#2516 - Rowan Jacobsen

Rowan Jacobsen is an award-winning science and nature writer. His new book, “In Defense of Sunlight: The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure,” is available now.www.simonandschuster.com/books/In-Defense-of-Sunlight/Rowan-Jacobsen/9781668092163www.rowanjacobsen.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Visit https://ketone.com/Rogan for 30% OFF, or find Ketone-IQ at Target nationwide. Go to https://paleovalley.com/rogan for 20% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The Joe Rogan Experience. Training my day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

• 0:12Joe Rogan?

  Yep, all right. Very nice to meet you, man.

• 0:14Speaker 02

  You too. Thanks for having me.

• 0:16Joe Rogan?

  Thank you. And thanks for doing this work because you want to talk about a subject that's confused so many people. Is the sun good for you? Is the sun killing you? Why does it give you vitamin D if it's bad for you? Why do people get skin cancer if it's good for you?

• 0:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's super complicated and the messaging has not sort of admitted that. And that was, yeah, a big impetus for the book.

• 0:37Joe Rogan?

  What was your opinion of sun exposure before you started writing this?

• 0:42Speaker 02

  So I had inherited the conventional wisdom from the institutions that it was really bad. At the same time, I will admit that my instincts were that maybe it wasn't as bad as they were leading me to believe because whenever I was in the sun, I felt good. And I live in Vermont. By the time winter was reaching like month six, I felt bad, right?

• 1:07Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  So I was like, there's more here than we're being told.

• 1:10Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that was my wife's opinion. She's like, the sun can't be bad. It always feels good when you go out there. I'm like, oh, no. It's a little more complicated than that, but that is the instinct. Like, it feels great when you're in the sun. Like, ah, it's like your body wants it.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Your body wants it. I mean, we now know that it literally triggers the release of opiates in the brain, sunlight. So, yeah, your body wants it and your body rewards you when you get it.

• 1:34Joe Rogan?

  So what is the issue? Well, let's go back to the beginning. So you had this idea that sun exposure is probably giving people cancer and sunscreen is good. You need to wear sunscreen, stay out of the sun. So when you started going into the research, what made you shift your opinion?

• 1:51Speaker 02

  So it really started for me like seven or eight years ago. I was on this like science journalism fellowship. So I was just doing research and some of those studies hit. The one about opiate release in the brain and other studies showing that when light hits skin... Cognition actually improves, like your metabolism cranks up a little bit when the body feels sunlight coming in. And I thought, that's interesting. That's all good stuff. Then I came across a couple of other studies that seem to indicate that sunlight could lower blood pressure, which was really interesting. So then, you know, I still had the sense, sunlight, bad, right?

• 2:31Speaker 02

  So then I remember just Googling, like, so how much does sunlight shorten your lifespan? And like, the punchline is, sunlight seems to extend your lifespan. So when I hit that, I was like, why are we not hearing this? So that was the beginning.

• 2:46Joe Rogan?

  And so then, so what is the problem? Like, what is the issue with sunlight? Like, when you think about skin cancer, what are the confounding factors that lead to skin cancer? Are we completely aware of that?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  It's more complicated than we thought. So sunlight does increase your risk of skin cancer. But depending on the type of skin cancer you're talking about, it's not necessarily like a linear relationship. So, yes, in general, too much sun increases your risk of skin cancer. But, yeah, the question is, what are the confounding factors? How important is skin cancer compared to these other things? If sunlight reduces your risk of other diseases, how does that weigh against the risk of skin cancer? So, it's not the type of thing that can, you know, be done in a 30-second PSA.

• 3:36Joe Rogan?

  Right. So, so sun cancer that does cause skin cancer, excuse me, sun exposure that does cause skin cancer, what is causing it? Why is it happening?

• 3:48Speaker 02

  So, ultraviolet light, which is the most energy-intensive part of the solar spectrum, when those photons of light hit your skin, they go inside, right? We absorb all wavelengths of light to a greater, lesser degree. And that's super high-energy ultraviolet light. If it hits a DNA molecule, it can mess up the DNA molecule. And then that can lead to mutations and skin cancer. Then it can also indirectly cause skin cancer by creating what are called reactive oxygen species, which are free radicals, basically. So it energizes these atoms that start to steal electrons from other atoms and causes a little chain reaction, which is what a free radical is.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  So ultraviolet light can increase your free radicals, and it can directly damage DNA. So that's why it can cause skin cancer. So it was basically that, learning that one fact back in like the 40s and 50s, that made scientists start to say, uh-oh, light skin cancer, maybe we should think about how much sun we're getting.

• 4:54Joe Rogan?

  But this wasn't universally accepted, right? There were some people that, even back then, thought that sun exposure was very healthy for you. Like, when did we figure out that sun causes the body to produce vitamin D?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was an important part, and it's a big part of the story, I think, because that was really back in the 20s that we figured that out. And then even a little earlier, we realized that sunlight could prevent rickets.

• 5:18Joe Rogan?

  Rickets?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so rickets is a, like, soft-bone disease. Like, if you don't get enough calcium in your bones when you're a kid, when you're a baby, you get soft bones, you get rickets. Really bad disease. And it was in the industrial revolution, kids started getting rickets. Farm kids never got rickets. Then suddenly, kids are working in factories, they're living in cities that are choked with coal smog, they're living in tenement buildings, they're never seeing the sun, and they all start getting rickets. Late 1800s.

• 5:51Joe Rogan?

  Was nutrition a factor in that?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Vitamin D. It was all vitamin D.

• 5:55Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  At first, they thought maybe it was vitamin A, but it turned out that was how vitamin D was discovered, was some doctors figured out that it could solve rickets in kids. And then they figured out that if sun hits skin, that's how we made vitamin D. Then they figured out-

• 6:13Joe Rogan?

  How did they figure that out?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  They tested, they did some tests on-

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Dogs. Actually, one of the guys figured it out. He had a hunch that that's what it was. They noticed that kids in the country wouldn't get rickets and kids in the city did get rickets. So like, I wonder if it's sunlight. So then a guy took dogs, and this is, I think, Scotland, stuck them in a... They actually thought it was dietary. He stuck them inside in this little warehouse and fed them oatmeal, which is what everyone in Scotland ate at the time. And the dogs got rickets. And he thought it was the oatmeal. He's like, OK, so something about diet. But then he got lucky because he had deprived the dogs of sunlight. And that's why they got rickets.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  So then eventually, they realized that light hitting cholesterol molecules in the skin actually converts the molecules to vitamin D. So vitamin D is like downstream of cholesterol. But it takes that same ultraviolet light that can screw up your DNA. It actually breaks a bond in the cholesterol molecule, which allows it to... It gives it some movement and it flips around into a new form that's vitamin D. So once they figured that out, then they're like, sun's really good for you. So we had this era in like the 20s, 30s, and into the 40s, when everyone thought sun would cure everything. And they went after it hard. Really? Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Like, parents would send their kids up into the Alps in like the 20s to institutes for heliotherapy. Kids would ski around in their underwear, take classes in their underwear. There's awesome photos from this era. Like, the instructors are in their underwear, in the mountains, outside in Switzerland, teaching the kids. And everyone looks really healthy, right? So there's kind of like this idea that you couldn't get too much light. So people are literally burning themselves on purpose for health.

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• 11:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so to give it away, now it looks like for melanoma, which is the most dangerous type of skin cancer, it's associated with burning strongly, but not with like gentle, moderate, everyday sun exposure.

• 11:21Joe Rogan?

  So how much of a factor is skin type? Like people that are pale or have freckles and red hair, blonde hair? Like how much of a factor is that in skin cancer? And can they mitigate that by like gentle, slow exposure? Like a little bit here, a little bit there, and slowly build up?

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, huge. Like, skin type is kind of everything. People who have really dark skin basically don't get sun-induced skin cancer, almost never. And the, you know, the authorities don't tend to talk about that because they want things to be, they want to have like these one-size-fits-all recommendations. But those recommendations to basically always avoid the sun are written for the super fair people, especially if you have red hair, orange freckles. Then you actually have a mutation in your melanin gene that makes you super susceptible to skin cancer from sunlight. So if you've got, if you've got that phenotype, lots of moles, red hair, freckles, you do have to be really careful.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  And you can't, you can only do so much. Like, you're not going to tan that much anyway. Your melanin's just different. Everybody else... Yeah, you're much less susceptible and you can tan, you know, you can make more melanin pretty easily through tanning.

• 12:44Joe Rogan?

  I wonder what, if any, effect, have you ever heard of that, I can't remember the name of the peptide, but there's a peptide that people are taking now that causes their body to generate melanin and they get really dark.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:01Joe Rogan?

  It's really weird.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I don't know what's going on there exactly. It seems like that peptide is maybe making you, there's things called photosensitizers that make your skin super sense, like you just absorb solar radiation really well then, but not necessarily in a good way. And that can make you make tons of melanin to try to compensate. So I wondered, that peptide might be triggering like melanin as a compensation mechanism for extra protection from sunlight, or maybe it's just making melanin happen like independently of sunlight.

• 13:37Joe Rogan?

  Did you put it into perplexity? All right, here it is. Melanotan, melanotan? Melanotan? Synthetic peptide analog of the naturally occurring hormone, a melanocyte stimulating hormone stimulates the body's melanocytes to produce melanin resulting in a dark tan. It's largely unregulated, illegal in many regions for cosmetic purposes and carries significant health risks. All right, what's the risks? It's not approved by the FDA for cosmetic use. An unregulated market means purity, okay, but that's unregulated.

• 14:17Joe Rogan?

  Notable risks include dermatological issues, rapid and uneven darkening of existing moles, the emergence of new moles and hyperpigmentation, concerns that could mask or accelerate the development of melanoma. What is this? Potentially damaging erections. What?

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Why the erections?

• 14:36Joe Rogan?

  Oh, that's right. This apparently gives people raging erections.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Why?

• 14:40Joe Rogan?

  Prolonged, painful and potentially damaging erections. Damaging. Imagine you get an erection that goes so hard you redline the penis?

• 14:51Joe Rogan?

  Medical and dermatological organizations strongly advise against the use of melaniton, melanitane, because it's unapproved, there are no clinically established safe dosages.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Well, weird, because that, so Alpha MSH, the thing that it is mimicking is, is that's how your body makes melanin, that's how your body's supposed to do it.

• 15:14Joe Rogan?

  You gotta see the before and afters, because they're kinda bonkers. I've seen some people get super, well, the problem is it's Instagram, you never know what's real. That's, that guy got a little tan. Let's see if there's any, okay, look how pale that, see, but that's not, how do we know if that's real?

• 15:30Speaker 04

  Just like, there's like a light on him.

• 15:32Joe Rogan?

  Right. And then he's in a fucking dark closet in the last picture.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  These are the best before and after photos I've seen.

• 15:38Joe Rogan?

  Is there, that one right there, the low, the, no, the one, yeah, that one. Look at that guy.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's a look, it's an interesting look.

• 15:47Joe Rogan?

  He injected himself with unregulated tanning peptide melanitane, melanitane 2. Click on that.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Seems like a joke a little bit.

• 15:56Joe Rogan?

  No, no, this guy, this is the guy that I saw online. This guy's, he's the test rabbit. This dude went hard.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Did he get an erection too?

• 16:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he died from that. I don't know. So, his before and afters, so let's see what his, he just, okay.

• 16:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he just got darker and darker and darker. But I wonder if like, if, I understand that it's unregulated, but if it was regulated, and this is something they're trying to work with right now with peptides and make them reg, see, that's, the photo's dark, though. I mean, that's like a shitty iPhone 1 camera.

• 16:37Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy. If that's, like, this is nuts. There's something going on there. Like, you know what it looks like? It looks like those bodybuilder guys who use that, that, that ink, that dye on their skin to make themselves darker so their muscles pop out more. So here's, here's better, tanning log photos, these are better photos. That's crazy. But I wonder if that offers skin protection?

• 17:01Speaker 02

  It would definitely offer skin, I mean, if it is, if it's melanin.

• 17:05Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  It's definitely, I mean, that guy can, can probably be outside all day.

• 17:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, so that's the question. Is that available to someone who's pale? Like, and if someone is pale... See if you could find an example of someone who's pale who took it. Because you would think like, oh, well, maybe that, maybe just we need to do studies and figure out what the dosage is and figure out how to activate that aspect of it.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Melanin clearly protects you from, from skin cancer. Like, if you, if you have super dark skin, like, you know, African ancestry, year blocking, like, your melanin is absorbing like 97, 98% of the UV rays. It's super effective.

• 17:46Joe Rogan?

  But didn't Bob Marley die from skin cancer?

• 17:49Speaker 02

  He did.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  That's pretty crazy.

• 17:51Joe Rogan?

  Okay, this is one. Wow.

• 17:54Speaker 04

  It looks like the same person. Hard to tell without the face.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Same mold.

• 17:58Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it looks like the same mold. That looks pretty good.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  But I would just also, wouldn't, if you were trying to sell some of this stuff in maybe nefarious ways, this would be an easy one to market.

• 18:11Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  Tough and, you know.

• 18:14Joe Rogan?

  Definitely. Look, this is part of the unregulated market problem, is we don't know. And also, you know, you're getting 99% bro-science on this stuff. You know, like.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  What screams bro-science?

• 18:28Joe Rogan?

  Screams it from the top of the hills. What legitimate scientist is out there injecting himself with melanin?

• 18:36Speaker 02

  But the other thing is, if you do it naturally, right? If you just get a little sun every day and slowly build up, you're not just making melanin, you're also increasing your body's damage repair system. Like, you have all these, like, nucleotide excision repair, things that fix your DNA and fix cells that have gotten screwed up. And that will also ramp up every day you, and it's not just, not just sunlight, like, exercise, same thing, like, anything that, that like stresses the body a little bit, it's like hormesis, right? So, all those things are going to cause your damage repair system to crank up and be ready, so. You could probably want those to, like, the melanin and the damage repair to, like, go up together.

• 19:19Joe Rogan?

  Right. So you would wanna, if, if, let's say, studies were done, let's say, we found what the effective and safe dose is and how to administer it. You would wanna do it along with sun exposure slowly to try to ramp up your body's ability.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  Added note on this, uh, this happened 14 years ago.

• 19:38Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  Which is strange. Here's some of the side effects, he said, but he also said he's pretty much impervious to UV at this point.

