Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Circumcision

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

This week on Flightless Bird, David sets out to discover why America loves circumcision so much, to the point where 115 million American men now find themselves without a foreskin. Joined by Monica, he tries to figure out why this medical procedure became so popular here, leading to some medical diagrams not bothering to include a foreskin anymore. David talks to a man in his 30s who’s furious he got circumcised when he was a baby, and another who’s annoyed he wasn’t circumcised, as he considers getting an adult circumcision. David talks to a doctor who’s carried out hundreds of circumcisions to find out what all the fuss is about, and spends time with Georganne Chapin, Executive Director of Intact America - who wants circumcision to be thrown out the window. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander who ended up accidentally marooned in America, and I want to grasp what makes this country tick. Now I'm not sure how many penises you've seen. They're usually hidden away, a strange piece of equipment that can be hard to take seriously. We don't even like saying the word penis, substituting it with dick, prick, cock and wang. Hey man, did I feel you faceplant into my pubic mound? No, no, no, no, there was no contact dude.

Are you sure? Because I could have swore I felt either your nose or your lips. No, nothing touched bro, nothing touched. The cold hard fact is that half the world's population has a penis, they're pretty common. But the American penis is different. Because if you live in America, the default thing to do if you have a baby that has a penis attached is you get that penis and chop some of it off. At least 70% of American penises are circumcised. Some surveys have that number higher, at 92%. Now here's the thing.

If you live in America and are listening to this, you're probably going, that's totally normal, it's what you do to a brand new penis. But being from New Zealand, it's not that normal. We like to keep our foreskins, proudly waving them around in the wind like a flag or a sock for all to see. Most Western European countries have a circumcision rate of less than 20%. With all this in mind, I want to understand the American penis. So get ready to draw your best set of cock and balls

and decide whether you're going to include a foreskin or not. Because this is the circumcision episode. How are we all feeling about this topic? I am really glad we're covering it. That's the thing. It's so American. America is this, it's different here. And it's very noticeable.

I mentioned the whole drawing the cock and balls thing as sort of a gag in the intro. But when you do draw a cock and balls there is no foreskin no it's too hard it's almost not it's too hard to draw and also but also it's like a cape or a sheath which is hard to draw you're just drawing a big circle with a line at the top for the urethra yeah and often a cock and balls is erect so the foreskin is i guess it's pulled back and doesn't really feature it's not a flaccid penis is it is it no Is it? No. No, when it's flaccid, you're right. You're always drawing kind of an array. It's not like swervy and quirky.

Where do the cock and balls come from? I assume America. I feel like Americans were drawing the cock and balls. A hundred percent. Yes. I think because it's an American cock and balls, that's why there's no foreskin when you draw a cock and balls. That's my pet theory. I actually know the history of this.

At the Declaration of Independence, when they were all coming up with the yeah i believe it was alexander hamilton doodle the cock and balls it was doodles during declaration actually it's probably benjamin franklin he was the most pervy of that group i think okay really quick my stance it's a ludicrous we circumcise it's so stupid there's no point to it it's uh from biblical times when it was a hard time to keep that foreskin clean that's not a problem these days no one has infections no that's that's what people say, but that's bullshit. So it's ridiculous we do it. I think it's absurd. I'm so glad I didn't have boys because I would have had a hell of a time deciding. Of course, you haven't had to make that decision.

Right. But I thought about it when Kristen was pregnant. I was like, what do we do here? Luckily in California, the rate is only like 50%, but that is very unique to the US. Now, with my belief that it is also genital mutilation, which we all agree is preposterous when you do it to women, mind you, that does have the goal of decreasing pleasure, which is uniquely patriarchal. But- It's still bad. It's mutilating.

It's so stupid, but it's already terrifying to show your penis to somebody. And if you already feel other and you know all the girls are going to tell their girlfriends he has a foreskin. Let me also say, I wish I had a foreskin. I'm jealous of you, David. I'm presuming you have one. I've got one. As designed. It's ridiculous to remove it.

I know. Well, by the way, going wrong. Yeah, it was a big debate for natalie and i yeah and what happened and yeah calvin had to be re-circumcised a year and a half after oh there's already debate whether or not we should god yeah she was not for it the doctor said do whatever you are that's what a lot of people say again something that's just american and it was your thought i didn't want him to feel weird but i agreed agreed that he shouldn't have his skin cut off. It's a bit like religion.

You just kind of do what your parents do, right? Well, it's all about high school. You don't even get to choose. Yeah, true. Someone found out a kid in my high school had a foreskin, and people wrote with soap on the window of his hatchback, foreskin. Well, I hope he's much stronger. Oh, my goodness. Bill Gates, and now he's very rich. I hope he's much stronger. That was Bill Gates and now he's very

rich. I hope he is too. But I just know that you can be a pariah for having that foreskin, even though more pleasure. We get into that in the documentary. Okay, great. He has a lot of nerves in that foreskin. Now, the only thing I thought of, I was glad I didn't have a foreskin is like, it was so hard for me to last

more than a minute or two in high school. If I had more nerve endings, I think when I pulled the sheets back, I would have sprayed. That's what I told Natalie. That was my argument, too. I was like, his wife will appreciate it. Circumcised him right when he was born, and it didn't take, like, they didn't cut enough off. Oh, Jesus, Pete. So a year and a half in, we had to redo it.

