 20s that we figured that out. And
5:13
then even a little earlier, we realized that sunlight could
5:17
prevent rickets. Rickets?
5:20
Speaker 4: Yeah.
5:20
Speaker 3: So rickets is a soft bone disease. Like if you
5:23
don't get enough calcium in your bones when you're a kid,
5:27
when you're a baby. You get soft bones. You get rickets.
5:31
Really bad disease. And in the Industrial Revolution, kids started
5:36
getting rickets. Farm kids never got rickets. Then suddenly, kids
5:40
are working in factories. They're living in cities that are
5:44
choked with coal smog. They're living in tenement buildings. They're
5:48
never seeing the sun, and they all start getting rickets.
5:50
Late 1800s.
5:51
Speaker 2: Is nutrition a factor in that?
5:54
Speaker 3: Vitamin D. It was all vitamin D. At first they
5:56
thought maybe it was vitamin A, but it turned out
5:59
that was how vitamin D was discovered, was some doctors
6:03
figured out that it could solve rickets in kids, and
6:08
then they figured out that if sun hit skin, that's
6:10
how we made vitamin D. How did they figure that out?
6:13
Speaker 2: They did some tests on.
6:21
Speaker 3: Dogs actually one of the guys figured it out he
6:24
um he was pretty he had a hunch that that's
6:26
what it was like they noticed that kids in the
6:28
country wouldn't get rickets and kids in the city did
6:30
get rickets so like i wonder if it's sunlight so
6:34
then a guy took dogs and this is i think
6:39
scotland stuck them in a um they actually thought it
6:44
was dietary he stuck them inside in this like little
6:47
like warehouse and fed them oatmeal which is what everyone
6:50
in scotland ate at the time And the dogs got rickets.
6:54
And he thought it was the oatmeal. He's like, okay,
6:56
so something about diet. But then he got lucky because
7:01
he had deprived the dogs of sunlight. And that's why
7:04
they got rickets. So then eventually they realized that light-hitting
7:12
cholesterol molecules in the skin actually converts the molecules to
7:17
vitamin D. So vitamin D is like downstream of cholesterol,
7:21
but it takes– that same ultraviolet light that can screw
7:23
up your DNA, it actually breaks a bond in the
7:27
cholesterol molecule, which allows it to... It gives it some movement,
7:31
and it flips around into a new form that's vitamin D.
7:35
So once they figure that out, then they're like, sun's
7:38
really good for you. So we had this era in, like,
7:40
the 20s, 30s, and into the 40s when everyone thought
7:43
sun would cure everything, and they, like, went after it hard.
7:48
Speaker 2: Really?
7:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, they... Parents would send their kids up into
7:53
the Alps in like the 20s to institutes for heliotherapy.
7:57
Kids would ski around in their underwear, take classes in
7:59
their underwear. There's awesome photos from this era. Like the
8:03
instructors are in their underwear in the mountains outside in
8:06
Switzerland teaching the kids. And everyone looks really healthy, right?
8:10
So there's kind of like this idea that you couldn't
8:13
get too much light. So people are literally burning themselves
8:16
on purpose for health.
8:17
Speaker 2: Is that the issue? Is burning a giant part of
8:19
the issue?
8:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. So to give it away, now it looks like
8:24
for melanoma, which is the most dangerous type of skin cancer,
8:27
it's associated with burning strongly, but not with like gentle, moderate,
8:34
everyday sun exposure.
8:35
Speaker 2: So how much of a factor is skin type? Like
8:40
people that are pale or have freckles and red hair,
8:44
blonde hair, like how much of a factor is that
8:47
in skin cancer? And can they mitigate that by like gentle,
8:52
slow exposure, like a little bit here, a little bit there,
8:55
and slowly build up.
8:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, huge. Like skin type is kind of everything. People
9:00
who have really dark skin basically don't get sun-induced skin cancer,
9:04
almost never. And the authorities don't tend to talk about
9:11
that because they want things to be– they want to
9:12
have like these one-size-fits-all recommendations. But those recommendations to basically
9:16
always avoid the sun– are written for the super fair people,
9:21
especially if you have red hair, orange freckles, then you
9:26
actually have a mutation in your melanin gene that makes
9:30
you super susceptible to skin cancer from sunlight. So if
9:34
you've got that phenotype, lots of moles, red hair, freckles,
9:40
you do have to be really careful. And you can
9:43
only do so much. You're not going to tan that
9:45
much anyway. Your melanin is just different. Everybody else, yeah,
9:52
you're much less susceptible and you can make more melanin
9:57
pretty easily through tanning.
9:59
Speaker 2: I wonder. what if any effect have you ever heard
10:02
of that i don't i can't remember the name of
10:04
the peptide but there's a peptide that people are taking
10:07
now that causes their body to generate melanin and they
10:11
get really dark yeah yeah it's really weird Yeah, and I.
10:17
Speaker 3: Don't know what's going on there exactly. It seems like
10:20
that peptide is maybe making you, there's things called photosensitizers
10:24
that make your skin super, like you just absorb solar
10:29
radiation really well then, but not necessarily in a good way.
10:34
And that can make you make tons of melanin to
10:36
try to compensate. So I wonder, that peptide might be
10:39
triggering like melanin as a compensation mechanism for extra protection
10:45
from sunlight. Or maybe it's just making melanin happen like
10:49
independently of the night.
10:50
Speaker 2: Did you put it into perplexity? All right. Here it is. Melanotan. Melanotan? Melanotan?
11:04
A melanocyte-stimulating hormone stimulates the body's melanocytes to produce melanin,
11:11
resulting in a dark tan. It's largely unregulated, illegal in
11:17
many regions for cosmetic purposes, and carries significant health risks.
11:22
What's the risks? It's not approved by the FDA for
11:26
cosmetic use. An unregulated market means purity. Okay, but that's unregulated.
11:31
Notable risks include dermatological issues, rapid and uneven darkening of
11:36
existing moles, the emergence of new moles, and hyperpigmentation. Concerns
11:40
that could mask or accelerate the development of melanoma. What
11:45
is this? Potentially damaging erections. What?
11:49
Speaker 3: Why the erections?
11:50
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right. This apparently gives people raging erections. Why? Prolonged, painful,
11:56
and potentially damaging erections. Damaging. Imagine you get an erection...
12:00
It goes so hard you redline the penis. Medical and
12:07
dermatological organizations strongly advise against the use of melanotan because
12:14
it's unapproved. There are no clinically established safe dosages.
12:18
Speaker 3: Well, weird, because Alpha MSH, the thing that it is mimicking,
12:24
that's how your body makes melanin. That's how your body's
12:27
supposed to do it.
12:28
Speaker 2: You've got to see the before and afters, because they're
12:29
kind of bonkers. I've seen some people get super... Well,
12:33
the problem is it's Instagram. You never know what's real.
12:36
That guy got a little tan. Let's see if there's any... Okay,
12:40
look how pale that... See, but that's not... How do
12:43
we know if that's real?
12:44
Speaker 1: It's just like there's a light on him.
12:45
Speaker 2: Right. Right. And then he's in a fucking dark closet
12:49
in the last picture.
12:50
Speaker 1: That's the best before and after photos I've seen.
12:52
Speaker 2: That one right there. No, the one. Yeah, that one.
12:56
Look at that guy.
12:59
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's a look. It's an interesting look.
13:01
Speaker 2: He injected himself with unregulated tannic peptide melanotan-2. Click on that.
13:08
Speaker 1: Seems like a joke.
13:10
Speaker 5: A little bit.
13:10
Speaker 2: No, no. This guy, this is the guy that I
13:12
saw online. This guy, he's the test rabbit. This dude
13:16
went hard.
13:18
Speaker 3: Did he get an erection too?
13:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, he died from that. I don't know. So his
13:24
before and afters. So let's see what his– he just– okay. Yeah,
13:31
he just got darker and darker and darker. But I
13:34
wonder if like– I understand that it's unregulated. But if
13:38
it was regulated and this is something they're trying to
13:41
work with right now with peptides and make them– see,
13:44
that's– the photo is dark though. I mean, that's like
13:48
a shitty iPhone 1 camera. That's crazy. Like, this is nuts.
13:55
There's something going on there. Like, you know what it
13:57
looks like? It looks like those bodybuilder guys who use
14:02
that ink, that dye on their skin to make themselves
14:04
darker so their muscles pop out more. So here's better.
14:08
Tanning log photos. These are better photos. That's crazy. But
14:12
I wonder if that offers skin protection.
14:14
Speaker 3: It would definitely offer skin. I mean, if it is,
14:17
if it's, if it's melanin, um, it's definitely, I mean,
14:20
that guy can, can probably be outside all day.
14:23
Speaker 4: Yeah.
14:24
Speaker 2: So that's the question. Is that available to someone who's pale? Like,
14:28
and if someone is pale, uh, see if you could
14:31
find an example of someone who's pale, who took it.
14:36
Cause you would think like, Oh, well maybe that, maybe just,
14:38
we need to do studies and figure out what the
14:41
dosage is and, Figure out how to activate that aspect
14:44
of it.
14:45
Speaker 3: Melanin clearly protects you from skin cancer. Like if you
14:49
have super dark skin, like, you know, African ancestry, you're blocking,
14:55
like your melanin is absorbing like 97, 98% of the
14:58
UV rays. It's super effective.
15:00
Speaker 2: But didn't Bob Marley die from skin cancer?
15:03
Speaker 3: He did. That's pretty crazy.
15:05
Speaker 2: Okay, this is one. Wow.
15:08
Speaker 1: It looks like the same person. Hard to tell without
15:10
the face.
15:11
Speaker 3: Same mold.
15:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like the same mold. That looks pretty good.
15:17
Speaker 5: But I would just also, wouldn't, if you were trying
15:19
to sell some of this stuff in maybe nefarious ways,
15:23
this would be an easy one to market.
15:25
Speaker 1: Tough and, you know.
15:28
Speaker 2: Definitely. Look, this is part of the unregulated market problem
15:32
is we don't know. And also, you know, you're getting
15:34
99% bro science on this stuff. You know, like.
15:40
Speaker 3: Screams it from the top of the hills.
15:45
Speaker 2: What legitimate scientist is out there injecting himself with melanotan?
15:50
Speaker 3: But the other thing is, if you do it naturally, right,
15:52
if you just get a little sun every day and
15:54
slowly build up, you're not just making melanin, you're also
15:58
increasing your body's damage repair system. You have all these
16:02
nucleotide excision repair, things that fix your DNA and fix
16:06
cells that have gotten screwed up. And That will also
16:10
ramp up every day. And it's not just sunlight. Like, exercise,
16:15
same thing. Like, anything that, like, stresses the body a
16:19
little bit is like hormesis, right? So all those things
16:22
are going to cause your damage repair system to crank
16:25
up and be ready. So you probably want those to, like,
16:29
the melanin and the damage repair to, like, go up together.
16:33
Speaker 2: Right. So you would want to, if let's say studies
16:36
were done, let's say we found what the effective and
16:39
safe dose is and how to administer it, you would
16:42
want to do it along with sun exposure slowly to
16:46
try to ramp up your body's ability.
16:48
Speaker 1: Added note on this, this happened 14 years ago.
16:51
Speaker 2: Wow.
16:52
Speaker 1: Which is strange.
16:54
Speaker 5: Here's some of the side effects he said, but he
16:55
also said he's pretty much impervious to UV at this point.
16:58
Speaker 2: Increased libido. Didn't see that one much either. He said
17:02
he didn't get it. Okay. Sides are decreased appetite, very
17:06
mild nausea, more for some, none for me. Increased libido.
17:10
He said he didn't see that one much either. Some
17:13
get facial flushing like a niacin dose. Never got that either.
17:17
And the most strange thing is that it feels really
17:19
good to stretch, like when you first wake up. Interesting. Huh.
17:26
Speaker 5: Okay.
17:27
Speaker 2: Did you do it for the skin coloring? Yes, I
17:28
did it for the skin coloring. I'm pretty much impervious
17:30
to UV at this point. I have faded about 25%
17:34
since returning from Florida January 35th. We'll be dosing again
17:38
probably in March. Is this guy still alive?
17:40
Speaker 1: That's my question.
17:42
Speaker 2: Click on that link where his profile. Let's see if
17:47
Homeboy's alive. Is this Reddit?
17:48
Speaker 1: I see a year ago he's commenting I never did
17:50
it subtle.
17:56
Speaker 2: Okay, so a year ago he's still alive, or someone
17:58
has taken over his account. In theory, you could use
18:03
an old-school quartz tanning lamp. Okay, so you could tan
18:07
with it.
18:07
Speaker 1: He's in a weird Reddit there, so we've got to
18:09
stop looking.
18:10
Speaker 2: Why?
18:10
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not for the show, but he's
18:12
in a weird.
18:14
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
18:16
Speaker 3: That's why I was afraid to.
18:17
Speaker 2: Go that way.
18:17
Speaker 1: That's a problem.
18:19
Speaker 2: Well, only crazy people are willing to try something like that.
18:22
Do you remember that there was a guy... I think
18:24
it was on Oprah or one of those shows where
18:27
he was taking– was it silver?
18:31
Speaker 5: Yeah, colloidal silver.
18:32
Speaker 2: That's right, colloidal silver. And his whole– his skin turned
18:36
blue permanently like a Smurf.
18:38
Speaker 4: Yeah.
18:38
Speaker 2: Poor guy. Yeah. And he wound up dying. Yeah.
18:42
Speaker 3: And how did it kill him?
18:43
Speaker 2: I don't know if it killed him, but he's– I
18:46
believe he died young. That's homeboy. Not good. Not good. Yeah.
18:51
Speaker 3: That's just not a good look.
18:52
Speaker 2: You would think you'd start tearing a little blue, and
18:54
you'd go, hey, maybe I need to back off this
18:57
colloidal silver.
18:58
Speaker 3: Papa Smurf dies.
19:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, what the fuck, dude? That guy, I mean,
19:05
maybe he could have gotten some melanotan and evened that out.
19:08
It'd just been a nice chocolate. You know, like a
19:11
bluish chocolate.
19:14
Speaker 3: I mean, he looks delicious. I'll say that.
19:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Argyria? Argyria? Argyria? Argyria, the rare disease
19:22
that turns people blue. Caused by a buildup of silver
19:26
in the body, which discolors the skin. Wow. 2013. He
19:32
died from unrelated causes. Whatever that means. I mean, anybody
19:37
who's taken that much colloidal silver, you're probably making a
19:39
lot of other mistakes. You're a risky dude.
19:45
Speaker 3: So many options.
19:47
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21:00
Speaker 3: Back to Bob Marley.
21:01
Speaker 2: Yes.
21:01
Speaker 3: He did die of skin cancer, and that confuses a
21:04
lot of people. So he had melanoma on his toe.
21:08
And that was a kind of melanoma that's not caused
21:13
by the sun. And everybody gets it, no matter what
21:16
race you are, everybody gets it at the same rate
21:19
which is quite uncommon they know it's not caused by
21:24
the sun but it complicates things for people because people
21:29
are like I got melanoma on my toe and they
21:32
think it's from the sun and they're like how did
21:34
that happen right like what's melanoma doing down there but
21:38
so it does not all melanomas are caused by the
21:43
sun there's you know most probably are but It gets
21:48
really weird with melanoma. It's associated with burning, with intermittent
21:55
sun exposure. You work in an office all year and
21:58
then you go to Cancun and get fried. That's a
22:00
pretty good recipe for melanoma. History of sunburns also will
22:05
double your risk. Chronic exposure, where you have an outdoor
22:08
job every day, lower than average risk of melanoma.
22:12
Speaker 2: Really?
22:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it gets weird.
22:13
Speaker 2: Like landscapers or something like that.
22:15
Speaker 3: Outdoor workers have fewer... have a lower incidence of melanoma
22:18
than office workers.
22:23
Speaker 2: Wow.
22:23
Speaker 3: And we don't hear that.
