The Joe Rogan Experience - #2516 - Rowan Jacobsen

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

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

Joe Rogan podcast, checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. All right. Very nice to meet you, man. You too. Thanks for having 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 son 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? Yeah, it's super complicated. and the messaging has not sort of admitted that, and that was, yeah, a big impetus for the book. What was your opinion of sun exposure

before you started writing this? So I had inherited the conventional wisdom from the institutions that it was really bad. At the same time, I'll 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? Right. So I was like, there's more here than we're being told. 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, well, it's a little more complicated than that. But that is a, the instinct.

Like, it feels great when you're in the sun. Like, ah, it's like your body wants it. 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. 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 suns. So when you started going into the research, what made you shift your

opinion? 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, 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 other studies that seemed to indicate that sunlight could lower blood pressure, which was really interesting. So then, you know, I still had the sense sunlight bad.

Right? So then I remember just like Googling like, so how much does sunlight like 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. 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?

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.

Right. So, so Scott, the sun cancer that does cause skin cancer, excuse me, sun exposure that does cause skin cancer, what is causing it? Why is it happening? So ultraviolet light, which is the most energy-intense 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 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 cause a little chain reaction, which is what a free radical is. So ultraviolet light can increase your free radicals, and it can directly damage DNA.

So that's why it could 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 sign we're getting. 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? 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. Ricketts? Yeah, so rickets is a, like, soft bone disease. Like, if you don't get enough calcium into your bones when you're a kid, when you're a kid, baby, you get soft bones, you get rickets. Really bad disease. And 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. Is nutrition a factor in that? Vitamin D. It was all vitamin D. At first, they thought maybe it was vitamin.

But it turned out that was how vitamin D was discovered. Was some doctors figured out that it could solve rickets and kids. And then they figured out that if sun hit skin, that's how we made vitamin D. Then they figured out. How did they figure that out? They tested, they did some tests on dogs. Actually, one of the guys figured it out. He had a hunch that that's what it was.

Like they noticed the kids in the, 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, okay, so something about diet.

But then he got lucky because he had deprived the dogs of sunlight. And that's why they got rickets. 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, gives it some movement, and it flips around into a new form

that's vitamin D. So once I figure that out, then they're like, Sun's really good for you. So we had this air in like the 20s, 30s, and into the 40s when everyone thought Sun would cure everything. And they like went after it hard. Really? Yeah. 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. 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.

Is that the issue? Is burning a giant part of the issue? 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. So how much of a factor is skin type, like people that are pale or have freckles and red hair and 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? 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 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 that phenotype, lots of moles, red hair, freckles, you do have to be really careful. And you can only do so much, like you're not going to tan that much anyway. Your melon'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. 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. Yeah, yeah.

It's really weird. 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 sensitive. 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 wonder 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. Did you put it into perplexity? Oh, here it is. Melaton. Melanotanotan. 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 carry significant health risks. What's the risks? It's not approved by the FDA for cosmetic use. An unregulated market means purity. Okay, but that's unregulated. 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? Why the erections? Oh, that's right.

This apparently gives people raging erections. Why? Prolonged, painful, and potentially damaging. Damaging. Imagine you get an erection that goes so hard, you redline the penis. Medical and dermatological organizations strongly advise against the use of melanotan, melanotan because it's unapproved, there are no clinically established safe dosages. Well, weird, because that, so alpha MSH, the thing that it is,

it is mimicking is that's how your body makes melanin that's how you're supposed to do it you got to see the before and afters because they're kind of 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 just like there's like a light on them right and then he's in a fucking dark closet in the last picture before and after photos I've seen Is there a other that one right there the low the no the one yeah that one look at that guy

Well you know it's a look it's an interesting he injected himself with unregulated tanning peptide Melanaton melanotan too click on that Seems like a joke a little no no this guy this is the guy that I saw online this guy's he's the test rabbit This dude went hard did he get an erection too? Yeah he died from that I don't know. So his before and afters. So let's see what is... He just...

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 regular... See, that's... The photo's dark, though.

I mean, that's like a shitty iPhone 1 camera. 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 ink that dye on their skin to make themselves darker so their muscles pop out more. So here's better. Tanning log photos.

These are better photos. That's crazy. But I wonder if that offers skin protection. It would definitely offer skin. I mean, if it is, if it's melanin. Right. Definitely, I mean, that guy can probably be outside all day. 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. Melanin clearly protects you from skin cancer. If you have super dark skin, like, you know, African ancestry, you're blocking, like, your melanin is absorbing, like, 97, 98% of the UV rays. It's super effective. But didn't Bob Marley die from skin cancer? He did.

That's pretty crazy. Okay, this is one. Wow. It looks like the same person. Hard to help out the face. Same mold. Yeah. It looks like the same mold.

That looks pretty good. but I would just also wouldn't if you were trying to sell some of the stuff and maybe nefarious ways this would be an easy one to market tough and you know 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 what screams bro signs screams it from the top of the hills what legitimate scientist is out there injecting himself with melanotan.

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. And it's not just sunlight. Like exercise, same thing. Like anything that 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. Right. So you would want to, 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 want to do it along with sun exposure slowly to try to ramp up your body's ability. Added note on this, this happened 14 years ago. Wow. 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. 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 it didn't see that one. much either. Some get facial

flushing like a niacin dose. Never got that either. And the most strange things that it feels really good to stretch, like when you first wake up. Interesting. Huh. Did you do it for the skin coloring? Yes, I did it for the skin coloring. I'm pretty much impervious to UV at this point.

I have faded about 25% since returning from Florida January 35th. We'll be dosing again probably in March. Is this guy still alive? That's my question. It's 14 years. What is that? Click on that link where his profile.

Oh. Let's see if Homeboy's alive. Right. He's not. Is this Reddit? I see a year ago. He's commenting. I never did it subtle.

Okay. So a year ago, he's still alive, or someone is taking over his account. In theory, you could use an old school quartz tanning lamp. Okay, so you could tan with it. I think he's in a weird Reddit there, so we've got to stop looking. Why? I mean, this is not for the show, but he isn't a weird. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. That's why I was a friend to go that way. 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 taking, was it silver? Yeah, colloidal silver. That's right, colloidal silver. And his whole, his skin turned blue permanently, like a smurf?

Yeah. Poor guy. Yeah. And he wound up dying. Yeah. And how did it kill him? I don't know if it killed him, but he's, I believe he died young. That's homeboy.