He had to go under for it. So we had to go to the hospital. He put under. Wow. He had a tweener. He was like, you kind of had a foreskin, kind of didn't. This is why you just shouldn't mess with it. I'm saying this, and I also, if I have a boy, I will struggle.

I don't. I mean, Vincent's circumcised now. Well, yeah, you can't have one. Yeah, it's preposterous. I took to the streets as I usually did to kind of canvas other people's opinions because I did feel really alone in knowing what to think about this topic.

And it was a weird one to talk about because it was the first one of these episodes where I've gone out to talk to people about something and felt like a bit of a weirdo because suddenly you're talking about penises and just there's a guy roaming around with a microphone. It's just a strange topic to bring up though if anyone could ask a question about a penis it's you even that intro i want to hear you say that thousand more times okay that's good well it did work out in the end circumcision it's not something we do in new

zealand americans they love it they tend to yes know, and they're not asking the kids. They're not asking the boys. But yeah, I guess parents love circumcision. Is it a good thing, bad thing, or neutral? I don't think anything could be neutral. I think you tend to go for what you know, but I think natural is good. And if you're circumcised, then you learn to work with that as well. I think a lot of it's a cultural thing, and what the father has, the son tends to have overall. I think that's kind of how it works. Oh, that's quite true.

Americans love standardization. That is a very difficult subject you've approached. I don't know why. It's more for a cleanliness kind of thing. I had twin boys, and we got ours circumcised. It's more for a cleanliness kind of thing. I had twin boys and we got ours circumcised. It's the visual aesthetics. The boys, they feel different if they're not. They're in the locker room.

They get made fun of for not. Are they into circumcision in Canada? I don't think so. I think it's going down in frequency. Any idea why? I think it's just like in frequency. Any idea why? I think it's just like culture. Is that a Jewish thing?

We are in a Jewish area. It's also like a Christian thing. In America, it seems to be like the default thing you do to a baby. Yeah. Any thoughts on that? Not really. I am, so. Yeah, it just was.

It was done. I didn't know, and it's there. Or it's not there, actually. Guy's wife was off to the side just mortified he was incredible i love that guy but yeah as you were saying it's kind of that thing of you want your kid to not be the odd one out and because the circumcision rate's so high here it just keeps going and going and going but it's so american to be like what we have is the best way or the normal way when actually numbers wise it's so not totally i don't think it's our american exceptionalism in this moment i don't think it's us saying it's the best i think it's saying fuck i don't want my kid to be super humiliated. It's not humiliating in New Zealand because that's the standard.

Exactly. So it's only humiliating here because we decided that that's, quote, normal. And clean. And that clean thing keeps coming back. It's like, it's way cleaner. I'm scared of here now in America. It's like, if anyone sees my penis, are they going to be horrified? Because they've been told that's this awful, dirty thing. thing well can i ask you a personal question go for it have you found it's much harder to keep

clean in america maybe there's something here going on our latitude no it's surprising like you still have water and soap and stuff and it's kind of fine it's not packed with lint it's not packed with lint no i've been checking it out i've been keeping an eye on it. And it's not disgusting. There's something patriarchal and like, ew, about I want my son's genitals to match my genitals. Yeah. I totally disagree with where you're coming from. You're saying as we think what we know is best. I think it's motivated solely out of preventing your kid from being humiliated. But Dax, it's only here that people would be humiliated.

I know, that's where they live they don't live in new zealand but if everyone just didn't do it listen if you could get everyone on the same page and you would say let's flick a light switch and end this everyone would say yes i don't think that's true you would but i think a lot of people would not say yes yours just your explanation is like rooted in arrogance and exceptionalism. I don't think it's all those character defects that are driving it. I think it's compassion that's driving it. I don't want my kid to be a pariah.

I wonder if it is a parent problem or if it's also the medical problem. I don't want his kid to be a pariah. Yeah, it wasn't about matching mine. Yeah, but your doctor told you. Yeah. And that is a common thing. Someone said it in this too. I'm not making it up out of nowhere. A of people do that and i've been told that like whatever you have you should

just do that yeah by default yeah and there's no other way around it and that's what i found in the doc it is rooted in american pop culture as well you're just told again and again and again that you're a complete freak show if you don't have it which is I guess where my journey with this whole thing started. Seriously Ewan you should have that taken care of I mean you're a very attractive man but that penis is a disaster. Well what would you have me do Jay? Get circumcised. Growing up in New Zealand it was always sort of weird watching American TV shows where it was just a given that every adult man would be circumcised A mohel? What the hell is a mohel? A mohel is the person that performs a circumcision

When I was a kid, I assumed it was a Jewish thing A practice deeply seated in a culture and religion That idea was reinforced thanks to shows like Seinfeld Something I watched religiously. But since I've been in America, a few friends here have had their babies circumcised, and I discovered they weren't Jewish. This shocked me to my core. Why would you circumcise anything if God wasn't telling you to do it?