22:25
Speaker 2: No, no. I mean, I was looking at Instagram the
22:29
other day and some poor guy had this, I don't
22:33
know what happened to his face, but he had some
22:35
sort of skin cancer and they had to take a
22:38
graft and it was on his nose. So it was
22:41
like a flap of skin was like almost covering over
22:45
his eye. And, you know, his message was wear sunscreen. Yeah.
22:48
This is what happened to me.
22:49
Speaker 3: Well, so, I mean, yeah. So I don't want to
22:52
downplay skin cancer because it sucks when you get it.
22:54
You know, they have to cut off a hunk of
22:56
your ear or something. That definitely sucks. Even if it's
22:59
not life-threatening, it sucks.
23:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:02
Speaker 3: And so, yeah. But that's generally from overexposure.
23:07
Speaker 2: Burning.
23:08
Speaker 3: Burning. All the experts I've spoken with said don't burn.
23:11
Speaker 4: Right.
23:11
Speaker 2: Burning is the one that. People always say that it's
23:14
not just burning. It's burning causes damage that starts to
23:18
appear years later.
23:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. And there's dialing in on that more and more.
23:23
It can start. Like burns during childhood is actually the
23:27
highest association for melanoma. Really? Don't burn when you're a kid.
23:30
So we're all screwed.
23:31
Speaker 2: Oh, that sucks. That sucks because I fucking cooked myself
23:35
as a kid.
23:36
Speaker 3: Same here. I grew up in Florida. Fried, you know.
23:38
Speaker 2: Well, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s,
23:41
you know, You wanted to get a tan, especially when
23:44
I lived in Boston. It was cold as shit in
23:46
the winter when it got warm. You know, you're a
23:48
Vermont guy. You got out there like, ah, put baby
23:51
oil on. We fried.
23:52
Speaker 3: Totally. I was just looking at some of those Johnson
23:54
baby oil ads from like the 60s and 70s. Oh,
23:58
my God.
23:59
Speaker 4: Yeah.
23:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was basically cooking lube. Totally. Yeah, it just
24:03
helped you cook better.
24:04
Speaker 3: But you remember George Hamilton, like the actor, Mr. Tan?
24:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
24:09
Speaker 3: He was all about that. Just the other day, I
24:11
was like, How's he doing? 87 and ridiculously healthy right now.
24:16
Speaker 2: Really?
24:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's going strong.
24:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I met that guy. He did an episode of
24:19
News Radio once. Yeah, he was tan as fuck. Yeah,
24:23
that was his thing.
24:25
Speaker 3: That was his thing. It became, yeah, what he was
24:27
known for. And he's still going.
24:29
Speaker 2: So he's still tan?
24:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should see him.
24:31
Speaker 2: He looks great. What does he look like? Pull a
24:32
photo of George Hamilton.
24:34
Speaker 3: I mean, great for an 87-year-old.
24:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, look at him, still tan.
24:38
Speaker 3: Tan and shiny.
24:40
Speaker 2: What a weird thing to be known for. He's the
24:43
guy who gets tan. You know what I'm saying? I mean,
24:47
try to remember a role that he played.
24:51
Speaker 3: That's true. I think he was Dracula in some bad
24:53
1970s comedy. Look at that. That's a tan right there.
24:57
Speaker 5: Right.
24:57
Speaker 2: So how was he getting it, though? I remember when
25:01
I was a kid in Boston, a lot of people
25:03
used tanning beds, especially in the wintertime.
25:05
Speaker 3: And they still do. Those are actually on the rise.
25:09
And they seem to raise your risk of melanoma for sure.
25:11
There you go. That's how he did it.
25:13
Speaker 2: Ah, look, he's got a reflect-a-tan thing. So he's just
25:16
out there getting sunlight all the time. And he didn't
25:19
look bad. That's, you know, that's a weird one, right?
25:26
Speaker 3: He claims he's never had skin cancer, I think.
25:28
Speaker 2: Well, he probably was doing it so often that his
25:32
body was prepared for it, right? Look at that photo
25:35
of him with that lady in the corner. Yeah, look
25:37
at that. That's nuts.
25:40
Speaker 3: See, that's the thing. I think, like... If you're getting
25:44
that regular dosage, your body is producing all of these
25:48
compounds whose entire job is to make sure your cells
25:52
don't turn cancerous. Because, you know, Living Things have been
25:56
working on this for 500 million years. Like, they've been
26:00
hammered by the sun every day, and they've got to
26:02
deal with it.
26:02
Speaker 2: Right.
26:04
Speaker 3: So it seems like when your skin is totally unprepared
26:09
and you shock it, with like a massive dose that
26:12
it's not ready for, then you're in trouble. That's the
26:16
kind of thing that triggers trouble.
26:18
Speaker 2: Was there any pushback on this research? Like when you
26:22
first started examining this and realizing that sun exposure has
26:27
a lot of benefits, were any dermatologists saying, hey, this
26:31
is dangerous information, you shouldn't say this?
26:33
Speaker 3: Hell yeah. I've been denounced multiple times by the American
26:37
Academy of Dermatology, like officially. They sent an official letter
26:40
when I write an article and they say, nobody should
26:43
be getting any sun exposure.
26:45
Speaker 2: That's their opinion? No one should be getting any sun exposure,
26:49
regardless of the benefits, the vitamin D, the.
26:52
Speaker 3: No sun exposure without protection from either sunscreen or, you know, clothing.
26:58
Speaker 2: Wow.
26:59
Speaker 3: And if that makes you vitamin D deficient, take a pill.
27:02
So that's what needs to change because those pills haven't
27:05
panned out in tests. They don't work like natural D
27:07
does for whatever reason.
27:09
Speaker 2: Really?
27:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't work at all.
27:11
Speaker 2: What do you mean?
27:12
Speaker 3: So everyone thought, like back in the 80s, 90s, everyone
27:19
started noticing, scientists started noticing that people who naturally had
27:23
lower amounts of vitamin D in their blood had higher
27:28
rates of all like the classic chronic diseases. So they
27:30
started thinking, okay, vitamin D, it's like a magic pill almost.
27:34
It'll cure, it'll reduce everyone's risk of all these diseases
27:37
if we raise their rates of D. So they started
27:40
recommending vitamin D pills, which I think are still like
27:42
the number one supplement.
27:43
Speaker 2: In the world. I take it.
27:46
Speaker 3: So then they did all these clinical trials to prove
27:49
that it would help. Huge, huge clinical trials, tens of
27:52
thousands of people, follow-ups that went for many years. None
27:57
of them showed a benefit.
27:59
Speaker 2: No benefit in terms of your immune response?
28:01
Speaker 3: No benefit for any condition.
28:03
Speaker 2: Now, did they take vitamin D along with vitamin K2
28:08
and with magnesium? Because that's what's recommended.
28:11
Speaker 3: So I don't, I mean, there were a bunch of different.
28:13
Speaker 2: Apparently vitamin D by itself is not effective. That you
28:16
need vitamin D with K2 and magnesium. And I think
28:20
there might be another one. But see, put that into perplexity, please.
28:25
See what it says, like. What are the benefits of
28:27
vitamin D and what should it be taken with? Because
28:30
I think magnesium and K2 are the big ones and
28:33
that together they have a sort of a synergistic effect. Yeah.
28:38
Speaker 3: That could be. Like, yeah, I'd be curious.
28:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think vitamin D by itself, the body has
28:42
a problem absorbing it. It's like there's a lot of
28:45
things like that. Like zinc is like that. You need
28:47
an ionophore to absorb zinc. So you take it with quercetin. Yeah.
28:51
Speaker 3: Well, one thing, D, you know, the way it naturally
28:54
comes into the skin and it comes in with a
28:57
whole bunch of related compounds.
28:58
Speaker 5: Right.
28:59
Speaker 3: And so, yeah, I do think there's sort of a
29:00
synergistic effect when it's combined with the right things.
29:02
Speaker 2: But D from the sun has always been known as
29:05
the best way to get it. For sure. The best
29:07
way to get vitamin D, the most effective, the healthiest
29:09
way is through sun exposure.
29:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that's how the design is supposed to work.
29:13
Speaker 2: Perplexity says vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, build
29:16
strong bones and teeth, support muscles and nerves, plays a
29:18
key role in immune function. It's best absorbed when taken
29:20
with a meal or a snack that contains some fat
29:23
and often paired with calcium for bone health. So please
29:29
put in what are the benefits of vitamin D taken
29:32
with K2 and magnesium. Let's see if it says that.
29:38
Because this is what my doctor said. who is a
29:41
vitamin specialist, recommends. Benefits when taken with K2 and magnesium. Okay. Okay.
29:56
Taking vitamin D together with vitamin K2 and magnesium can
29:59
make each of them work more effectively, especially for bones
30:02
and heart, as long as the doses are appropriate for you.
30:05
The trio mainly improves how your body handles calcium. Interesting.
30:09
D helps you absorb it. Magnesium helps activate D, and
30:13
K2 helps send calcium into bones instead of arteries. D
30:18
increases calcium absorption from your gut and supports bone, muscle,
30:22
and immune function. Magnesium required to activate vitamin D, low magnesium,
30:26
can blunt vitamin D's effect and also directly support bone
30:30
structure and many enzymes. K2 activates proteins that move calcium
30:36
into bones and teeth and keep it out of the
30:38
arteries and soft tissues, helping bone and cardiovascular health. Potential
30:43
benefits of the combo, better bone support, heart and artery protection,
30:48
more efficient vitamin D use. Okay, so. The doctor is correct.
30:55
So maybe that's the problem, is that these people were
30:57
taking it with low magnesium, low calcium, didn't have K2.
31:03
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'd be curious if there was an effect on
31:10
disease incidence for that combination. I don't know. Because the
31:14
D on its own, yeah, it didn't show. Any effect.
31:17
But sun exposure.
31:18
Speaker 2: Let's put that in. Does vitamin D taken on its
31:22
own have any health benefits? Let's see what it says
31:25
to that. Because I'd never heard that, that D on
31:29
its own was not effective at all. I just heard
31:31
that it was minimally effective, that you had to take
31:33
it with other.
31:34
Speaker 3: It seems like it only helps people who are really deficient.
31:38
Like if you're super low, like below like 16 nanograms
31:41
per milliliter– then probably it's a good idea. But like
31:46
for people who already had like at least 20 nanograms
31:48
per milliliter, it didn't seem to have any of these
31:51
benefits that they were seeing in people who naturally had
31:53
high rates of mucosal exposure.
31:56
Speaker 2: It says, yes, vitamin D on its own has several
31:58
well-proven health benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and immunity.
32:01
Speaker 1: Just like a general answer.
32:03
Speaker 2: Huh. Bone strength and fracture prevention, muscle function, adequate.
32:08
Speaker 1: I didn't add own, sorry.
32:10
Speaker 2: What's that?
32:11
Speaker 1: I missed the word own taken on it.
32:13
Speaker 2: On its own. I'll try while.
32:16
Speaker 1: The answer was weird.
32:17
Speaker 2: So let's see. Yes. As clear proven benefits, especially for bones, muscles,
32:23
and correcting deficiency. Yeah.
32:25
Speaker 3: So that's going to be for people who have super
32:27
low levels.
32:27
Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
32:29
Speaker 2: Preventing rickets. There it is.
32:30
Speaker 3: Yeah. So they had thought that it might reduce incidence
32:34
of all these other diseases based on what they're seeing
32:37
for people who naturally had high levels through sun exposure.
32:40
And it didn't. Wait a minute.
32:42
Speaker 2: People who had high levels through sun exposure.
32:45
Speaker 3: Yeah. Because your natural level of vitamin D is sort
32:48
of a direct, like, meter of how much.
32:51
Speaker 2: Sun exposure you get. Right. But this is natural level.
32:52
You're not talking about supplementation. Right.
32:54
Speaker 4: Right.
32:55
Speaker 2: Okay.
32:55
Speaker 3: So that was why, like, people who had high levels
32:58
of D without supplementation have lower rates of, like, every
33:01
disease you can think of. So the hope was that
33:04
raising everyone's D to those levels would have the same effect.
33:09
Speaker 2: And it didn't.
33:10
Speaker 3: Like the New England Journal of Medicine actually did an
33:14
editorial in 2022 saying stop prescribing D, it doesn't work.
33:21
Speaker 2: God, that seems incorrect though because if you're taking it
33:25
with magnesium and K2, it seems that they do work
33:28
synergistically and there seems to be proven health benefits. One
33:31
of the problems I think is like– I think people
33:35
generally want to avoid recommending supplementation. For some reason. It's
33:43
kind of a weird thing. Like, they want to dismiss it. Like,
33:47
I had a doctor once that told me, don't bother
33:49
taking vitamins. Just eat a balanced diet. And I was like,
33:53
look at you. Guy looked like shit.
33:56
Speaker 3: He didn't look as good as you, right?
33:57
Speaker 2: He looked terrible. Doctors, yeah.
33:59
Speaker 3: I'm amazed how poor, what poor health they generally, like,
34:03
seem to explain.
34:03
Speaker 2: I can't take it. I mean, it's so hard to
34:06
take seriously a guy with a gut. Well, just he
34:10
looked terrible. Yeah. And he was telling me that I
34:12
just need a healthy diet. And I'm like, OK, I
34:14
do have a healthy diet. But also I feel different
34:17
when I take vitamins and my blood work reflects that. Yeah.
34:22
Speaker 3: I noticed that when I started going to all the
34:25
conferences of the sun researchers and they're all in like
34:28
the basements of hotels and those guys all are as
34:31
pacey as it gets like. Do none of you guys like,
34:34
you know, practice what you preach?
34:36
Speaker 2: Really? How strange is it that human beings with all
34:39
of our knowledge, with, I mean, obviously there's much more
34:42
to learn. We're still confused about how we interact with
34:46
our environment.
34:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent.
34:50
Speaker 2: With sun, which seems to be like, it's there. It's everywhere.
34:54
It's like you're always in the sun in normal, in
34:57
the normal world environment where outside of cities and all
35:01
that stuff. It seems like we would have an understanding
35:04
of what happens when you're interacting with sun.
35:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, and light period, like light of all kinds. Like
35:10
it seems like there is the sense in biology that
35:13
light didn't matter. It's like just ephemeral, which, you know,
35:17
the quantum physicist 100 years ago understood that light and
35:21
matter are just like two halves of the same coin, right?
35:23
And that light totally affects the behavior of molecules. We're
35:27
made of molecules. light's going to matter. So I actually think, like,
35:30
that's where I eventually got to with the book. I
35:32
was like, we need to think about our light diets
35:35
and our, like, lightscapes that we're, you know, surrounding ourselves with, like,
35:39
more seriously than we have.
35:40
Speaker 2: Well, it seems like your work is based entirely on
35:44
the data. So what did these dermatologists have to say
35:49
about the data if they're denouncing you and they're saying that,
35:52
you know, this guy should not be listened to, the
35:55
things you're saying are dangerous? Like, But you're talking about data.
35:58
So I don't understand how they can just make those
36:00
flat statements like that.
36:02
Speaker 3: Right. And I think we just need to have a
36:04
conversation about the data. And, you know, there's no, like,
36:07
right answer ahead of time. But they don't– like, their
36:10
job is to prevent skin cancer. So if that's your
36:14
only job, you're going to tell people stay out of
36:16
the sunlight.
36:17
Speaker 2: Forever. Forever. Forever.
36:18
Speaker 5: Right.
36:19
Speaker 3: And no one can call you on that. No one
36:20
can say, Hey, like I got skin cancer. It's your fault.
36:23
Speaker 2: Right. But doesn't sun exposure improve cardiovascular health and lower
36:28
blood pressure? And isn't cardiovascular disease a far more dangerous
36:32
problem than skin cancer in terms of numbers?
36:36
Speaker 3: It's number one, 20 million deaths a year, cardio. So
36:39
anything that moves the needle on that is awesome, you know?