Not good. Yeah. That's just not a good look. You would think you'd start turning a little blue and you'd go, hey, maybe I need to back off this colloidal silver. Paffa Slerf dies. Yeah. I mean, what the fuck, dude? That guy, I mean, maybe he could have gotten some melanotan and even that out.

It's just been a nice. chocolate, you know, like a blueish chocolate. I mean, he looks delicious. I'll say that. Yeah, this is Argreia, Argaria, Argyria, the rare disease it 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 taking that much colloidal silver. you're probably making a lot of other mistakes. I mean, yeah, like... You're a risky dude. There's so many options. This episode is brought to you by Ketone IQ. Here's something cool. Ketone IQ is giving five lucky listeners

the chance to win custom autographed gloves signed by John Bones-Jones, the goat, the absolute legend of MMA. But first, you know, I've been studying ketones for years. The U.S. military spent years researching one question. What is the best fuel you can give the brain? They landed on ketones, your brain's natural super fuel. The guys at ketone IQ helped bring it to market and make it accessible.

And I'm telling you, this stuff is great. My brain works on another level when I take it. There's never been a better time to try it out yourself. And because when you order now through my link, you get 30% off and you're automatically entered to win a pair of custom MMA gloves signed by Ketone IQ co-owner John Bones-Jones and gold medal wrestler Gable Stevenson. So go to ketone.com slash Rogan today,

claim 30% off your first order and enter to win some autographed gloves. Back to Bob Marley. Yes. He did die of skin cancer, and that confuses a lot of people. Right. He had melanoma on his toe.

And that was a kind of melanoma that's not caused by the sun. And everybody gets it, no matter 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?

Like, what's a melanoma doing on there? But so it does, not all melanomas are caused by the sun. There's, you know, most probably are. But it gets really weird with melanoma. 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 so really yeah so it gets weird like landscapers outdoor workers have fewer have a lower incidence of melanoma than office workers wow and we don't hear that 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 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. This is what happened to me. 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. Yeah. So. But, and so, yeah, But that's generally from over exposure. Burning. It's burning.

All the experts I've spoken with said don't burn. 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. Yeah. And there's dialing in on that more and more. It can start. Like burns during childhood is actually the highest association for melanoma. Really?

Don't burn when you're a kid. So we're all screwed. Oh, that sucks. That sucks. because I fucking cooked myself as a kid. Same here. I grew up in Florida. Fried, you know.

Well, when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, 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 car. Yeah. You got out there like, ah, put baby oil on. We fried. Totally.

I was just looking at some of those Johnson baby oil ads from like the 60s and 70s. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah, it was basically cooking lube. Totally. Yeah, it just helped. helped you cook better. But you remember George Hamilton, like the actor, Mr. Tan?

Yeah. He was all about that. Just the other day, I was like, how's he doing? 87 and ridiculously healthy right now. Really? Yeah, he's going strong. Yeah, I met that guy. He did an episode of news radio once.

Yeah, he was tan as fuck. Yeah, that was his thing. That was his thing. It became, yeah, what he was known for. And still, he's still going. So he's still tan? Yeah, you should see him. He looks great.

What does he look like? Pull a photo of George Han. Hamilton. I mean, great for an 87-year-old. Yeah. Look at him. Still tan. How does he... 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. That's true. I think he was Dracula in some bad 1970s, like, comedy. Look at that. That's a tan right there. Right. So how was he getting it, though? Like, I remember when I was a kid in Boston, a lot of people used to tanning beds, especially in the wintertime. And they still do.

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

He claims he's never had skin cancer, I think. 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. 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 hammered by the sun every day and they've got to deal with it. Right. 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. That's the kind of thing that triggers trouble. 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. Hell yeah. I've been denounced multiple times by the American Academy of Dermatology, like officially. They sent an official letter when I write an article and they say, nobody should be getting any sun exposure. That's their opinion. No one should be getting any sun exposure, regardless of the benefits, the vitamin D. No sun exposure without protection from either sunscreen or, you know, clothing.

Wow. And if that makes you vitamin D deficient, take a pill. So 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. Really? Yeah, they don't work at all. What do you mean? So everyone thought, like back in 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 I 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. I take it. 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 for many years.

None of them showed a benefit. No benefit in terms of your immune response? No benefit for any condition. Now, did they take vitamin D along with vitamin K2 and with magnesium? Because that's what's recommended. So I don't, I mean, there are a bunch of different stuff. 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. 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. Yeah, that could be. Like, yeah, I'd be curious. 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. Yeah. Well, one thing, D, you know, the way it naturally comes into the skin, and it comes in with a whole bunch of related compounds. Right. And so, yeah, I do think there's sort of a synergistic effect when it's combined with the right things.

But D from the sun has always been known as the best way to get it. For sure. The best way to get vitamin D, the most effective, the healthiest way is through sun exposure. Yeah. Like, that's how the design is supposed to work. 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 absorb when taken with a meal or a snack that contains some fat and offered paired with calcium for bone health. So please put in what are the benefits of vitamin D taken with K2 and magnesium?

Let's see if it says that. Because this is what my doctor, who is a vitamin specialist, recommends. Benefits when taken with K2 and magnesium. Okay. Taking vitamin D, together with vitamin D. and 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

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 problems that these people were taking. it with low magnesium, low calcium, didn't have K2.

Yeah, I'd be curious if there was an effect on disease incidence for that combination. I don't know because the D on its own, yeah, it didn't show any effect, but sun exposure. Let's put that in. Does vitamin D taken on its own have any health benefits? 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... 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 science. I can answer it the way you're looking for. It says, yes, vitamin D on its own has several well-proven health benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and immunity. Just like a general answer. Huh. Bone strength and fracture prevention, muscle function, adequate. I didn't add own, sorry.

What's that? I missed the word own taken on it. On its own. Let's try why the answer was weird. So let's say. Yes. It's clear proven benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and correcting deficiency. Yeah.

Yeah, so that's going to be for people who have super low levels. Preventing rickets. There it is. Yeah. 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. Wait a minute. People who had high levels through sun exposure.

Yeah. Because your natural level of vitamin D is sort of a direct, like, meter of how much sun exposure is. Right. But this is natural level. You're not talking about supplementation. Right. Right. Okay.

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. Right. 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 Medicine did a, actually did a editorial in 2022 saying, stop prescribing D. It doesn't work. Is that. God, that seems incorrect, though.

Because if you're taking it with magnesium in 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. 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. The guy looked like shit. He didn't look as good as you, right?