• 19:44Joe Rogan?

  Increased libido. Didn't see that one much either. He said he didn't get it. Okay, sides are decreased appetite, very mild nausea, more for some, none for me, decreased libido, increased libido. He said, didn't see that one much either. Some get facial flushing, like a niacin dose, never got that either. And the most strange thing is that it feels really good to stretch, like, when you first wake up. Interesting. Huh.

• 20:12Joe Rogan?

  Um, did you do it for skin coloring? Yes, I did it for skin coloring. I'm pretty much impervious to UV at this point. I have faded about 25% since returning from Florida, January 35th. Will be dosing again probably in March. Is this guy still alive?

• 20:26Speaker 02

  That's my question.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  14 years, what is that, 20?

• 20:29Joe Rogan?

  Click on that link where his, his profile.

• 20:33Joe Rogan?

  Let's see if the homeboy's alive.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  See where this takes us.

• 20:35Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  If he's not.

• 20:37Joe Rogan?

  Is this Reddit?

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Uh, let's see, a year ago, he's commenting, "I never did it subtle."

• 20:42Joe Rogan?

  Okay, so a year ago, he's still alive, or someone has taken over his account.

• 20:48Joe Rogan?

  "In theory, you could use an old-school quartz tanning lamp." Okay, so you could tan with it.

• 20:53Speaker 04

  And he's in a weird Reddit there, so we're gonna stop looking.

• 20:56Joe Rogan?

  Why?

• 20:56Speaker 04

  I don't, I mean, this is not for the show, but he's in a weird...

• 21:00Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  That's why I was afraid to go that way.

• 21:03Joe Rogan?

  That's a problem. Well, only crazy people are willing to try something like that. Like, do you remember that there was a guy, god, I think it was on Oprah or one of those shows? Where he was, uh, taking, was it silver?

• 21:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:18Joe Rogan?

  That's right, colloidal silver. And his whole, his skin turned blue permanently.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:23Joe Rogan?

  Like a Smurf.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:25Joe Rogan?

  Poor guy.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:26Joe Rogan?

  And he wound up dying. Yeah.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  What, and how did it kill him?

• 21:30Joe Rogan?

  I don't know if it killed him, but he's, I believe he died young. That's homeboy. Not good. Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  That's just not a good look.

• 21:38Joe Rogan?

  You would think you'd start tearing it a little blue and you'd go, hey, maybe I need to back off this colloidal silver.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Papa Smurf dies.

• 21:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. I mean, what the fuck, dude? That guy, I mean, maybe he could have gotten some lanotan and evened that out. It'd just been a nice chocolate. You know, like a bluish chocolate.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  I mean, he looks delicious, I'll say that.

• 22:02Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, this is argria? Ar- argiria? Argiria, the rare disease that turns people blue. Caused by a buildup of silver in the body which discolors the skin. Wow. 2013. He died from unrelated causes. Whatever that means. I mean, anybody's taken that much colloidal silver, you're probably making a lot of other mistakes.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, like...

• 22:28Joe Rogan?

  You're a risky dude.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  He has so many options.

• 22:33Joe Rogan?

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• 23:46Speaker 02

  Um, back to Bob Marley.

• 23:47Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  He did die of skin cancer and that confuses a lot of people. So, he had melanoma on his toe.

• 23:53Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  So, and that was a kind of melanoma that's not caused by the sun. And everybody gets it, no matter, you know, what race you are, everybody gets it at the same rate, which is quite uncommon. They know it's not caused by the sun, but it complicates things for people. Because people are like, "I got melanoma on my toe?" And they think it's from the sun. And they're like, "How did that happen?", right? Uh, like, "What's melanoma doing down there?" But, so, it does, not all melanomas are caused by the sun. There's, um, you know, most probably are, but it gets really weird with melanoma.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  It's associated with burning, with like intermittent sun exposure. Like, you work in an office all year and then you go to Cancun and get fried. That's a pretty good recipe for melanoma. History of sunburns also will double your risk. Chronic exposure, where you have an outdoor job every day, lower than average risk of melanoma.

• 24:58Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it gets weird.

• 24:59Joe Rogan?

  Like landscapers or something.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Landscapers have, outdoor workers have fewer, have a lower incidence of melanoma than office workers.

• 25:09Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  And we don't hear that.

• 25:11Joe Rogan?

  No, no. I mean, I was, I was looking at Instagram the other day and some poor guy had this, I don't know what happened to his face, but he had some sort of skin cancer. And they had to take a graft and his, it was on his nose. So, it was like a flap of skin was like almost covering over his eye. And, you know, his message was, "Wear sunscreen."

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:35Joe Rogan?

  This is what happened to me.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Well, so, I mean, yeah, so I don't want to downplay skin cancer because it sucks when you get it. If it's, you know, they have to cut off a hunk of your ear or something, that definitely sucks. Even if it's not life-threatening, sucks.

• 25:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  But, and so, yeah, like, but that's generally from overexposure, like.

• 25:53Joe Rogan?

  Burning.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Burning. All the experts I've spoken with said, "Don't burn."

• 25:57Joe Rogan?

  Right. Burning is the one that, people always say that it's not just burning, it's, burning causes damage that starts to appear years later.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there's, there's dialing in on that more and more. It can start, like, burns during childhood is actually the highest association from melanoma.

• 26:15Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 26:16Speaker 02

  So, "Don't burn when you're a kid, so we're all screwed."

• 26:17Joe Rogan?

  Oh, that sucks. That sucks, because I fucking cooked myself as a kid.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Same here. I grew up in Florida, fried, you know?

• 26:24Joe Rogan?

  Well, when I was a kid in the seventies and eighties, you know, you wanted to get a tan, especially when I lived in Boston, it was cold as shit in the winter. When it got warm, you know, you're a Vermont guy, you got out there, you're like, "Ah, put baby oil on, we're fried."

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Totally. I was just looking at some of those Johnson baby oil ads from like the sixties and seventies. Oh, my god, yeah.

• 26:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it was basically cooking lube, who's.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 26:48Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it just helped, helped you cook better.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  But you remember, you know, George Hamilton, like, the actor?

• 26:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Mr. Tan, he was like, he was all about that. I, just the other day, I was like, "How's he doing? Eighty-seven and ridiculously healthy right now."

• 27:02Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's going strong.

• 27:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I met that guy. He was, he did an episode of News Radio once. Yeah, he was tan as fuck. Yeah, that, that was his thing.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  That was his thing. It became, yeah, what he was known for. And still, he's still going.

• 27:15Joe Rogan?

  So, he's still tan?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, you should see him. He looks great.

• 27:17Joe Rogan?

  What does he look like? Pull a photo of George Hamilton.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  I mean, great for an eighty-seven-year-old.

• 27:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Look at him, still tan. How does he?

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Tan and shiny.

• 27:26Joe Rogan?

  What a weird thing to be known for. He's the guy who gets tan. You know what I'm saying? I mean, try to remember a role that he played.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  That's true. I think he was Dracula in some bad nineteen-seventies, like, comedy. Look at that, that's a tan right there.

• 27:43Joe Rogan?

  Right, so how was he getting it, though? Like, I remember when I was a kid in Boston, a lot of people used tanning beds, especially in the wintertime.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  And they still do. Like, those are actually, like, on the rise. And they do, they seem to raise your risk of melanoma for sure. There you go, that's how he did it.

• 27:59Joe Rogan?

  Ah, look, he's got a reflecta tan thing. So, he was just out there getting sunlight all the time. And he didn't look bad. That's, you know, that's a, that's a weird one, right?

• 28:12Speaker 02

  He claims he's never had skin cancer, I think.

• 28:14Joe Rogan?

  Well, he probably was doing it so often that his body was prepared for it, right? Look at that photo of him with that lady in the corner. Yeah, look at that. That's nuts.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  See, that's the thing. I think, like, if you're getting that regular dosage, your body is producing all of these compounds whose entire job is to make sure your cells don't turn cancerous. Because, you know, living things have been working on this for 500 million years. Like, they've been getting hammered by the sun every day, and they gotta deal with it.

• 28:49Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  So it's when, it seems like when your skin is totally unprepared and you shock it with, like, a massive dose that it's not ready for, then you're in trouble. Like, that's the kind of thing that triggers trouble.

• 29:05Joe Rogan?

  Was there any pushback on this research? Like, when you first started examining this and realizing that sun exposure has a lot of benefits, were any dermatologists saying, "Hey, this is dangerous information. You shouldn't say this"?

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah. You know, I've been denounced multiple times by the American Academy of Dermatology. Like, officially. They send an official letter when I write an article, and they say, "Nobody should be getting any sun exposure."

• 29:32Joe Rogan?

  That's their opinion? No one should be getting any sun exposure, regardless of the benefits, the vitamin D, the...

• 29:38Speaker 02

  No sun exposure without protection from either sunscreen or, you know, clothing.

• 29:44Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  And if that makes you vitamin D deficient, take a pill. So that's what, that's what needs to change. Because those pills haven't panned out in tests. They don't work like natural D does, for whatever reason.

• 29:55Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, they don't work at all.

• 29:57Joe Rogan?

  What do you mean?

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Everyone thought, like, back in the like, the 80s, 90s, everyone started noticing, scientists started noticing that people who naturally had lower amounts of vitamin D in their blood had higher rates of all, like, the classic chronic diseases. So they started thinking, okay, vitamin D, it's like a magic pill, almost. It'll cure, it'll reduce everyone's risk of all these diseases if we raise their rates of D. So they started recommending vitamin D pills, which I think are still like, the number one supplement in the world.

• 30:30Joe Rogan?

  I take it.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  So then, they did all these clinical trials to prove that it would help. Huge, huge clinical trials, tens of thousands of people, follow-ups that went on, went for many years. None of them showed a benefit.

• 30:44Joe Rogan?

  No benefit in terms of your immune response?

• 30:47Speaker 02

  No benefit for any condition.

• 30:49Joe Rogan?

  Now, did they take vitamin D along with vitamin K2 and with magnesium? Because that's what's recommended.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  So I don't, I mean, there were a bunch of different...

• 30:59Joe Rogan?

  Apparently, vitamin D by itself is not effective, that you need vitamin D with K2 and magnesium. And I think there might be another one. Well, see, put that into perplexity, please. See what it says, like, what are the benefits of vitamin D and what should it be taken with? Because I think magnesium and K2 are the big ones. And that, together, they have a sort of a synergistic effect.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, that could be, like, yeah, I'd be curious.

• 31:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I think vitamin D by itself, the body has a problem absorbing it. It's like, there's a lot of things like that. Like zinc is like that, you need an ionophore to absorb zinc, so you take it with quercetin.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, one thing, like, D, you know, the way you, it naturally comes in through the skin, and it comes in with a whole bunch of related compounds.

• 31:44Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, I do think there's sort of a synergistic effect when it's combined with the right things.

• 31:49Joe Rogan?

  But D from the sun has always been known as the best way to get it.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 31:53Joe Rogan?

  The best way to get vitamin D, the most effective, the healthiest way, is through sun exposure.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, that's, that's how the design's supposed to work.

• 32:00Joe Rogan?

  Perplexity says vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, build strong bones and teeth, support muscles and nerves, plays a key role in immune function. It's best absorbed when taken with a meal or a snack that contains some fat, and offered paired with calcium for bone health.

• 32:13Joe Rogan?

  Um, what, so, please put in, what are the benefits of vitamin D taken with K2 and magnesium? See if it says that. Cause this is what my doctor, who is a vitamin specialist, recommends. Benefits when taken with K2 and magnesium.

• 32:39Joe Rogan?

  Dun dun dun, okay. Taking vitamin D together with vitamin K2 and magnesium can make each of them work more effectively, especially for bones and heart, as long as the doses are appropriate for you. The trio mainly improves how your body handles calcium. Interesting. D helps you absorb it, magnesium helps activate D, and K2 helps send calcium into bones instead of arteries. D increases calcium absorption from your gut and supports bone, muscle, and immune function. Magnesium required to activate vitamin D, low magnesium can blunt vitamin D's effect, and also directly support bone structure and many enzymes. K2 activates proteins that move calcium into bones and teeth,

• 33:23Joe Rogan?

  and keep it out of the arteries and soft tissues, helping bone and cardiovascular health. Potential benefits of the combo, better bone support, heart and artery protection, more efficient vitamin D use. Okay, so, the doctor is correct. So maybe that's the problem, that these people were taking it with low magnesium, low calcium, didn't have K2.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd be curious if, like, if there was an effect on disease incidence for that combination.

• 33:58Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  I don't know, cause the D on its own, yeah, didn't show any, any effect, but sun exposure.

• 34:04Joe Rogan?

  Let's put that in, does vitamin D taken on its own have any health benefits?

• 34:11Joe Rogan?

  Let's see what it says to that. Because I'd never heard that, that D on its own was not effective at all. I've just heard that it was minimally effective, that you had to take it with other.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  It seems like it only helps people who are really deficient. Like, if you're super low, like below like 16 nanograms per milliliter, then probably it's a good idea. But like for people who already had like at least 20 nanograms per milliliter, it didn't seem to have any of these benefits that they were seeing in people who naturally had high rates through sun exposure.

• 34:42Joe Rogan?

  It says, yes, vitamin D on its own has several well-proven health benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and immunity.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Just like a general answer.

• 34:49Joe Rogan?

  Huh. Bone strength and fracture prevention, muscle function, adequate.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  I didn't add own, sorry.

• 34:56Joe Rogan?

  What's that?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  I didn't, I missed the word own, taken on.

• 34:59Joe Rogan?

  On its own.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  I'll try, why the answer was weird.

• 35:03Joe Rogan?

  So let's see. Yes, it has clear proven benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and correcting deficiency.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's going to be for people who have super low levels.

• 35:13Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm. Preventing rickets, there it is.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but so they had thought that it might reduce incidence of all these other diseases based on what they're seeing for people who naturally had high levels through sun exposure, and it didn't.

• 35:28Joe Rogan?

  Wait a minute, people who had high levels through sun exposure?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so your natural level of vitamin D is sort of a direct like meter of how much.

• 35:37Joe Rogan?

  Right, but this is a natural level, you're not talking about supplementation.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Right, right. So that was why, like, people who had high levels of D without supplementation have lower rates of all, like every disease you can think of. So the hope was that raising everyone's D to those levels would have the same effect, and it didn't. Like, New England Journal of Medicine did a, actually did an editorial in 2022 saying, "Stop prescribing D, it doesn't work."