So I decided to pick up the phone to talk to someone who knew what they were talking about. I hadn't warned Fred Wok that I was about to FaceTime him, but he kindly answered anyway. Fred's a retired surgeon who's had several branches to his career. He was a director of clinical trials for a large urology group, and he did general urology until he was into his 50s. He also did a lot of cancer surgery. And all through that time, I did a lot of circumcisions. Okay, how many circumcisions do you think you've done in your lifetime? I don't know that you can count that high. Hundreds.

I'll tell you that universally, it's not an operation that urologists like to do. It's fiddly. You have to go to the operating room. If you're doing it on a child, the parent's anxiety is also part of the equation. I never really thought about what was going through a parent's mind during a circumcision. I guess it's unpleasant for all involved. Some can't stand the idea of doing that to a newborn

because it's generally not done with anesthetic or very little anesthetic. But I've had children sleep through the whole thing. But I always put in a little anesthetic because I just can't believe that it doesn't hurt but a lot don't and the Moyles ritual Jewish circumcision they usually soak a rag in wine and give it to the kid he sucks on the wine and by the time they get down to doing the circumcision he's drunk. As well as being popular in Judaism circumcision is also common amongst Muslims. Because there are so many Muslims on planet Earth, statistically, they get circumcised the most. The next biggest population that practices circumcision? Americans.

What I'm trying to figure out is why it seems in America that the default thing to do to a newborn male child is to circumcise them. Well, it's because the American Association of Pediatrics, the American Association of Pediatric Urology, decided in the 50s and 60s that it was beneficial to do it in a newborn where you could do it under local or without anesthetic. The risks of not doing it are that you have to do it at a later age, which requires an anesthetic. Sure, I understand why it's probably better to circumcise an infant than an adult. But why do it at all?

At least 70% of the American male population is circumcised, about 115 million men. That's giant. Why chop off 115 million foreskins? There are a couple of factors. The first one is you want the child to look like daddy. So if dad's circumcised, the kid's circumcised. And adhesions, where the foreskin does get pulled back and then it starts to stick. And phimosis, where you get scars and you can't retract it. Okay, so things get a bit graphic here. But foreskins in adults can go awry.

But it's pretty rare. Fred's main point is that if you do it, you want to do it early. There is evidence that it protects against the contraction of HIV and AIDS, but the risk-reward is not good there because it's not a simple operation in an adult. It's usually in the operating room with an anesthetic. It looks like a dog chewed on it's not a simple operation in an adult. It's usually in the operating room with an anesthetic. It looks like a dog chewed on it for about a week. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

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proved impossible. Turned out it was actually quite hard to find an adult American who was toying with getting a circumcision, so I just started casually bringing it up in conversation. While I was getting food with friends, I'd inquire if they were thinking about getting a new haircut, or tattoo, or maybe a circumcision. Surprisingly, this tactic actually worked, and I met Tom. Circumcision has always been a topic that, no pun intended, has been the tip of my mind. I always thought that there was something wrong with me. I do have a condition called phimosis, which is where the foreskin doesn't fully retract, so it doesn't expose the entire head of the penis.

And for the longest time, I thought I was like, there's something wrong with me, like I can never be fixed. And growing up queer as a gay man, it was a big insecurity of mine. So then that gives me more reason to think that, do I need to have a circumcision? Because it seems to be more culturally accepted, especially in the queer community, and it's more desired. Despite having one, I hadn't actually thought that much about the aesthetics of a penis. A penis was a penis, hidden most of the time, only emerging from time to time, usually in private. There's a really incredible piece in The New Yorker about a botched adult circumcision written by Gary Steingart. At one point, he perfectly captures the absurdity of the penis.

Quote, I've always imagined that beyond its pleasurable utility, the penis must be an incomprehensible thing to most heterosexual women, like a walrus wearing a cape that shows up every once in a while to perform a quick round of gardening. As for Tom, he's been weighing up changing the appearance

of his penis for years. When I was in my mid-20s, I was like, oh, should I do it? And then it slowly became an issue. And so now that I'm 31, I'm like, do I do it? Because for me, I'm fine the way I am. Everything works and everything's great. It's that public perception thing from other people that you're dealing with. Exactly. And it's a change that you obviously can't reverse it. I'm almost like, well, I kind of look like the statue of David. He's uncircumcised