He looked terrible. I was like, yeah, I'm amazed how poor, what poor health they generally like seem to explain. I can't take it. I mean, it's so hard to take seriously a guy with a gut when, well, just, he looked terrible. Yeah. 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. Yeah. I noticed that when 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? 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. Yeah, absolutely.

100%. 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 you're outside of cities and all that stuff. It seems like we would have an understanding of what happens when you're interacting with sun. Yeah. And light, period. Like, light of all kinds. Like, it seems like there's the 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. has the same coin, right? And that light totally affects the behavior of molecules. We're made of molecules. Light's going to 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 light scapes that we're, you know, surrounding ourselves with, like more seriously than we have.

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? And they're saying that, you know, this guy should not be listened to. The things you're saying are dangerous. But you're talking about data. So I don't understand how they can just make those flat statements like that. Right. And I think we just need to have a conversation about the data.

And, you know, there's no, like, right answer ahead of time. But they don't, like, their job is to prevent skin cancer. So if that's your only job, you're going to tell people stay out of the sunlight. Forever. Forever, right? And no one can call you on that. No one can say, hey, like, I got skin cancer. cancer, it's your fault.

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? It's number one, 20 million deaths a year, cardio. So anything that moves the needle on that is awesome, you know? And it does. And it seems to. Like, all the studies show it does. 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 your giant clinical study where you stick half the people in the sunlight and they live longer, which is not going to happen. Right. Yeah. But it's like, are they willing to have a conversation with you? They're not willing to, they don't want to look outside of the.

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 got to be somebody out there who can be the generalist who can think about it holistically. That seems so ignorant. It's the state of science now. Like, the science is, you know, like a field of microspecialties. Did you like some coffee? Yeah, I'll take a little.

That looks good when you're pouring it. It's also a very shiny press. Oh yeah, fresh press. Cheers, sir. Cheers. Is coffee good for you? Coffee's awesome. Coffee is shocking the good for you.

Talk to me. Let's go. It is fucking crazy how good coffee is for you. I've been, like, startled by the, like, power of the evidence. Yeah. I've read both. I read it's bad for you, and I dismissed it because I'm, I'm, biased.

And I'd love coffee. And I just, it just tastes too good. It feels too good. I like it. But I've read a lot of benefits about it. I think it's the best possible supplement. Really?

Do 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. Hmm. And it's particularly because of caffeine or coffee itself? Is the coffee bean? 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. No. But caffeine is actually, the plants are making it to kill bugs. Right. Right. Because it makes the bugs monocondria 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. 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 Paulin 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. 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 own ways.

He went right back. Yeah. Like, I remember that article. It was great. And also, he said none of the, like, the caffeine researchers touch 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.

Yeah, he is. He went right back to it. So have you had any conversations with these dermatologists that are denouncing you? No, but I'd like to, actually. I think... Are they willing or have they avoided them? They have so far really avoided. Like, they just say, you know, we're not ready to look at any of that research. God, that's so weird.

I think it's going to change. I think actually, like I said, I think light medicine is actually going to become very important 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 these different wavelengths of life. as healing modalities and how to, you know, work them into, like, regular, like, programs.

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. Wow. Yeah. Not just stopped it, but reversed it. Like, 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 Brecker was on the first.

podcast and 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. So all over? 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, got to wear these goggles and make sure you close your eyes before the light goes on. I was like, okay, I did all that. And apparently there's some benefit that even when blindfolded, it increases your vision. 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. Yeah, I mean, I'm 58. And for me to be 56 and saying, I'm fucked, I have. I had these fucking things everywhere. I had these reading glasses. I had them all over my house. I'd gotten up to 3X.

These are the cheap Amazon ones. I had a nice pair, but I'd keep losing them. So I just went on but 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 20, but it's way better than it was when I was 15. And, yeah, I think, so the, in the, the mitochondria in 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 got to 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. What 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 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? 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? So I think we got to let the old guard die off a little bit.

But I guarantee there's a young generation coming in who's going to be really interested in light and how they can use it. 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 explore. things from this position that, like, hey, maybe the old guard are not correct. And the data seems to show that that's true. 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. Well, it's also, like, don't you want to be informed? And if there's, if 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. Well, I think that, and they'll be, they won't object to the red. Some of them are using red light therapy because there's no risk of skin cancer from red. It's only the UV 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. Yeah. But even that, it seems like there's a, like in your book you show there's a tremendous amount of data. There's health benefits to it. So I just don't understand. And that data is, it's coming from all different other fields, like immunology, cardiology. So, and, like, scientists are sort of increasingly, like, hesitant to trespass on their other domains. Right.

You know, like, they're not going to walk across campus to the other building anymore. Yeah. But that needs to change, you know. 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 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 just like guys this is what you're here for there's not a lot of scientists you got to do your job because like you're the only ones that are doing it there's without you guys were 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. And the other part of it is that science, it's sort of very self-reinforcing. 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.

Right, right. And there's generally a handful of entities that are, like, handing out the grant money. And it's the old guys waiting to die who are going to approve what they're going to approve what they think is the truth. 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. Right. So it's very difficult to get funded to do something that goes against the grain.

Increasingly so. And that's a problem. And so much of it is dependent upon the ego of the people there at the top of the organization. Ego is definitely part of it. 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 in, incorrect, they're very reluctant to correct themselves. Yeah, there's not just a, it's very rare to find the individual who's well known in the field and is eager to self-correct, you know. So have you had any conversations with any of these dermatologists?

No, but I'd love to. Not one? That seems crazy. Have you reached out to any of them? I have. I've reached out and I get the boilerplate. Like, we don't want anyone in the sun. take your d pills

it doesn't matter and the one that really that I think has got to change is the skin color question because fine to go with the recommendations for avoiding sun for people with fair skin

but for people with dark skin who have almost no risk from the sun-induced skin cancer and can benefit hugely from like things that will lower blood pressure and lower cardiovascular disease It seems like you're not being fair to those people. Not only that, it makes you feel better, which is very important just for sanity.

I mean, I think that gets underplayed. Like, mood and happiness is kind of the whole deal, right? Yeah. And there's just no question that sun exposure makes you happier. I spent a week with my friend Brian Callan and Steve Minela in Alaska and Prince Edwards 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 L.A., 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 L.A. right now in the sun.

And it feels amazing. I never felt the sun like this before. 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 going to 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 L.A. It's sunny all day long every day. Right, right. So eventually I got accustomed to it, but that feeling 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. Yeah, it's an awesome drug. And I've felt it for sure, you know, especially like early spring.