• 36:05Joe Rogan?

  God, that seems incorrect, though. Because if you're taking it with magnesium and K2, it seems that they do work synergistically, and there seems to be proven health benefits. That one of the problems, I think, is like, I think people generally want to avoid recommending supplementation for some reason.

• 36:29Joe Rogan?

  It's kind of a weird thing, like, they want to dismiss it. Like, I had a doctor once that told me, "Don't bother taking vitamins. Just eat a balanced diet." And I was like, "Look at you." Guy looked like shit.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  He didn't look as good as you, right?

• 36:43Joe Rogan?

  He looked terrible.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Doctors, yeah, I'm amazed how poor, what, poor health, they generally, like, seem to be displaying.

• 36:50Joe Rogan?

  I can't take it, I mean, it's so hard to take seriously a guy with a gut when, well, he just, he looked terrible.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:57Joe Rogan?

  And he was telling me that I just need a healthy diet. And I'm like, "Okay, I do have a healthy diet." But also, I feel different when I take vitamins, and my blood work reflects that.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I noticed that when I was, I started going to all the conferences of the sun researchers, and they're all in, like, the basements of hotels, and those guys all are as pacey as it gets. Like, do none of you guys, like, you know, practice what you preach, really?

• 37:22Joe Rogan?

  How strange is it that human beings with all of our knowledge, with, I mean, obviously, there's much more to learn, we're still confused about how we interact with our environment?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, 100%.

• 37:36Joe Rogan?

  With sun, which seems to be like, it's there, it's everywhere. It's like, you're always in the sun in normal, in the normal world environment, where humans, outside of cities and all that stuff. That's, it seems like we would have an understanding of what happens when you're interacting with sun.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and light, period, like, light of all kinds. Like, it seems like there's this sense in biology that light didn't matter. It's like, just ephemeral, which, you know, the quantum physicist 100 years ago understood that light and matter are just like two halves of the same coin, right? And that light totally affects the behavior of molecules. We're made of molecules, light's gonna matter. So I actually think, like, that's where I eventually got to with the book. I was like, "We need to think about our light diets and our, like, lightscapes that we're, you know, surrounding ourselves with, like, more seriously than we have."

• 38:26Joe Rogan?

  Well, it seems like your work is based entirely on the data. So what did these dermatologists have to say about the data? If they're denouncing you, and they're saying that, you know, this guy should not be listened to, the things you're saying are dangerous, like, but you're talking about data. So I don't understand how they can just make those flat statements like that. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. And with World Mental Health Day on the 10th, now's the perfect time to give it a try.

• 39:07Joe Rogan?

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• 39:50Joe Rogan?

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• 40:33Joe Rogan?

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• 41:05Speaker 02

  Right. And I think we just need to have a conversation about the data and there's no right answer ahead of time. But their job is to prevent skin cancer. So if that's your only job... You're gonna tell people, stay out of sunlight.

• 41:19Joe Rogan?

  Forever.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Forever, right? And no one can call you on that. No one can say, hey, like, I got skin cancer, it's your fault.

• 41:26Joe Rogan?

  Right, but doesn't sun exposure improve cardiovascular health and lower blood pressure? And isn't cardiovascular disease a far more dangerous problem than skin cancer in terms of numbers?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  It's number one, 20 million deaths a year, cardio. So, anything that moves the needle on that is awesome, you know?

• 41:46Joe Rogan?

  And it does.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  And it seems to, like, all the studies show it does. And they're, but they're all observational studies, right? You look at populations, you're like, oh, these people have more sun exposure, lower blood pressure, lower rates of cardiovascular disease. But then, you know, the other side will say, you know, correlation does not prove causation. Like, prove, show us that it's, you know, do, do your giant clinical study where you stick half the people in the sunlight and they live longer, which is not gonna happen.

• 42:14Joe Rogan?

  Right, yeah, but it's like, are they willing to have a conversation with you?

• 42:20Speaker 02

  They're not, they're not willing to, they don't wanna look outside of the sun and skin cancer question. Like, they're not willing to entertain any of the other benefits that are outside of their field. So, there's gotta be somebody out there who can be the generalist, who can, like, think about it holistically.

• 42:39Joe Rogan?

  That seems so ignorant.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  It's the, it's the state of science now? Like, the science is, you know, like, a field of micro-specialties?

• 42:49Joe Rogan?

  Would you like some coffee?

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll take a little, that looks good when you're pouring it. It's also a very shiny press.

• 42:56Joe Rogan?

  Oh yeah, press, cheers, sir.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Cheers.

• 43:00Joe Rogan?

  Is coffee good for you?

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Coffee's awesome, coffee is shocking the good for you.

• 43:03Joe Rogan?

  Talk to me, let's go.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  It's, it is fucking crazy how good coffee is for you. I've, I've been, like, startled by the, like, power of the evidence.

• 43:15Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I've read both. I've read it's bad for you, and I dismissed it because I, I'm biased.

• 43:24Joe Rogan?

  And I love coffee. And I just, it just tastes too good, it feels too good, I like it.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  It's um.

• 43:33Joe Rogan?

  But I've had a lot of benefits about it.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  I think it's the best possible supplement.

• 43:37Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 43:37Speaker 02

  You think of it as a supplement, it's the best, and I think it's all due to mitochondrial function. I think it makes your mitochondria just spin, you know?

• 43:47Joe Rogan?

  Hmm. And is it particularly because of caffeine or coffee itself? Is the coffee bean?

• 43:52Speaker 02

  You know, I mean caffeine, I think it's caffeine, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's other stuff in coffee that's contributing, because, you know, like, tea doesn't seem to quite, like, deliver the goods like coffee does.

• 44:03Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  But caffeine is actually, the plants are making it to kill bugs.

• 44:09Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Right? Because it makes the bugs' mitochondria run out of control, and they basically, like, blow up. It does that to us, but we have these other, like, governors, like, that come in and slow down that ramp up, so we get the nice ramp up without the explosion, so it's good. So it makes, you know, we produce energy more efficiently with less wear and tear.

• 44:33Joe Rogan?

  That's all I need to hear. I'm in. I just love coffee, I'm not giving it up. But I've heard many people say that, Michael Pollan had a really interesting anecdote. He laid off coffee for, I think, three or four months as an experiment, and then he had a cup of coffee, and he said it was like taking a psychedelic.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:53Joe Rogan?

  He said, "I just felt so amazing, and the effect was so profound." He said, "I really wanted to do it only that way, where I only take it, you know, very rarely, because, but then I fell right back into my old ways."

• 45:04Speaker 02

  He went right back, yeah. Like, I remember that article, it was great, and also he said, "None of the, like, the caffeine researchers touched the stuff." I'm like, "That's not good." But yeah, he went right back to it, and I think he's a proud coffee drinker.

• 45:20Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he is. He went right back to it, but, so, have you had any conversations with these dermatologists that are denouncing you?

• 45:30Speaker 02

  No, but I'd like to, actually, I think.

• 45:31Joe Rogan?

  Are they willing, or have they avoided them?

• 45:35Speaker 02

  They have so far really avoided, like, they just say, you know, "We're not ready to look at any of that research."

• 45:41Joe Rogan?

  God, that's so weird.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  I think it's gonna change. I think, actually.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Like I said, I think light medicine is actually going to become very important in the next 10, 20 years. And dermatologists are kind of positioned to be the leaders on that stuff because skin is the primary interface with light for our bodies. And they should be experts on all this. You know, red light therapy is a big thing now. And dermatologists are doing that, even though the evidence isn't great for that. But I think there's probably something there. But they should, basically, I think they need to be thinking more about all of these different wavelengths of light as healing modalities and how to work them into regular programs.

• 46:27Joe Rogan?

  I've talked about this before, so I apologize to anybody listening, but I've essentially completely stopped my macular degeneration with red light therapy.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Wow, yeah.

• 46:37Joe Rogan?

  Not just stopped it, but reversed it. I don't need reading glasses anymore. I've been using a red light bed for about two years now. And from the time I started using it, within about a month, I started seeing benefits. And so Gary Brekko was on the podcast and he explained it to me. And so I went out and bought one of these really expensive, it's like a tanning bed, this thing you lie in. And I do it three times a week for 20 minutes.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  So all over?

• 47:00Joe Rogan?

  Yep, naked. Just lie down in there. And I keep my eyes open. And I went to a tanning bed once, not a tanning bed, a red light bed once at a health clinic. And they were like, you've got to wear these goggles and make sure you close your eyes before the light goes on. I was like, OK. I did all that. And apparently, there's some benefit that even when blindfolded, it increases your vision.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And again, I think mitochondria are part of that answer. There's a guy at University College London, Glenn Jeffrey, who, this is his whole field, optometry and red light. And he has shown, in multiple different animals, including humans, that red light improves mitochondrial function and improves vision.

• 47:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm fifty-eight, and for me to be fifty-six and saying, "I'm fucked." I had these fucking things everywhere. I had these, all of these reading glasses. I had them all over my house. I'd gotten up to three X. These are the cheap Amazon ones. I had a nice pair, but I'd keep losing them, so I just went and bought cheap ones. They seemed to work. And it was just fine for looking at a computer, you know, reading my emails, reading my phone. And I needed them to read my phone. I don't need them anymore, like, at all. I don't use them anymore. My vision's not perfect. It's not as good as it was when I was twenty, but it's way better than it was when I was fifty-six.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  And, yeah, I think, so, the mitochondria of the eyes have to fire faster than any mitochondria anywhere else in the body. The eyes burn through energy like no other cells, because it's like, you know, it's kind of the toughest task. It's like, they gotta go super fast. So, they, yeah, those mitochondria need to be on top of their game, and it seems like red light benefits that in particular.

• 48:50Joe Rogan?

  It seems so close-minded that these dermatologists aren't willing to say, "Maybe we're looking at just insufficient amount of data. Maybe we're looking at this wrong. Maybe the whole thing is much more nuanced, and maybe there's benefits if it's done correctly." I just don't understand why they're not, if there's all this data, which clearly you show in your book, that there's a tremendous amount of data, why?

• 49:15Speaker 02

  You know, like, so, there's this, like, saying attributed to Max Planck, who's this, like, quantum physicist, "Science advances one funeral at a time," right? I think we gotta let the old guard, like, die off a little bit, but I guarantee there's a young generation coming in who's gonna be really interested in light and how they can use it.

• 49:35Joe Rogan?

  Oh, certainly. Well, I think there's so many conversations available online now from actual researchers and people that have put in the time and put in the work and explored things from this position that, like, "Hey, maybe the old guard are not correct." And the data seems to show that that's true.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's fun. I mean, playing with light, it's super fun. So, like, this is a way you can, like, make your world a little bit richer, is starting to think about this stuff.

• 50:02Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's also, like, don't you want to be informed? And if there's, we do understand that it has an effect on mitochondria, and there is all this evidence that red light seems to have some benefits, like... Wouldn't, I just don't understand how someone could be an expert in skin and ignore that.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Well, I think that, and they'll be, they won't object to the red, there, some of them are using red light therapy because there's no risk of skin cancer from red. It's only the UV.

• 50:27Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  And maybe a little bit of the blue that contributes to skin cancer. So that, it's the UV where they get a little wigged out.

• 50:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but, but even that, it seems like there's such, like, in your book, you show there's a tremendous amount of data that there's health benefits to it. So I just don't understand.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  And that data, it's coming from all different, other fields, like.

• 50:49Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Immunology, cardiology, so, and like scientists are sort of increasingly like hesitant to trespass on their other, other domains.

• 50:59Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  You know, like they're not going to walk across campus to the, the other building.

• 51:03Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Anymore.

• 51:05Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  But that needs to change, you know?

• 51:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, we've had those discussions too with scientists that are super frustrated, especially when they try to get interdisciplinary groups together to study one particular thing and.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:17Joe Rogan?

  Everyone's resisting because they have their own work that they're working on and they don't want to get involved. And it's like, guys, this is what you're here for. There's not a lot of scientists. You gotta do your job because like you're the only ones that are doing it. There's, without you guys, we're fucked. And if you're out there relying on old insufficient data, or you know, you have this very small data set that shows that there's negative outcomes to sunlight. And so you just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like, you're doing the whole field a massive disservice.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  And the other part of it is that science, it's sort of very self-reinforcing. It's all, it's all grant-based essentially. Like, if you're a scientist, you want to do a study, you have to apply for a grant to get the money to do the study.

• 52:03Joe Rogan?

  Right, right.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  And there's generally a handful of entities that are like handing out the grant money.

• 52:08Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  And it's the old guys waiting to die who are going to approve what they think is the truth. They're, they're going to fund the study that fits with what they already know about the world. So it's this kind of crazy system where the only way you can get money to do a study is if you're already telling them what they know.

• 52:25Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Right, so it's very difficult to get funded to do something that goes against the grain, increasingly so. And that's a problem.

• 52:31Joe Rogan?

  And so much of it is dependent upon the ego of the people there at the top of the organization.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Ego is definitely part of it.

• 52:38Joe Rogan?

  It's a giant part of it because if they've based their entire career on telling you one thing that turns out to be incorrect, they're very reluctant to correct themselves.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's not just a whole, it's very rare to find the individual who's well-known in the field and is eager to self-correct, you know?

• 52:55Joe Rogan?

  So have you had any conversations with any of these dermatologists?

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Uh, no, but I'd love to.

• 53:01Joe Rogan?

  Not one? That seems crazy. Have you reached out to any of them?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  I have. I've reached out and I get the boilerplate. Like, we don't want anyone in the sun, take your D-pills, doesn't matter. Well, and the one that really, that I think has got to change is the skin color question. Because, fine to, you know, go with the recommendations for avoiding sun for people with fair skin, but for people with dark skin, who have almost no risk from sun-induced skin cancer, and can benefit hugely from, like, things that will lower blood pressure and lower cardiovascular disease, like, it seems like you're not being fair to those people.

• 53:44Joe Rogan?

  Not only that, it makes you feel better, which is very important just for sanity.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  I mean, that, I think that gets underplayed. Like, mood and happiness is kind of the whole deal, right?

• 53:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  And there's just no question that sun exposure makes you happier.