and he's like revered and everyone's literally looking up to him. And so there's something very natural and wonderful about it. But from a functional standpoint, I wonder what it's like on the other side. This whole time I've been talking to Tom, I've been thinking back to my conversation with Dr. Wolk and that dog chew toy. But I guess the grass is always greener on the other side, because I've been talking to another man, Adam. Adam was circumcised as a baby, but he didn't want to be circumcised. I mean, as an infant, he didn't get the chance to make a decision. But as an adult, he's mad the call was made on his behalf. He's annoyed his foreskin was lobbed off before he could form the thoughts or the words to say no thank you i'll

keep that bit when i really pressed my parents on why they said it was to look like dad which is a very common answer which is really just a way of saying this is the cultural norm like liam neeson with his kidnapped daughter and taken what i do have are a very particular set of skills adam wants his foreskin back. He makes the point that he lost a lot of nerve endings when that skin was chopped off. Between 10,000 and 20,000 specialized erotogenic nerves. In hindsight, he'd like to be able to try those nerves out. It's sort of a passed down wound, which I don't think anybody's having that thought explicitly in their minds when they're signing the consent form for their son to be circumcised. For Adam, it's about him, but it's also about America and how America thinks about penises.

He sees the whole operation as a human rights violation. When you hit your parents up about this and you were like, hey, why did you do this? I actually kind of wanted that skin. Like, was that a weird conversation to have? Oh, yeah. Yeah. How did that go? Well, it was very emotionally charged. I was young. I was 18. I'd been distraught over it for years. I thought I was growing up in a civilized society here. But at the end of the day, this is just a ritual that we have medicalized. here. But at the end of the day, this is just a ritual that we have medicalized. At one point, he considered suing his circumciser to make his point. I mean, people have done it. A headline from 2006 reads,

Man Sues for Loss of Foreskin. Six years later, another case and another headline, Man, 28, Sues Over Circumcision That Robbed Him of, quote marks, Prowess. At the end of the day, we're strapping baby boys down on these boards and then going at it with a clamp and a knife and acting like, oh, this is fine. What's wrong with you? This is totally normal. There's parts of the foreskin that are lopped off that you'll never get back. It's just one of these sort of exceptions to any kind of understanding of our economy that we're taught growing up in American culture.

Adam is not alone. There are a growing number of Americans that want their foreskins back. I mean, literally. There was that wonderful scene in the HBO show How To With John Wilson, where Ron Lowe had invented a device to stretch the skin back on his circumcised penis. Ron explains his invention over on his YouTube channel. For my day job, I'm an industrial engineer, but as a sideline, I operate a business called TLC Tugger, which helps men restore their foreskins. There are people like

Ron setting out to restore one foreskin at a time. Then there are those who are looking to change things on a more systemic level, and not just people that are missing a foreskin. a time. Then there are those who are looking to change things on a more systemic level, and not just people that are missing a foreskin. Some don't even have a penis. I'm Georgianne Chapin. I'm 70 years old. Georgianne's background is in anthropology and public health. I've been a healthcare executive for many years, probably since my mid-30s. And now she's the executive director of Intact America, which is a not-for-profit based in New York, which is trying to change the way America thinks about circumcision.

Americans are obsessed with the idea of their son's penises. Her mission to end circumcision is sort of personal. Her brother had complications from his circumcision when he was an infant. He was circumcised in the hospital shortly after he was born, and then a few days later, his urethra closed up. Something called meadal stenosis, and it only happens in circumcised men. It could happen at any age, but it's virtually unheard of in men who are intact, which is, we don't say uncircumcised, we say intact.

And he had to be taken back to the doctor, and his urethra had to be reopened with a scalpel. And my mother had to hold him while this was going on. Like Bruce Wayne seeing his parents gunned down, I guess that was Georgianne's origin story. By the time she wound up studying anthropology, she became interested in circumcision all over again. I just thought this is such a peculiar, awful thing to do to a newborn baby. How could it be that half of the population, all males, were born needing corrective surgery? It just made no sense. Nobody knows the exact rate. Intact America did its own survey and

reckons 75% of American males are circumcised. The World Health Organization has it between 76% and 92%. It's not like there's a central penis database in America, so it's hard to get an exact number. I'm assuming that if you have a baby in New Zealand, this is not a decision anyone has to make. Of course, you're not going to cut your baby's penis. And so here, a lot of the articles you'll see in the press start with, if you're having a baby boy, the first important decision you have to make is whether to have him circumcised. And in non-circumcising countries, it's a non-decision. People who say it's cleaner, you have all these aspirations for your child. He can become an interviewer for a podcast. He can

become a neurosurgeon. He can become a fine carpenter. He can become all of these things. And he's not going to be able to learn how to wash his penis. I mean, it's absurd. I quite like how dramatic Georgianne gets. She goes all in. We could cut off somebody's toes and they would never get athlete's foot, fungus between their toes. We could pull people's teeth. They wouldn't have to worry about cavities. We could remove girls' breasts and they would never get breast cancer. So the idea that this is an important, critical decision is really a scam. I think this is the first time I'd heard an American describe circumcision as a scam. But if you look into why Americans circumcise, you can see why she uses that word.