If I leave Vermont and I like have something in L.A., I'm just like, like, why is everyone not just dancing on the streets? This feels so good, you know? But the problem is Los Angeles, they're so used to it. Yeah. They're so spoiled. Everyone in there are so spoiled weather-wise. It's the perfect weather on Earth. It's incredible. Yeah. 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. Yeah. But how about here? Like, do you end up spending a lot of time outside here? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I do. But I'm outdoors all the time. I work out outside. I do a lot of farmers carries outside. I practice archery, so I shoot my bow outside every day, and I love it.

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 a 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 bring a big jug, a 64-ounce jug of water with ice and electrolytes, and I just drink that while I'm out there. So I'd shoot my bow for an hour and a half, two hours, and 105 degrees.

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

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 kind of all it is. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's all it seems to be. But we do see, like, truckers that, have you ever seen those? You're talking about that famous photo.

Yeah. That is a crazy photo. 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. It's like special effects. Somebody melted the left side of his face.

What's that all about? Yeah, there's the guy. There he is. That's literally nuts. Yeah. That's literally nuts. Like left side is just sloping off, basically. His left side looks like a hundred-year-old man, truck driver face.

Years behind the wheel driving a truck. Damage typically eliminated the left side of the face. So it's literally called truck driver face. Yeah. Now, so that photo and that study got used to, like, scare the shit out of a lot of people, try to keep them out of the sun. 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 finish 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. 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 high-quality. Palio Valley.com slash Rogan and use the code Rogan. That's paleoValley.com slash Rogan. Whoa, that's crazy. Look at the difference between. Wow, that's literally bananas. 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. 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 does, why did, why him? Like, because I've been driving in a car for 45 years and, you know, my face is the same on the left as it is on the right. Yeah. Kind of hanging in there, but, but the other thing is window glass, I think is actually a really interesting problem to talk about. Yeah. 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, but you're still going to get a bunch of UVA, which they figured out, like in the 90s, does cause skin cancer. Oh, wow. So sun through the windows is not as good as sun outside.

It blocks the UVB, but the UVA comes through, but you'll never have a burn reaction because of it. But you might be getting damaged. Yeah. And so like in the U.S., people get slightly more, slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the left side of their body. In the U.K., they get slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the right side. Uh-huh. Because they drive on the opposite side of the road.

Yeah. So window glass is slightly? Slightly? Slightly. It's like 52-48. It's not huge. Okay. But it's statistically significant? Statistically significant.

Yeah. Huh. So do you think it's this guy's particular genes? That must be something weird about that guy. Right. Well, how many instances of truck driver face do they have? I just Googled the condition, and it's only him coming up in the photos. So this is the thing.

One lady, but she clearly doesn't seem to have the same issue. There's a lot of truck drivers that have been doing it for 50 years. That's not the same thing. Oh, that's not real. Is that real? It's a different thing. She's got something wrong with her jaw. Oh.

But it's coming up as the same condition. unilateral dermatomat to oh so she had some sort of cancer that made her way its way into her jaw but I can't I would assume that more cases would pop up but it's literally just him so that's the thing it's the real question is what's up with that dude yeah interesting different truck that's not the same guy no it doesn't seem like the same person that might be it's hard to say yeah 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, 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 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. 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 zinc in it. It's very white and obvious.

You know, the spray stuff goes on clear. You can't even tell you have it on, but it's very effective. But I'm always like super hesitant. I'm like, 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. So your skin's absorbing it. I'm like, what's going on there?

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. Yes. It turns up at high doses or higher doses than they would like it to in blood, breast milk, urine, you name it. And what specifically turns up and what's dangerous about it? 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. And nobody's done the testing. But they're about to get phased out anyway. Like just as of a couple months ago, the government changed the roles and is going to let in, for the first time, in 30 years, new ingredients, which they've been using in Europe in Asia and Australia for decades, and the sunscreen companies have been asking to use them and haven't been allowed to, but they're finally going to get to use one of the main ones. And one of these ingredients? So it's called like Bemotrizzanol or something.

And there's another one that you see in Europe called like Mexeril 400. But they're way better. Like basically, U.S. sunscreens are a generation behind everyone else because in the U.S. sunscreens are regulated as over-the-counter drugs. Ben-O-Trizzanol, yeah. Bamo-Trizzan-all, highly affected broad-spectrum, UV-filtered blocks, both UVA and UVB, approved by FDAs, is over-the-counter sunscreen ingredient.

In June of 2026, oh, wow. So this month, yeah. Celebrated for being highly photo-stable, doesn't break down the sun, transparent on the skin without leaving a white cast, and gentle on sensitive skin. So this is RFK Jr. stuff. Yeah, this one looks really good.

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? Yeah, they all bailed on it long ago because it was all we had. God damn it. That drives me crazy. Yeah. So FDA, so in the U.S. sunscreens are regulated as drugs, counterdrugs. 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 the stuff in the U.S. forever, but the FDA said, sure, just, you know, 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 in terms of performance and, like, maybe safety's suspicions.

So that's going to change by the end of this year. It's going to get better. 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? Not that have been proven. There's, like, toxicologists are little suspicious about some of them. Like, they've definitely been shown to mess up coral, right? Like people... Coral reefs, right. Yeah. That's one of the things they found after COVID, right? 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 change 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. Yeah, I mean, it's all the above, I'm pretty sure. But yeah, the sunscreen at that kind a concentration if you got a, you know, a bazillion snorkelers in the water can definitely mess up the car. Yeah, 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 this highly visited area where people would jump in. And they showed a massive increase in the reef after COVID.

Yeah, like Hawaii banned use of those sunscreen. A bunch of places banned that style of sunscreen. But the... But they don't really check your bags, though. Yeah, right. You know what can you? When they say banned, like, people are going to take it anyway. But it doesn't look like...

I don't think it has a much impact on us, unless you're using a ton of it, which, of course, now some people are. So it's not great for you, but it's not the worst. Yeah, there's been a bunch of studies that just looked at, like, lifespan and sunscreen. green doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever, like positive or negative on lifespan. So it just might have some sort of an impact on hormonal function? Yeah, it could well. Endocrine disruption.