• 53:59Joe Rogan?

  I spent a week with my friend Brian Callen and Steve Rinella in Alaska, in Prince Edward's Island, and it rains there like 350 days a year. And we got rained on for the entire week. And then, when I came back to LA, I was driving around and the sun was magnificent. It felt so good. I stood outside, I closed my eyes, I like stretched my arms wide, like I was just taking it all in. And I called my friend Steve up, and I said, "Dude..." Because we were in the rain for like a week, I go, I'm in LA right now in the sun and it feels amazing. I never felt the sun like this before.

• 54:41Joe Rogan?

  It's because like my body was saying, you didn't get enough of this for a week. Now take it in and we're gonna reward you with all these amazing endorphins and good feelings. Like if that was a drug, that drug that I took, like if depressed people could take whatever I felt when I was out in the sun after a week in the rain, they would take it every day. They would change the world. Like I could feel like this all the time and it went away. You know, it went away because LA it's sunny all day long, every day. So eventually I got accustomed to it, but that feeling that I get, that I got after the week in the rain and coming back and just be like, ah, it was incredible. It was like a drug, an amazing drug, a happy drug.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, it's an awesome drug and I, I've felt it for sure, you know, I, especially like early spring. If I leave Vermont and I like have something in LA, I'm just like, like, why is everyone not just dancing on the streets? This feels so good, you know?

• 55:39Joe Rogan?

  But the problem is Los Angeles, they're so used to it.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:42Joe Rogan?

  They're, they're so spoiled. Everyone there is so spoiled weather wise. It's the perfect weather on earth. It's, it's incredible.

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:49Joe Rogan?

  Especially if you live in like Malibu where it barely even gets hot. So you're dealing with that cool ocean breeze and it's sunny every day, you know, like, oh.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, but how about here? Like, do you end up spending a lot of time outside here?

• 56:01Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I do, but I'm outdoors all the time. I work out outside. I do a lot of farmer's carries outside. I, I practice archery, so I shoot my bow outside every day and I love it. I did feel, I feel better, even when it's hot out. I don't mind because I'm really kind of accustomed to it because of sauna use. I use the sauna every day and I'm pretty religious about it. So my body's really acclimated to heat, so it doesn't really bother me that much. I just try, bring a big jug of 64 ounce jug of water with ice and electrolytes and I just drink that while I'm out there. So I'll shoot my bow for an hour and a half, two hours in 105 degrees and I'm fine. I love it.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  I actually love that too, yeah. Like as a kid in Florida, you know, we'd play basketball after school for hours. And or in summer it'd be 105 degrees and then you just kind of turn the hose. You stick that in your mouth for quite a long time, you know?

• 56:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I mean, it feels great. It's just, you have to make sure you're not dehydrated and you have to make sure you don't burn. That's, that's kind of all it is.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 57:06Joe Rogan?

  It's all it seems to be. But we do see, like, truckers that, have you ever seen those?

• 57:12Speaker 02

  You're talking about that famous photo?

• 57:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  That is a crazy photo.

• 57:16Joe Rogan?

  Crazy photo. So, what we're referring to is, there's a photo of this trucker and the left side of his face, from the sun coming in from the window, looks like he's 20 years older on his left side than it is on his right side.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  It's like, it's like, special effects, somebody melted the left side of his face.

• 57:33Joe Rogan?

  What's that all about? Yeah, there's the guy.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  There he is.

• 57:36Joe Rogan?

  That's literally nuts.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:39Joe Rogan?

  That's literally nuts.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Like, left side is just sloping off, basically.

• 57:42Joe Rogan?

  His left side looks like a 100-year-old man, truck driver face. Years behind the wheel, driving a truck. Damage typically limited to the left side of the face. So, it's literally called "truck driver face."

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, now, so, this, that, that photo and that study got used to, like, scare the shit out of a lot of people, trying to keep them out of the sun.

• 58:02Joe Rogan?

  Especially people that are vain and don't want that fucked-up, wrinkly face. This episode is brought to you by Paleo Valley. You guys know I live a super-busy lifestyle, so I need snacks that don't slow me down, and Paleo Valley is the perfect on-the-go snack. That's why I keep a couple beef sticks in my bag. Not just any beef sticks. Paleo Valley 100% grass-fed beef and finished sticks. Because, let me tell you, beef sticks are not all equal. Most on the market use preservatives and additives like encapsulated citric acid and lactic acid to keep them shelf-stable, but not Paleo Valley. They naturally ferment their beef sticks to preserve freshness and flavor without using any chemicals or questionable ingredients.

• 58:46Joe Rogan?

  That natural fermentation even supports a healthy gut. No MSG, no gluten, no sugar, no additives, no junk. Just clean, high-quality beef. These are tender and perfectly seasoned, not dry or tough like most sticks. And they've got five flavors right now. I'm all in for the jalapeno. Go to paleovalley.com/Rogan and use the code ROGEN. That's paleovalley.com/Rogan. Oh, that's crazy. Look at the difference between... Wow, that's literally bananas. What, so what they're showing back and forth is, they're just taking the skin from the left side of the face and switching sides, so you can see how much damage. He's received on that side, the driver's side.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so there's a couple of interesting things there. One, that is shocking, but the question to ask is, why doesn't every trucker look like that, right? Like, if that's the problem, why him? Because I've been driving in a car for 45 years and, you know, my face is...

• 59:47Joe Rogan?

  The same on the left as it is on the right.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Trying to hang it in there. But the other thing is, window glass, I think, is actually a really interesting problem to talk about.

• 59:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Because window glass blocks UVB, but not UVA. And there's two different wavelengths of UV. The UVB is the super-high-energy one. UVA is a little bit lower. It's kind of on the way to blue. And they used to think back in the day that UVB was the only one that caused skin cancer. And those old sunscreens that we used in the 70s, 80s only blocked UVB. Window glass blocks UVB, blocks only part of the UVA. So anytime you're driving or you're hanging out in a window in your house, you're getting a bunch of UVA. You're not going to burn, because UVB is the one that causes burning.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  But you're still going to get a bunch of UVA, which they figured out, like, in the 90s, does cause skin cancer.

• 1:00:44Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  So...

• 1:00:47Joe Rogan?

  So sun through the windows...

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Sun through the windows.

• 1:00:49Joe Rogan?

  Is not as good as sun outside?

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  It blocks the UVB, but the UVA comes through, but you'll never have a burn reaction because of it.

• 1:00:59Joe Rogan?

  But you might be getting damage.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, like, in the US, people get slightly more, slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the left side of their body. In the UK, they get slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the right side of their

• 1:01:14Joe Rogan?

  Uh-huh. Because they're driving the opposite side of the road.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So window glass is...

• 1:01:21Joe Rogan?

  Slightly?

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Slightly. It's like 52, 48. It's not huge.

• 1:01:24Joe Rogan?

  Okay, but it's statistically significant?

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Statistically significant, yeah.

• 1:01:28Joe Rogan?

  Huh. So do you think it's this guy's particular genes?

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  There must be something weird about that guy.

• 1:01:33Joe Rogan?

  Right. Well, how many instances of truck driver face do they have?

• 1:01:37Speaker 04

  I just Googled the condition and it's only him coming up in the photos.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  So this is the thing.

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  There's one lady, but I don't, she clearly doesn't seem to have the same issue.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  There's a lot of truck drivers that have been doing it for 50 years.

• 1:01:49Speaker 04

  That's not the same thing.

• 1:01:50Joe Rogan?

  Oh, that's not real. Is that real?

• 1:01:52Speaker 04

  It's a different thing. She's got something wrong with her jaw.

• 1:01:55Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  But it's coming up as the same condition. Unilateral derma.

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  Dermatite, I can't say.

• 1:02:02Joe Rogan?

  Oh, so she had some sort of cancer that made her way, it's way into her jaw?

• 1:02:05Speaker 04

  But I can't, I would have assumed that more cases would pop up, but it's literally just him.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  So that's the thing. It's the, the real question is, what's up with that dude?

• 1:02:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 1:02:15Speaker 04

  Here's a different truck. That's not the, oh, I don't think that's the same guy.

• 1:02:18Joe Rogan?

  No, it doesn't seem like the same person. But, might be. It's hard to say. Could be different lighting.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  But so, the thing is, if, so those sunscreens that were acting kind of like window glass in the 70s and 80s, and even into the 90s, before we got the broad spectrum sunscreens.

• 1:02:34Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  They're blocking the UVB, so you weren't going to ever burn. And that's what SPF actually measures, is how many more times you can be out in the sun without burning. So if you got, but it's based totally on UVB. So if you've got SPF 30, in theory, you can spend 30 times as long outside before you start to burn. That's a long time, right? But all that time, UVA is just pouring into you. And they now know that UVA is the one that probably is most likely to cause melanoma.

• 1:03:05Joe Rogan?

  Oh, that's crazy. Wow. So, sunscreen. Now, I use a natural sunscreen when I use it at all. It's the stuff that's like beef tallow-based and a zinc in it. It's very white and obvious. You know, it's the, the spray stuff goes unclear. You can't even tell you have it on.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Joe Rogan?

  But it's very effective. But I'm always like, super hesitant. I'm like, what, what's in that stuff that we're going to find out 15, 20 years from now? Like, if it can block the sun, so it's a chemical, and you're spraying this chemical on an organ, which is your skin.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Joe Rogan?

  So your, your skin's absorbing it. I'm like, what, what's going on there?

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  And they used to say, oh, no, no, it's not absorbed very much. And then the... FDA, CDC did studies a few years ago and discovered that it's absorbed at very large amounts.

• 1:03:53Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  It turns up at high doses or higher doses than they would like it to in blood, breast milk, urine, you name it.

• 1:04:02Joe Rogan?

  And what specifically turns up and what's dangerous about it?

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  So they're suspected to be hormone disruptors, all those classic chemical filters like oxybenzone. There isn't much proof that they're dangerous in the amounts used, but they definitely are absorbed at much higher rates than we thought. And the FDA has refused to approve them as safe, pending more testing.

• 1:04:31Joe Rogan?

  Ooh.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  And nobody's done the testing.

• 1:04:33Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  But they're about to get phased out anyway. Just as of a couple of months ago, the government changed the rules and is going to let in, for the first time in 30 years, new ingredients, which they've been using in Europe and Asia and Australia for decades. And the sunscreen companies have been asking to use them and haven't been allowed to, but now they're finally going to get to use one of the main ones.

• 1:05:01Joe Rogan?

  And what are these ingredients?

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  So it's called like Bemotrizonal or something. And there's another one that you see in Europe called like Mexaril 400, but they're way better. Basically, US sunscreens are a generation behind everyone else because in the US, sunscreens are regulated as over the counter drugs.

• 1:05:19Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Bemotrizonal, yeah.

• 1:05:21Joe Rogan?

  Bemotrizonal, highly effective broad spectrum UV filtered, blocks both UVA and UVB, approved by FDA, is over the counter sunscreen ingredient in June of 2026. Oh, wow. So this month.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, just happened, yeah.

• 1:05:34Joe Rogan?

  Celebrated for being highly photostable, doesn't break down the sun, transparent on the skin without leaving a white cast, and gentle on sensitive skin. So this is RFK Junior stuff.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, this one looks really good.

• 1:05:46Joe Rogan?

  So this other stuff that has been in there, why didn't it get examined if Europe and Asia and all these other places were using these different safer versions?

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, they all bailed on it long ago because it was all we had.

• 1:06:01Joe Rogan?

  God damn it, that drives me crazy.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, so FDA, so in the US, sunscreens are regulated as drugs, counter drugs. So you have to do all this safety testing if you want to get a new ingredient in. Everywhere else, they're just cosmetics, so you can use kind of whatever you want with more minimal safety testing. So the companies wanted to use this stuff in the US forever, but the FDA said, sure, just do the testing, but they didn't want to do, it was too expensive to do the testing. They would have to test it on animals. They didn't want to get the blowback on that. There are a bunch of reasons that they weren't willing to do it. Also, I think they're a little scared of what they might find. So anyway, so our sunscreens have not been nearly as good as what's used elsewhere, both

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  in terms of performance and like maybe safety suspicions. So that's going to change by the end of this year. It's going to get better.

• 1:06:55Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's good. With the traditional sunscreen ingredients that we used to use, is there any negative health consequences of using them that they've shown? Like, is there any diseases that occur more readily or more frequently?

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  Not that have been proven. There's like toxicologists are a little suspicious about some of them. Like, they've definitely been shown to mess up coral, right? Like, people who-

• 1:07:18Joe Rogan?

  Coral reefs, right? Yeah, that's one of the things they found after COVID, right? They used to think, they used to think that it was the warming of the environment. This was one of the things that climate change people used to say. The climate changes was destroying the coral reefs. And then it turns out, actually, it's all these people that have sunscreen all over their body and they jump in the ocean and they're essentially poisoning the reef.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's all of the above, I'm pretty sure. But, but yeah, the sunscreen at that kind of concentration, if you got a bazillion snarklers in the water, can definitely mess up the coral pretty badly.

• 1:07:50Joe Rogan?

  Wasn't there some sort of a study that examined what happened to the reef after COVID? There was one particular reef that was in a highly visited area where people would jump in. And they showed a massive increase in the reef after COVID.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Hawaii, Hawaii banned use of those sunscreen, a bunch of places banned, banned those, that style of sunscreen. But the

• 1:08:20Joe Rogan?

  But they don't really check your bags, though.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:23Joe Rogan?

  You know what I mean? When they say banned, like, people are gonna take it anyway.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  But it doesn't look like, I don't think it has a much impact on, on us, unless you're using a ton of it, which of course, now some people are.

• 1:08:35Joe Rogan?

  So it's not great for you, but it's not the worst?

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's been a bunch of studies that just looked at, like, lifespan, and sunscreen doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever, like, positive or negative on lifespan.

• 1:08:46Joe Rogan?

  Hmm, so it just might have some sort of an impact on hormonal function?

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could well.

• 1:08:53Joe Rogan?

  Endocrine disruption?

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Endocrine disruption. There's a guy named Graham Peaslee at Notre Dame who found that many, many cosmetic products of all kinds are actually contaminated with forever chemicals.