36:43
Speaker 2: And it does.
36:45
Speaker 3: And it seems to like all the studies show it does. Um,
36:48
But they're all observational studies, right? You look at populations,
36:51
you're like, oh, these people have more sun exposure, lower
36:54
blood pressure, lower rates of cardiovascular disease. But then, you know,
36:58
the other side will say, you know, correlation does not
37:01
prove causation. Like prove, show us that it's, you know,
37:05
do your giant clinical study where you stick half the
37:09
people in the sunlight and they live longer, which is
37:11
not going to happen.
37:12
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. But it's like, are they willing to have
37:16
a conversation with you?
37:18
Speaker 3: They're not willing to– they don't want to look outside
37:21
of the sun and skin cancer question. Like they're not
37:27
willing to entertain any of the other benefits that are
37:30
outside of their field. So there's got to be somebody
37:33
out there who can be the generalist who can like
37:35
think about it holistically.
37:37
Speaker 2: That seems so ignorant.
37:40
Speaker 3: It's the state of science now. Like the science is,
37:44
you know, like a field of micro-specialties.
37:46
Speaker 2: Would you like some coffee?
37:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll take a little. That looks good when you're
37:49
pouring it. That's a very shiny press you've got there.
37:54
Speaker 2: Cheers, sir.
37:55
Speaker 5: Cheers.
37:57
Speaker 2: Is coffee good for you?
37:59
Speaker 3: Coffee is awesome. Coffee is shockingly good for me.
38:01
Speaker 2: Talk to me. Let's go.
38:03
Speaker 3: It is fucking crazy how good coffee is for you.
38:06
I've been startled by the power of the evidence. Yeah.
38:14
Speaker 2: I've read both. I read It's Bad for You, and
38:17
I dismissed it because I'm biased. I love coffee. And
38:24
I just– it just tastes too good. It feels too good.
38:28
I like it. But I've read a lot of benefits
38:32
about it.
38:32
Speaker 3: I think it's the best possible supplement.
38:34
Speaker 5: Really?
38:34
Speaker 3: You think of it as a supplement? It's the best.
38:36
And I think it's all due to mitochondrial function. I
38:39
think it makes your mitochondria just spin, you know?
38:44
Speaker 4: Hmm.
38:45
Speaker 2: And it's particularly because of caffeine or coffee itself is
38:49
the coffee bean.
38:50
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, caffeine, I think it's caffeine, but
38:52
I wouldn't be surprised if there's other stuff in coffee
38:54
that's contributing. Cause you know, like tea doesn't seem to
38:58
quite like deliver the goods like, like coffee does.
39:01
Speaker 4: No.
39:01
Speaker 3: Um, but caffeine is actually, um, the plants are making
39:05
it to kill bugs.
39:07
Speaker 2: Right.
39:07
Speaker 4: Right.
39:08
Speaker 3: Because it makes the bugs mitochondria run out of control
39:11
and they basically like blow up. Um, It does that
39:14
to us, but we have these other, like, governors, like,
39:17
that come in and slow down that ramp up. So
39:20
we get the nice ramp up without the explosion. So
39:23
it's good. So it makes– we produce energy more efficiently
39:29
with less wear and tear.
39:31
Speaker 2: That's all I need to hear. I'm in. I just
39:34
love coffee. I'm not giving it up. But I've heard
39:37
many people say that– Michael Pollan had a really interesting anecdote.
39:41
He laid off coffee for I think three or four
39:44
months as an experiment. And then he had a cup
39:47
of coffee and he said it was like taking a psychedelic.
39:50
He said, I just felt so amazing. The effect was
39:54
so profound. He said, I really wanted to do it
39:56
only that way where I only take it very rarely.
40:00
But then I fell right back into my own woods.
40:02
Speaker 3: He went right back. Yeah. I remember that article.
40:04
Speaker 2: It was great.
40:05
Speaker 3: And also he said none of the caffeine researchers touched
40:09
the stuff. I'm like, that's not good. But, yeah, he
40:14
went right back to it. And I think he's a–
40:17
proud coffee drinker.
40:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is. He went right back to it. But, um,
40:22
so have you had any conversations with these dermatologists that
40:26
are denouncing you? No, but I'd like to actually, I think,
40:29
are they willing or have they avoided them?
40:32
Speaker 3: They have so far really avoided, like they, they, they
40:35
just say, you know, we're not ready to look at
40:38
any of that research.
40:40
Speaker 2: Um, so weird.
40:41
Speaker 3: I think it's going to change. I think actually, um,
40:44
Like I said, I think light medicine is actually going
40:47
to become very important in the next 10, 20 years.
40:50
And dermatologists are kind of positioned to be the leaders
40:53
on that stuff. Because skin is the primary interface with
40:59
light for our bodies. And they should be experts on
41:02
all this. Red light therapy is a big thing now.
41:06
And dermatologists are doing that, even though the evidence isn't
41:09
great for that. But I think there's probably something there.
41:12
But they should basically... I think they need to be
41:15
thinking more about all of these different wavelengths of light
41:18
as healing modalities and how to, you know, work them
41:21
into like regular like programs.
41:25
Speaker 2: I've talked about this before, so I apologize to anybody listening,
41:28
but I've essentially completely stopped my macular degeneration with red
41:33
light therapy. Wow.
41:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.
41:35
Speaker 2: Not just stopped it, but reversed it. Like I don't
41:37
need reading glasses anymore. I've been using a red light
41:40
bed for about two years now. And from the time
41:43
I started using it, within about a month, I started
41:45
seeing benefits. And so Gary Brecco was on the podcast
41:48
and he explained it to me. And so I went
41:50
out and bought one of these really expensive, it's like
41:52
a tanning bed, this thing you lie in. And I
41:55
do it three times a week for 20 minutes.
41:56
Speaker 3: So all over?
41:57
Speaker 2: Yep. Naked. Just lie down in there. And I keep
42:01
my eyes open. And I went to a tanning bed once,
42:04
not a tanning bed, a red light bed once at
42:07
a health clinic. And they were like, got to wear
42:08
these goggles and Make sure you close your eyes before
42:11
the light goes on. I was like, okay. I did
42:13
all that. And apparently there's some benefit that even when blindfolded,
42:16
it increases your vision.
42:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And again, I think mitochondria are part
42:21
of that answer. There's a guy at University College London,
42:24
Glenn Jeffrey, who this is his whole field, optometry and
42:29
red light. And he has shown in multiple different animals,
42:33
including humans, that red light improves mitochondrial function and– Improves vision.
42:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I'm 58 and for me to be
42:45
56 and saying I'm fucked. I had these fucking things everywhere.
42:50
I had these all these reading glasses. I had them
42:52
all over my house. I'd gotten up to three X.
42:55
These are the cheap Amazon ones. I had a nice pair,
42:58
but I keep losing them. So I just went on
43:00
bought cheap ones. They seem to work. And it was
43:02
just fine for looking at a computer, reading my emails,
43:06
reading my phone. And I needed them to read my phone.
43:09
I don't need them anymore, like at all. I don't
43:11
use them anymore. My vision's not perfect. It's not as
43:14
good as it was when I was 20, but it's
43:17
way better than it was when I was 56.
43:20
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think, so the mitochondria in the eyes
43:26
have to fire faster than any mitochondria anywhere else in
43:30
the body. The eyes burn through energy like crazy. like
43:33
no other cells because it's like, you know, it's kind
43:36
of the toughest task. It's like they got to go
43:38
super fast. So they, yeah, those mitochondria need to be
43:43
on top of their game. And it seems like red
43:45
light benefits that in particular.
43:48
Speaker 2: It seems so closed-minded that these dermatologists aren't willing to
43:53
say maybe we're looking at just insufficient amount of data.
43:59
Maybe we're looking at this wrong. Maybe the whole thing
44:01
is much more nuanced. And maybe there's benefits if done correctly.
44:05
I just don't understand why they're not– if there's all
44:07
this data, which clearly you show in your book, that
44:09
there's a tremendous amount of data. Why?
44:13
Speaker 3: You know, like– so there's this like saying attributed to
44:17
Max Planck who's this like quantum physicist. Science advances one
44:20
funeral at a time. I think we got to let
44:23
the old guy die off a little bit. But I
44:26
guarantee there's a young generation coming in who's going to
44:30
be really interested in light and how they can use it.
44:32
Speaker 2: Oh, certainly. Well, I think there's so many conversations available
44:36
online now from actual researchers and people that have put
44:40
in the time and put in the work and explored
44:42
things from this position that like, hey, maybe the old
44:45
guard are not correct. And the data seems to show
44:49
that that's true. Yeah.
44:50
Speaker 3: And it's fun. I mean, playing with light, it's super fun.
44:53
So like this is a way you can you can
44:56
like make your world a little bit richer is starting
44:59
to think about this stuff.
45:00
Speaker 2: Well, it's also like, don't you want to be informed?
45:03
And if there's– if we do understand that it has
45:05
an effect on mitochondria and there is all this evidence
45:08
that red light seems to have some benefits, like wouldn't–
45:11
I just don't understand how someone could be an expert
45:14
in skin and ignore that.
45:17
Speaker 3: Well, I think that– and they'll be– they won't object
45:19
to the red. Some of them are using red light
45:21
therapy because there's no risk of skin cancer for red.
45:23
It's only the UV and maybe a little bit of
45:26
the blue that contributes to skin cancer. So that– it's
45:30
the UV where they get a little wigged out.
45:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. But even that, it seems like there's– like in
45:38
your book, you show there's a tremendous amount of data.
45:40
There's health benefits to it. So I just don't understand.
45:44
Speaker 3: It's coming from all different other fields like immunology, cardiology.
45:49
So– and like scientists are sort of increasingly like hesitant
45:53
to trespass on their other domains.
45:57
Speaker 4: Right.
45:57
Speaker 3: Like they're not going to walk across campus to the
46:00
other building anymore.
46:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
46:03
Speaker 3: That needs to change.
46:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've had those discussions too with scientists that are
46:08
super frustrated, especially when they try to get interdisciplinary groups
46:12
together to study one particular thing and everyone's resisting because
46:16
they have their own work that they're working on and
46:17
they don't want to get involved.
46:18
Speaker 1: It's like, guys, this is.
46:21
Speaker 2: What you're here for. There's not a lot of scientists.
46:25
You got to do your job because you're the only
46:28
ones that are doing it. Without you guys, we're fucked.
46:31
And if you're out there relying on old insufficient data
46:36
or you have this very small data set that shows
46:40
that there's negative outcomes to sunlight and so you just
46:44
throw the baby out with the bathwater, like you're doing
46:47
the whole field a massive disservice.
46:50
Speaker 3: And the other part of it is that science– it's
46:52
sort of very self-reinforcing. It's all grant-based essentially. Like if
46:56
you're a scientist, you want to do a study. you
46:58
have to apply for a grant to get the money
47:00
to do the study. And there's generally a handful of
47:03
entities that are handing out the grant money. And it's
47:06
the old guys waiting to die who are going to
47:09
approve what they think is the truth. They're going to
47:12
fund the study that fits with what they already know
47:14
about the world. So it's this kind of crazy system
47:18
where the only way you can get money to do
47:20
a study is if you're already telling them what they know.
47:22
So it's very difficult to get funded to do something
47:26
that goes against the grain. Increasingly so. And that's a problem.
47:29
Speaker 2: And so much of it is dependent upon the ego
47:32
of the people that are at the top of the organization.
47:34
Speaker 3: Ego is definitely part of it.
47:35
Speaker 2: It's a giant part of it because if they've based
47:37
their entire career on telling you one thing that turns
47:40
out to be incorrect, they're very reluctant to correct themselves. Yeah.
47:45
Speaker 3: There's not just– it's very rare to find the individual
47:48
who's well-known in the field and is eager to self-correct.
47:53
Speaker 2: So have you had any conversations with any of these dermatologists?
47:56
Speaker 4: No.
47:57
Speaker 3: No, but I'd love to.
47:58
Speaker 2: Not one? That seems crazy. Have you reached out to
48:02
any of them?
48:02
Speaker 3: I have. I've reached out and I get the boilerplate. Like,
48:07
we don't want anyone in the sun. Take your T-pills.
48:11
It doesn't matter. And the one that really I think
48:15
has got to change is the skin color question. Because
48:19
fine to go with the recommendations for avoiding sun for
48:24
people with fair skin. But for people with dark skin
48:26
who have almost no risk from sun-induced skin cancer and
48:32
can benefit hugely from things that will lower blood pressure
48:37
and lower cardiovascular disease, it seems like you're not being
48:40
fair to those people.
48:41
Speaker 2: Not only that, it makes you feel better, which is
48:44
very important just for sanity.
48:47
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that gets underplayed. Like mood and
48:50
happiness is kind of the whole deal, right? And there's
48:54
just no question that sun exposure makes you happier.
48:57
Speaker 2: I spent a week with my friend Brian Callen and
49:00
Steve Rinella in Alaska on Prince Edward's Island. And it
49:06
rains there like 350 days a year. And we got
49:09
rained on for the entire week. And then when I
49:12
came back to LA I was driving around and the
49:17
sun was magnificent it felt so good I stood outside
49:22
I closed my eyes I like stretched my arms wide
49:24
like I was just taking it all in and I
49:26
called my friend Steve up and I said dude because
49:29
we were in the rain for like a week I
49:31
go I'm in LA right now in the sun and
49:33
it feels amazing I never felt the sun like this
49:38
before It's because like my body was saying, you didn't
49:41
get enough of this for a week. Now take it
49:43
in and we're going to reward you with all these
49:46
amazing endorphins and good feelings. Like if that was a drug,
49:50
that drug that I took, like if depressed people could
49:53
take whatever I felt when I was out in the
49:56
sun after a week in the rain, they would take
49:58
it every day. They would change the world. Like I
50:00
could feel like this all the time and it went away.
50:03
You know, it went away because L.A., it's sunny all
50:05
day long, every day.
50:06
Speaker 3: Right, right.
50:07
Speaker 2: So eventually I got accustomed to it. But that feeling
50:11
that I got after the week in the rain and
50:13
coming back and just be like, ah, it was incredible.
50:19
It was like a drug, an amazing drug, a happy drug.
50:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an awesome drug. I felt it for sure.
50:26
Especially like early spring. If I leave Vermont and I
50:29
have something in L.A., I'm just like, Why is everyone
50:33
not just dancing on the streets? This feels so good.
50:36
Speaker 2: But the problem is Los Angeles, they're so used to it.
50:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.
50:40
Speaker 2: They're so spoiled. Everyone there is so spoiled weather-wise. It's
50:43
the perfect weather on earth. It's incredible.
50:46
Speaker 4: Yeah.
50:47
Speaker 2: Especially if you live in like Malibu where it barely
50:49
even gets hot. So you're dealing with that cool ocean
50:52
breeze and it's sunny every day. You know, like, oh. Yeah.
50:55
Speaker 3: But how about here? Like do you end up spending
50:57
a lot of time outside here?
50:58
Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
50:59
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I do. But I'm outdoors all the time.
51:02
I work out outside. I do a lot of farmer's
51:04
carries outside. I practice archery, so I shoot my bow
51:08
outside every day, and I love it. I feel better.
51:12
Even when it's hot out, I don't mind because I'm
51:16
really kind of accustomed to it because of sauna use.
51:18
I use a sauna every day, and I'm pretty religious
51:21
about it. So my body is really acclimated to heat.
51:26
So it doesn't really bother me that much. I just
51:28
bring a big jug, a 64-ounce jug of water with
51:31
ice and electrolytes, and I just drink that while I'm
51:33
out there. So I'll shoot my bow for an hour
51:36
and a half, two hours in 105 degrees, and I'm fine.
51:38
I love it. It feels good.
51:40
Speaker 3: I actually love that too, yeah. Like as a kid
51:42
in Florida, we'd play basketball after school for hours, or
51:46
in summer it would be 105 degrees, and then you
51:50
just kind of turn the hose. You stick it out
51:52
of your mouth for quite a long time, you know.
51:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it feels great. It's just you have
51:57
to make sure you're not dehydrated and you have to
51:59
make sure you don't burn. That's kind of all it is.
52:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
52:03
Speaker 2: That's all it seems to be. But we do see
52:06
like truckers that– have you ever seen those?
52:09
Speaker 3: You're talking about that famous photo.
52:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
52:12
Speaker 3: That is a crazy photo.
52:14
Speaker 2: Crazy photo. So what we're referring to is there's a
52:17
photo of this trucker and the left side of his
52:20
face from the sun coming in from the window– Looks
52:23
like he's 20 years older on his left side than
52:25
it is on his right side.
52:27
Speaker 3: It's like special effects. Somebody melted the left side of
52:30
his face.
52:31
Speaker 2: What's that all about? Yeah, there's the guy.
52:33
Speaker 3: There he is.
52:33
Speaker 2: That's literally nuts.
52:36
Speaker 4: Yeah.
52:36
Speaker 2: That's literally nuts.
52:37
Speaker 3: Like left side is just sloping off basically.
52:40
Speaker 2: His left side looks like a 100-year-old man, truck driver face.
52:45
Years behind the wheel driving a truck. Damage typically limited
52:48
to the left side of the face. So it's literally
52:50
called truck driver face.
52:52
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, so this that that that photo in that
52:55
study got used to, like, scare the shit out of
52:58
a lot of people, try to keep them out of
52:59
the sun.
53:00
Speaker 2: Especially people that are vain and don't want that fucked
53:03
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at the difference between. Wow, that's literally bananas. So what
54:16
they're showing back and forth is they're just taking the
54:19
skin from the left side of the face and switching
54:21
sides so you can see how much damage. he's received
54:26
on that side, the driver's side.
54:28
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so there's a couple of interesting things there. One, um,
54:30
that is shocking, but the question to ask is why
54:33
doesn't every trucker look like that? Right. Like if that's
54:36
the problem, why does, why did, why him? Like, cause
54:40
I've been driving in a car for 45 years and
54:43
you know, my.
54:44
Speaker 2: Face is the same on the left as it is
54:46
on the right.
54:47
Speaker 4: Yeah.
54:47
Speaker 3: Kind of hanging in there. But, um, But the other
54:50
thing is window glass, I think, is actually a really
54:52
interesting problem to talk about.
54:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
54:55
Speaker 3: Because window glass blocks UVB but not UVA. And there's
55:00
two different wavelengths of UV. The UVB is the super
55:04
high energy one. UVA is a little bit lower. It's
55:07
kind of on the way to blue. And they used
55:10
to think back in the day that UVB was the
55:13
only one that caused skin cancer. And those old sunscreens
55:17
that we used in the 70s, 80s, only blocked UVB.
55:20
Window glass blocks UVB, blocks only part of the UVA.
55:26
So anytime you're driving or you're hanging out in a
55:28
window in your house, you're getting a bunch of UVA.
55:32
You're not going to burn because UVB is the one
55:34
that causes burning. But you're still going to get a
55:37
bunch of UVA, which they figured out, like in the 90s,
55:40
does cause skin cancer.
55:42
Speaker 2: Oh, wow. So sun through the windows is not as
55:47
good as sun outside.
55:50
Speaker 3: It blocks the UVB, but the UVA comes through, but
55:54
you'll never have a burn reaction because of it.
55:56
Speaker 2: But you might be getting damage.
55:58
Speaker 5: Yeah.
55:59
Speaker 3: And so, like, in the U.S., people get slightly more,
56:05
slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the left side
56:07
of their body. In the U.K., they get slightly higher
56:10
rates of skin cancer on the right side.
56:12
Speaker 2: Aha! Because they drive on the opposite side of the road.
56:15
Speaker 4: Yeah.
56:16
Speaker 3: So, window glass is Slightly? Slightly. It's like 52, 48.
56:21
It's not huge.
56:22
Speaker 2: Okay, but it's statistically significant?
56:24
Speaker 3: Statistically significant, yeah.
56:25
Speaker 2: Huh. So do you think it's this guy's particular genes?
56:29
Speaker 3: There must be something weird about that guy.
56:31
Speaker 2: Right. Well, how many instances of truck driver face do
56:33
they have?
56:35
Speaker 5: I just Googled the condition, and it's only him coming
56:39
up in the photos.
56:40
Speaker 2: So this is the thing.
56:40
Speaker 5: There's one lady, but she clearly doesn't seem to have
56:43
the same issue.
56:44
Speaker 3: There's a lot of truck drivers that have been doing
56:45
it for 50 years.
56:47
Speaker 1: That's not the same thing.
56:48
Speaker 2: Oh, that's not real. Is that real?
56:49
Speaker 1: It's a different thing. She's got something wrong with her jaw.
56:53
Speaker 5: Oh. But it's coming up as the same condition. Unilateral dermatotoxic.
56:59
Speaker 2: Oh, so she had some sort of cancer that made
57:02
its way into her jaw?
57:03
Speaker 4: Yeah.
57:03
Speaker 5: I would have assumed that more cases would pop up,
57:06
but it's literally just him.
57:07
Speaker 3: So that's the thing. The real question is, what's up
57:10
with that dude?
57:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, interesting. Here's a different truck.
57:13
Speaker 1: That's not the same. I don't think that's the same guy.
57:16
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't seem like the same person. It might be.
57:20
It's hard to say. It could be different lighting.
57:22
Speaker 3: But so the thing is, so those sunscreens that were
57:26
acting kind of like window glass in the 70s and
57:29
80s and even into the 90s before we got the
57:30
broad-spectrum sunscreens?
57:32
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
57:33
Speaker 3: They're blocking the UVB, so you weren't going to ever burn.
57:36
And that's what SPF actually measures, is how many more
57:39
times you can be out in the sun without burning.
57:42
But it's based totally on UVB. So if you've got
57:45
SPF 30, in theory, you can spend 30 times as
57:48
long outside before you start to burn. That's a long time, right?
57:53
But all that time, UVA is just pouring into you.
57:57
And they now know that UVA is the one that
57:59
probably is most likely to cause melanoma.
58:02
Speaker 2: Oh, that's crazy. Wow. So sunscreen. Now, I use a
58:08
natural sunscreen when I use it at all. It's the
58:10
stuff that's like beef tallow based and there's zinc in it.
58:13
It's very white and obvious. You know, it's the spray
58:17
stuff goes on clear. You can't even tell you have
58:19
it on. Yeah. But it's very effective. But I'm always
58:22
like super hesitant. I'm like, what's in that stuff that
58:26
we're going to find out 15, 20 years from now?
58:28
Like if it can block the sun. So it's a
58:31
chemical and you're spraying this chemical on an organ, which
58:34
is your skin. So your skin is absorbing it. I'm like,
58:38
what's going on there?
58:39
Speaker 3: And they used to say, oh, no, no, it's not
58:41
absorbed very much. And then the FDA, CDC did studies
58:46
a few years ago and discovered that it's absorbed at
58:49
very large amounts.
58:51
Speaker 4: Yes.
58:51
Speaker 3: It turns up at high doses or higher doses than
58:55
they would like it to in populations. Blood, breast milk, urine,
58:59
you name it.
59:00
Speaker 2: And what specifically turns up and what's dangerous about it?
59:03
Speaker 3: So they're suspected to be hormone disruptors, all those classic
59:06
chemical filters like oxybenzone. There isn't much proof that they're
59:16
dangerous in the amounts used. But they definitely are absorbed
59:20
at much higher rates than we thought. And the FDA
59:22
has refused to approve them as safe pending more testing.
59:29
Speaker 4: Ooh.
59:29
Speaker 3: And nobody's done the testing. Oh. But they're about to
59:32
get phased out anyway. Like, just as of a couple
59:34
months ago, the government changed the rules and is going
59:41
to let in, for the first time in 30 years,
59:44
new ingredients, which they've been using in Europe and Asia
59:48
and Australia for decades. And the sunscreen companies have been
59:52
asking to use them and haven't been allowed to. But
59:56
they're finally going to get to use one of the
59:58
main ones.
59:58
Speaker 2: And what are these ingredients?
1:00:00
Speaker 3: So it's called like bemotrizinol or something. There's another one
1:00:05
that you see in Europe called like Mexeril 400, but
1:00:09
they're way better. Like basically U.S. sunscreens are a generation
1:00:12
behind everyone else because in the U.S. sunscreens are regulated
1:00:16
as over-the-counter drugs. Bemotrizinol, yeah.
1:00:18
Speaker 2: Bemotrizinol, highly effective broad-spectrum UV-filtered blocks, both UVA and UVB,
1:00:24
approved by FDA as over-the-counter sunscreen ingredient. In June of 2026. Oh, wow.
1:00:28
So this month. Yeah, it just happened. Celebrated for being
1:00:31
highly photo stable, doesn't break down the sun, transparent on
1:00:35
the skin without leaving a white cast, and gentle on
1:00:38
sensitive skin. So this is RFK Jr. stuff.
1:00:41
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:00:42
Speaker 3: This one looks really good.
1:00:44
Speaker 2: So this other stuff that has been in there, why
1:00:48
didn't it get examined if Europe and Asia and all
1:00:52
these other places were using these different safer versions?
1:00:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, they all bailed on it. long ago because it
1:00:58
was all we had. God damn it.
1:01:00
Speaker 2: That drives me crazy. Yeah.
1:01:02
Speaker 3: Well, so it's because– so FDA– so in the U.S.,
1:01:05
sunscreens are regulated as drugs, counterdrugs. So you have to
1:01:08
do all this safety testing if you want to get
1:01:11
a new ingredient in. Everywhere else, they're just cosmetics. So
1:01:14
you can use kind of whatever you want with more
1:01:16
minimal safety testing. So the companies wanted to use this
1:01:20
stuff in the U.S. forever, but the FDA said, sure,
1:01:23
just do the testing. But they didn't want to do–
1:01:27
it was too expensive to do the testing. They would
1:01:29
have to test it on animals. They didn't want to
1:01:31
get the blowback on that. There are a bunch of
1:01:33
reasons that they weren't willing to do it. Also, I
1:01:35
think they're a little scared of what they might find.
1:01:38
So anyway, so our sunscreens have not been nearly as
1:01:42
good as what's used elsewhere, both in terms of performance
1:01:46
and like maybe safety suspicions. So that's going to change
1:01:51
by the end of this year. It's going to get better.
1:01:52
Speaker 2: Well, that's good. With the traditional sunscreen ingredients that we
1:01:56
used to use, is there any negative health consequences of
1:01:59
using them that they've shown? Like is there any diseases
1:02:02
that occur more readily or more frequently?
1:02:06
Speaker 3: Not that have been proven. There's– like toxicologists are a
1:02:09
little suspicious about some of them. Like they've definitely been
1:02:12
shown to mess up coral, right? Like people– Coral.
1:02:16
Speaker 2: Reefs, right?
1:02:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:02:17
Speaker 2: That's one of the things they found after COVID, right?
1:02:20
They used to think that it was the warming of
1:02:22
the environment. This was one of the things that climate
1:02:24
change people used to say. The climate change was destroying
1:02:28
the coral reefs. And then it turns out actually it's
1:02:31
all these people that have sunscreen all over their body
1:02:33
and they jump in the ocean and they're essentially poisoning
1:02:36
the reef.
1:02:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's all of the above, I'm pretty sure.
1:02:39
But yeah, the sunscreen at that kind of concentration, if
1:02:42
you've got a bazillion snorkelers in the water– can definitely
1:02:47
mess up the car.
1:02:48
Speaker 2: Wasn't there some sort of a study that examined what
1:02:50
happened to the reef after COVID? There was one particular
1:02:54
roof reef that was in a, this highly visited area
1:02:59
where people would jump in and they showed a massive
1:03:02
increase in, in the reef after COVID.
1:03:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like Hawaii, Hawaii banned use of those sunscreen, a
1:03:10
bunch of places banned, uh, banned those, that style of sunscreen.
1:03:15
Speaker 2: Um, But they don't really check your bags, though. Yeah, right.
1:03:21
When they say banned, people are going to take it anyway.
1:03:24
Speaker 3: But it doesn't look like– I don't think it has
1:03:26
much impact on us unless you're using a ton of it, which,
1:03:31
of course, now some people are.
1:03:32
Speaker 2: So it's not great for you, but it's not the worst.
1:03:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's been a bunch of studies that just looked
1:03:37
at lifespan, and sunscreen doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever,
1:03:42
like positive or negative on lifespan.
1:03:44
Speaker 2: So it just might have some sort of an impact
1:03:47
on hormonal function?
1:03:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could well.
1:03:51
Speaker 2: Endocrine disruption?
1:03:52
Speaker 3: Endocrine disruption. There's a guy named Graham Peasley at Notre
1:03:55
Dame who found that many, many cosmetic products of all
1:04:03
kinds are actually contaminated with forever chemicals. And even if
1:04:10
they don't have it on the ingredients, like anything that's
1:04:13
like water-resistant or super smooth is quite possibly going to
1:04:18
have forever chemicals in it. And some of it is
1:04:21
actually coming from the plastic containers because those get, they
1:04:26
basically get, like, fluorinated with, like, fluorine gas before they
1:04:32
get anything in them, which is supposed to make them, like,
1:04:36
a little smoother inside of the containers. But it turns
1:04:38
out that actually leaks forever chemicals into the product, whatever's
1:04:42
in there.
1:04:42
Speaker 5: Hmm.
1:04:43
Speaker 3: That's what he found.
1:04:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean this is a problem
1:04:47
with hot coffee when you're drinking it out of a
1:04:49
paper cup.
1:04:50
Speaker 3: Very similar, yeah.
1:04:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. People don't realize like the paper cup is not
1:04:54
capable of keeping that liquid. It would turn to mush.
1:04:58
And the reason why it doesn't turn to mush is
1:05:00
because there's essentially a condom like around the inside of
1:05:04
the coffee cup. And Paul Saladino broke a coffee cup
1:05:07
down to show what it looks like on the inside.
1:05:10
And you're like, oh, no. You're pouring hot liquid into plastic,
1:05:14
which you're never supposed to do. And it's also like
1:05:17
most coffee machines. Like a giant percentage of coffee machines
1:05:20
have just plastic everywhere. I got rid of mine. That's
1:05:24
why we use French press at the studio and I
1:05:26
use that at home too. And I have one of
1:05:27
those little Aero presses to make an individual cup of coffee.
1:05:31
It's like the plastic is a real problem and heating
1:05:34
it is terrible. We know that about water bottles. Like
1:05:37
you're never supposed to drink out of a water bottle
1:05:38
that you leave in the hot sun in your car.
1:05:40
Speaker 3: So now picture that bottle of sunscreen that's sitting in
1:05:42
your car, right, cooking and leaching into the material.
1:05:50
Speaker 2: Yuck. Yeah, not good. People don't think of the skin
1:05:53
as an organ. And I was explaining to a friend
1:05:56
of mine the other day, he was using hand wash,
1:05:59
that fucking hand sanitizer stuff. And I'm like, man, I
1:06:03
don't think that's good for you. I mean, I think
1:06:05
if you want to wash your hands, you should just
1:06:07
use soap and water. And then I read this article
1:06:09
about it. Like, oh, yeah, that's a toxic chemical. Hand sanitizer,
1:06:14
when you're using it every day, you're essentially exposing your skin,
1:06:18
your organ, to this, like, what exactly is in hand
1:06:23
sanitizer and is it bad for you? Because I remember
1:06:26
this article, but I just, like, went over the headline
1:06:29
and briefly started reading it and then I had to
1:06:31
do something and I put a bookmark to it that
1:06:33
was going to go back to it later and I
1:06:35
never did. Okay.
1:06:36
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say, like, Something happened
1:06:38
to the bookmark.
