The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1340: ZYNs | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

Are ZYNs gas-station Ozempic or a dopamine loan shark? Nick Pell digs into the nicotine pouch boom this Skeptical Sunday — and the verdict is messy.Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher Nick Pell!Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1340On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:ZYNs are a tobacco-free nicotine pouch born from Swedish "snus." Swedish Match engineers extracted nicotine salts and loaded them into food-grade fillers, creating a shelf-stable white pouch that doesn't stain teeth or require spitting. Philip Morris bought the company for $16 billion in 2022.The harm-reduction case is strong, but "less harmful" isn't "harmless." ZYNs skip the carbon monoxide, tar, and lung damage of cigarettes, and carry roughly 90 — 99% lower carcinogens. But they still raise heart rate and blood pressure, can cause gum recession, disrupt sleep, and remain wildly addictive.The user base skews young, male, and white. Men are 88% of the market, and the 19-30 bracket is fastest-growing, with use doubling in 2024-2025. Adoption is concentrated in white, high-income, urban circles like tech, law, and finance where smoking is socially radioactive.Nicotine has real cognitive perks — with a catch. A meta-analysis of 41 studies found genuine gains in alertness, reaction time, and focus, plus appetite suppression ("gas station Ozempic"). The catch: for addicts, these benefits mostly just return you to baseline rather than lifting you above it.If you already smoke, switching is a genuine win you can act on today. For a smoker, trading cigarettes for pouches is described as "trading a motorcycle for a minivan" — vastly less likely to kill you. Harm reduction beats abstinence-only, since switchers are twice as likely to stay off cigarettes as those using gum or lozenges.Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know!And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors:SimpliSafe Home Security: 50% off + 1st month free: simplisafe.com/jordanProgressive Insurance: Free online quote: progressive.comProfile Guru: 50% off through June: MyProfileGuru.com, code JordanJune50AT&T: Get an iPhone 17 Pro for $0: att.com/iphone or visit an AT&T store for detailsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher and microphone breather Nick Pell. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the story, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people and turned their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker, and during the week, we have long-formed conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers on Sundays as though it's skeptical Sunday, a rotating guest co-host and I are going to break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as

why tipping makes no sense, chemtrails also make no sense, ban foods, GMOs, toothpaste, crystal healing, diet pills, self-help, cults, bottled water, and more. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs, these are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology and disinformation, junk science, crime and cults, and more. that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, if you haven't been living under a rock, you've seen people sticking little packets of nicotine into their mouths.

They go by different brand names, but the most common one is Zinn. Like Band-Aid and Kleenex, Zin has basically just become the name for a little packet of nicotine that you put under your lip. Unless otherwise specified in this episode, by the way, when we say Zin, we just mean nicotine pouch. but people generally fall on either side of one extreme about zins. Either these little flavored packets are just kicking your addiction from one side of the street to another and seducing kids with fruit and mint flavors, or they're the second coming of Jesus and the best thing you can put into your mouth, chock full of vitamins and minerals and necessary for a successful and fulfilling life.

So what's the real story behind these addictive little packages that seem to have popped up absolutely everywhere over the last few years, from Silicon Valley startups to Sunbelt construction sites? Here today to help me tackle this topic in the nick of time as writer and researcher Nick Pell. As anyone who is listening to any of Nick's episodes knows, he is a man, well, you love nicotine, right? I do, and I think that it's worth discussing the health benefits of nicotine. Okay, so Nick thinks that smoking is good for you. I don't. I do, however, think that we lost something important, socially speaking, when everyone quit smoking, a really small example is the loss of one-on-one mentorship time with

your boss and people can laugh, but it's a real thing. I learned some of the most important professional lessons of my life ripin heaters with the boss. So, you know, you can say the health benefits outweigh this. I'm going to say the health benefits outweigh this. And you know what? That's a totally legitimate belief to have, but we should be honest about what we lost when health nuts decided that people couldn't smoke anywhere. I mean, bars, are you kidding me? Like, bars are dedicated to adults behaving badly and the effects of secondhand smoke are wildly overblown. Huh. Okay. Well, the CDC disagrees. There are tons of studies that disagree with the CDC. Okay. Yeah. Maybe a topic for another time. I'm down when you're down. People, honestly, like the bar smoking

man is people just don't want their clothes to smell bad. I'm completely unconvinced that people actually care about the health effects of secondhand smoke. Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of at, I don't want the boogers that have weird colors and I don't want to have to wash my hair again before, in clothes, before bed and the next day. Yeah, anyway, this message was brought to you by RJR. Nabisco, makers of Marlboro. I haven't smoked and going on 15 years. I used to, I would like grab a pack when I was traveling, but I lost the taste for it by 40. I switched to super strong menthol flavored vapes, which is, frankly, I enjoyed them more

than cigarettes, and that's coming as a former two pack a day unfiltered Campbell smoker. Yikes, yeah, you were really hardcore if memory serves. I remember hanging out in your old apartment. Speaking of having to wash your hair and clothes. Yeah, I was a smoking in my apartment with the windows closed kind of guy. And, you know, camel unfiltered. If it's good enough to kill Grandpa, it was good enough to kill me. Yeah, but you don't even vape anymore now.