• 1:09:09Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  And it's, even if they don't have it on the ingredients, like, anything that's like water resistant or super smooth is quite possibly gonna have forever chemicals in it. And some of it is actually coming from the plastic containers, cuz those get, they basically get, like, fluorinated, with this, like, fluorine gas before they get anything in them, which is supposed to make them, like, a little smoother, the inside of the containers. But it turns out that actually leaks forever chemicals into the product, whatever's in there.

• 1:09:45Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  That's what he found.

• 1:09:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, this is a problem with hot coffee, when you're drinking it out of a paper cup.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Very similar, yeah.

• 1:09:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, people don't realize, like, the paper cup is not capable of keeping that liquid.

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Joe Rogan?

  It would turn to mush.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Joe Rogan?

  And the reason why it doesn't turn to mush is cuz there's essentially a condom, like, around

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:10:06Joe Rogan?

  the inside of the coffee cup. And, you know, Paul Saladino broke a coffee cup down to show what it looks like on the inside, and you're like, oh, no, you're pouring hot liquid into plastic, which you're never supposed to do. And it's also, like, most coffee machines. Like a giant percentage of coffee machines have just plastic everywhere. I got rid of mine. That's why we use French press at the studio and I use that at home too. And I have one of those little arrow presses to make an individual cup of coffee.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Joe Rogan?

  It's like the plastic is a real problem and heating it is terrible. We know that about water bottles. Like you're never supposed to drink out of a water bottle that you leave in the hot sun in your car.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  So now picture that bottle of sunscreen that's sitting in your car, right? Cooking.

• 1:10:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  And leaching into the material.

• 1:10:52Joe Rogan?

  Yuck. Yeah, not good. People don't think of the skin as an organ. And I was explaining to a friend of mine the other day, he was using hand wash, that fucking hand sanitizer stuff. And I'm like, man, I don't think that's good for you. I mean, I think if you want to wash your hands, you should just use soap and water. And then I read this article about it, like, oh yeah, that's a toxic chemical. Like hand sanitizer, when you're using it every day, you're essentially exposing your skin, your organ, to this, like, what exactly is in hand sanitizer and is it bad for you? Cause I remember this article, but I just like went over the headline and briefly started reading it.

• 1:11:33Joe Rogan?

  And then I had to do something and I put a bookmark to it that I was gonna go back to it later and I never did.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  Okay, I thought you were gonna say like something happened to the bookmark.

• 1:11:41Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no, no, no. No, I just, I never went back to it. But I remember during the COVID times, everybody was just like hand sanitizer everywhere. I'm like, I just don't think that can be good for you.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  I mean, anything that's antibiotic, right? Anything that's killing biological life, probably you want to be at least a little bit hesitant with. Mostly alcohol.

• 1:12:01Joe Rogan?

  Mostly alcohol. Well, even alcohol going through your skin like that.

• 1:12:07Joe Rogan?

  Isopropyl alcohol sometimes used instead of or with ethanol, similar levels. And then this word, benzalknonium chloride in many alcohol-free products.

• 1:12:22Joe Rogan?

  Alright, um, but see if you can find articles on the dangers of using hand sanitizer. Cause this is what I had read. Briefly.

• 1:12:34Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 1:12:35Joe Rogan?

  Just say-

• 1:12:36Speaker 04

  People overuse it, they're gonna fuck up your skin biome, but I don't-

• 1:12:38Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that's what it's saying, overuse?

• 1:12:40Speaker 04

  I just, I just know that.

• 1:12:42Joe Rogan?

  I know a guy's got, um, OCD and, uh, he's, um, you know, hypochondriac a little bit and he uses hand sanitizer all the time, it's kinda crazy.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  Ah, yeah.

• 1:12:52Joe Rogan?

  A friend of mine, without knowing, went to look at his house, cause his house was for sale. And he's looking at the house, he's like, "This is a very nice house." And he opens up a closet and one of the closets was filled with hand sanitizer. And he got so freaked out, he didn't wanna live in the house anymore. He's like, "I don't wanna buy this house." Like, this guy, like, whatever weird thing he's possessed with, that he needs fifty thousand fucking bottles of hand sanitizer.

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, the main issues are just like, overuse and then don't not use it on your hands, obviously. Don't breathe it, don't drink it.

• 1:13:23Joe Rogan?

  Right, only use it on your hands, yeah.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  But Jamie's right on the skin, uh, biome. Skin biome's turning out to be really important.

• 1:13:29Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Like, there's, um, you know, they call it the gut-skin act- axis, where your skin microbiome and your gut microbiome are like chatting all the time.

• 1:13:37Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  And you, the, you, you can change the composition of your skin microbiome based on all kinds of stuff, like products, sun exposure, you know, everything you do-

• 1:13:50Joe Rogan?

  Probiotics.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  Probiotics.

• 1:13:52Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Well, in the jujitsu world, um, in the, the early two thousands, people started really getting into probiotics, they started really getting into acidophilus, yogurt, kimchi, fermented vegetables and stuff like that, just to prevent skin issues.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:14:09Joe Rogan?

  Because jujitsu, because you're, you're getting scratched up and you're rolling around and there's a lot of infections. And a lot of people get, not just infections, like staph infection, but they also get ringworm and a bunch of stuff like that, and so- Some people started using antibacterial soap. And the problem with that is it just nukes all the good flora of your skin.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Joe Rogan?

  So then there's a company called Defense Soap. And they developed a soap specifically for grapplers. And this soap has tea tree oil and eucalyptus. And it's very healthy for the skin. So it promotes healthy gut flora, but it does kill all the cooties. It kills all the mat cooties.

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, that's, I think that's basically what you want. Like, that microbiome, it can take a lot of natural, you know, abuse. It's there. It, you know, it naturally lives on skin. So it's usually getting, like, roughed up by the world.

• 1:15:01Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  But yeah, chemicals that are too strong can take it out.

• 1:15:05Joe Rogan?

  And the gut flora is important as well. It's like, you gotta think of the whole thing as one sort of ecosystem.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Joe Rogan?

  Your whole body, it all works together. And if your gut biome is all fucked up and you don't have healthy gut flora, it can affect all sorts of different issues.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  And yeah, it shows up on the skin, for sure. That's, that's well-known.

• 1:15:28Joe Rogan?

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• 1:16:13Joe Rogan?

  Chime is a fintech, not a bank, banking services and Chime Card, provided by Chime's bank partners. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for more details.

• 1:16:27Joe Rogan?

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• 1:17:10Joe Rogan?

  you gotta check out Tacovas in-store or online at tacovas.com. That's T-E-C-O-V-A-S dot com. And right now, get 10% off at tacovas.com/rogan when you sign up for email and texts. So when you first started getting pushback against this, were you surprised? Did it upset you? Like, what did it feel like to get attacked by dermatologists?

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  I am naturally conflict averse, right? So I was kind of like, do I even want to talk about this? But it was such interesting information. I thought it was important, so I wanted to. It started, I wrote an article for Outside back in like 2018, and I titled it, "Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?" Right?

• 1:17:56Joe Rogan?

  Ooh.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  So right there, that's pushing buttons.

• 1:18:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  I probably, you know, in retrospect, I don't push as many buttons today. I just point to the data.

• 1:18:06Joe Rogan?

  You just didn't like it? Didn't like the response?

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it got a massive response. It went truly, you know, viral, as they used to say. But it actually detracted.

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  Like now, I think those old sunscreens really were like margarine detrimental, like the ones that only blocked UVB. So I think I kind of got it right, but also it's like the title detracted from the information in the article, in a sense.

• 1:18:32Joe Rogan?

  But why? Because margarine sucks.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  Margarine sucks. Those old sunscreens did suck. The new sunscreens are, they're fine.

• 1:18:38Joe Rogan?

  So it's a good comparison.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  It turns out to have been, yeah. Like, the more we learn about those old sunscreens, the more it looks like a sort of like a catastrophic mistake that then got fixed. But, but, yeah. So that, like, so now the book is out, suddenly I've got all these like beauty magazines contacting me. And they have this image of me as like, you know, the Unabomber, like hanging out, hanging out in my cabin and firing off these missiles.

• 1:19:11Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:13Joe Rogan?

  From beauty magazines?

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  They were nervous to talk to me because they thought I was going to be, you know,

• 1:19:17Joe Rogan?

  A kook.

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  A kook. Yeah.

• 1:19:20Joe Rogan?

  Wow. So the first, so is sunscreen the new margarine? So that was the first one. And what was the response to that? So like, do you remember the first like really negative response and how you felt about it?

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so there was an official letter from the AAD, like, you know, we, and, you know, they're very, they're very polite, but they're like, here, we, we think this is misrepresenting, you know, the, the information. And this, and we think this is dangerous. If you're telling people that they might benefit from more sunlight, that's dangerous. So that's probably, and then, you know, when that came in, I was like, so that needs to change. If, if we have in our heads that exposure to any sunshine is dangerous, we, you know, we're not seeing the forest for the trees. We've lost the thread on this one. So then, so I did a bunch of other articles. I did one, an article that focused specifically on the skin color issue, like, do people of color?

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  Do we need to stop telling people of color that they need to protect themselves from the sun? And then I did a couple more recently for The Atlantic, just on like, what should recommendations be? How do we, can we do recommendations that are not one size fits all?

• 1:20:38Joe Rogan?

  Well, skin color in particular is one of the best signs of adaptation to environment. I mean, that's how human beings were able to get vitamin D from the sun in a place like Scotland. When people moved there, they got pale as shit.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  100%.

• 1:20:54Joe Rogan?

  Completely makes sense.

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you can track it. It's like, the gradations of lightning go with that move northward.

• 1:21:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:02Speaker 02

  So you can tell. Like, white skin is like a desperate attempt to get enough light in a, you know, screwy northern environment.

• 1:21:09Joe Rogan?

  Right, but when those people that have ancestors from that screwy northern environment moved to California or Arizona.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Or Australia.

• 1:21:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and Australia is real bad, right? Because there's all the people that used hairspray in the 80s. It caused a fucking giant hole in the ozone layer over Australia.

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, essentially.

• 1:21:29Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, Australia, when I was there, they have these signs on buses, like these warnings that show skin cancer, like these horrible lesions on people's faces and stuff. And it's just this warning to wear sunscreen, protect yourself.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  They're right. Like, that's the textbook case, where you've got a horrible mismatch between the population and the place. Like, super, super high levels of sunshine in Australia, weak ozone, like, redheads from Scotland who are trying to deal. So, like, their skin cancer rates are literally like, two or three times what they are anywhere else in the world.

• 1:22:07Joe Rogan?

  Wow. Now, how much of that is because of the skin color of the general Australian population other than the indigenous people? And how much of it is because of the ozone?

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  So ozone is healing itself slowly. We're getting there. So that's probably less of an issue now. It's really, it's a really fair-skinned population in a like, super bright, intense environment. So they do need to worry about it. But the problem is, the rest of the world has kind of set its like, rules about sun exposure based on Australia.

• 1:22:38Joe Rogan?

  What's interesting also about Australia is like, I wonder how long it takes for human adaptation to start to show itself. Like, do you think like, in a hundred thousand years from now, people that live in Australia will be dark?

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  Well, David Reich did that great episode with you, right? Did you have David Reich on?

• 1:23:01Joe Rogan?

  David Reich?

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  He's the Harvard Ancient DNA guy?

• 1:23:07Joe Rogan?

  Did we? No?

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  So he, so he just came out with a new study, like, two months ago.

• 1:23:12Joe Rogan?

  We've had so many people on, I can't remember who I've had on.

• 1:23:13Speaker 02

  I can't either, okay. I was like, if I didn't hear, here, where'd I hear? Anyway.

• 1:23:17Joe Rogan?

  Might be Lex.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  It, um, it just, uh, that movement started a few thousand years ago. Suddenly, like, the, that pale redhead gene came out of nowhere and like, skyrocketed. So it can change pretty quickly when the environmental factors change.

• 1:23:35Joe Rogan?

  Really? That's, that's only a few thousand years old?

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  The redheaded gene, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:41Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  It was kind of like, lingering quietly in the background, and then, like-

• 1:23:46Joe Rogan?

  Maybe that's why gingers get so much hate. Because they're just brand new.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  They are, they are like, the next new thing, kind of. But yeah, four or five thousand years ago, it suddenly explodes in popularity. But in a very particular place, in Northern Europe.

• 1:24:00Joe Rogan?

  Ah, and most likely as a result to the environment.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, for a hundred percent.

• 1:24:05Joe Rogan?

  Wow. So I wonder how long it's gonna take. I wonder if we could go into the future, if the same population lives in Australia now.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  Well, I accept. Here's the weird thing. Like, so Australians versus UK, right? Similar genetics. Australia, super high rates of skin cancer because of that sunny environment, but also way better lifespan than in the UK.

• 1:24:31Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  So, skin cancer is a factor, but that sunlight is actually benefiting Australians more than it's hurting them compared to the UK.

• 1:24:40Joe Rogan?

  Hmm. I wonder if that's a healthy user bias as well, because one of the things about Australia is a lot of outdoor activities. A lot of people are doing stuff outside.

• 1:24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:51Joe Rogan?

  Lot of activity, period.

• 1:24:54Speaker 02

  And that could be a factor. And actually, that's one thing I come down to in the book, is it's really hard to disentangle all of these factors, but what's really obvious is just outside good, too much inside bad.

• 1:25:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  So, whatever, like, you don't even have to, like, break it down too much. More outside, covered up, whatever you want is probably going to be good for you.

• 1:25:17Joe Rogan?

  One of the things a friend of mine who's a doctor said, that when he was working in New York City, in the wintertime, he would find people with undetectable levels of vitamin D.

• 1:25:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:27Joe Rogan?

  And he said it was a particular problem with people with darker skin, because if they have darker skin, you're going to get less vitamin D from the sun, for whatever exposure you do get, and then these people are all indoors all the time.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a really bad formula. Like, yeah, if you have dark skin, you need five to 10 times as much sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin D.

• 1:25:49Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:25:50Speaker 02

  So, you're really, if you have really dark skin, you're kind of designed for a very bright, you know, tropical environment where you're...

• 1:25:56Joe Rogan?

  Where you're outside all the time.

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  Outside all the time. You can handle 12 hours a day of sunshine, and in fact, you're going to benefit from it. You get moved to a really dark environment, that's not going to be good for you, so you probably need to compensate in other ways.

• 1:26:10Joe Rogan?