Endocrine disruption. There's a guy named Graham Peasley at Notre Dame who found that many, many cosmetic products of all kinds are actually contaminated with forever chemicals. and even if they don't have it on the ingredients, like anything that's like water resistant or super smooth is quite possibly going to have forever chemicals in it. And some of it is actually coming from the plastic containers because those get, they basically get like fluorinated

with this like flooring 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. That's what he found. Yeah, that makes sense.

I mean, this is a problem with hot coffee when you're drinking it out of a paper cup. Very similar, yeah. Yeah, people don't realize, like, the paper cup is not capable of keeping that liquid. It would turn to mush. And the reason why it doesn't turn to mush is because there's essentially a condom

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

Cooking. Yeah. And leaching into the material. 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? Because I remember this article, but I just like went over the headline and briefly started reading it. And then I had to do something. And I put a bookmark to it that was going to go back.

to it later and I never did. Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say, like, something happened to the bookmark. 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. 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. Mostly alcohol. Well, even alcohol, going through your skin like that. Isopropyl alcohol, sometimes use instead of or with ethanol similar levels. And then this word, benzalcanium chloride in many alcohol-free products. All right, but see if you can find articles on the dangers of using hand sanitizer, because this is what I had read briefly.

Uh, well, maybe people overuse it. You're going to fuck up your skin by them, but I don't... Yeah, that's what it's saying. Overuse. I just know that. I know a guy's got OCD, and he's, you know, hyperchondriac a little bit, and he uses his hand sanitizer all the time. It's kind of crazy. Uh-huh.

And a friend of mine without knowing went to look at his house because his house for sale. And he's looking at the house. He's like, it was 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 want to live in the house anymore. He's like, I don't want to buy this house.

Like, this guy, like, whatever weird thing he's possessed with that he needs 50,000 fucking bottles of hand sanitizer. 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. Right, only use it on your hands. Yeah. But Jamie's right on the skin biome.

Skin biomes sharing out to be really important. Right. There's, you know, they call it the gut skin excess where your skin, microbiome and your gut microbiome are like chatting all the time and you 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 probiotics probiotics yeah well in the jiu jutsu world um in the the early 2000s 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.

Interesting. Because Jiu-Jitsu, because 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 staff 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. So then there's a company called Defense Soap.

And they developed a soap specifically for grapplers. And this soap has tetri 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. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's basically what you want. Like that microbiome, it can take a lot of natural, you know, abused.

It's there. You know, it naturally lives on skin. So it's usually getting, like, roughed up by the world. Mm-hmm. But yeah, chemicals that are too strong can take it out. And the gut flora is important as well. It's like you've got to think of the whole thing as one sort of ecosystem. Yeah.

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. And yeah, it shows up on the skin for sure. That's well known. 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? I am naturally conflict-averse, right?

I was kind of like, do I even want to talk about this? But it was such interesting information that 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? So right there, that's pushing buttons. Yeah. I probably, you know, in retrospect, I don't push as many buttons today.

I just point to the data. You just didn't like it. Didn't like the response? Well, I mean, it got a massive response. It went truly, you know, viral, as they used to say. But it actually detracted. 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 the title detracted from the information in the article in a sense.

But why? Because margin sucks. Margin sucks. Those old sunscreens did suck. The new sunscreens are fine. So it's a good comparison. 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 yeah.

So that, like I, so now that. the books is out, suddenly I've got all these like beauty magazines contacting me. And, um, they have this image of me as like, you know, the unabomber, like hanging out, hanging out in my cabin and firing off these missives. Really? Yeah. From beauty magazines. They were nervous to talk to me because they thought I was going to be, you know, a kook. A kook. Yeah. Wow. So the first are, so those is sunscreen the new margin? So the, so the first are, so those is sunscreen the new margin. 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? 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 information. And this is, and we think this is dangerous. If you're telling people that they might benefit from more sons, light, that's dangerous. So that's probably, and then, you know, when that came in, I was like, so that needs to change. If we have it 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 article.

I did one, an article that focused specifically on the skin color issue. Like, do people of color, 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. Can we do recommendations that are not one size fits all? 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.

100%. Completely makes sense. Yeah, and you can track it. It's like the gradations of lightning go with that move northward. Yeah. So you can tell. Like white skin is like a desperate attempt to get enough light in a, you know, screwy northern environment. Right.

But when those people that have ancestors from that screwy northern environment move to California or Arizona. Or Australia. Yeah. Well, Australia is real bad, right? Because there's all the people that use hairspray in the 80s. They cause a fucking giant hole in the ozone layer over Australia. Well, yeah, essentially. 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. They're right. 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 their skin cancer rates are literally like two or three times what they are anywhere else in the world. 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 the ozone? So the 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. 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.

Well, David Reich had that did that great episode with you, right? Did you have David Reich on? David Reich. He's the Harvard ancient DNA guy. Did we? No? So he just came out with a new study, like two months ago. We had so many people on, I can't remember who ever had on.

I can't either. I'm like, if I didn't hear it, hear it, what I hear it? Anyway. Might be Lex? It just, that movement started. A few thousand years ago, suddenly, like, that pale redhead gene came out of nowhere and, like, skyrocketed. So it can change pretty quickly when the environmental factors change. Really?

That's only a few thousand years old? The redheaded gene, yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. It was kind of, like, lingering quietly in the background, and then, like... Maybe that's why ginger's get so much hate because they're just brand new. They are, like, the next new thing, kind of. Yeah, four or five thousand years ago, it suddenly explodes in popularity, but in a very particular place in Northern Europe.

Oh, and most likely as a result to the environment. Yeah, for 100%. Wow. So I wonder how long it's going to take. I wonder if we could go into the future, if the same population lives in Australia now. Well, I accept here's the weird thing. 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.

Really? So skin cancer is a factor, but that sunlight is actually benefiting Australians more than it's hurting them compared to the UK. I wonder if that's a healthy user bias as well, because one of things about Australia is a lot of outdoor activities. A lot of people are doing stuff outside. Yeah. A lot of activity, period. 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. Yeah. 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. 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. Yeah. And he said it was a particular problem with people with darker skin. Because if you have darker skin, you're going to get less vitamin D from the sun, whatever exposure you do get. And then these people are all indoors all the time.

Yeah. That's a really bad formula. Like, yeah, if you have dark skin, you need five to ten times as much. sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin D. Oh. 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 outside all the time. 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. 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?