You're just a Zen guy. I like rogues and sesh. Actually, I'm kind of a sash guy now. They're just other brands. You know, call me Joe the way I be rogan. Right. Moving on, who is actually using zins? What do we know about the typical Zin use?

Men are 88% of the market share according to a report from Nicco Kick. Thus far, no one has made the Virginia Slims of Zins. Yeah, those are the skinny cigarettes that old ladies and, well, gay dudes smoke. Not if there's anything wrong with that. No, whatever. To the degree that Zins are marketed, they're heavily marketed and culturally adopted through masculine-coded channels like sports, fitness, finance, grit culture. I do know a lot of gym bros, well, such as yourself, are hitting the Zins pretty hard.

Yeah, man. Wintergreen Zinn, first thing in the morning with a white monster. It's, and you're hitting the iron, it's a little piece of heaven on earth. That's got to taste like day three of a Vegas bender. What about age? Because I definitely get the sense that middle-aged dudes are not the core demographic for Zinn, but now I actually have no idea. I think day three of a Vegas bender probably tastes like baby aspirin. You know what I'm saying.

I do know what you're saying. Oh, man. All right. Daddy chill. The 19 to 30 age bracket is the fastest growing demographic in 2024 to 2025. Past year use, which is, you know, used it in the past year. Within that age cohort, doubled. And that's nearly 10% of young adults reporting use according to the University of Michigan.

Go blue. Obligatory. Amazing Blue. Who, hey, congratulations on beating Yukon. I wish I cared about that stuff because people get so hyped up about it, but I can't even muster the energy to pretend. But thank you. I'm a UMass alum, so if UMass isn't going to win, I just want Yukon to lose.

So, you know, I got my wish. Gotcha. Among 12th graders, Yusuf Zins surged from 3% in 20203 to 5.4% in 2024, often as a discrete alternative to vaping, which is harder to hide in classrooms. Oh, yeah, that's definitely sketch. I remember teachers telling us not to drink coffee in school because we were too young and it might stunt our growth or something like that. Possibly worth noting I was always the tallest kid in my class until I started drinking

coffee. So, you know, maybe the teachers were wrong. Well, that anecdotal evidence is all we need for this, for skeptical Sunday. Seriously, dude, I was like, I've been this tall since I was thinking. And then it just froze. Womp, wump, yeah, exactly. Oh, man. And my father's like six and a half feet tall.

A lot of 12th graders are 18, but I guess you have to be 21 to use nicotine legally now, which is weird. I see. I would have killed for little packets of nicotine in middle school. Honestly, yes. Middle school. Yes, I absolutely would have killed for these in middle school. Gross. Adoption among those 45 and older is significantly lower.

it's usually below 2%. Wow. And that suggests older smokers are either sticking to cigarettes or haven't been reached by the digital marketing that often drives the pouch sales. It could also just mean they've given up nicotine entirely, though, right? Right. I know tons of guys who used to smoke but don't smoke anymore. Anecdotally, tons of older dudes at the gym are zinning.

For what it's worth, about 35% of pouch users are former smokers. What about by race? It's overwhelmingly a white thing. 75 to 80% of the market is white, according to the journal of the American Medical Association and the Centers for Disease Control. And it has a certain amount of currency in high income, high education circles like tech, law, finance, where smoking is socially radioactive. Oh, yeah. Chewing, that's a rural thing, but Zins are urban and suburban overwhelmingly.

Chewing is chewing tobacco. Okay, well, maybe we'll get into that. But where did these things come from? Because I feel like they were just nowhere, and then suddenly they were just absolutely everywhere. So to understand Zing, you have to understand Snooze. And Sweden has used snooze, which is a moist, paste pasteurized tobacco powder tucked under the lip. They've been using that since the 18th century. Now, because snooze is steam cured rather than fire cured, like American dip or chew,

it has much lower levels of carcinogens. I've seen these around, and I kind of just assumed they were the same thing. actually, I tried the Swedish version because my buddy Johann, there was another Swedish guy and Johann when we were exchange students, and we would go on these retreats or whatever, and we'd be drinking. And I remember they would get kind of wasted and put these things in. And oh my God, dude, I've never been so sick in my life. So first of all, you're putting in this like whiskey flavored pouch of tobacco, but you're wasted and you've never had the multiplier effect before of having tobacco because I wasn't a smoker or anything, right? So I'm just like drinking at age,

you know, 17 or whatever in Germany. And we put these things in at, I don't know, 9 p.m. after drinking since like 5 or 6. And I did something, like, chewed it, and it opened. And I was, like, swallowing all these little bits of it. And I was just absolutely so sick, like head pounding, room spinning sick. And I assume all Scandies have done that before,

at least once by mistake, but they were probably 12 when they started using these things. So, like, whatever, and they were not affected by it. But I remember them waiting trying to get me up to go to a bar and I was like, I'm done. And they were like, dude, it's 8.30. And I was like, I can't move. I'm totally wrecked.