I'm not talking about the reasons we're told today. I'm talking about diving back into the 1800s. Circumcision began being promoted by doctors, aside from it having a religious ritual history among Muslims and Jews and some tribes around the world. In the Victorian era, the belief was that sex was wrong, sex was dirty and only to be undertaken for procreation, that masturbation was a sin or make him less likely to indulge in sex. And actually, a philosopher and physician, Maimonides, in the 13th century said the same thing. He said the foreskin is a source of pleasure and removing it meant a boy would spend more time in his studies. So this has an old history. By the time the early 20th century came around,

being circumcised was seen as a mark of class. If you meet a really old American guy, like I'm talking about somebody in his 90s, and he's circumcised, guaranteed his family was wealthy. But as more and more people started having babies in hospitals, it became more common. people started having babies in hospitals, it became more common. And by the 1940s in the US, it was pretty mainstream. It was mainstream in New Zealand back then too, by the way. But by the 70s, we'd largely stopped. But America forged on for a very American reason. Because medicine became a fee-for-service enterprise here. So doctors make money. The more procedures they do, the more money they make. And hospitals bill for it, doctors bill for it.

Insurance companies, some don't pay for it, but most do. In short, circumcisions are big business. The hospital charges, their equipment manufacturers, the clamps, the scalpels, the bandages, the circumstrate, which is a molded board that they put the baby on that elevates his hips, so give the doctor easier access. And then there's a whole industry of circumcision repairs, circumcision revisions, many of them for cosmetic reasons. Then there's also a cosmetic industry that uses severed infant foreskins for face creams. If it's such a disgusting body part, such a harmful body

part, why is it so valuable, you know, that you want to turn it into a face cream and smear it on your face? The foreskin has very particular biological properties and probably immunological properties too. So yeah, foreskin fibroblasts are a hot commodity in the beauty business. Back in 2018, a quite famous actor made headlines when she talked about getting a penis facial from a New York salon. Which brings us to a topic I didn't want to come to, but here we are. Smegma. If you don't know what smegma is,

look it up. You don't need me telling you. Smegma is actually derived from the Greek word for soap. So smegma, it's not any more disgusting than the saliva in your mouth. These are normal bodily fluids. So we've built up this myth about foreskin, how it's beneficial to remove it. And as a consequence, most Americans my age have never even seen an intact adult penis. They might have seen a newborn's intact penis. If they haven't seen that, they've never seen a foreskin. And this brings us to George Ann Chapin's big point, that circumcision is such a big part of being an American, many Americans don't even know what an old school, original, natural penis looks like anymore. I actually have a big chart of the human anatomy that was published in 2012 by a national library

of medicine. And it's got a huge color plates of the male reproductive system. And the male reproductive system has labeled the penis and the testicles and the vas deferens, you know, where the sperm travels down and all that. And it's missing a foreskin. It's a circumcised penis. That is the default penis. It's crazy. Somebody looking at this who's intact would say, that's not my penis. Whose penis is that? Is this part of the issue now that if you do have a foreskin, if you are intact,

then you're kind of a freak in America? Maybe I'm a freak here now. Well, you're a lucky freak. A lucky freak. Yeah, that's what they tell all the freaks. But here I am, a Kiwi stranded in America, a freak in a sea of dicks. Doctors will tell people anything to get them to circumcise their sons. They'll tell them it's healthier. They'll tell them it's cleaner. They'll tell them the child will be made fun of. The other one is they'll tell them he's going to have to have it done eventually. So it's better to do it now when he doesn't remember. Or it's better to do it now when it's less painful. Or it's even better to do it now when he doesn't remember, or it's better to do it now when it's less painful,

or it's even better to do it now when it's cheaper. But the assumption is, it's going to be done. So let's just do it now, and I get my money now, and then you can go home from the hospital. Jujan thinks attitudes are changing. Even in the last five years, people have become more open to even talking about circumcision, open to the idea that maybe there's another way. She's beavering away on a memoir, by the way. Her working title is This Penis Business. And we'll look at America's obsession with circumcision. America's strangest scam. Essentially, America's doing this because some people wanted to stop boys wanking. Yeah, back in the day. You wouldn't believe some of the things that were circumcision was promoted to either prevent or cure. Hip dysplasia,

tuberculosis, insanity, urinary and fecal incontinence. So operating on the genitals has a many thousands of year history. People are obsessed with genitalia because genitalia are so important in perpetuation of the species. So this is America's culture, but unfortunately it involves maiming the genitals. Not all do. Some might admire them, but we maim them. That seemed like a good place to finish things up I thanked Georgianne for her time And wished her luck with her penis book Before I wrapped up my journey into the foreskin though Or lack of foreskin I guess

I wanted to talk to Dr. Fred Wolk again I had a hack question I'd forgotten to pose I wanted the retired urologist to tell me his most intense penis story I called him back He was wearing a shirt this time. Oh my goodness. I mean, the things that I have taken out of urethras, chains, big pens.