Like, you know, like. Yeah. Well, we are one race. We are 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. 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. But there's so much racial identity that's tied to these characteristics of your appearance and where your ancestors are from. And it's going to be very weird if all of a sudden you could, like, people get, like, dark thick curly hair and they used to be gingers i wonder how people are going to react to that

i mean it's coming right right it's coming all bets are off yeah i just wonder how many people are going to be claiming cultural or racial appropriation with people just deciding to have a healthier skin tone that protects them from the sun more i say very good yeah well yeah um like that guy with the melanotan i wonder I wonder if anybody got mad at him Right, right? Like what are you supposed to look like? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, what are you supposed to look like? Yeah, yeah. 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 cuck.

A bunch of plastic surgery. But she was dark as a date. 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

That's a little too far maybe Maybe Wow that's her That's her So what did she do Via intense use of tanning injections Yeah so she's She's the ultimate melanitan hero

Wow I mean that got that lady got Like Cameroon dark Like look at that photo again Go back to that video like that's crazy that is crazy that's crazy I don't know maybe you're in Australia it works for you maybe well it would right it would protect because it is melanin but obviously she's got she's got other things going on like yeah at some point you might might have too much melancholy 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. And it's an incredibly good absorber of UV, better than anything we've come up with. It's almost perfect at it. But what you want it, 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 little umbrellas. 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. And what would cause it to be lower? So it starts lower. Right. And it only goes up in response to sunlight. So if you're never, ever in the sun and you so. suddenly go out and get hit by a bunch of sunlight, your melon's going to be down too low and can actually create for you.

It can exacerbate the problem. So this lady might be exacerbating the problem if he's just getting the melanin that way. 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. Oh, boy. That's interesting. Because like the melanotan stuff, I have heard about it before and I 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. You want it in the right place. Yeah. Could both things work? Could you do it that way and with sun exposure increase both? And 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? You're above my pay grade now.

I think you might be above everybody's pay grade. I don't know if anyone has looked at that. It seems like something to look into, though. If we know that there's a benefit to having melanin. Yeah, it would be interesting. But I think this stuff's new enough that there probably hasn't been a ton of research on it. So what does a pale person do? What does the old pasty white do?

Yeah. So, full pasty white, like really pale? 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, no, he's white like paper. So if you're white like paper.

He's from England. Yeah. Yeah. You do have to be really careful. You're not going to tan that much. You just don't make that much melanin. Can that change over time? Can they, like, slowly expose themselves to the size?

sunlight, like five minutes a day and just ramp it up? Depends on your genetics. If you're like a full-on ginger, like true redhead, then you have a type of melanin called Fial Melanin, not you melanin, which is what everybody else has. And Fial-melanin just does not do a good job of absorbing sunlight. Oh, no. So there's no hope for gingers?

There's no hope for gingers in terms of sun exposure. Damn. Now, the hope is just, you know, avoid that midday sun, that's high and UV. Get the morning and, like, the sunrise and sunset stuff that doesn't have the UV in it. Okay, so they can benefit from sun exposure, but they can't have, like, full-on outdoor sun exposure. Yeah, they're the ones who need to be really careful. So for those people, sunscreen is recommended. Yeah, or just cover up even, I think, better, you know.

How many other people are working? on this stuff. And is everybody sort of an agreement with the data, the people that are examining it? I mean, there's a ton of science coming out, but it's early days, for sure. Doesn't it seem crazy that sun and our reaction to sun is unknown, or at least poorly studied? 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. Well, certainly for like stuff that they use for antidepressants.

Yeah, but that's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sun exposure is competitive with antidepressants in terms of lifting depression. Isn't that nuts? And you know it's way better? Exercise. Yeah. Many times better than any known antidepressants, regular exercise.

I mean, exercise is number one for everything. I'm talking ginger people with Mel with the peptide here. Mm-hmm. Seeing a few posts about it changing their hair color. Interesting. And this one says permanently. What? Yeah.

Cliffs on that. Well, this is, I guess this just takes it to the Reddit. It's just going to show a YouTube video here, but there's multiple. Changed his hair color. Other posts about it. Whoa. And there's a, I was just seeing. What if that would work with people that are old that have, like, white hair?

I wonder what that would do. Like a melatonin 2 page says like how it can affect hair color. No. I read through it real quick. This is not the best website. Isn't it weird that women with red hair are hot and men with red hair are not? It's very weird because women with red hair are considered very attractive. Yeah, this one's, this guy just got a spray tan.

Okay. But the people that take it, that one guy, is he like a one of one? where it changed his hair color. So that, like I said, so this website... Click on that, click on the video. Let's watch it for a couple seconds. See what this guy's showing. So this is him before and this is him now.

His eyebrow and his beard colors changed. Also, we clicked on the... It might not even be him. He could be reporting the video about someone else too. It looks pretty good, I guess it is. Yeah. Gray? 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 directions 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 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 So the effects are permanent So he still has dark hair But what's interesting is that in the beginning

He had gray hair He seems older obviously right Right but he had gray he was showing And his hair's not gray anymore Right I mean gray gray gray and ginger Gray is a loss of melanin Like melanchin's will make your hair dark

As well as your skin dark So he's resupplied his melanin For his hair as well it seems like That seems kind of nuts He said one vial for a year Olueneas don't even know all over year. 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 kind of know if this guy's full of shit. Yeah, that's again, it's like there's only one person saying. Yeah, that's the problem. It's like you don't know what you're looking at.

Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify advertising. You're among fans. But that's crazy. But it is, yeah. Melon is the pigment for all of it. Put that in. Does melatonan, how does it say? How do you say it? Melanotan.

Melanotan? Does melanotan have an effect on hair color? Put that into perplexity. See what they say. Yeah. What does it say? 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. I know. Stuff makes me, isn't it? I'm stuck with the gray hair, I think. Well, mine would be gray if I had hair. It's all gray in my beard now. It's great. I'm going to try it.

I want to try some melotanan and see if I get dangerous boners. Melanatan does not have good human evidence of changing scalp or body hair color. Its main effects on skin tanning and freckling, not on turning hair darker or lighter. But how's that guy? Maybe he's like just a weird case. Yeah, it's got to be a hormone dependent. What about the lady with the giant boobs? She had dark hair too

She's saying When I was looking To her thing It was said she went through A permanent tanning process So I don't know She would have been taking extreme dosages But she'll show her Instagram account

Is a mess If it's even hers It's the one that Google showed me But what's the erection connection? I don't understand How You know Making more melanin

Was the melanan Erection connection? I have heard that though Actually Brigham from Ways to Well The local wellness clinic was telling me about 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, he said it didn't affect him that way. But maybe he's broken. Does it say anything about... It's coming up right now. Malatantan 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 trotches, 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. Debo. Hmm.