1:06:39
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no. No, I just, I never went
1:06:42
back to it. But I remember during the COVID times,
1:06:44
everybody was just like hand sanitizer everywhere. I'm like, I
1:06:47
just don't think that can be good for you.
1:06:50
Speaker 3: I mean, anything that's antibiotic, right? Anything that's killing biological life,
1:06:55
probably you want to be at least a little bit
1:06:57
hesitant with. Mostly alcohol.
1:06:59
Speaker 2: Mostly alcohol. Well, even alcohol going through your skin like that.
1:07:04
Isopropyl alcohol sometimes used instead or with ethanol, similar levels.
1:07:10
And then this word, benzalkanonium chloride in many alcohol-free products.
1:07:19
All right. But see if you can find articles on
1:07:23
the dangers of using hand sanitizer because this is what
1:07:28
I had read briefly. Oh.
1:07:33
Speaker 1: Just say– If you overuse it, you're going to fuck
1:07:34
up your skin biome, but.
1:07:35
Speaker 2: That don't– Yeah, that's what it's saying, overuse. I just
1:07:39
know that. I know a guy who's got OCD and
1:07:42
he's hypochondriac a little bit and he uses hand sanitizer
1:07:47
all the time. It's kind of crazy. And a friend
1:07:50
of mine without knowing went to look at his house
1:07:53
because his house was for sale. And he's looking at
1:07:56
the house. He's like, this is a very nice house.
1:07:58
And he opens up a closet and one of the
1:08:00
closets was– filled with hand sanitizer. And he got so
1:08:03
freaked out, he didn't want to live in the house anymore.
1:08:05
He's like, I don't want to buy this house. Like,
1:08:07
this guy, like, whatever weird thing he's possessed with that
1:08:10
he needs 50,000 fucking bottles of hand sanitizer.
1:08:13
Speaker 5: Yeah, the main issues are just overuse, and then don't
1:08:16
not use it on your hands, obviously.
1:08:18
Speaker 1: Don't breathe it, don't drink it.
1:08:20
Speaker 2: Right, only use it on your hands. Yeah.
1:08:22
Speaker 3: But Jamie's right on the skin biome. Skin biome's turning
1:08:25
out to be really important. Like, there's, you know, they
1:08:28
call it the gut-skin axis, where Your skin microbiome and
1:08:31
your gut microbiome are like chatting all the time. And
1:08:38
you can change the composition of your skin microbiome based
1:08:42
on all kinds of stuff like products, sun exposure, everything
1:08:47
you do.
1:08:47
Speaker 2: Probiotics.
1:08:48
Speaker 3: Probiotics.
1:08:49
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, in the jujitsu world, in the early 2000s,
1:08:55
people started really getting into probiotics. They started really getting
1:08:58
into acidophilus. yogurt, kimchi, fermented vegetables and stuff like that
1:09:04
just to prevent skin issues. Interesting. Because jujitsu, because you're
1:09:09
getting scratched up and you're rolling around and there's a
1:09:12
lot of infections and a lot of people get Not
1:09:14
just infections like staph infection, but they also get ringworm
1:09:18
and a bunch of stuff like that. And so some
1:09:21
people started using antibacterial soap. And the problem with that
1:09:25
is it just nukes all the good flora of your skin.
1:09:28
So then there's a company called Defense Soap, and they
1:09:31
developed a soap specifically for grapplers. And this soap has
1:09:35
tea tree oil and eucalyptus, and it's very healthy for
1:09:38
the skin. So it promotes healthy gut flora, but it
1:09:41
does kill all the cooties. It kills all the mat cooties.
1:09:46
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's basically what you want. Like
1:09:49
that microbiome, it can take a lot of natural abuse.
1:09:53
Speaker 2: It's there.
1:09:54
Speaker 3: It naturally lives on skin. So it's usually getting like
1:09:57
roughed up by the world. But yeah, chemicals that are
1:10:01
too strong can take it out.
1:10:03
Speaker 2: And the gut flora is important as well. It's like
1:10:07
you got to think of the whole thing as one
1:10:10
sort of ecosystem. Your whole body– it all works together.
1:10:14
And if your gut biome is all fucked up and
1:10:17
you don't have healthy gut flora, it can affect all
1:10:20
sorts of different issues.
1:10:21
Speaker 3: And yeah, it shows up on the skin for sure.
1:10:24
That's well known.
1:10:26
Speaker 2: So when you first started getting pushback against this, were
1:10:31
you surprised? Did it upset you? Like, what did it
1:10:34
feel like to get attacked by dermatologists?
1:10:37
Speaker 3: I am naturally conflict averse, right? I was kind of like,
1:10:40
do I even want to talk about this? But It
1:10:41
was such interesting information. I thought it was important, so
1:10:44
I wanted to. It started, I wrote an article for
1:10:47
Outside back in, like, 2018, and I titled it, Is
1:10:51
Sunscreen the New Margarine?
1:10:52
Speaker 4: Right?
1:10:53
Speaker 2: Ooh.
1:10:55
Speaker 3: So, right there, that's pushing buttons. Yeah. I probably, you know,
1:10:59
in retrospect, I don't push as many buttons today. I
1:11:02
just point to the data.
1:11:02
Speaker 2: You just didn't like it? Didn't like the response?
1:11:05
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it got a massive response. It went truly,
1:11:08
you know, viral, as they used to say. But, It
1:11:12
actually detracted. Like now, I think those old sunscreens really were,
1:11:18
like margarine, detrimental, like the ones that only blocked UVB.
1:11:22
So I think I kind of got it right, but
1:11:24
also the title detracted from the information in the article
1:11:28
in a sense.
1:11:29
Speaker 2: But why? Because margarine sucks.
1:11:31
Speaker 3: Margarine sucks. Those old sunscreens did suck. The new sunscreens,
1:11:34
they're fine.
1:11:35
Speaker 2: So it's a good comparison.
1:11:37
Speaker 3: It turns out to have been, yeah. Like the more
1:11:39
we learn about those old sunscreens, the more it looks
1:11:41
like a sort of like, a catastrophic mistake that then
1:11:44
got fixed. But, uh, but yeah, so that, like I,
1:11:50
so now the book is out. Suddenly I've got all
1:11:53
these like beauty magazines contacting me and, um, they have
1:11:58
this image of me as like, you know, the Unabomber,
1:12:02
like hanging out, hanging out in my cabin and firing
1:12:06
off these missives.
1:12:07
Speaker 2: And, Really? Yeah. From beauty magazines.
1:12:10
Speaker 3: They were nervous to talk to me because they thought
1:12:12
I was going to be– A kook. A kook.
1:12:15
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow. So the first– so his sunscreen, the new margarine.
1:12:21
So that was the first one. And what was the
1:12:23
response to that? So like do you remember the first
1:12:27
like really negative response and how you felt about it?
1:12:30
Speaker 3: So yeah. So there was an official letter from the AAD.
1:12:35
Like we– and they're very polite. But they're like, here,
1:12:40
we think this is misrepresenting, you know, the information. And
1:12:45
we think this is dangerous. If you're telling people that
1:12:48
they might benefit from more sunlight, that's dangerous. So that's probably,
1:12:54
and then, you know, when that came in, I was like,
1:12:57
so that needs to change. If we have in our
1:12:59
heads that exposure to any sunshine is dangerous, we, you know,
1:13:03
we're not seeing the forest for the trees. We've lost
1:13:05
the thread on this one. So then– so I did
1:13:09
a bunch of other articles. I did one– an article
1:13:11
that focused specifically on the skin color issue. Like do
1:13:15
people of color– do we need to stop telling people
1:13:19
of color that they need to protect themselves from the sun?
1:13:22
And then I did a couple more recently for The
1:13:26
Atlantic just on like what should recommendations be? How do
1:13:31
we– can we do recommendations that are not one size
1:13:33
fits all?
1:13:34
Speaker 2: Well, skin color– in particular, is one of the best
1:13:38
signs of adaptation to environment. I mean, that's how human
1:13:41
beings were able to get vitamin D from the sun
1:13:45
in a place like Scotland. When people moved there, they
1:13:48
got pale as shit. 100%.
1:13:50
Speaker 3: Completely makes sense. Yeah, and you can track it. It's
1:13:54
like the gradations of lightning go with that move northward.
1:13:57
So you can tell. White skin is like a desperate
1:14:02
attempt to get enough light in a screwy northern environment.
1:14:06
Speaker 2: Right. But when those people that have ancestors from that
1:14:09
screwy northern environment move to California or Arizona.
1:14:13
Speaker 3: Or Australia.
1:14:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, Australia is real bad, right? Because there's all
1:14:18
the people that use hairspray in the 80s. They cause
1:14:21
a fucking giant hole in the ozone layer over Australia.
1:14:24
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, essentially.
1:14:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. Australia, when I was there, they have these signs
1:14:30
on buses, like these warnings that show skin cancer, like
1:14:34
these horrible lesions. On people's faces and stuff. And it's
1:14:37
just this warning to wear sunscreen. Protect yourself.
1:14:41
Speaker 3: They're right. That's the textbook case where you've got a
1:14:45
horrible mismatch between the population and the place. Like super,
1:14:49
super high levels of sunshine in Australia. We go zone
1:14:53
like redheads from Scotland who like are trying to deal.
1:14:57
So their skin cancer rates are literally like two or
1:15:01
three times what they are anywhere else.
1:15:02
Speaker 2: In the world. Wow. Now, how much of that is
1:15:04
because of the skin color of the general Australian population
1:15:08
other than the indigenous people? And how much of it
1:15:11
is because the ozone?
1:15:13
Speaker 3: So the ozone is healing itself slowly. We're getting there. Um,
1:15:17
so that's probably less of an issue now. It's really,
1:15:20
it's a really fair skin population in a super bright,
1:15:25
intense environment. Um, So they do need to worry about it.
1:15:28
But the problem is the rest of the world has
1:15:30
kind of set its, like, rules about sun exposure based
1:15:33
on Australia.
1:15:34
Speaker 2: What's interesting also about Australia is, like, I wonder how
1:15:38
long it takes for human adaptation to start to show itself. Like,
1:15:44
do you think, like, in 100,000 years from now, people
1:15:47
that live in Australia will be dark?
1:15:49
Speaker 3: Well, David Reich did that great episode.
1:15:52
Speaker 2: With you, right?
1:15:53
Speaker 3: Did you have David Reich on?
1:15:58
Speaker 2: David Reich.
1:15:59
Speaker 3: He's the Harvard ancient DNA guy.
1:16:04
Speaker 2: Did we?
1:16:05
Speaker 4: No.
1:16:05
Speaker 3: So he just came out with a new study like
1:16:07
two months ago.
1:16:08
Speaker 2: We've had so many people on, I can't remember who
1:16:09
ever had on.
1:16:10
Speaker 3: I can't either.
1:16:10
Speaker 2: That's a problem.
1:16:11
Speaker 3: I was like, if I didn't hear it here, what
1:16:13
did I hear?
1:16:13
Speaker 2: Anyway. It might be Lex.
1:16:15
Speaker 3: Or Huberman. It just– that movement started a few thousand
1:16:21
years ago. Suddenly like that pale redhead gene came out
1:16:25
of nowhere and like skyrocketed. So it can change pretty
1:16:28
quickly when the environmental factors change. Really?
1:16:32
Speaker 2: That's only a few thousand years old?
1:16:34
Speaker 3: The redheaded gene, yeah. That's crazy. It was kind of
1:16:39
lingering quietly in the background.
1:16:41
Speaker 2: Maybe that's why gingers get so much hate because they're
1:16:44
just brand new.
1:16:48
Speaker 3: They are like the next new thing. But yeah, 4,000
1:16:51
or 5,000 years ago, it suddenly explodes in popularity, but
1:16:54
in a very particular place in northern Europe.
1:16:57
Speaker 2: Oh, and most likely as a result to the environment.
1:17:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, for 100%. Wow.
1:17:03
Speaker 2: So I wonder how long it's going to take. I
1:17:05
wonder if we could go into the future, if the
1:17:07
same population lives in Australia now.
1:17:11
Speaker 3: Well, except here's the weird thing. So Australians versus UK, right?
1:17:17
Similar genetics. Australia, super high rates of skin cancer because
1:17:23
of that sunny environment. But also way better lifespan than
1:17:26
in the U.K.
1:17:28
Speaker 2: Really?
1:17:28
Speaker 3: So skin cancer is a factor. But that sunlight is
1:17:32
actually benefiting Australians more than it's hurting them compared to
1:17:35
the U.K.
1:17:37
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's a healthy user bias as well.
1:17:41
Because one of the things about Australia is a lot
1:17:44
of outdoor activities. A lot of people are doing stuff outside.
1:17:47
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:17:48
Speaker 2: A lot of activity, period.
1:17:49
Speaker 5: Period.
1:17:50
Speaker 3: And that could be a factor. And actually that's one
1:17:52
thing I come down to in the book is it's
1:17:55
really hard to disentangle all of these factors. But what's
1:17:58
really obvious is just outside good, too much inside bad.
1:18:05
So whatever– like you don't even have to like break
1:18:08
it down too much. More outside, covered up, whatever you
1:18:12
want is probably going to be good for you.
1:18:13
Speaker 2: One of the things a friend of mine who's a
1:18:15
doctor said that he– when he was– Working in New
1:18:18
York City in the wintertime, he would find people with
1:18:21
undetectable levels of vitamin D. Yeah. And he said it
1:18:24
was a particular problem with people with darker skin. Because
1:18:27
if you have darker skin, you're going to get less
1:18:29
vitamin D from the sun for whatever exposure you do get.
1:18:32
And then these people are all indoors all the time.
1:18:35
Speaker 3: Yeah. That's a really bad formula. Like, yeah, if you
1:18:38
have dark skin, you need five to ten times as
1:18:42
much sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin D.
1:18:46
So you're really, if you have really dark skin, you're
1:18:48
kind of designed for a very bright, you know, tropical.
1:18:51
Speaker 2: Environment where you're... Where you're outside all the time.
1:18:53
Speaker 3: Outside all the time. You can handle 12 hours a
1:18:56
day of sunshine, and in fact, you're going to benefit
1:18:58
from it. You get moved to a really dark environment,
1:19:03
that's not going to be good for you, so you
1:19:04
probably need to compensate in other ways.
1:19:07
Speaker 2: It's going to be very interesting... When genetic engineering reaches
1:19:12
a level where we can turn those things on and
1:19:15
off in people and how do people react to fair
1:19:20
skin people all of a sudden getting dark?
1:19:24
Speaker 3: Like, you know, like.
1:19:26
Speaker 2: Well, we are one race. We are the human race.
1:19:30
There's a bunch of different ancestors where people came from
1:19:34
different areas where they adapted to different environments. But the
1:19:37
reality is we're just human beings. And we all started
1:19:40
in Ethiopia and we spread out. And that's just what
1:19:43
we are. We are the result of whatever environment our
1:19:46
ancestors evolved in.
1:19:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. And with skin tone, it's clearly like very,
1:19:53
very specific reactions to that environment and trying to figure
1:19:55
out what's best in each situation.
1:19:57
Speaker 2: But there's so much racial identity that's tied to these
1:20:02
characteristics of your appearance and where your ancestors are from.
1:20:06
And it's going to be very weird. If all of
1:20:09
a sudden you could– like people get like dark, thick,
1:20:12
curly hair and they used to be gingers. I wonder
1:20:16
how people are going to react to that.
1:20:19
Speaker 3: I mean it's coming, right?
1:20:20
Speaker 2: Right. It's coming.
1:20:21
Speaker 3: All bets are off.
1:20:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just wonder how many people are going to
1:20:25
be claiming cultural or racial appropriation with people just deciding
1:20:30
to have a healthier skin tone. That protects him from
1:20:33
the sun more.
1:20:34
Speaker 3: Oh, I see where you're going.
1:20:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
1:20:36
Speaker 3: Well, yeah.
1:20:37
Speaker 2: Like that guy with the melanotan. I wonder if anybody
1:20:42
got mad at him.