There's a very common in LA County prison where you take a marble and you grind it down until it's small. And then they hold you down and someone lifts up your foreskin and they've sharpened a toothbrush edge and they stab the skin and they put the marble in there they always put it on the dorsal side so it'll rub against the clitoris it's a french tickler if you will and it's supposed to drive your mate wild when you get out. Oh my god, that's so intense. This is happening a lot?

It's not uncommon in LA County Prison. Amazing. I've never heard of it. I'm so naive. There's a blessing when you have a ritual circumcision. May you always be naive about shit like that. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. like that. Yes.

Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Flightless Bird is brought to you by Babbel. I think you're going somewhere soon that you might be able to use this one. Oh my gosh, this could not be happening at a more opportune time because I'm going to Spain in August. I'm so excited. I have taken so many Spanish classes in college and high

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So it doesn't feel like this huge thing you're endeavoring upon. It's a fun little activity to do in the morning. Yeah, it's gamified. So it feels like a fun activity. It doesn't feel like you're learning. And plus, its speech recognition technology helps you to improve your pronunciation and your accent. And they have 14 different languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Start your new language learning journey today with Babbel.

Right now, when you purchase a three-month Babbel subscription, you'll get an additional three months for free. That's for six months for the price of just three months go to babbel.com and use the promo code bird that's b-a-b-b-e-l.com code bird i feel much less naive after learning all of that pqs pqs on that marble oh sure yeah if anyone's wanting a modification the la prison is the place to get it that's a fast track sounds real nasty real nasty oh man that was fascinating you know it seems like the solution is to do it top down for the amaA and the insurers to all say, okay, we're no longer performing these and we're not reimbursing for these.

There's no point to these. We're kind of done. I don't think you're going to get it on the societal side just because of, again, the pressure or whatever their motivation is. I think it's ethical for the AMA to go, look, guys, there's no point to this. So we're not going to do this anymore. They're going to have to go to some other clinic. I don't know what you do for like the Muslims or whoever that have to have it done.

I mean, that's a different thing, isn't it? Where it's cultural, that feels like a very different thing. Also, they're not doing it at a hospital. Like I went to a bris when I was young, I guess. Yeah. It was a party. I mean, it was a whole party. And we stood there while a rabbi. Yeah, a rabbi. It was a party. I mean, it was a whole party, and we stood there while a rabbi.

Yeah, a rabbi. It was a whole celebration. While a rabbi cut off some penis in front of us. My mom did not want to watch. She didn't like it, but I was like, what is this? I mean, that is the fascinating thing when it's rooted in all this. It's one of the oldest procedures. I reckon it's been done before recorded history, like 15,000 years ago.

They were doing it for religious reasons. That feels very, I'm not saying that's necessarily a reason to necessarily keep it going forever, but it's a very different reason to the American healthcare system going, oh, we're just going to do it because it's our default setting. Because it's what we do. And the thing is, everyone I spoke to about this that even knew what they were talking about from a hospital point of view is that it's not a clear-cut procedure exactly how you do it, like how you're stretching the sore skin out,

where you're chopping, what you're doing, let alone outside of the hospital when you're going at it. Backyard party. At a backyard party, yeah, it's a very different thing. And there's that other angle where the baby can't talk. They're always crying anyway. They're always being dramatic. If they're crying when you chop it off, is it that bad?

It probably is. They might be hungry. Or or they might be hungry or they might sleep through it so it's the whole idea of how much trauma is this creating in a child right with boys and feeling pressure and stuff i totally i mean yeah it just exists here but again it's boys amongst other boys for the most part a lot of my friends have had sex with uncircumcised people. And they're not like, oh, my God, it was gross or it was weird. It was just sex. It's not like a big gossip station the next day. Kids are brutal and they'll pick on things.

Adults don't really care. Yeah, I think everyone would be fine if they were a full-grown adult in college when the first unveiling happened. And everyone was rational and not already scared you just gotta imagine like everyone in america doesn't have nipples and you're the one girl in school with nipples right i totally get it but then also that every other place in the world doesn't have nipples you have to make that decision yeah but just that fact should be a relief to you it would not help you in high school to go, oh, well, in Bangladesh, they have nipples. So I feel fine. It's just your peers.

You'd say, no one in my high school has nipples. It's just your peers that the pressure's on. Yeah, no one succumbs to global pressure. It's all peer pressure. It's such a weird thing to bully over. In New Zealand, if there was someone circumcised at school, they'd be the ones that were being teased. It would just be in reverse. It's so, so strange.