  It's going to be very interesting when genetic engineering reaches a level where we can turn those things on and off in people. And how do people react to fair-skinned people all of a sudden getting dark?

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  Like, you know, like...

• 1:26:30Joe Rogan?

  Well, we are one race. We are, we're the human race. There's a bunch of different... ancestors, where people came from different areas, where they adapted to different environments. But the reality is, we're just human beings. And we all started in Ethiopia and we spread out. And that's just what we are. We are the result of whatever environment our ancestors evolved in.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. And with skin tone, it's clearly like very, very specific reactions to that environment and trying to figure out what's best in each situation.

• 1:27:01Joe Rogan?

  But there's so much racial identity that's tied, that's tied to these characteristics of your appearance and where your ancestors are from. And it's gonna be very weird if all of a sudden you could, like, people get like dark, thick, curly hair. And they're, they're used to be gingers. I wonder how people are gonna react to that.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  I mean, it's coming, right?

• 1:27:24Joe Rogan?

  Right, it's coming.

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  All bets are off.

• 1:27:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I just wonder how many people are gonna be claiming cultural or racial appropriation with people just deciding to have a healthier skin tone that protects them from the sun more.

• 1:27:38Speaker 02

  I see where you're going.

• 1:27:39Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, yeah.

• 1:27:41Joe Rogan?

  Like that guy with the melanotan, I wonder.

• 1:27:45Joe Rogan?

  I wonder if anybody got mad at him.

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  Right, right? Like, what are you supposed to look like?

• 1:27:50Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm, yeah, what are you supposed to look like?

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:54Joe Rogan?

  There was a lady that was on a television show once that was turning herself black. It was in the UK. And this lady looked, she looked like she had other issues. She had giant breast implants, she looked like a kook, a bunch of plastic surgery. But she was dark as a date.

• 1:28:11Joe Rogan?

  Like that lady. That's a white lady. So that's what she used to look like. And she's getting her boobs bigger and bigger, she wants them bigger. And so, look, she keeps getting.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  That's a little too far, maybe.

• 1:28:22Joe Rogan?

  Maybe.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  Wow, that's her?

• 1:28:24Joe Rogan?

  That's her. So what did she do via intense use of tanning injections? Yeah, so she's, she's the ultimate melanotan hero.

• 1:28:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:28:36Joe Rogan?

  I mean, that got, that lady got like Cameroon dark. Like, look at that photo again, go back to that video.

• 1:28:44Joe Rogan?

  Like, that's crazy.

• 1:28:46Speaker 02

  That is crazy.

• 1:28:47Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  I don't know. Maybe if you're in Australia, it works for you.

• 1:28:51Joe Rogan?

  Uh, maybe. Well, it would, right? It would protect, because it is melanin. But obviously, she's got, she's got other things going on.

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, at some point, you might, might, might have too much melanin. Well, so here's the funny thing about melanin as well. Like, so it's made by our melanocytes, which are what can become melanoma if they get screwed up. And those are in the very bottom of the epidermis, the outer layer of the skin.

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  And it's incredibly good absorber of UV, better than anything we've come up with. It's almost perfect at it. But what you want, when, when your skin gets hit with sunlight, that melanin that's just been produced is at the bottom of the epidermis, where the melanocytes are. So it has to migrate to the surface, and then it kind of acts like, like, like little umbrellas. Like, it'll like, cover the nucleus of the cell and protect it. So you get these little, like, umbrellas, a line of umbrellas on the very top of your epidermis. But it has to migrate up because of sunlight. If melanin is lower in your skin, then it's going to absorb all that radiation farther down, and actually, it can cause more free radicals deeper in the skin.

• 1:30:01Joe Rogan?

  And what would cause it to be lower?

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  So it starts lower.

• 1:30:04Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  And it only goes up in response to sunlight.

• 1:30:07Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  So if you're never, ever in the sun, and you suddenly go out and get hit by a bunch of sunlight, your melanin's going to be down too low and can actually create free, it can exacerbate the problem.

• 1:30:21Joe Rogan?

  So this lady might be exacerbating the problem if he's just, just getting the melanin that way?

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I don't know, because I don't know about this specifically, but you probably, yeah, you don't want to just be like messing around with melanin, like, to the extent that she is.

• 1:30:37Joe Rogan?

  Oh, boy. That's interesting. Because like, the melanotan stuff, I have heard about it before and I just never really looked into it. But the idea kind of makes sense. That if you can make your body produce more melanin, that would protect itself. But I didn't realize that it has to be melanin from sun exposure.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  You want it in the right place.

• 1:30:58Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Could both things work? Could you do it that way and with sun exposure, increase both? And would it, would it give some sort of a benefit to have a higher level of melanin that could eventually get to the surface of the skin? Does that make any sense?

• 1:31:15Speaker 02

  You're above my pay grade now. Like, I think you might be above everybody's pay grade. I don't know if anyone has looked at that.

• 1:31:21Joe Rogan?

  It seems like something to look into, though. If we know that there's a benefit to having melanin.

• 1:31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it may be interesting. But I think this stuff's new enough that there probably hasn't been a ton of research on it.

• 1:31:31Joe Rogan?

  So what does a pale person do? What does the old pasty white do?

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, full pasty white, like really pale?

• 1:31:39Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Like, my friend, I have a friend, my daughter said, "He's white." And I said, she was really little. And I go, "Yeah." She goes, "No, no, he's white like paper."

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  So if you're white like paper.

• 1:31:51Joe Rogan?

  He's from England.

• 1:31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. You do have to be really careful. You're not going to tan that much. You just don't make that much melanin.

• 1:32:00Joe Rogan?

  Can that change over time? Can they like slowly expose themselves to the sunlight, like five minutes a day? And just ramp it up?

• 1:32:08Speaker 02

  If, it depends on your genetics. If you're like a full-on ginger, like true redhead, then you have a type of melanin called theo-melanin, not you-melanin, which is what everybody else has. And theo-melanin just does not do a good job absorbing sunlight.

• 1:32:27Joe Rogan?

  Oh, no. So there's no hope for gingers?

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  There's no hope for gingers in terms of sun exposure.

• 1:32:32Joe Rogan?

  Damn.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  The hope is just, you know, avoid that midday sun, that high UV. Get the morning and, like, the sunrise and sunset stuff that doesn't have the UV in it.

• 1:32:43Joe Rogan?

  Okay, so they can benefit from sun exposure, but they can't have like full-on outdoor sun exposure?

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're the ones who need to be really careful.

• 1:32:53Joe Rogan?

  So for those people, sunscreen is recommended?

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, or just cover up even, I think, better, you know?

• 1:33:01Joe Rogan?

  How many other people are working on this stuff? And is everybody sort of in agreement with the data? The people that... Or examining it?

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  I mean, there's a ton of science coming out, but it's early days, for sure.

• 1:33:15Joe Rogan?

  Doesn't it seem crazy that sun and our reaction to sun is unknown, or at least poorly studied?

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But yeah, but it's amazing how many things in medicine, you know, you dive into the research and you dig down a little and you realize that we're just kind of guessing still on many levels. Like, it's early days for a lot of this stuff.

• 1:33:41Joe Rogan?

  Well, certainly for like, stuff that they use for antidepressants.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Speaker 02

  Sun exposure is competitive with antidepressants in terms of lifting depression.

• 1:33:53Joe Rogan?

  Isn't that nuts? And you know what's way better? Exercise.

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:58Joe Rogan?

  Many times better than any known antidepressants, regular exercise.

• 1:34:03Speaker 02

  I mean, exercise is number one for everything across the board.

• 1:34:05Speaker 04

  Is there a ginger people with melatonin peptide here?

• 1:34:08Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:09Speaker 04

  Seeing if he posts about it changing their hair color.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:34:12Speaker 04

  And this one says permanently.

• 1:34:13Joe Rogan?

  What?

• 1:34:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:14Joe Rogan?

  Click on that.

• 1:34:15Speaker 04

  Well, this is, I guess this just takes us to the Reddit. It's just gonna show a YouTube video here, but there's multiple, there's other posts.

• 1:34:21Joe Rogan?

  Changes hair color?

• 1:34:23Speaker 04

  Other posts about it.

• 1:34:24Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 1:34:26Speaker 04

  And there's a, I was just seeing.

• 1:34:27Joe Rogan?

  What if that would work with people that are old, that have like, white hair?

• 1:34:33Joe Rogan?

  Wonder what that would do?

• 1:34:34Speaker 04

  Like, a melatonin 2 page says like, how it can affect hair color.

• 1:34:39Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 1:34:39Speaker 04

  I read through it real quick. This is not the best website.

• 1:34:41Joe Rogan?

  Isn't it weird that women with red hair are hot and men with red hair are not?

• 1:34:49Joe Rogan?

  It's very weird, because women with red hair are considered very attractive.

• 1:34:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, this one's, this guy's got a spray tan.

• 1:34:57Joe Rogan?

  Okay, but the people that take it, that one guy, is he like, a one of one, where it changes hair color?

• 1:35:05Speaker 04

  So that, this, like I said, so this website.

• 1:35:07Joe Rogan?

  Click on that, like, click on the video. Let's watch it for a couple of seconds. See what this guy's showing. So this is him before, and this is him now. His eyebrow and his beard color's changed.

• 1:35:18Speaker 04

  Also, I, we clicked on the, this might not even be him, he could be reporting the video about someone else too.

• 1:35:27Speaker 04

  He looks pretty good.

• 1:35:28Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:31Joe Rogan?

  Gray?

• 1:35:31Speaker 05

  I actually used to be ginger. Now, I was bullied a lot as a kid because I was ginger, I was weird, and I was chubby. That's the winning trio for being blackions from this, going through a lot of changes. Up here, down there, you know, the stuff that happens during purity. So I didn't immediately notice that my hair had gotten much darker. It was actually other people asking me what the hell I had done to my hairline, you know? On this picture, it's probably much clearer. That's a picture of me and my brother. We have the same genetics in regards of skin color and the color of our hair. And as you can see, my hair is now completely different from his. We used to have the same skin and the same hair, especially the color.

• 1:36:14Speaker 05

  Now, this is only from using one vial of melanotan 2 in the span of a year, even more than a year. And it was at low dosages. But with our genetics of big, tall, white, ginger, Belgian gingers, it completely changed the color of my hair and my skin, and the effects were very strong.

• 1:36:36Joe Rogan?

  So the effects are permanent, so he still has dark hair. But what's interesting is that in the beginning, he had gray hair.

• 1:36:42Speaker 04

  He seems older, obviously, right?

• 1:36:44Joe Rogan?

  Right, but he had gray hair, he was showing, and his hair's not gray anymore.

• 1:36:50Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:36:50Speaker 04

  I mean, gray, gray, yeah.

• 1:36:52Joe Rogan?

  Gray and ginger.

• 1:36:53Speaker 04

  Gray is a loss of melanin. Like melanin's what makes your hair dark as well as your skin dark. So he's, he's resupplied his melanin for his hair as well, it seems like.

• 1:37:01Joe Rogan?

  That seems kind of nuts.

• 1:37:04Speaker 04

  He said one vial for a year? Oh, he said even all over a year.

• 1:37:08Joe Rogan?

  Right, so for a year, so his skin has gotten pale again, but his hair is permanently dark. So that's what he used to look like. He had red hair, he had a red beard, and he had gray hair. His hair had gone gray and now his hair is dark. I gotta know if this guy's full of shit.

• 1:37:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's one, that's again, it's like, there's one, only one person saying.

• 1:37:27Joe Rogan?

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• 1:38:09Joe Rogan?

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• 1:38:49Joe Rogan?

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• 1:39:29Speaker 04

  But it is, yeah. Melanin is the pigment for all of it.

• 1:39:31Joe Rogan?

  Put that in. Does melatonin, how does it say, how do you say it?

• 1:39:36Speaker 04

  Melanotan.

• 1:39:37Joe Rogan?

  Melanotan? Does melanotan have an effect on hair color? Put that into perplexity. See what they say.

• 1:39:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:45Joe Rogan?

  What does it say?

• 1:39:49Joe Rogan?

  Because I know a lot of people with gray hair that bums them out. And they dye it and shit, and that can't be good for you. You're putting fucking dye in your hair.

• 1:39:57Speaker 02

  I know. Stuff makes me hesitant. I'm stuck with the gray hair, I think.

• 1:40:00Joe Rogan?

  Well, mine would be gray if I had hair. It's all gray on my beard now. It's gray on my... I'm gonna try it. I wanna try some melontanin and see if I get dangerous boners. Melanotan does not have good human evidence of changing scalp or body hair color. Its main effect is on skin tanning and freckling, not on turning hair darker or lighter. But how's that guy? Maybe he's like a... just a weird case.

• 1:40:27Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, it's gotta be a hormone-dependent.

• 1:40:32Joe Rogan?

  What about the lady with the giant boobs? She had dark hair too.

• 1:40:35Speaker 04

  She... she's saying, when I was looking through her thing, it was said she went through a permanent tanning process. So I don't know, she would've been taking extreme dosages. Also, her Instagram account is a mess.

• 1:40:48Speaker 04

  If it's even hers, it's the one that Google showed me.

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  But what's the erection connection? I don't understand how, you know, making more melanin...

• 1:40:57Joe Rogan?

  Was the melanotan erection connection... I have heard that, though. Actually, Brigham from Ways to Well, the local wellness clinic was telling me about that. That some people have crazy erections because of melanotan. Yeah, like, what? How? And then some people don't. Like, that one guy that had taken it, and he said it didn't affect him that way. But maybe... maybe he's broken.

• 1:41:22Joe Rogan?

  Does it say anything about...

• 1:41:24Speaker 04

  It's coming up right now.

• 1:41:25Joe Rogan?

  Why melanotan causes boners? Okay, it can increase libido and trigger erections in some men, but it's not approved for... Well, I know it's not approved. How does it affect it? Stimulates melanocortin... melanocortin receptors in the brain, which are involved in sexual arousal and erection control, not just tanning. Controlled tiles... controlled trot... geez, I can't talk today. Subcutaneous melanotan 2 caused erections in most men with erectile dysfunction, often without sexual stimulation. Same studies found increased sexual desire in a majority of doses compared with placebo.

• 1:42:06Joe Rogan?

  Hmm. Interesting. I wonder what the connection is.

• 1:42:12Speaker 02

  It's the Milano Corten. Like you said, the MC, was it MC4R up there?