Interesting. I wonder what the connection is. It's the Milano-C-C-C-4R up there. So, yeah, MC-1R is the gene for that determines whether you've got the red hair or not. Look at this. Common side effects were yawning. Nausea, yawning and stretching, flushing. with decreased appetite.

Some participants had severe nausea at higher dosage. Yawning in sexual desire is an interesting combination. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, I'm really horny, but I'm too tired to do anything about it. Iboactive sexual desire for premenopausal women. Interesting. Interesting. Also shows erectogenic.

I like that word. A rectogenic effects in men with ED. including those who fail PDE5 inhibitors. What is a PDE5 inhibitor? Interesting. Someone out with gray hair should give it a go. Find out. Sounds right.

Doesn't sound like other than dealing with boners. It doesn't seem like there's any real problems. 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 it's you're not making any dangerous or you know any claims or any you're not advising people do anything that's reckless 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 um 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 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 away from any sun exposure that I think backing that up a little bit is sort of uncomfortable, you know? I understand, but I mean, isn't history filled with new discoveries and changing courses?

Yeah, and I think it'll change, but it's going to be one funeral at a time. It's going to be ugly all the way. When you do this kind of work, 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? Yeah, that's 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 the New York Times Magazine. the 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, margin, right? The margin era, the top experts got it 100% wrong back then. And when they got called on it by like, you know, Taubbs and others, Nina Taishol's, you got, you guys have had Nina. I've had Taub's on as well. Oh yeah, okay. 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 blood in the water during that process. Oh, yeah. I was in the early days of that, and people were just warning me about my cholesterol. What about your cholesterol? Yeah. What's really interesting is during the heart of that, when I ate 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 anticholesterol medication?

And I said, no. Why? And he goes, you're very low cholesterol. Interesting. 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.

I think, I mean, yeah, I think the evidence is pretty good. Like for keto, I think it's pretty strong. Salad, you know, I think is pretty much spot on on a lot of this stuff. But so, yeah, so that, like the ultimate experts, all said that was going to kill you. Right. You know, Atkins back in the day, and they were all completely wrong. So there's a long track record of the pros being wrong, I think, on a lot of things.

But 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. I mean, they completely flipped the food pyramid. Right, which was a beautiful thing to do. And I can't believe it happened so fast. Yeah. Well, also, with very little pushback.

It's kind of interesting. Super. 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 and eggs. You could live off just eggs. Yeah, probably the perfect food.

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, I feed them, I throw the worms down. They're not afraid of me. They listen to me. When I open the door, they come running out, and they run it 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. those beautiful orange oats.

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 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. They feed them curcumin and turmeric and they're making it because it makes their eggs a darker more attractive yoke

I know right what it's like it's it's so screwy so so bizarrely backwards 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 it's like yeah it can't hurt I mean right so it's not like they're getting them food die so it's amazing you know I mean so it's like yeah you're getting these darker eggs because People like that and the darker eggs come from turmeric or turmeric, but still, you're getting turmeric then, aren't you? Isn't that how it works? I mean, that's fine. But I think the chicken, I think like it's the bugs that sometimes help turn them aren't. Yeah, we get eggs from our neighbor. Like in Vermont, everybody. There's chickens like running around the road everywhere. And yeah, they're delicious. Yeah, you can tell that they're getting it from the bugs and the greens. And it's super healthy. I mean, but 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. Yeah, exactly, little arthropods. Mm-hmm. Yeah, like miniature shrimp kind of. Yeah, that's why they have that wonderful-looking pink skin, that orange-y pink skin. So in that case, the dye is maybe a little more suspect. Yeah, well, the die is very suspect because it's like, you know, these farm-ray salmon, they have pale skin because they're eating bullshit.

Yeah. Yeah. Are there any other things that you've stumbled across that turned out to be good for you that people were averse to? 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 flipped 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, it didn't seem to have a whole lot of impact on mortality at all. And also probably reduces a little bit of stress, 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. 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. I gave it up for about eight months. I completely, the 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, 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 going to stop drinking. Not because I'm an alcoholic,

it 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, 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's not 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 two drinks is like we you know 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 yeah completely sober after it's all over it's like i now 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 who or an aura ring or one of those tracking devices,

you will notice in your sleep in your recovery. You're not sleeping as well. You don't sleep as well. You don't get the same deep sleep. I can tell. Yeah, just one glass of wine can fuck you up a little bit. Yeah, yeah. And for me, that hit in middle age.

Like before that, it wasn't a problem. But now, yeah, like two drinks. Two does seem to be the cutoff where, you know, life functions normally still. Yeah. But, yeah, the sleep's not as restorative somehow. 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 if then your body has a chance to process it and then you're okay. Well, Italian style, right? Right. I feel like the Mediterranean lifestyle. They got this pretty much nailed down like 2,000 years ago. Right. It seems to work pretty well. 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. I know. I know. Something's different there. 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 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 glutons. 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 so angry that when I come back home, I can't have food like this. You have to seek it out.

You have to go to, like, certain restaurants that only use, like, Italian flour. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, you look at those Mediterranean cultures, and it just works for them. And, yeah, like you say, you can't explain it in terms of, like 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. I do actually think light is part of it too. Like they got great light there.

Yep, they have great light, especially like Malfi Coast, those people. Yeah. But the other thing is also less stress. 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 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. 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. I have heard that with polyphenols.

I've heard that, and this is, I think, controversial as well, but it's cigarettes taken a long, 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. That is super interesting. Yeah, which kind of makes sense. And it's going to be, like, everything is going to be something like that. Yeah.

It's bad in a certain context, and then it seems to have been okay for people in a different context. Yeah, yeah. Are there any other things that you've noticed? Like, I know you've done work on chocolate, right? A lot of work on chocolate. Yeah, 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, with this German guy was going up river 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 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 going to land on this river and meet a canoe that was going to take us up river to meet with these indigenous groups.