I want to address the masturbation history of it. I didn't know any of that. That doesn't shock me at all. Like the whole puritanical Elizabethan, all that shit makes me so angry. You're just embedded here, right? Yeah, like to fucking somehow get people to masturbate less is crazy. But I have thought many times when I have envy is the pornography I've seen where a man has foreskin when he let's say he were to finish outside of the womb okay and he's assisting in that with his hand what i notice yeah is the

foreskin is almost like your own lubricant like it slides back and forth totally yes and i was like that's incredible that you have a built-in lubricant completely because no it is it's better all around for lubrication and for like getting down to business what george ann told me as well is that something that she has experienced because she's talking to loads of people as she's rallying to stop circumcision yeah is that american men this is an amazing thing for her to say like they pound really hard okay because they have to because their penis is like much number so to be able to ejaculate they've really got to like go for it just to feel anything because imagine like if you're

uncircumcised the head of your penis is permanently isolated in a little bubble so whenever it comes out it's like surprise it's excited it's like surprise. It's excited. It's like taking your mittens off in the winter or something. And it's like, whoa. But then when you're circumcised, your penis is just rubbing on your underwear all day. It's like, it's tireless. It's used to a lot of stimuli. It's like the bottom of a foot. It's all thick and hard and can't feel anything.

We talk so much societally now about consent. Consent is the big word of the day. Absolutely. Women need to consent. And we're just removing the fact that there's a surgery happening every day, an elective surgery, without the person's consent. Which will dramatically affect their adult life and their sex life and everything. It's a pretty big one.

An elective cosmetic surgery exactly yeah that's the outrageous thing yeah it's not for some life-saving procedure what if they gave babies a nose job immediately exactly like it'd be like that that culturally it was dangerous to not have a big roman nose because you couldn't get enough air in it's chaotic right i'd feel better wouldn't yeah we all would feel better all of us with big noses i had a friend in new zealand i still have a friend in new zealand we'll call him um jayden and he what a conventional kiwi name and i don't know why and i don't have the details i was wanting to talk to him before this episode but he's asleep because he's in new zealand sure

he's weighted down by that foreskin it's exhausting oh no oh because he was gonna have a circumcision when he was a baby but didn't have him for some reason so he had it a bit later i think around like maybe five or seven or something and he just told me this amazing story one time where he got home from that procedure and he was for some reason he had no pants on and he lay down on the rug and he sort of became attached to the to the rug and sort of had to peel himself off. Which is just a really intense

story that I always think of when I see Jaden. It's confusing though because it's so soft you think it's going to feel nice. Maybe even comfort. The fiber is fused. It's a lot. After this episode did you feel more comfortable being here with a uncircumcised intact yeah yeah shouts to say intact i think i do i mean it's weird

because i hadn't really thought about it that much and i'm almost a bit more worried about it now than i was before because i didn't know the stats were so high about circumcised penises like if it's 92 if it's that upper register yeah then i really am a freak and like the one place you don't want to be a freak is when you're showing your penis to someone right well you want to be a freak in the sheets but you don't want to be a freak before you get in the sheets it's playing my mind a little bit anyone Anyone who you're going to want to have sex with is not going to care. Okay, that's good to know. What's like that British show, I think it's called Naked Attraction, maybe. Have you seen this?

It's like I've only watched various bits of it, so I'm probably describing it incorrectly. But there's a person playing the game show, and then there's four boxes on screen. And they've got a person in each of them. The bottom of it will open up, and so they'll see a foot and some calf and they'll be naked and they'll be like, oh, I think I'll pick one and two because those calves look good. Oh, wow. And then they open up the next layer and it's genitals. And they're like, oh, I picked this one and that one.

And so they slowly eliminate them until there's one like body left that they really like. And then they'll open up the face bit of the box. And it will either be, they'll be like, wow, I love that face that's attached to that body. Or they'll be like, oh no, I love that body, but I don't like that face. Oh no, this is a mind. It's truly horrific.

I really wish I was uncircumcised at this point. That would be great. Yeah, that's the thing that you can't reverse it. Like you could get the TLC tugger and what that does. Have you seen this action? That's not real. It's real. I mean, it's real, but it doesn't regrow the nerves that were lost.

No, that's the issue. It could stretch your skin. It'll stretch your skin. Yeah, it'll make your dick saggy. So it might look like you have a bit of a foreskin, but none of the nerves grow back. It's just now saggy skin that you've stretched out. Do you know how the TLC Tugger works, Monica? I can't even, do you know?

No, yeah, tell us. You attach it to like what's left Of your foreskin And it's like This little band That you put around there And it's got like A little string That comes off it

And then weights And so you wear Like the weights Down your pants So I could be Wearing it right now And like It's just gently

Like pulling on my foreskin As I'm sitting And you can also There's a bit Where you can You can sort of Pull it up You attach it

To the headboard And it just stretches your penis aggressively while you sleep. Wow. And eventually you'll get some skin back. Do you know It's a plug for the TLC. If you don't get it back, you'll just get saggier skin in that area. Let's be very clear. There's no

added skin. It just gets thinner and saggy. When I'm sponsored by TLC Tiger yeah, it just stretches it. Do you know of this guy Fakir? F-A-K-I-R. He may be dead at this point. I feel like I've heard the name. His goal was to recreate all of these rituals from different tribes around the world.

So he did everything. He did waist reduction. So he had like a 12-inch waist at one point. He did the, I forget what tribe, a Native American does this ritual where they put huge hooks through your pectors and you hang from a tree. Oh, my God. Yeah, he did that.