1:20:44
Speaker 3: Right, right? Like what are you supposed to look like?
1:20:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are you supposed to look like?
1:20:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
1:20:50
Speaker 2: There was a lady that was on a television show
1:20:52
once that was turning herself black. It was in the UK.
1:20:55
And this lady looked– she looked like she had other issues.
1:20:58
She had giant breast implants. She looked like a kook.
1:21:01
Bunch of plastic surgery. But she was dark as a date.
1:21:07
Like that lady. That's a white lady. So that's what
1:21:11
she used to look like. And she's getting her boobs
1:21:14
bigger and bigger. She wants them bigger. And so, look,
1:21:17
she keeps getting.
1:21:17
Speaker 3: That's a little too far, maybe.
1:21:19
Speaker 2: Maybe.
1:21:19
Speaker 3: Wow, that's her?
1:21:20
Speaker 2: That's her. So what did she do via intense use
1:21:25
of tanning injections? Yeah, so she's the ultimate melanotan hero. Wow.
1:21:32
I mean, that lady got, like, Cameroon dark. Like, look
1:21:37
at that photo again. Go back to that video. Like,
1:21:41
that's crazy.
1:21:42
Speaker 3: That is crazy.
1:21:43
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
1:21:44
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe if you're in Australia, it works
1:21:46
for you.
1:21:48
Speaker 2: Maybe. Well, it would, right? It would protect, because it
1:21:51
is melanin. But obviously, she's got other things going on.
1:21:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, at some point, you might... I'd have too much melanin.
1:22:00
So here's the funny thing about melanin as well. So
1:22:03
it's made by our melanocytes, which are what can become
1:22:06
melanoma if they get screwed up. And those are in
1:22:09
the very bottom of the epidermis, the outer layer of
1:22:11
the skin. And it's an incredibly good absorber of UV,
1:22:16
better than anything we've come up with. It's almost perfect
1:22:19
at it. But when your skin gets hit with sunlight,
1:22:25
That melanin that's just been produced is at the bottom
1:22:28
of the epidermis where the melanocytes are. So it has
1:22:31
to migrate to the surface, and then it kind of
1:22:33
acts like little umbrellas. It'll cover the nucleus of the
1:22:37
cell and protect it. So you get these little umbrellas,
1:22:40
a line of umbrellas on the very top of your epidermis.
1:22:43
But it has to migrate up because of sunlight. If
1:22:47
melanin is lower in your skin, then it's going to
1:22:49
absorb all that radiation that's farther down and actually it
1:22:54
can cause more free radicals deeper in the skin.
1:22:57
Speaker 2: And what would cause it to be lower so it starts.
1:22:59
Speaker 3: Lower right and it only goes up in response to
1:23:02
sunlight so if you're never ever in the sun and
1:23:08
you suddenly go out and get hit by a bunch
1:23:10
of sunlight your melon's going to be down too low
1:23:14
and can actually create free it can exacerbate the problem.
1:23:18
Speaker 2: So this lady might be exacerbating the problem if she's
1:23:21
just getting the melanin that way.
1:23:23
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know because I don't know about this specifically.
1:23:26
But you probably– yeah. You don't want to just be
1:23:28
like messing around with melanin like to the extent that
1:23:33
she is.
1:23:33
Speaker 2: Oh, boy. That's interesting because like the melanotan stuff, I
1:23:38
have heard about it before. I never really looked into it.
1:23:42
But the idea kind of makes sense. That if you
1:23:46
can make your body produce more melanin, that would protect itself.
1:23:49
But I didn't realize that it has to be melanin
1:23:52
from sun exposure.
1:23:53
Speaker 3: You want it in the right place.
1:23:55
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:23:56
Speaker 2: Could both things work? Could you do it that way
1:23:59
and with sun exposure, increase both? And would it give
1:24:05
some sort of a benefit? To have a higher level
1:24:08
of melanin that could eventually get to the surface of
1:24:10
the skin? Does that make any sense?
1:24:12
Speaker 3: You're above my pay grade now. Like I think you
1:24:14
might be above everybody's pay grade. I don't know if
1:24:16
anyone has looked at that.
1:24:18
Speaker 2: It seems like something to look into though if we
1:24:20
know that there's a benefit to having melanin.
1:24:21
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:24:22
Speaker 3: I mean it would be interesting. But I think this
1:24:24
stuff is new enough that there probably hasn't been a
1:24:26
ton of research on it.
1:24:27
Speaker 2: So what does a pale person do? What does the
1:24:31
old pasty white do? Yeah.
1:24:34
Speaker 3: So full pasty white, like really pale?
1:24:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have a friend. My daughter said, he's white.
1:24:40
And I said, she was really little. And I go, yeah.
1:24:42
She goes, no, no, no. He's white like paper.
1:24:46
Speaker 3: So if you're white like paper. He's from England.
1:24:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:24:49
Speaker 3: You do have to be really careful. You're not going
1:24:52
to tan that much. You just don't make that much melanin.
1:24:56
Speaker 2: Can that change over time? Can they like slowly expose
1:24:59
themselves to the sunlight like five minutes a day? And
1:25:03
just ramp it up?
1:25:05
Speaker 3: It depends on your genetics. If you're like a full-on ginger,
1:25:11
like true redhead, then you have a type of melanin
1:25:16
called pheomelanin, not eumelanin, which is what everybody else has.
1:25:20
And pheomelanin just does not do a good job of
1:25:22
absorbing sunlight.
1:25:23
Speaker 2: Oh, no. So there's no hope for gingers?
1:25:26
Speaker 3: There's no hope for gingers in terms of sun exposure.
1:25:28
Speaker 2: Damn.
1:25:30
Speaker 3: The hope is just, you know, avoid that... Midday sun,
1:25:33
that's high in UV. Get the morning and like the
1:25:36
sunrise and sunset stuff that doesn't have the UV in it.
1:25:39
Speaker 2: Okay. So they can benefit from sun exposure, but they
1:25:43
can't have like full-on outdoor sun exposure.
1:25:46
Speaker 3: Yeah. They're the ones who need to be really careful.
1:25:49
Speaker 2: So for those people, sunscreen is recommended.
1:25:52
Speaker 3: Yeah. Or just cover up even, I think, better, you know.
1:25:57
Speaker 2: How many other people are working on this stuff? And
1:26:00
is everybody sort of in agreement with the data, the
1:26:03
people that are examining it?
1:26:06
Speaker 3: I mean there's a ton of science coming out, but
1:26:08
it's early days for sure.
1:26:11
Speaker 2: Doesn't it seem crazy that sun and our reaction to
1:26:16
sun is unknown or at least poorly studied?
1:26:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's amazing how many things in
1:26:24
medicine– You know, you dive into the research and you
1:26:28
dig down a little and you realize that we're just
1:26:31
kind of guessing still on many levels. Like it's early
1:26:35
days for a lot of this stuff.
1:26:37
Speaker 2: Well, certainly for like stuff that they use for antidepressants.
1:26:42
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:26:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
1:26:45
Speaker 3: Sun exposure is competitive with antidepressants in terms of lifting depression.
1:26:49
Speaker 2: Isn't that nuts? And you know what's way better?
1:26:51
Speaker 3: Exercise.
1:26:52
Speaker 2: Exercise.
1:26:54
Speaker 5: Yeah.
1:26:54
Speaker 2: Many times better than any known antidepressants. Regular exercise.
1:26:59
Speaker 3: I mean, exercise is number one for everything across the board.
1:27:02
Speaker 5: Ginger people with the peptide here. I'm seeing a few
1:27:05
posts about it changing their hair color.
1:27:07
Speaker 3: And this one says permanently.
1:27:09
Speaker 2: What?
1:27:10
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:27:11
Speaker 2: Click on that.
1:27:12
Speaker 5: I guess this just takes it to the Reddit. It's
1:27:14
just going to show a YouTube video here, but there's multiple.
1:27:17
Speaker 2: Change this hair color.
1:27:19
Speaker 1: Other posts about it.
1:27:20
Speaker 5: Whoa.
1:27:21
Speaker 2: Whoa.
1:27:22
Speaker 3: And there's, I was just seeing.
1:27:23
Speaker 2: What if that would work with people that are old,
1:27:26
that have like white hair? I wonder what that would do.
1:27:31
Speaker 5: Like a Melatonin 2 page says like how it can
1:27:33
affect hair color.
1:27:35
Speaker 2: No.
1:27:36
Speaker 1: I read through it real quick. This is not the
1:27:37
best website.
1:27:38
Speaker 2: Isn't it weird that women with red hair are hot
1:27:42
and men with red hair are not? It's very weird
1:27:47
because women with red hair are considered very attractive.
1:27:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy's got a spray tan.
1:27:54
Speaker 2: Okay, but the people that take it, that one guy,
1:27:58
is he like a one-of-one where it changes his hair color?
1:28:02
Speaker 1: Like I said, so this website.
1:28:04
Speaker 2: Click on the video. Let's watch it for a couple seconds.
1:28:06
See what this guy's showing. So this is him before,
1:28:10
and this is him now. His eyebrow and his beard
1:28:14
color's changed.
1:28:15
Speaker 5: Also, we clicked on the video. This might not even
1:28:17
be him. He could be reporting the video about someone else, too.
1:28:23
Speaker 1: It looks pretty good.
1:28:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:28:27
Speaker 4: Gray actually used to be ginger. Now I was bullied
1:28:31
a lot as a kid because I was ginger. I
1:28:34
was weird and I was chubby. That's the winning trio
1:28:37
for being objections from this going through a lot of
1:28:40
changes up here down there you know the stuff that
1:28:44
happens during puberty so i didn't immediately notice that my
1:28:47
hair had gotten much darker it was actually other people
1:28:50
asking me what the hell i had done to my hairline,
1:28:54
you know. On this picture, it's probably much clearer. That's
1:28:57
a picture of me and my brother. We have the
1:28:59
same genetics in regards of skin color and the color
1:29:03
of our hair. And as you can see, my hair
1:29:05
is now completely different from his. We used to have
1:29:07
the same skin and the same hair, especially the color. Now,
1:29:11
this is only from using one vial of melanotan-2 in
1:29:14
the span of a year, even more than a year.
1:29:17
And it was at low dosages.
1:29:20
Speaker 2: But with our.
1:29:20
Speaker 4: Genetics of Big, tall, white, ginger, Belgian gingers. It completely
1:29:26
changed the color of my hair and my skin, and
1:29:29
the effects were very strong.
1:29:32
Speaker 2: So the effects are permanent, so he still has dark hair.
1:29:35
But what's interesting is that in the beginning, he had
1:29:37
gray hair.
1:29:38
Speaker 1: He seems older, obviously, right?
1:29:40
Speaker 2: Right, but he had gray hair. He was showing, and
1:29:42
his hair's not gray anymore. Right.
1:29:46
Speaker 3: I mean, gray and ginger. Gray is a loss of melanin.
1:29:51
Melanin is what makes your hair dark as well as
1:29:52
your skin dark. So he's resupplied his melanin through his
1:29:56
hair as well, it seems like.
1:29:57
Speaker 2: That seems kind of nuts.
1:30:00
Speaker 1: He's had one vial for a year. He's had even
1:30:03
all over a year.
1:30:04
Speaker 2: Right. So for a year. So his skin has gotten
1:30:07
pale again, but his hair is permanently dark. So that's
1:30:10
what he used to look like. He had red hair.
1:30:12
He had a red beard and he had gray hair.
1:30:16
His hair had gone gray and now his hair is dark.
1:30:18
I got to know if this guy's full of shit.
1:30:21
Speaker 1: That's again, it's like there's only one person saying that.
1:30:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the problem. It's like you don't know what
1:30:26
you're looking at. But that's crazy.
1:30:28
Speaker 3: But it is, yeah. Melanin is the pigment for all
1:30:31
of it.
1:30:31
Speaker 2: Put that in. Does melatonin, how does it say it?
1:30:35
How do you say it?
1:30:36
Speaker 3: Melanotan.
1:30:37
Speaker 2: Melanotan? Does melanotan have an effect on hair color? Put
1:30:40
that into perplexity. See what they say.
1:30:43
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:30:43
Speaker 3: What does it say?
1:30:49
Speaker 2: Because I know a lot of people with gray hair
1:30:51
that it bums them out. And they dye it and shit,
1:30:54
and that can't be good for you. You're putting fucking
1:30:56
dye in your hair.
1:30:56
Speaker 3: I know.
1:30:57
Speaker 2: Stuff makes me hesitant.
1:30:58
Speaker 3: I'm stuck with the gray hair, I think.
1:31:00
Speaker 2: Well, mine would be gray if I had hair. It's
1:31:02
all gray on my beard now. It's gray on my...
1:31:05
I'm going to try it. I'm going to try some
1:31:06
melatonin and see if I get dangerous boners. Melanotan. Melanotan.
1:31:12
does not have good human evidence of changing scalp or
1:31:15
body hair color. Its main effect is on skin tanning
1:31:18
and freckling, not on turning hair darker or lighter. But
1:31:21
how's that guy? Maybe he's just a weird case.
1:31:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got to be a hormone dependent.
1:31:32
Speaker 2: What about the lady with the giant boobs? She had
1:31:34
dark hair too.
1:31:36
Speaker 5: She's saying, when I was looking through her thing, it
1:31:37
said she went through a permanent tanning process.
1:31:41
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
1:31:41
Speaker 1: She would have been taking extreme dosages.
1:31:44
Speaker 5: Her Instagram account is a mess. If it's even hers,
1:31:49
it's the one that Google showed me.
1:31:52
Speaker 3: What's the erection connection? I don't understand how, you know,
1:31:56
making more melanin.
1:31:57
Speaker 2: What's the melanotan erection connection? I have heard that, though. Actually,
1:32:01
Brigham from Ways to Well, the local wellness clinic, was
1:32:04
telling me about that. That some people have crazy erections
1:32:07
because of melanotan. Yeah, like what? How? And some people don't.
1:32:12
Like that one guy that had taken it, he said
1:32:14
it didn't affect him that way. But maybe he's broken.
1:32:22
Does it say anything about... It's coming up right now.
1:32:24
Why melatonin causes boners? Okay. It can increase... libido and
1:32:31
trigger erections in some men, but it's not approved for, well,
1:32:34
I know it's not approved. How does it affect it?
1:32:36
Stimulates melanocortin, melanocortin receptors in the brain, which are involved
1:32:43
in sexual arousal and erection control, not just tanning. Controlled tiles,
1:32:49
controlled trot, geez, I can't talk today. Subcutaneous melanotan-2 caused
1:32:54
erections in most men with erectile dysfunction, often without sexual stimulation.
1:33:00
Same studies found increased sexual desire in a majority of
1:33:03
doses compared with placebo. Interesting. I wonder what the connection is.
1:33:12
Speaker 3: It's the Milano-Corton. Like you said, the MC4R up there. So, yeah,
1:33:18
MC1R is the gene that determines whether you've got the
1:33:26
red hair or not.
1:33:27
Speaker 2: Look at this. Common side effects were yawning, nausea, yawning,
1:33:33
and stretching, flushing with decreased appetite. Some participants had severe
1:33:37
nausea at higher doses.
1:33:39
Speaker 3: Yawning and sexual desire is an interesting combination.
1:33:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, I'm really horny, but I'm too
1:33:44
tired to do anything about it.
1:33:47
Speaker 5: Hypoactive sexual desire for premenopausal women.
1:33:52
Speaker 2: Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Also shows erectogenic effects in men with ED,
1:34:03
including those who fail PDE5 inhibitors. What is that? What
1:34:09
is a PDE5 inhibitor? Interesting. Someone out there with gray
1:34:18
hair should give it a go. Find out. Find out
1:34:21
what's up. It doesn't sound like– other than dealing with boners,
1:34:24
it doesn't seem like there's any real problems. I keep
1:34:29
going back to this you getting attacked thing and I
1:34:32
don't understand how someone could attack you with the data
1:34:36
that you're showing because like it's– you're not making any
1:34:40
dangerous or any claims or any– you're not advising people
1:34:47
to do anything that's reckless.