• 1:42:18Speaker 02

  So, yeah, MC1R is the gene for, that determines whether you've got the red hair or not.

• 1:42:27Joe Rogan?

  Look at this. Common side effects were yawning.

• 1:42:32Joe Rogan?

  Nausea, yawning and stretching, flushing with decreased appetite. Some participants had severe nausea at higher doses.

• 1:42:39Speaker 02

  Yawning and sexual desire is an interesting combination.

• 1:42:42Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, I'm really horny, but I'm too tired to do anything about it.

• 1:42:49Speaker 04

  Hypoactive sexual desire for pre-menopausal women.

• 1:42:52Joe Rogan?

  Interesting. Interesting. Also shows a rectogenic, I like that word, a rectogenic effects in men with ED. Including those who fail PDE5 inhibitors. What is that? What is a PDE5 inhibitor?

• 1:43:14Joe Rogan?

  Interesting.

• 1:43:17Joe Rogan?

  Someone should, someone out there with gray hair should give it a go. Find out.

• 1:43:21Speaker 02

  Sounds right.

• 1:43:22Joe Rogan?

  Doesn't sound like, other than dealing with boners, doesn't seem like there's any real problems.

• 1:43:28Joe Rogan?

  I keep going back to this, you getting attacked thing. And I don't understand how someone could attack you with the data that you're showing. Because like, you're not making any dangerous or, you know, any claims or any, you're not advising people to do anything that's reckless.

• 1:43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I mean, I purposefully have sort of, well, I really haven't. I basically tell people to figure it out for themselves, right? But it's only small amounts of sun exposure that seem to be necessary to get most of the benefits. Like, the jump isn't going from zero to some. It's, you don't, you don't need it a lot. Nobody really needs a lot. Unless you have really dark skin, then you can probably get away with a lot. So, yeah, just a little bit of sun exposure doesn't seem like a crazy recommendation. But it's just because the messaging has been sort of so extreme and unyielding. Like, they've worked for so hard to sort of scare people.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  Away from any sun exposure that I think backing that up a little bit is sort of uncomfortable. You know?

• 1:44:42Joe Rogan?

  I understand, but I mean, isn't history filled with new discoveries and changing courses?

• 1:44:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think it'll change, but.

• 1:44:52Joe Rogan?

  One funeral.

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  One funeral at a time.

• 1:44:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  It's gonna be ugly all the way.

• 1:44:57Joe Rogan?

  When you do this kind of work, like, have you discovered any other things that people thought were unhealthy that turned out to actually probably be good for you, at least if used correctly?

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's such a good question. So the one, like, the metaphor that I think we're all familiar with and that I think maps pretty perfectly here is diet and fat, right? Like, 20, you know, 25 years ago, Gary Taubes does that article in New York Times Magazine, "What If Fat Doesn't Make You Fat?", and we were still back in that era of, you know, carbs, cut all the fat out of your diet, carbs are good for you, margarine, right? The margarine era. They, the top experts got it 100% wrong back then. And when they got called on it by, like, you know, Taubes and others, Nina Taichols, you guys have had Nina on.

• 1:45:48Joe Rogan?

  I've had Taubes on as well.

• 1:45:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 1:45:52Speaker 02

  You know, they fought hard and they were totally wrong. And we now, you know, we flipped, but it took a long time and, you know, there was a little, little blood in the water during that process.

• 1:46:04Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah, I was in the early days of that and people were just warning me about my cholesterol. What about your cholesterol?

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Joe Rogan?

  What's really interesting is during the heart of that, when I, you know, I eat a lot of meat, my diet's mostly meat, and I went to the doctor and I got all my levels checked and he said, "Are you on some anti-cholesterol medication?"

• 1:46:25Joe Rogan?

  I said, no, why? And he goes, you have very low cholesterol.

• 1:46:28Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:46:29Joe Rogan?

  It's weird. And I go, dude, if you saw my diet? My diet's like mostly meat and eggs and bacon. That's like a giant percentage of my diet. I thought that was really interesting.

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  I think, I mean, yeah, I think the evidence is pretty good. Like for keto, I think it's pretty stressality, you know? I think is pretty much spot on on a lot of this stuff. But, but, so, yeah, so that, like, the, the ultimate experts all said that was gonna kill you.

• 1:46:58Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:46:58Speaker 02

  You know, Atkins back in the day, and they were all completely wrong. So, there's a, you know, there's a long track record of the pros being wrong, I think, on a lot of things. But that's, that's a really good example. And people can wrap their heads around that one, because we now, I think a lot of people understand that low carb really works well for them.

• 1:47:16Joe Rogan?

  I mean, they completely flipped the food pyramid.

• 1:47:19Speaker 02

  Right, which was a beautiful thing to do, and I can't believe it happened so fast.

• 1:47:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, well, also with very little pushback. It's kind of interesting.

• 1:47:26Speaker 02

  Super.

• 1:47:27Joe Rogan?

  Because the evidence had already compounded to the fact that, listen, for sure, margarine is not a good thing. It's not a good substitute. But also that all these healthy fats that you're getting from milk, that you're getting from eggs, eggs in particular. We've been told eggs are bad for you, the cholesterol in eggs. Eggs, you could live off just eggs.

• 1:47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably the perfect food.

• 1:47:48Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, like, eggs are fantastic. I always tell my friends that are vegans, I was like, listen, man, just get some chickens, and they're your pets, and they give you free food. It's like, I have 16 chickens now, and I get eggs every day, and these chickens are pets. Like, I go, hey, ladies, you know, I feed them, I throw the worms down. They're not afraid of me, they, they listen to me. When I open the door, they come running out, and they wander around the yard. It's like a great relationship. You get free food, you take care of them, you feed them, and they eat all the bugs in your yard, and you get these delicious, healthy eggs from them.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  With those beautiful orange eggs.

• 1:48:26Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, so if you're worried about, if it's an ethical thing, you don't want animal cruelty, and good for you. That's, that's a wonderful way to live. But you are sacrificing your health by not eating pasture-raised eggs. Just get the real ones, not the bullshit ones, the real ones. Unfortunately, they're tricking people now. Some companies have been exposed for feeding their chickens turmeric.

• 1:48:52Joe Rogan?

  They feed them curcumin and turmeric and they're make it because it makes their eggs a darker, more attractive yolk.

• 1:49:01Speaker 02

  I know, right? Well, that's like, it's so screwy, so bizarrely backwards.

• 1:49:07Joe Rogan?

  It is, but isn't turmeric good for you and wouldn't turmeric that you're getting from those eggs also be good for you?

• 1:49:14Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah, they can't hurt, I mean.

• 1:49:15Joe Rogan?

  Right? So it's not like they're getting them food dye. So it's, you know what I mean? So it's like, yeah, you're getting these darker eggs because people like that and the darker eggs come from turmeric, but.

• 1:49:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:28Joe Rogan?

  Still, you're getting turmeric then, aren't you? Isn't that how it works?

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  I mean, that's fine, but I think the chicken, I think like it's the bugs that sometimes help turn them on. Yeah, we get, we get eggs from our neighbor. Like in Vermont, everybody raised, there's chickens like running around the road everywhere.

• 1:49:45Speaker 02

  And yeah, they're delicious. Yeah, you can tell that they're getting it from the bugs and the greens and, yeah.

• 1:49:52Joe Rogan?

  And it's super healthy. I mean, but that, that color of things is also why they dye farm-raised salmon, which is really gross. So salmon are getting that from bugs in particular.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Little arthropods, yeah, like miniature shrimp kind of.

• 1:50:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that's why they have that wonderful looking pink skin, that orangey pink skin.

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  So in that case, the dye is maybe a little more suspect.

• 1:50:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, well, the dye is very suspect because it's like, you know, these farm-raised salmon, they have pale skin because they're eating bullshit.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:26Joe Rogan?

  Are there any other things that you've stumbled across that turned out to be good for you that people were averse to?

• 1:50:34Speaker 02

  I'm still curious about alcohol. You know how everything is flipped on alcohol? Like first it was like drink or two a day is good for you and then suddenly they flip like a year or two ago and say, any amount of alcohol is bad for you. I looked down, I looked into those studies. And it seems like the takeaway really should have been, you know, moderate drinking doesn't do much of anything to you. Like, maybe it is slightly good for you or slightly bad for you, but for like a drink a day, or like one to two a day, didn't seem to have a whole lot of impact on mortality at all.

• 1:51:10Joe Rogan?

  And also probably reduces a little bit of stress.

• 1:51:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51:15Joe Rogan?

  Relieves a little bit of social anxiety. And that alone is really beneficial. Like, how do you feel? Like, are you happy or are you stressed out? Sometimes a drink or two, you're like, ah, fuck it, we're fine, everything's good. Like, that alone has benefits. Like, what it does to your mood, that it's a social lubricant. It'll allow you to like, maybe laugh a little bit more, have a little bit more fun.

• 1:51:39Speaker 02

  Totally. Which is why I can't give it up. Like, that social environment is a really nice environment to be in, you know? And if, you know, a couple beers helps make that happen, it's a good thing, probably.

• 1:51:48Joe Rogan?

  I gave it up for about eight months. I completely, I, problem is, I own a comedy club and I was there a lot. And so, everybody's like, have a drink, have a drink, let's do shots. And then, next thing you know, you're, I was in the gym the next day feeling like shit. I got tired of doing that to myself, and so, I said, I'm just gonna stop drinking. Not because I'm an alcoholic, wasn't hard to stop, it was super easy, I just stopped. And then, I started feeling way better. I was like, god, why was I drinking for so long? It was just so bad. And then, out to dinner with my wife, had a margarita, like, eight months later. I'm like, let's have a drink. She wasn't drinking either. I'm like, let's have a drink. And like, this is nice, I like it. So now, I limit myself. I just, I won't have more than like, two drinks. Two drinks is kind of my, but two drinks is right.

• 1:52:31Joe Rogan?

  Two drinks is like, wee, as long as you don't have to drive, you're not going anywhere. You know, if I go to the club, I'm there for hours.

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:38Joe Rogan?

  Completely sober after it's all over. It's like, I wake up in the morning, I don't feel like shit, doesn't seem to be affecting my workouts. However, if you wear a whoop, or an Oura ring, or one of those tracking devices, you will notice in your sleep, in your recovery.

• 1:52:54Speaker 02

  You're not sleeping as well.

• 1:52:55Joe Rogan?

  You don't sleep as well. You don't get the same deep sleep.

• 1:52:58Speaker 02

  I can tell.

• 1:52:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, just one glass of wine can fuck you up a little bit.

• 1:53:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and that, for me, that hit in middle age. Like, before that wasn't a problem. But now, yeah, like, two drinks, I, two, two does seem to be the cutoff where, you know, life functions normally still.

• 1:53:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:14Speaker 02

  But, yeah, the sleep's not as restorative somehow.

• 1:53:17Joe Rogan?

  Somehow, but I wonder if it's the timing of when you're drinking. So I wonder if you have like a glass of wine at dinner at like six o'clock, but you don't go to bed till midnight. I wonder then your body has a chance to process it and then you're okay.

• 1:53:32Speaker 02

  Well, that Italian style, right?

• 1:53:33Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  I feel like the Mediterranean lifestyle, they, they got this pretty much nailed down like 2,000 years ago.

• 1:53:40Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:53:40Speaker 02

  It seems to work pretty well.

• 1:53:42Joe Rogan?

  Which also brings us back to food. Right? Because the way they eat is so, it's so interesting how thin they are, and yet they eat mostly carbs.

• 1:53:51Speaker 02

  I know, I know. Something's different there.

• 1:53:54Joe Rogan?

  A lot's different, and we know what it is now. We know that there's a lot of additives and preservatives, and it's also like, they don't use glyphosate and...

• 1:54:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:03Joe Rogan?

  They have heirloom wheat, so they have wheat that hasn't been optimized to have a higher yield, so it doesn't have as much complex wheat glutens. And there's a lot of issues with our food, unfortunately. And if you eat American bread, you know, the bromine, all the different additives, all the shit that we put in our food. That's so disturbing. Whenever I go to Italy, I'm, I'm so angry that when I come back home, I can't have food like this. Like, you have to seek it out. You have to go to like certain restaurants that only use like Italian flour.

• 1:54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, but yeah, you, you look at those Mediterranean cultures and it just works for them. And yeah, like you say, it's, you can't explain it in terms of like macronutrients or anything like that. Like, it's something, there's something like synergistic about that lifestyle.

• 1:54:51Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  I do actually think light is part of it, too. Like, they got great light there.

• 1:54:54Joe Rogan?

  Yep, they have great light, especially like Malvi Coast, those people.

• 1:54:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:58Joe Rogan?

  But the other thing is also less stress. They're, they're not as career-focused, they're more family-oriented, very tight-knit family groups, they eat dinner together. There's a lot of laughing, a lot of drinking wine. A lot, a lot of them smoke cigarettes. You go over there like, cigarettes never went out of style over there. They're all smoking cigarettes. And you're like, how are you guys so fucking healthy? This is weird.

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It's, yeah, it'll be interesting on cigarettes if it turns out that in a certain context, they're not that damaging. And then out of that context, they're super damaging.

• 1:55:33Joe Rogan?

  I have heard that with polyphenols. I've heard that, and this is, I think, controversial as well, but it's cigarettes taken along with olive oil. And that a lot of these people have high olive oil-rich diets and that cigarettes, along with olive oil, that the olive oil tends to balance out whatever damage that the cigarettes are doing.

• 1:55:56Speaker 02

  That is super interesting.

• 1:55:58Joe Rogan?

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• 1:57:57Speaker 02

  And it's gonna be, like, everything is gonna be something like that.

• 1:58:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:01Speaker 02

  Where it's bad in a certain context and then it seems to have been OK for people in a different context.

• 1:58:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah. Are there any other things that you've noticed? Like, I know you've done work on chocolate, right?

• 1:58:13Speaker 02

  Lot of, lot of work on choc- yeah, I've, like, my first sort of big magazine story, Outside Magazine, sent me to the Amazon on this, like, crazy hunt to, with this German guy. It was basically Apocalypse Now with chocolate. You know? Where this German guy was going upriver into the Amazon to try to find this wild cacao, like, to work with some of the indigenous groups to harvest wild cacao and make, like, the world's first wild chocolate. So I went with him. Crazy, crazy trip. But, but yeah, I sort of fell in love with cacao on that trip. But it was, like, we landed, we took a small plane and we were gonna land on this river and meet a canoe that was gonna take us upriver to meet with these indigenous groups.