He also cut his penis in half. Well, first he did a Prince Albert piercing and then he cut his penis in half. But before he did all this, he put very heavy weights on his penis and he just stretched his penis out To like 14 inches It got really thin and crazy long It is amazing what you can do with the penis

There's a scene in the new Jackass film Have you seen that at all? I haven't They get two bits of Perspex glass And they put it on either side of the penis And they have little screws on the Perspex And just tighten it And in the end

The penis is just like a bit of paper. It's flat? It's just flat in there. And then they play ping pong with each other. Their penises are attached to this thing. But yeah, you can do a lot to it. But yeah, obviously chopping the foreskin off. It's literally like the most painful bit to chop off.

That's where all the nerves are. It's a really strange thing. Well, I do just want to applaud the penis's malleability. And so what is incredible about it, dogs have penis bones. We don't have a bone. You know, we just have all these blood vessels. And the fact that it inflates with blood

and becomes stiff is incredible. It's crazy. And the fact that when it's limp, you can push it as hard as you can. You can put it back in your body if you try hard enough. I've done this. You can make it disappear. And then it can push it as hard as you can. You can put it back in your body if you try hard enough. I've done this. You can make it disappear, and then it can be stiff as a board,

light as a feather, stiff as a board. What an incredible – It can do a lot. It can do a lot. Can you embrace Monica? Yes. You've got some boys here trying to embrace you with what we can do. It's like no other body part, though.

What is it? It's wild. Yeah. The vulva can contract and expand so much that a baby can come out of it that's pretty cool i love yeah i love vulva okay but wait it's not a competition yeah because vulvas win but fair what broke on your penis so when it was erect it snapped right but so i think what it did is i think it tore a lot of the blood vessels oh okay and where they connect to each other to become this one unified coagulation yeah because that

must have been such a surprise because it is so invincible like it feels invincible right it was what it can go through the most unique pain it was just searing heat kind of pain that's what these little boys are going through. I want to point out something that I don't know if people ever think about. So all babies are female. And then if they're male, the mom's body sends testosterone down and starts converting. And the ovaries, which are inside, descend. They take over the vulva.

And the vulva becomes testicles. And the clitoris turns into a penis yeah and that's so wild that our genitalia is the same thing just puffed out in different areas i think and then what's really fascinating is female bodybuilders who do a tremendous amount of testosterone and steroids their clitoris does turn into a penis it It becomes super elongated. It just gets bigger, right? It has a shaft. It has a head just like our head. What?

If you look at your clitoris closely, it has a head just like the penis head. And as it grows out from all this steroid use, it mirrors a penis. That's incredible. It's a very liberal thing to say, but I'm going to say it because I believe it. The fact we all begin like this and all sort of to change it's amazing we get so stressed about gender and

genitals right because like we're all kind of saying from the same space yeah so why are we that stressed about it let's all try and stop circumcision somehow i feel like we probably should but will this just go on for another like hundred years i guess it will right i don't think so and it seems to be picking up some momentum. Again, the California stat is encouraging. So look, you're going to be in school with a bunch of different kids and there's going to be plenty of support here. But if you're in northern Wisconsin, you might be on your own.

But it takes doctors to finally stand up and go, this is a preposterous, unethical tradition. I need to procreate in america and have a son or multiple sons and not circumcise them and that can be the beginning of change yeah they'll be bullied and like completely ruined but they will start to create change when you whip your dong out in front of some co-ed or non-co-ed in the next month or two and they'll go what the fuck's going on there and you'll go oh i'm from new zealand i'm like that makes sense now if you're just like what's going on there i don't know i live next door to you see you got a built-in no again that's not giving women enough credit no one's gonna say what the fuck's going on there and if they are get a different woman

i think you don't mind the foreskin and that's wonderful and i think all women shouldn't mind the foreskin but i also think there's a lot of high school girls that are would probably tell all their friends currently until there's more people who aren't i'll stay away from high school girls until david until david's martyr son is on the scene it's so charismatic all the boys will be using the tuggy tugger the tippy tugger whatever the tlc it should not be called tlc tender loving care yeah wow that's not tender loving or caring to stretch to make your dick saggy i don't think a foreskin is gross at all but making your dick super saggy is gross i'm gonna stand by that the more i think about it the more accurate i think you are okay thank you. The question is,

am I become more American or less American in this episode? Because I do have a foreskin, so I'm probably less American. Big time. Big setback. You're the new American. So sometimes we could say, are you becoming more American? Or is America becoming more

like you? And I think that's the latter in this case. So I think America is becoming more like you, David I think that's the latter in this case. So I think America is becoming more like you, David. Congratulations to you. You're a trendsetter. Thank you so much. Only here you're completely normal and average at home. No wonder you came here where you can be spectacular and exceptional.

And you're succeeding admirably. Thank you. Thanks, David. Love you. Thank you you guys.