So we found a runway, right? This is in the Bolivian Amazon. 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, this is actually a landing strip that our, you know,

Colombian boss owns. And we're guarding it for him. And what do you two white dudes do in here? So like all the cocaine traffic comes through this part of the Amazon. And we had just done what people actually have been killed for, which is, you know, like if a couple of people. couple of white guys drop in there. They assume you're like the EA or something. Right. 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 anyway, the guy I was with, the German guy, he negotiated with them. And finally they're like, okay, just give us a landing fee. So we're like, sure. But yeah, so that was, but that was beginning of my chocolate journey. So what part of the Amazon were you? Where are you? And you, you, you? Bolivia, which, you know, 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,

a bunch of cattle ranching as well, and all the drug traffic comes through there from the Andes. And you went there just as a journalist? Yeah, so this guy, this German guy, he'd been living there for 20 years, and he was, trying to get this cacao. And you're like, yeah, I'm going to go meet with these groups. Do you want to come? And outside had just come to me, and they'd like something else I'd written. And they're like, hey, we're outside magazine.

What's the freakest 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 going to be going off a 200-foot waterfall and kayak for you guys. But then this, like, you know, heart of dark chocolate thing came up. And I was like, I could eat that for. 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, good chocolate at the end of it. So what is the benefit of wild cacao? 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. because cacao grows in the understory of the rainforest. So it's kind of a way to monetize the full rainforest.

And keep the canopy intact. Exactly. What is the benefits of cacao, like, health-wise? It's right there with coffee. You know, tons of polyphenols, a little bit of caffeine. It seems to, you know, be anti-inflammatory, gives you a little boost, makes you happy. Some of the same reasons and maybe some different ones as well. And when you say it tastes better, like in what way, like when you try it?

A lot more like aromatic's and less bitterness. Like 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 like the great aromatic qualities that like the old Maya cacao had had. And that's what gets growing up. 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 go back to Latin America to find the ancient heirloom varieties that had this great flavor and make like better chocolate than it had ever been made before. So 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, you know, primordial days and make chocolate. Well, I mean, the example of tomatoes is a perfect example because heirloom tomatoes are sensational. They're so delicious. So much better. They're so much better.

And then you have one of those bullshit McDonald's tomatoes that looks like a piece of paper. Yeah. Is that a cacao? That's what it looks like? Yeah. So these pods and you open up the pod, it's kind of like the size of like a little Nerf football or something. Oh, wow. I had no idea.

And so chocolate is made from the seeds inside. You got to ferment them and then roast them, and then you grind them into chocolate. Where can one get heirloom chocolate made from this ancient cacao? Is there a company? Yeah. So the place I send people is Caputo's, which is online site. They're like the main importer of specialty chocolate. There they are.

Is that the people? Yeah. So Caputo's has most of the great. wild cacao is available on their website. It's just like retail. Caputo's. So is it Caputo's.com? Yeah.

Yeah. It's from Salt Lake City? Yeah, they've got a cool shop in Salt Lake. Oh, interesting. Preserve Bolivian rainforests. All right. Ritual chocolate. Yeah, I've heard of people like ritual cacao ceremonies.

I'm like, what you doing? So that... What are you doing? That, it's a... That's a gringo thing. Everyone thinks it goes back to some like, like we're referencing some ancient Maya ceremony. Of course it is. It was a white dude in Guatemala named Keith.

Yeah, there you go. Look at these people. It's kind of like ayahuasca with trading wheels. They do cacao. But like what can come out of a ritual where you take cacao? I mean, you know, same thing that can come out of ritual where you do anything else. Like you're focusing, you know, it's a mindfulness. You get a little, you know, you get a little boost from the cacao.

But not much. Yeah, it's more about the ritual. Why is a cacao? What is a cacao ceremony? Why are they suddenly showing up all over L.A.? Yeah, you can answer that one on your own. So, I mean, Jamie, if you can call it 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. Oh, white people. But he's a... Damn it, white people. And then everyone else sort of took it from him. There he is.

Well, he looks like the type of guy. Look at him. Big old fucking dirty pot of cacao. Dunkin on a costume. So he started. Okay. Poor Keith. These silly people.

So, but there's like antioxidants. in it. Like there's other... A ton. Yeah. It's good for you. It's totally good for you. And, 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. But, and it tastes great. So, you know, what's not to like? Anything else? Any other foods or substances or different things that you found out that were beneficial? Well, how do you feel about oysters? I wrote a book about oysters, too.

I eat them all the time. Are you a fan? Yeah, I like them. Are they okay? I mean, they're great. But? There's no but. They're great.

But I think we haven't figured out why. You know, you're like, you're eating like a little living being. So I think, you know, there's like some chi factor there where the reason people get so excited and feel so good when to eat oysters, it's not because of like the nutrients. It's like there's something else that's in there, you know. Well, isn't there zinc in oysters? Definitely zing. And they're supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect. Right?

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... This sounds like hippie talk, sir. It does sound a little, you know, like, cheese going to get, she's going to get justified scientifically at some point. You think? Yeah. So you think you're getting... What's interesting, there's another 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. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, plants are pretty damn smart. Yeah, weirdly so. Yeah.

And muscles and clams and oysters, they're not. They're sort of alive, but they don't feel pain. Yeah. And they just move. And because they move, they open and close, we've decided that they're animals. And with oysters, that's literally the only thing they can do.

Clams at least can, you know, dig down. They get the tongue and yeah. Oysters, they're stuck. They just open and close. There's not a whole lot going on there for sure. Right. But healthy for you. Yeah.

Unless you get a bad batch and then you die. They are definitely a source of food poisoning. Yeah, I've heard people dying. Yeah, yeah. They kill a few people every year. 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 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. Interesting. And so it's contagious. Yeah. I guess if you're like ralphing hard enough, you're flowing it through the air. 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 and they're on boats when they have food poisoning. Yeah. Because those people could actually spread whatever that is. through the air. Fucking weird. Yeah. Yeah.

But 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. Cold water. Cold water is a friend. So 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. Yeah.

And so you may be interesting. The airborne confusion. The confute show more? Confuse food poisoning with highly contagious stomach bugs like neurovirus. 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. Okay. I think we covered it. You think? Yeah.

Yeah. I think we, I think you're going to get a lot of interesting responses. So guess what? I don't read them. So good luck. to all those haters, 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. Turns out you're right. Yeah. It just doesn't make sense that your body produces vitamin D through it. It makes you feel so good, and yet somehow another is bad. I think it's, like many things, very nuanced, and so I'm really happy that you did so much work on it. And I'm happy you rode the storm too.

Well, the storm's just coming. 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. Yeah, so whatever their favorite online place, in defense of sunlight, Amazon, anywhere else. And did you do an audio version of it? Yeah, they let me read it. Yes.

We'll see if that was good news or not. Nice. I love it when someone reads their own book. It's very important, I think. Me too. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much.

Thank you. Bye, everyone. Thank you.