• 1:58:58Speaker 02

  So we found a runway, right? This is in the Bolivian Amazon. But I've been in the Amazon all of, like, four minutes, right? The plane drops us off on this flooded runway where, like, it was a crazy landing. We hop out of the plane. I'm glad to be alive. And then these four guys with guns come out of this little cabin and we're like, we're gar- this is actually a landing strip that our, you know, Colombian boss owns and we're guarding it for him and, "What are you two white dudes doing here?" So, like, all the cocaine traffic comes through this part of the Amazon.

• 1:59:34Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 1:59:35Speaker 02

  And we had just done what people actually have been killed for, which is, you know, like, if, if a couple of white guys drop in there, they assume you're, like, DEA or something.

• 1:59:44Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:59:44Speaker 02

  So they're super suspicious. And I didn't, you know, they were speaking Spanish, so I was, like, catching every fourth word or something. I'm like, "This can't be good because of the guns." But, but anyway, the guy I was with, the German guy, he negotiated with them and finally they're like, "OK, just give us a landing fee." So we're like, "Sure."

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  But yeah, so that was, but that was the beginning of my chocolate journey.

• 2:00:07Joe Rogan?

  So what part of the Amazon were you? Where are you?

• 2:00:10Speaker 02

  Bolivia, which Bolivia you think of like mountains, La Paz, but they have these lowlands, which are like straight up like tropical rainforest. It's called the Benny and it's like truly lawless area, like huge swathes of jungle, bunch of cattle ranching as well, and all the drug traffic comes through there from the Andes. So.

• 2:00:32Joe Rogan?

  And you went there as, just as a journalist?

• 2:00:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this guy, this German guy, he'd been living there for 20 years and he was trying to get this cacao and he was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go meet with these groups. Do you want to come?" And Outside had just come to me and they'd liked something else I'd written and they're like, "Hey, we're Outside Magazine. What's the freakiest thing you ever wanted to do? We'll, you know, we'll send you there." And I had like a little kid at the time, so I was like, you know, "I'm not gonna be going off a 200-foot waterfall in kayak for you guys." But then this like, you know, heart of dark chocolate thing came up and I was like, "I could do that, I could be like the comic guy for them." So it was this like ridiculous journey where like everything went wrong, but we did get some really good chocolate at the end of it.

• 2:01:18Joe Rogan?

  So what is the benefit of wild cacao?

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  It tastes really, really good, like better than the industrial varieties of cacao that most chocolates made with, and it's just like kind of a cool story and it can be used to support those indigenous groups so that the forest doesn't get cut down and turned into more like cattle ranch. Cause cacao grows in the understory of the rainforest, so it's kind of a way to monetize the full rainforest.

• 2:01:47Joe Rogan?

  And keep the canopy intact.

• 2:01:48Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 2:01:50Joe Rogan?

  What is the benefits of cacao like health-wise?

• 2:01:53Speaker 02

  It's right there with coffee, you know, tons of polyphenols, a little bit of caffeine. It seems to be anti-inflammatory, gives you a little boost, makes you happy. Some of the same reasons and maybe some different ones as well.

• 2:02:07Joe Rogan?

  And when you say it tastes better, in what way? Like, when you try it?

• 2:02:11Speaker 02

  A lot more aromatics and less bitterness. Basically, what happened with cacao is when it became a global product, the Europeans selected varieties that were high yielding. Same thing that happened with tomatoes and everything else. They were high yielding, but they lost some of the great aromatic qualities that the old Maya cacao had had. And that's what gets grown all over the world. Most cacao comes from Africa now. And it's more bitter, less interesting, but way cheaper. So then, there's this movement that started like 10, 15 years ago of people trying to

• 2:02:51Speaker 02

  go back to Latin America to find the ancient heirloom varieties that had this great flavor and make better chocolate than had ever been made before. Sort of the most ancient is the stuff in the Amazon, which is where cacao originated, still growing wild. So it's kind of cool if you can go back to the primordial days and make chocolate.

• 2:03:13Joe Rogan?

  Well, I mean, the example of tomatoes is a perfect example because heirloom tomatoes are sensational. They're so delicious.

• 2:03:20Speaker 02

  So much better.

• 2:03:21Joe Rogan?

  They're so much better. And then you have one of those bullshit McDonald's tomatoes that looks like a piece of paper.

• 2:03:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:27Joe Rogan?

  Is that cacao? That's what it looks like?

• 2:03:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's these pods, and you open up the pod, it's kind of like the size of a little Nerf football or something.

• 2:03:36Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow. I had no idea.

• 2:03:39Speaker 02

  And so chocolate is made from the seeds inside. You've got to ferment them and then roast them, and then you grind them into chocolate.

• 2:03:46Joe Rogan?

  Where can one get heirloom chocolate made from this ancient cacao? Is there a company?

• 2:03:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the place I send people is Caputos, which is an online site. They're like the main importer of specialty chocolate. There they are.

• 2:04:02Joe Rogan?

  Is that the people?

• 2:04:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Caputos has most of the great wild cacao's available on their website. It's just like retail.

• 2:04:11Joe Rogan?

  Caputos. So is it caputos.com?

• 2:04:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:15Joe Rogan?

  It's from Salt Lake City?

• 2:04:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, they've got a cool shop in Salt Lake.

• 2:04:19Joe Rogan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:04:22Joe Rogan?

  Preserve Bolivian rainforests.

• 2:04:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:25Joe Rogan?

  All right. Ritual chocolate. Yeah, I've heard of people like ritual cacao ceremonies. I'm like, what are you doing?

• 2:04:32Speaker 02

  So that.

• 2:04:33Joe Rogan?

  What are you doing?

• 2:04:35Speaker 02

  That, it's, it's a, um, that's a gringo thing. Everyone thinks it goes back to some like, like we're referencing some ancient Maya ceremony.

• 2:04:44Joe Rogan?

  Of course it is.

• 2:04:45Speaker 02

  It's, it was a, um, a, a white dude in Guatemala.

• 2:04:49Joe Rogan?

  Look at these people.

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:04:50Joe Rogan?

  Look at these people.

• 2:04:51Speaker 02

  Right. It's kind of like ayahuasca with trading wheels.

• 2:04:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. They do cacao.

• 2:04:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:56Joe Rogan?

  But like, what, what's, what can come out of a ritual where you take cacao?

• 2:05:01Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, same thing that can come out of ritual where you do anything else. Like you're, you're focusing, you know, and some mindfulness. You get a little, you know, you get a little boost from the cacao, but.

• 2:05:11Joe Rogan?

  Not much.

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's more about the ritual or.

• 2:05:15Joe Rogan?

  Why is cacao, what is a cacao ceremony? Why are they suddenly showing up all over LA? Yeah, you can answer that one on your own.

• 2:05:23Speaker 02

  So, I mean, Jamie, if you can call up Keith's cacao, there's this guy named Keith. I think he died recently. He's like the classic gringo guru with a big white beard who would like have people in Guatemala. And he's just invented this cacao ceremony thing.

• 2:05:37Joe Rogan?

  Oh, white people.

• 2:05:38Speaker 02

  But he's a.

• 2:05:38Joe Rogan?

  Damn it, white people.

• 2:05:40Speaker 02

  And then everyone else sort of took it from him. There he is.

• 2:05:44Joe Rogan?

  Well, he looks like the type of guy, look at him, big old fucking dirty pot of cacao.

• 2:05:48Speaker 04

  It's Duncan in a costume.

• 2:05:49Speaker 02

  So he started it all.

• 2:05:55Joe Rogan?

  Okay, poor Keith. These silly people. So, um, but, but there's like antioxidants in it, like there's other.

• 2:06:05Speaker 02

  A ton, yeah. It's good for you. It's totally good for you. And, um, yeah, it, you know, gets your heart beating a little faster. There's some happy drugs in there. It's got a tiny bit of cannabinoids in it.

• 2:06:18Speaker 02

  But. And it tastes great, so, you know, what's not to like?

• 2:06:24Joe Rogan?

  Anything else? Any other foods or substances or different things that you found out that were beneficial?

• 2:06:30Speaker 02

  Well, how do you feel about oysters? I wrote a book about oysters, too.

• 2:06:32Joe Rogan?

  I eat them all the time.

• 2:06:33Speaker 02

  Are you? You're a fan?

• 2:06:34Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I like them. Are they OK?

• 2:06:37Speaker 02

  I mean, they're great.

• 2:06:38Joe Rogan?

  But?

• 2:06:39Speaker 02

  There's no but. They're great. But I think they're, I think, I think we haven't figured out why. You know, they're like, you know, you're eating like a little living being.

• 2:06:46Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:06:46Speaker 02

  So I think, you know, there's like some chi factor there where the reason people get so excited and feel so good when they eat oysters, it's not because of like the nutrients. It's like there's something else that's in there, you know?

• 2:06:59Joe Rogan?

  Well, isn't there zinc in oysters?

• 2:07:01Speaker 02

  There's definitely zinc.

• 2:07:02Joe Rogan?

  And they're supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect, right?

• 2:07:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think that aphrodisiac thing is like, it's more about the chi, like this living force that you're ingesting than the zinc.

• 2:07:11Joe Rogan?

  This sounds like hippy talk, sir.

• 2:07:13Speaker 02

  It does, it does sound a little, you know, like chi's gonna get, chi's gonna get justified scientifically at some point.

• 2:07:20Joe Rogan?

  You think?

• 2:07:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:22Joe Rogan?

  So you think you're getting, what's interesting, there's another, a friend of mine made an argument for vegans to eat shellfish. And he said, like, if you're eating clams and oysters, they're so primitive, they're more primitive than plants. He said, there's more evidence that plants are conscious than there is that these shellfish are conscious.

• 2:07:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, plants are pretty damn smart, so.

• 2:07:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, weirdly so.

• 2:07:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:46Joe Rogan?

  And mussels and clams and oysters, they're not. They're, they're, they're sort of alive, but they don't feel pain.

• 2:07:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:56Joe Rogan?

  And they just move. And because they move, they open and close, we've decided that they're animals.

• 2:08:01Speaker 02

  And with oysters, that's literally the only thing they can do.

• 2:08:04Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:04Speaker 02

  Like clams at least can, you know, dig down.

• 2:08:06Joe Rogan?

  They get the tongue and, yeah.

• 2:08:07Speaker 02

  Oysters, they're stuck. They, they just open and close. There's not a whole lot going on there, for sure.

• 2:08:12Joe Rogan?

  Right, but healthy for you.

• 2:08:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:16Joe Rogan?

  Unless you get a bad batch and then you die.

• 2:08:18Speaker 02

  They are definitely a source of food poisoning.

• 2:08:21Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I've heard people dying.

• 2:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they kill a few people every year.

• 2:08:24Joe Rogan?

  You know, it's interesting, my wife got food poisoning from oysters once when we were on vacation. We were in Hawaii and she ate oysters and somehow or another she got it and I didn't. But then my daughter, who didn't eat oysters, also got the food poisoning. Because food poisoning apparently can spread through the air.

• 2:08:43Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 2:08:44Joe Rogan?

  And so it's contagious.

• 2:08:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're, I guess if you're like ralphing hard enough, you're flowing it through the air.

• 2:08:50Joe Rogan?

  I guess, but it was really weird. And that's how we found out that food poisoning is contagious. And that's one of the reasons why they isolate people when they're on boats when they have food poisoning. Because those people could actually spread whatever that is through the air. Fucking weird.

• 2:09:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but that, I do, I do love oysters, but I do get nervous when I eat them. Because every now and then you hear like Houston man dies from food poisoning from oysters.

• 2:09:18Speaker 02

  Cold water, cold water is your friend.

• 2:09:21Joe Rogan?

  Says food poisoning itself is not directly contagious as it refers to an illness caused by eating or drinking contaminated food. However, the specific viruses or bacteria responsible for the contamination are highly contagious. And can easily spread from person to person through poor hygiene or shared surfaces. Yeah, so it's contagious. So the viruses that come from food poisoning are contagious. It's not like, through the air. Oh, so surface contact, is that what it is? Oh, I see. So coughing and stuff, injecting.

• 2:09:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:50Joe Rogan?

  So you may be interested. The airborne confusion, the confused, show more.

• 2:09:57Joe Rogan?

  Confuse food poisoning with highly contagious stomach bugs like norovirus. Where the viruses are not airborne, they're highly contagious, can spread through the air in tiny droplets when someone vomits. There it is. Leading to contaminated surfaces or breathing in aerosolized particles. So that's what it is, it's the coughs. Yeah.

• 2:10:20Joe Rogan?

  Okay, I think we covered it. You think?

• 2:10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think we, I think you're gonna get a lot of interesting responses.

• 2:10:28Joe Rogan?

  So guess what, I don't read them, so good luck to all those haters.

• 2:10:33Joe Rogan?

  Shouting into the void. I've long suspected that sun exposure is probably good for you and then it's really just a matter of like how much and mitigating the damage that you could get if you get burnt.

• 2:10:45Speaker 02

  Turns out you're right.

• 2:10:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It just doesn't make sense that your body produces vitamin D through it, it makes you feel so good and yet somehow or another it's bad. And I think it's like many things, very nuanced. And so I'm really happy that you did so much work on it.

• 2:11:00Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 2:11:01Joe Rogan?

  And I'm happy you rode the storm too.

• 2:11:02Speaker 02

  Well, the storm's just coming.

• 2:11:05Joe Rogan?

  I'm sure, especially after this show. But thank you very much and tell everybody where your book is and how they can get it.

• 2:11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so whatever their favorite online place, in Defense of Sunlight, Amazon, anywhere else.

• 2:11:18Joe Rogan?

  And did you do an audio version of it?

• 2:11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, they let me read it.

• 2:11:21Joe Rogan?

  Yes!

• 2:11:21Speaker 02

  We'll see if that was good news or not.

• 2:11:23Joe Rogan?

  Nice. I love it when someone reads their own book. It's very important, I think.

• 2:11:26Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 2:11:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much.

• 2:11:29Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:11:30Joe Rogan?

  Bye.

• 2:11:45Speaker 06

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