1:34:49
Speaker 3: Or Yeah, no, I mean, I purposefully have sort of... Well,
1:34:53
I really haven't... I basically tell people to figure it
1:34:56
out for themselves, right? But it's only small amounts of
1:35:00
sun exposure that seem to be necessary to get most
1:35:04
of the benefits. Like, the jump isn't going from zero
1:35:07
to some. You don't need a lot. Nobody really needs
1:35:11
a lot. Unless you have really dark skin, then you
1:35:13
can probably get away with a lot. So, yeah, just
1:35:16
a little bit of sun exposure... Doesn't seem like a
1:35:19
crazy recommendation. But it's just because the messaging has been
1:35:24
sort of so extreme and unyielding. Like, they've worked for
1:35:28
so hard to sort of scare people away from any
1:35:35
sun exposure that I think backing that up a little
1:35:38
bit is sort of uncomfortable, you know?
1:35:42
Speaker 2: I understand, but I mean isn't history filled with new
1:35:46
discoveries and changing courses?
1:35:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it will change, but it's going
1:35:53
to be one funeral at a time. It's going to
1:35:55
be ugly all the way.
1:35:57
Speaker 2: When you do this kind of work, like have you
1:36:00
discovered any other things that people thought were unhealthy that
1:36:03
turned out to actually probably be good for you, at
1:36:06
least if used correctly?
1:36:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's such a good question. So the one, like
1:36:10
the metaphor that I think we're all familiar with and
1:36:13
that I think maps pretty perfectly here is diet and fat, right?
1:36:20
Like 20, you know, 25 years ago, Gary Taubes does
1:36:24
that article in the New York Times Magazine, what if
1:36:26
fat doesn't make you fat? And we were still back
1:36:29
in that era of, you know, carbs, cut all the
1:36:33
fat out of your diet. Carbs are good for you. Margarine, right?
1:36:37
The margarine era. The top experts got it 100 percent
1:36:41
wrong back then. And when they got called on it
1:36:44
by like, you know, Taubes and others, Nina Teicholz, you
1:36:47
guys have had Nina on.
1:36:48
Speaker 2: I've had Taubes on as well. Oh, yeah.
1:36:50
Speaker 3: OK. You know, they fought hard and they were totally wrong.
1:36:56
And we now, you know, we flipped, but it took
1:36:58
a long time. And, you know, there was a little
1:37:01
blood in the water during that process.
1:37:03
Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
1:37:04
Speaker 2: I was in the early days of that and people
1:37:06
were just warning me. about my cholesterol. What about your cholesterol?
1:37:11
What's really interesting is during the heart of that, when I,
1:37:15
you know, I eat a lot of meat, my diet's
1:37:17
mostly meat. And I went to the doctor and I
1:37:19
got all my levels checked. And he said, are you
1:37:20
on some anti-cholesterol medication? And I said, no, why? And
1:37:26
he goes, you're very low cholesterol. It was weird. And
1:37:30
I go, dude, if you saw my diet, my diet's
1:37:33
like mostly meat and eggs and bacon. That's like a
1:37:37
giant percentage of my diet. I thought that was really interesting.
1:37:41
Speaker 3: I think– I mean, yeah. I think the evidence is
1:37:44
pretty good. Like for keto, I think it's pretty– saladino
1:37:47
I think is pretty much spot on on a lot
1:37:49
of this stuff. But– so yeah. So that– like the
1:37:54
ultimate experts all said that was going to kill you. Right.
1:37:58
Atkins back in the day and they were all completely wrong.
1:38:03
So there's– You know, there's a long track record of
1:38:07
the pros being wrong, I think, on a lot of things.
1:38:09
But that's a really good example. And people can wrap
1:38:11
their heads around that one because we now– I think
1:38:13
a lot of people understand that low-carb really works well
1:38:16
for them.
1:38:16
Speaker 2: I mean, they completely flipped the food pyramid.
1:38:19
Speaker 3: Right, which was a beautiful thing to do. And I
1:38:21
can't believe it happened so fast.
1:38:22
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, also with very little pushback. It's kind of
1:38:26
interesting because the evidence had already compounded to the fact
1:38:30
that– listen, for sure, margarine is not a good thing.
1:38:33
It's not a good substitute. But also that all these
1:38:36
healthy fats that you're getting from milk, that you're getting
1:38:39
from eggs, eggs in particular. We've been told eggs are
1:38:42
bad for you, the cholesterol in eggs. Eggs– you could
1:38:45
live off just eggs.
1:38:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably the perfect food.
1:38:47
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:38:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like eggs are fantastic. I always tell my friends
1:38:50
that are vegans. I was like, listen, man, just get
1:38:53
some chickens and they're your pets and they give you
1:38:55
free food. It's like I have 16 chickens now and
1:39:00
I get eggs every day. And these chickens are pets.
1:39:03
Like I go, hey, ladies. I feed them. I throw
1:39:06
the worms down. They're not afraid of me. They listen
1:39:09
to me. When I open the door, they come running
1:39:11
out and they wander around the yard. It's like a
1:39:15
great relationship. You get free food. You take care of them.
1:39:18
You feed them and they eat all the bugs in
1:39:21
your yard and you get these delicious, healthy eggs from them.
1:39:24
Speaker 3: With those beautiful orange.
1:39:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. So if you're worried about if it's an ethical thing,
1:39:28
you don't want animal cruelty and good for you. That's
1:39:32
that's a wonderful way to live. But you are sacrificing
1:39:36
your health by not eating pasture raised eggs. Just get
1:39:39
the real ones, not the bullshit ones, the real ones. Unfortunately.
1:39:44
They're tricking people now. Some companies have been exposed for
1:39:49
feeding their chickens turmeric. They feed them curcumin and turmeric
1:39:55
because it makes their eggs a darker, more attractive yolk.
1:40:01
Speaker 3: I know, right? It's so screwy, so bizarrely backwards.
1:40:07
Speaker 2: It is, but isn't turmeric good for you? And wouldn't
1:40:10
turmeric that you're getting from those eggs also be good
1:40:13
for you?
1:40:13
Speaker 3: It's like– Yeah, it can't hurt.
1:40:14
Speaker 2: I mean– Right? So it's not like they're giving them
1:40:17
food dye. So it's– you know what I mean? Right.
1:40:19
So it's like, yeah, you're getting these darker eggs because
1:40:22
people like that and the darker eggs come from turmeric.
1:40:25
But still, you're getting turmeric then, aren't you? Isn't that
1:40:31
how it works?
1:40:33
Speaker 3: I mean that's fine. But I think the chicken– I
1:40:34
think like it's the bugs that sometimes help turn them on. Yeah,
1:40:38
we get eggs from our neighbor. Like in Vermont, everybody–
1:40:41
there's chickens like running around the road everywhere. And yeah,
1:40:46
they're delicious. Yeah, you can tell that they're getting it
1:40:49
from the bugs and the greens and– yeah.
1:40:52
Speaker 2: And it's super healthy. I mean but that color of
1:40:55
things is also why they dye farm-raised salmon, which is
1:40:59
really gross. So salmon are getting that from bugs in particular.
1:41:04
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Little arthropods.
1:41:06
Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
1:41:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, like miniature shrimp kind of.
1:41:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why they have that wonderful-looking pink skin, that
1:41:13
orangey pink skin.
1:41:14
Speaker 3: So in that case, the dye is maybe a little
1:41:16
more suspect.
1:41:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the dye is very suspect because it's like,
1:41:19
you know, these farm-raised salmon, they have pale skin because
1:41:22
they're eating bullshit.
1:41:24
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
1:41:26
Speaker 2: Are there any other things that you've stumbled across that
1:41:30
turned out to be good for you that people were
1:41:32
averse to?
1:41:33
Speaker 3: I'm still curious about alcohol. You know how everything is
1:41:35
flipped on alcohol? Like first it was like drink or
1:41:38
two a day is good for you. And then suddenly
1:41:40
they flipped like a year or two ago and say,
1:41:43
any amount of alcohol is bad for you. I looked down,
1:41:46
I looked at into those studies. Um, and it seems
1:41:51
like the takeaway really should have been, you know, moderate
1:41:55
drinking doesn't do much of anything to you. Like maybe
1:41:58
it makes is slightly good for you or slightly bad
1:42:00
for you, but, For like a drink a day or
1:42:03
like one to two a day, it didn't seem to
1:42:06
have a whole lot of impact on mortality at all.
1:42:11
Speaker 2: And also probably reduces a little bit of stress, relieves
1:42:15
a little bit of social anxiety. And that alone is
1:42:20
really beneficial. Like how do you feel? Like are you
1:42:23
happy or are you stressed out? Sometimes a drink or two,
1:42:26
you're like, ah, fuck it. We're fine. Everything's good. Like
1:42:29
that alone has benefits, like what it does to your mood,
1:42:33
that it's a social lubricant. It will allow you to
1:42:36
like maybe laugh a little bit more, have a little
1:42:38
bit more fun.
1:42:39
Speaker 3: Totally, which is why I can't give it up. Like
1:42:41
that social environment is a really nice environment to be in.
1:42:45
And if a couple beers helps make that happen, it's
1:42:48
a good thing.
1:42:48
Speaker 2: I gave it up for about eight months. I completely–
1:42:51
the problem is I own a comedy club and I
1:42:54
was there a lot. And so everybody's like, have a drink,
1:42:57
have a drink. Let's do shots. And then next thing
1:42:59
you know, I was in the gym the next day
1:43:01
feeling like shit. I got tired of doing that to myself.
1:43:03
And so I said, I'm just going to stop drinking.
1:43:06
Not because I'm an alcoholic. It wasn't hard to stop.
1:43:08
It was super easy. I just stopped. And then I
1:43:10
started feeling way better. I was like, God, why was
1:43:13
I drinking for so long? It was just so bad.
1:43:15
And then out to dinner with my wife, had a
1:43:17
margarita like eight months later. I'm like, let's have a drink.
1:43:20
She wasn't drinking either. I'm like, let's have a drink.
1:43:22
I'm like, this is nice. I like it. So now
1:43:25
I limit myself. I won't have more than like two drinks.
1:43:28
Two drinks is kind of my– but two drinks is right.
1:43:31
Two drinks is like wee. As long as you don't
1:43:33
have to drive, you're not going anywhere. If I go
1:43:36
to the club, I'm there for hours. I'm completely sober
1:43:38
after it's all over. It's like I wake up in
1:43:41
the morning. I don't feel like shit. It doesn't seem
1:43:43
to be affecting my workouts. However, if you wear a
1:43:47
whoop or an aura ring or one of those tracking devices,
1:43:51
you will notice in your sleep. In your recovery.
1:43:54
Speaker 3: You're not sleeping as well.
1:43:55
Speaker 2: You don't sleep as well. You don't get the same
1:43:57
deep sleep.
1:43:58
Speaker 3: I can tell.
1:43:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, just one glass of wine can fuck you up
1:44:02
a little bit.
1:44:02
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
1:44:03
Speaker 3: And for me, that hit in middle age. Like before that,
1:44:05
it wasn't a problem. But now, yeah, like two drinks.
1:44:09
Two does seem to be the cutoff where, you know,
1:44:12
life functions normally still.
1:44:13
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:44:14
Speaker 3: But yeah, the sleep's not as restorative somehow.
1:44:17
Speaker 2: Somehow. But I wonder if it's the timing of when
1:44:20
you're drinking. So I wonder if you have like a
1:44:23
glass of wine at dinner at like 6 o'clock but
1:44:25
you don't go to bed until midnight. I wonder if
1:44:28
then your body has a chance to process it and
1:44:31
then you're OK.
1:44:32
Speaker 3: Well, Italian style, right?
1:44:33
Speaker 2: Right.
1:44:33
Speaker 3: I feel like the Mediterranean lifestyle, they got this pretty
1:44:36
much nailed down like 2,000 years ago.
1:44:40
Speaker 2: Right.
1:44:40
Speaker 3: It seems to work pretty well.
1:44:42
Speaker 2: Which also brings us back to food. Right. Because the
1:44:45
way they eat is so– it's so interesting how thin
1:44:48
they are and yet they eat mostly carbs.
1:44:51
Speaker 3: I know.
1:44:52
Speaker 2: I know.
1:44:53
Speaker 3: Something's different there.
1:44:54
Speaker 2: A lot's different. And we know what it is now.
1:44:56
We know that there's a lot of additives and preservatives.
1:44:59
And it's also like they don't use glyphosate. And they
1:45:03
have heirloom wheat. So they have wheat that hasn't been
1:45:05
optimized to have a higher yield. So it doesn't have
1:45:08
as much complex wheat glutens. And so there's a lot
1:45:10
of issues with our food, unfortunately. And if you eat
1:45:14
American bread, you know, the bromine, all the different additives,
1:45:17
all the shit that we put in our food. That's
1:45:20
so disturbing. Whenever I go to Italy, I'm so angry
1:45:24
that when I come back home, I can't have food
1:45:26
like this. Like you have to seek it out. You
1:45:28
have to go to like certain restaurants that only use
1:45:31
like Italian flour. Yeah, yeah.
1:45:34
Speaker 3: But yeah, you look at those Mediterranean cultures and it
1:45:38
just works for them. And yeah, like you say, you
1:45:41
can't explain it in terms of like macronutrients or anything
1:45:44
like that. Like it's something, there's something like, synergistic about
1:45:50
that lifestyle. I do actually think light is part of
1:45:52
it too. Like they got great light there.
1:45:54
Speaker 2: Yep. They have great light, especially like the Malfi Coast,
1:45:56
those people. Yeah. But the other thing is also less stress. They're,
1:46:01
they're not as career focused. They're more family oriented, very
1:46:06
tight knit family groups. They eat dinner together. There's a
1:46:08
lot of laughing, a lot of drinking wine. A lot
1:46:12
of them smoke cigarettes. You go over there like cigarettes
1:46:14
never went out of style over there. They're all smoking cigarettes.
1:46:17
And you're like, how are you guys so fucking healthy?
1:46:19
This is weird.
1:46:21
Speaker 3: Yeah. It is. It's yeah. It'll be interesting on cigarettes
1:46:24
if it turns out that in a certain context, they're
1:46:28
not that damaging. And then out of that context, they're
1:46:31
super damaging.
1:46:33
Speaker 2: I have heard that with polyphenols. I've heard that. And
1:46:37
this is, I think, controversial as well. But it's cigarettes
1:46:41
taken along with olive oil. And that a lot of
1:46:45
these people have high olive oil rich diets and that
1:46:48
cigarettes along with olive oil, that the olive oil tends
1:46:52
to balance out whatever damage that the cigarettes are doing.
1:46:56
Speaker 3: That is super interesting.
1:46:57
Speaker 2: Yeah. Which kind of makes sense.
1:46:59
Speaker 3: And it's going to be like everything is going to
1:47:01
be something like that.
1:47:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:47:03
Speaker 3: It's bad in a certain context and then it seems
1:47:06
to have been OK for people in a different context.
1:47:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:47:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:47:10
Speaker 2: Are there any other things that you've noticed? Like I
1:47:13
know you've done work on chocolate, right?
1:47:14
Speaker 3: A lot of work on– yeah. Like my first sort
1:47:19
of big magazine story outside magazine sent me to the
1:47:23
Amazon on this like crazy hunt to– with this German guy.
1:47:28
It was basically Apocalypse Now with chocolate. This German guy
1:47:32
was going upriver into the Amazon to try to find
1:47:34
this wild cacao, like to work with some of the
1:47:37
indigenous groups. to harvest wild cacao and make the world's
1:47:40
first wild chocolate. So I went with him. Crazy, crazy trip.