Like, no thing. And I woke up the next day, just disgust. Like, I'd been hit by just many multiple garbage trucks. It was just terrible. I don't know where I'm going with this story, but basically, yes, I've experienced that and they're not the same thing at all. Well, 12-year-old Scandinavians trying snooze for the first time. Your pro tip from Jordan Harbinger is don't chew them. Don't chew the pack.

Yeah. Don't chew the pouch. But Zins aren't snooze. And, you know, worth noting Sweden has the lowest smoking rates of Europe and the lowest rate of tobacco-related mortality in the developed world. The problem is that snooze still contains tobacco leaf, which causes brown staining on your teeth and a salty tobacco taste. And you have to refrigerate them. America never really took to it. Yeah, man, they're always in that little fridge.

Oh, that's so weird. I guess I never really noticed that. Yeah, that would be a deal breaker if you are, I don't know, in the night. 1900s America working in the South, you don't have the ability to refrigerate stuff. We don't like to do that if we don't have to. No, around here, around these parts. So the breakthrough was white snooze. In the early 2000s, engineers at Swedish Match, the giant of Scandinavian tobacco started experimenting

with how to keep the nicotine but lose the tobacco leaf. They eventually figured out how to extract nicotine salts from the plant and stableload them into food grade fillers, like cellulose, things like that. This created a white pouch that was shelf stable, didn't stain your teeth, and didn't require spitting. Oh, maybe that's what I was doing wrong. You're probably supposed to spit that stuff out. So you don't spit with zins like you do with chewing tobacco? No. I mean, I spit them out when I'm done or I discreetly take them out of my mouth, but mostly I just spit them because it's fun to spit things. Swedish match test marketed Zinn in Colorado and Montana in 2014.

They targeted like outdoorsy guys, skiers, hikers, hunters. They wanted nicotine. They couldn't light a match in the wind or they didn't want to carry a spit cup. Huh. That's a lovely mental image. I can imagine carrying around a cup of your own tobacco spit. That's just got to be a huge hit with the ladies. So you don't spit with a Zinn.

No. Or you do if you want it to be fun. But other things you have to spit. Well, I don't spit the spit out. I just spit the bags when I'm done, you know. But with the other stuff, you can't even swallow the saliva that's soaked with the tobacco because you'll get sick. That's why I got so sick with that Swedish thing. And you tried to eat it.

Well, that, yeah. Yes. That's probably the real reason. But you think about dip, like you think about doing donuts in the mud with a rusty old truck. Yes. And Zins are clean. They're white. They're odorless.

It was the first tobacco product that you could use. an office cubicle or on an airplane and no one was going to notice. When did all this hit the American market again? By 2019, Zin went national in the U.S. and growth was vertical. It moved from gas stations to these pockets of high performance demographics that we're talking about. Yes. Okay. So this is why I'm interested in this because I remember growing up and seeing these little plastic hockey pucks that would say like, I don't know, there was some brand like skull or whatever. I don't, I can't really remember. Kodiak.

Yes, yes, Kodiak, exactly. But this isn't the same thing. And I remember Zinn was so popular, like coders in Silicon Valley, guys on Wall Street that I used to know who would do, you know, other stuff. They kind of use Zins more like caffeine than tobacco. It's kind of more like Red Bull than a cigarette to them. So where they sort of put this in their brain, where it sort of lives in their stimulant shelf. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does.

And I think it's, you know, it kind of is. In 2022, Philip Morris International, that's the company behind Marlboro. They bought Swedish match for a staggering $16 billion. Wow. This was a massive pivot for big tobacco because now they finally got something they can sell that doesn't have like, you know, a shelf date on when it's going to be either illegal or the market's not going to exist anymore. Right. Then you've got the promotion from the podcasters and. and social media personalities,

some of whom might be getting paid, some of whom just like it, and that's what makes Zinn into a lifestyle brand. Now, the marketing promotion blitz led to politicians like Chuck Schumer, calling for federal crackdowns, while others defended it as the greatest harm reduction tool

since the nicotine patch. Virtue signaling time. I ban tobacco advertising on the show. I won't take vape sponsors, cannabis sponsors, even though I'm an occasional user of some of the gummy things and the like.