1:47:46
But yeah, I sort of fell in love with cacao
1:47:50
on that trip. We took a small plane, and we
1:47:55
were going to land on this river and meet a
1:47:56
canoe that was going to take us upriver to meet
1:47:58
with these indigenous groups. So we found a runway. This
1:48:02
is in the Bolivian Amazon. I've been in the Amazon
1:48:06
all of four minutes. The plane drops us off on
1:48:09
this flooded runway where like it was a crazy landing.
1:48:12
We hop out of the plane. I'm glad to be alive.
1:48:15
um and then these four guys with guns come out
1:48:20
of this little cabin uh and we're like we're this
1:48:24
is actually a landing strip that our you know colombian
1:48:27
boss owns and we're guarding it for him and what
1:48:31
do you two white dudes doing here so like all
1:48:33
the uh cocaine traffic comes through this part of the
1:48:35
amazon And we had just done what people actually have
1:48:39
been killed for, which is, you know, like, if a
1:48:42
couple of white guys drop in there, they assume you're, like,
1:48:45
DEA or something.
1:48:46
Speaker 2: Right.
1:48:46
Speaker 3: So they're super suspicious. And, you know, they were speaking Spanish,
1:48:50
so I was, like, catching every fourth word or something.
1:48:52
I'm like, this can't be good because of the guns.
1:48:54
But anyway, the guy I was with, the German guy,
1:48:57
he negotiated with them. And finally they're like, okay, just
1:49:00
give us a landing fee. So we're like, sure.
1:49:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:49:04
Speaker 3: But, yeah, so that was the beginning of my chocolate journey.
1:49:09
Speaker 2: So what part of the Amazon were you?
1:49:12
Speaker 3: Bolivia, which, you know, Bolivia you think of like mountains,
1:49:15
La Paz, but they have these lowlands, which are like
1:49:18
straight up like tropical rainforest. It's called the Beni, and
1:49:23
it's like truly lawless area, like huge swaths of jungle,
1:49:27
a bunch of cattle ranching as well, and all the
1:49:30
drug traffic comes through there from the Andes.
1:49:34
Speaker 2: And you went there just as a journalist? Yeah.
1:49:37
Speaker 3: So this guy, this German guy, he'd been living there
1:49:39
for 20 years and he was trying to get this cacao.
1:49:43
And he's like, yeah, I'm going to go meet with
1:49:45
these groups. Do you want to come? And outside had
1:49:48
just come to me and they'd liked something else I'd written.
1:49:51
And they're like, hey, we're Outside Magazine. What's the like
1:49:54
freakiest thing you ever wanted to do? We'll, you know,
1:49:57
we'll send you there. And I had like a little
1:49:59
kid at the time. So I was like, you know,
1:50:01
I'm not going to be going off it. 200 foot
1:50:03
waterfall and kayak for you guys. But then this, this like,
1:50:07
you know, heart of dark chocolate thing came up and
1:50:10
I was like, I could do that. I could be
1:50:11
like the comic guy for them. So it was this
1:50:14
like ridiculous journey where like everything went wrong. But we
1:50:17
did get some really good, good chocolate at the end
1:50:19
of it.
1:50:19
Speaker 2: So what is the benefit of wild cacao?
1:50:23
Speaker 3: It tastes really, really good, like better than the industrial
1:50:27
varieties of cacao that most chocolates made with. And it's
1:50:31
just like, kind of a cool story and it can
1:50:33
be used to support those indigenous groups so that the
1:50:36
forest doesn't get cut down and turned into more like
1:50:38
cattle ranch because um cacao grows in the understory of
1:50:43
the rainforest so it's kind of a way to monetize
1:50:47
the the full rainforest.
1:50:49
Speaker 2: And keep the canopy intact exactly yeah um what is
1:50:52
the benefits of cacao like health wise.
1:50:55
Speaker 3: It's right there with with coffee um you know tons
1:50:58
of polyphenols a little bit of caffeine and It seems
1:51:01
to be anti-inflammatory, gives you a little boost, makes you
1:51:06
happy for some of the same reasons and maybe some
1:51:08
different ones as well.
1:51:09
Speaker 2: And when you say it tastes better, like in what way?
1:51:12
Like when you try it?
1:51:14
Speaker 3: A lot more like aromatics and less bitterness. Like basically
1:51:19
what happened with cacao is when it became a global product,
1:51:24
the Europeans selected varieties– that were high yielding. Same thing
1:51:29
that happened with tomatoes and everything else. They were high yielding,
1:51:32
but they lost some of like the great aromatic qualities
1:51:36
that like the old Maya cacao had had. And that's
1:51:38
what gets grown all over the world. Most cacao comes
1:51:41
from Africa now. And it's more bitter, less interesting, but
1:51:46
way cheaper. So then there's this movement that started like 10,
1:51:50
15 years ago of people trying to go back to
1:51:54
Latin America to find the like ancient, heirloom varieties that
1:51:58
had this great flavor and make, like, better chocolate than
1:52:01
had ever been made before. Sort of the most ancient
1:52:05
is the stuff in the Amazon, which is where cacao originated,
1:52:07
still growing wild. So it's, you know, it's kind of
1:52:11
cool if you can go back to the, you know,
1:52:14
primordial days and make chocolate.
1:52:15
Speaker 2: Well, I mean the example of tomatoes is a perfect
1:52:18
example because heirloom tomatoes are sensational. They're so delicious.
1:52:22
Speaker 3: So much better.
1:52:23
Speaker 2: They're so much better. And then you have one of
1:52:25
those bullshit McDonald's tomatoes that looks like a piece of paper. Yeah.
1:52:29
Is that cacao? That's what it looks like? Yeah.
1:52:31
Speaker 3: So it's these pods and you open up the pod.
1:52:35
It's kind of like the size of like a little
1:52:36
Nerf football or something.
1:52:38
Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Yeah. I had no idea.
1:52:41
Speaker 3: And so chocolate is made from the seeds– You got
1:52:44
to ferment them and then roast them and then you
1:52:47
grind them into chocolate.
1:52:48
Speaker 2: Where can one get heirloom chocolate made from this ancient cacao?
1:52:55
Is there a company? Yeah.
1:52:56
Speaker 3: So the place I send people is Caputo's, which is
1:53:00
an online site. They're like the main importer of specialty chocolate.
1:53:04
There they are.
1:53:04
Speaker 2: Is that the people?
1:53:05
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Caputo's has most of the great wild cacaos
1:53:10
available on their website. It's just like retail.
1:53:13
Speaker 2: Caputo's. So is it Caputo's.com? Yeah. It's from Salt Lake City? Yeah.
1:53:19
Speaker 3: They've got a cool shop in Salt Lake.
1:53:20
Speaker 2: Oh, interesting. Interesting. Preserve Bolivian rainforests. Yeah, there you go.
1:53:27
Ritual chocolate. Yeah, I've heard of people like ritual cacao ceremonies.
1:53:32
I'm like, what are you doing?
1:53:36
Speaker 3: What are you doing? That's a gringo thing. Everyone thinks
1:53:42
it goes back to some like we're referencing some ancient
1:53:45
Maya ceremony.
1:53:46
Speaker 2: Of course it is.
1:53:48
Speaker 3: It was a white dude in Guatemala named Keith. Look
1:53:51
at these people. Yeah, there you go.
1:53:52
Speaker 2: Look at these people. Right?
1:53:54
Speaker 3: It's kind of like ayahuasca with trading wheels.
1:53:57
Speaker 2: They do cacao. But like what can come out of
1:54:01
a ritual where you take cacao?
1:54:03
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, same thing that can come out
1:54:05
of a ritual where you do anything else. Like you're focusing,
1:54:08
you know, it's a mindfulness. You get a little, you know,
1:54:11
you get a little boost from the cacao.
1:54:13
Speaker 2: But not much. Yeah.
1:54:14
Speaker 3: It's more about the ritual.
1:54:17
Speaker 2: Why is cacao? What is a cacao ceremony? Why are
1:54:20
they suddenly showing up all over L.A.? Yeah, you can
1:54:24
answer that one on your own.
1:54:25
Speaker 3: So, I mean, Jamie, if you can call up Keith's cacao,
1:54:28
there's this guy named Keith. I think he died recently.
1:54:30
He's like the classic gringo guru with a big white
1:54:33
beard who would like have people in Guatemala. And he's
1:54:36
just invented this cacao ceremony thing. Oh, white people. But he's.
1:54:40
Speaker 2: Damn it, white people.
1:54:42
Speaker 3: And then everyone else sort of took it from him.
1:54:44
There he is.
1:54:45
Speaker 2: Well, he looks like the type of guy. Look at him.
1:54:47
Big old fucking dirty pot of cacao.
1:54:49
Speaker 1: Duncan in a costume.
1:54:51
Speaker 3: So he started it.
1:54:57
Speaker 2: Okay. Poor Keith. These silly people. So, but there's like
1:55:04
antioxidants in it. Like there's other.
1:55:06
Speaker 3: A ton.
1:55:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:55:08
Speaker 3: It's good for you. It's totally good for you. And yeah, it,
1:55:12
you know, gets your heart beating a little faster. There's
1:55:14
some happy drugs in there. It's got a tiny bit
1:55:17
of cannabinoids in it.
1:55:18
Speaker 2: But.
1:55:21
Speaker 3: And it tastes great. So, you know, what's not to like?
1:55:25
Speaker 2: Anything else? Any other foods or substances or different things
1:55:29
that you found out that were beneficial?
1:55:31
Speaker 3: Well, how do you feel about oysters? I wrote a
1:55:33
book about oysters, too.
1:55:34
Speaker 2: I eat them all the time. Are you a fan? Yeah,
1:55:36
I like them. Are they okay?
1:55:38
Speaker 3: I mean, they're great.
1:55:40
Speaker 2: But?
1:55:41
Speaker 3: There's no but. They're great. But I think we haven't
1:55:44
figured out why. You know, you're eating like a little
1:55:46
living being. So I think, you know, there's like some
1:55:50
chi factor there where— The reason people get so excited
1:55:53
and feel so good when they eat oysters, it's not
1:55:55
because of like the nutrients. It's like there's something else
1:55:59
that's in.
1:55:59
Speaker 2: There, you know. Well, isn't there zinc in oysters?
1:56:03
Speaker 3: There's definitely zinc.
1:56:03
Speaker 2: And they're supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect, right? Yeah.
1:56:06
Speaker 3: So I think that aphrodisiac thing is like it's more
1:56:09
about the chi, like this living force that you're ingesting.
1:56:12
This sounds like hippie talk. It does sound a little,
1:56:18
you know. Like she's going to get justified scientifically at
1:56:22
some point. You think? Yeah.
1:56:24
Speaker 2: So you think you're getting– what's interesting, there's another friend
1:56:27
of mine made an argument for vegans to eat shellfish.
1:56:31
He said like if you're eating clams and oysters, they're
1:56:35
so primitive. They're more primitive than plants. He said there's
1:56:38
more evidence that plants are conscious than there is that
1:56:40
these shellfish are conscious. Yeah.
1:56:43
Speaker 3: I mean I think– yeah, plants are pretty damn smart.
1:56:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, weirdly so. Yeah. And mussels and clams and oysters,
1:56:51
they're not. They're sort of alive, but they don't feel pain.
1:56:57
Speaker 5: Yeah.
1:56:58
Speaker 2: And they just move. And because they move, they open
1:57:00
and close. We've decided that they're animals.
1:57:03
Speaker 3: And with oysters, that's literally the only thing they can do.
1:57:06
Clams at least can dig down.
1:57:07
Speaker 2: They get the tongue.
1:57:09
Speaker 3: Oysters, they're stuck. They just open and close. There's not
1:57:13
a whole lot going on there for sure.
1:57:14
Speaker 2: Right. But healthy for you. Yeah. Unless you get a
1:57:19
bad batch and then you die.
1:57:20
Speaker 3: They are definitely a source of food poisoning.
1:57:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard of people dying.
1:57:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. They kill a few people every year.
1:57:26
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting. My wife got food poisoning from
1:57:29
oysters once when we were on vacation. We were in
1:57:31
Hawaii and she ate oysters and somehow or another she
1:57:34
got it and I didn't. But then my daughter, who
1:57:38
didn't eat oysters, also got the food poisoning because food
1:57:42
poisoning apparently can spread through the air. Interesting. And so
1:57:46
it's contagious. Yeah.
1:57:47
Speaker 3: Yeah. I guess if you're like ralphing hard enough, you're
1:57:51
flowing it.
1:57:51
Speaker 2: Through the air. I guess. But it was really weird.
1:57:55
And that's how we found out that food poisoning is contagious.
1:57:59
And that's one of the reasons why they isolate people
1:58:00
when they're on boats when they have food poisoning. Yeah.
1:58:03
Because those people could actually spread whatever that is through
1:58:06
the air. Fucking weird.
1:58:09
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:58:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I do love oysters, but I do get
1:58:14
nervous when I eat them because every now and then
1:58:16
you hear like, Houston man dies from food poisoning from oysters.
1:58:20
Speaker 3: Cold water. Cold water is your friend.
1:58:22
Speaker 2: It says food poisoning itself is not directly contagious as
1:58:25
it refers to an illness caused by eating or drinking
1:58:27
contaminated food. However, the specific virus is. or bacteria responsible
1:58:31
for the contamination are highly contagious and can easily spread
1:58:34
from person to person through poor hygiene or shared surfaces. Yeah.
1:58:38
So it's contagious. So the viruses that come from food
1:58:42
poisoning are contagious. It's not like through the air. Oh,
1:58:45
so surface contact. Is that what it is? Oh, I see.
1:58:50
So coughing and stuff, injecting. Yeah. And so you may
1:58:53
be interesting. The airborne confusion, the confused few show more, um,
1:58:59
confuse food poisoning with highly contagious stomach bugs like norovirus. Uh,
1:59:04
where the viruses are not airborne, they're highly contagious, can
1:59:07
spread through the air in tiny droplets. When someone vomits,
1:59:10
there it is leading to contaminated surfaces or breathing in
1:59:14
aerosolized particles. So that's what it is. It's the coughs.
1:59:19
Speaker 5: Yeah.
1:59:21
Speaker 2: Um, okay. I think we covered it. You think?
1:59:24
Speaker 5: Yeah.
1:59:25
Speaker 3: I think, I think we, uh, I think you're going
1:59:27
to get a lot of, uh, Interesting response.
1:59:30
Speaker 2: Guess what? I don't read them. So good luck to
1:59:32
all those haters shouting into the void. I've long suspected
1:59:38
that sun exposure is probably good for you. And then
1:59:41
it's really just a matter of like how much and
1:59:44
mitigating the damage that you could get if you get burnt.
1:59:47
Speaker 3: Turns out you're right.
1:59:48
Speaker 2: Yeah. It just doesn't make sense that your body produces
1:59:53
vitamin D through it. It makes you feel so good,
1:59:55
and yet somehow or another it's bad. I think it's
1:59:57
like many things, very nuanced. And so I'm really happy
2:00:01
that you did so much work on it. Thanks. And
2:00:03
I'm happy you rode the storm too.
2:00:05
Speaker 3: Well, the storm's just coming.
2:00:07
Speaker 2: I'm sure, especially after this show. But thank you very much.
2:00:10
And tell everybody where your book is and how they
2:00:12
can get it.
2:00:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, so whatever their favorite online place, In Defense of Sunlight, Amazon,
2:00:19
anywhere else.
2:00:20
Speaker 2: And did you do an audio version of it?
2:00:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, they let me read it.
2:00:23
Speaker 2: Yes.
2:00:23
Speaker 3: We'll see if that was good news or not.
2:00:24
Speaker 5: Nice.
2:00:25
Speaker 2: I love it when someone reads their own book. It's
2:00:27
very important, I think.
2:00:28
Speaker 3: Me too, yeah.
2:00:29
Speaker 2: All right. Well, thank you very much.
2:00:30
Speaker 3: Thank you.
2:00:31
Speaker 2: Bye, everybody.