Wait, what? You didn't know that? No, I'm shocked, dude. Look, if you're going to slowly ruin your life, at least do it efficiently. Speaking of bad decisions with great ROI, let's hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Simpleasef. Here's the problem with most home security.

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I'm surprised that you're, well, I guess maybe because I do seem quite a square. I'm not like a, let me do a bunch of edibles while my kids are in bed and watch a movie guy. I'm a holy crap, it's 1 a.m. Why the hell am I not asleep? Oh, it's because I'm ruminating about a tax audit. Well, there's a solution for that that's not going to give me a hangover and it's half of one of these little purple gummy things that are probably expired by now. So I kind of have like a medicinal use for it as opposed to entertainment use. But here's the thing. No judgment for people who use it for entertainment. It's just it's not my thing. I don't use it for that because I don't really like it. It makes me, it has, I effects for me that make me feel like paranoid and anxious, but somehow, if I'm already anxious, it doesn't, it takes that away. Don't ask me. I don't know. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I don't use it for entertainment because it will make me curl up in the fetal position and not have any fun. The paranoia is part of the fun, man. And like, you know, the problem, like, the reason I quit was because if I smoke pot or hit the penjuman, as the young ins say,

I'm going to either go on a super productive tear for the next three hours and get all kinds of stuff done, or I'm going to be like, man, staring at the wall right now rules. And I don't get to like pick. And please don't write in telling me about strains. I know all about strains. Yes, exactly. And I just don't get to pick. It's like, oh, man, the ceiling fan is awesome.

Or I'm going to get like a month for the stuff done in three hours. That is so funny. Okay. So I, that was me in college where it would be like, I really need to get this legal brief done. Last time I smoked a little bit of the same weed bag with this one guy. I was so productive and I did a bunch of homework and I briefed all these legal cases. So I took a to talk off of the thing the guys are smoking on the porch. And then it was like, oh my God, I need to call my mom and tell her I'm too high to do my law school case briefing. And then I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

what? I'm 23 years old. This is the worst idea ever. I need to lay down and go to bed and do this in the morning. And I was, you're right. Like I just don't write in and go, oh, Sativa, you know, hybrid this. No, it's just, I, it's a dice roll for me every damn time. Yeah. And yeah, sometimes it's, oh my God, that made this movie so much funnier. And other times it's, I need to call this person that I said something somewhat rude to in 2004. And I need to explain myself.

You know, I'm just like, no. Don't, what are you doing? So, yeah, that's why it's medicinal for me. And if you look at, if anybody who's like a weed person looked in my little drawer full of gummies, they'd be sorely disappointed because everything is like too. milligrams, not 20 milligrams, which is like the doses these guys are doing. And it's like got CBD and CBN and all the stuff that just makes you drowsy and fall asleep. Like that's what this is for.

I have it in tea for when I have the flu or cold. You drink it and you just pass the heck out. So anyway, I know that's a different show. So I know you think there are health benefits to nicotine, but there are drawbacks to even for something like Zins, right? Oh, they're absolutely drawbacks and health problems related to nicotine pouches. and being a grown up means deciding if you think the benefits outweigh the detriments. And while the evidence is scant, this is, after all, a totally novel nicotine delivery system

that we're talking about. I think it's pretty apparent to anyone paying attention that Zins are way healthier than smoking and probably vaping. It was actually a doctor who told me to switch to Zins. First of all, your doctor? What? Well, not my doctor, Jordan. I'm not a millionaire like you.

I can't afford to go to the doctor. Sad truth. I use chat GPT to tell me if I have cancer. Oh my gosh. No, it was a doctor for my church, and he basically told me vaping is terrible because God knows what's in any of that. And he also said he knew that I was never going to quit nicotine and just pick up zins, which he also uses.

So I did. And is it the same? No, I miss vaping sometimes. But I also don't have to deal with desperation for nicotine on top of wanting to vape and having, you know, vaping or smoking. my only means of obtaining the drug that I'm addicted to. Yeah. From a harm reduction standpoint, it's just a no-brainer.

Right. Yeah, I remember researching this, and it's like particular, but what is it called, particulate lung damage? That's one of the things with vapes in smoking, is it's like there's all these little tiny dust particles of, or chemical particles landing in your lungs, and you don't have that with Zin. And even if you're ingesting some microplastics or something else, it's just totally different than having them coat your lungs several times a day.

So, yes. All right. And the craziest thing is people will just say it's just as bad as smoking. And I'm with you, man. Look, look, I'm not a doctor, but you kind of really only need to look at the types of damage that you get from smoking and go, okay, putting a little packet in your mouth that you don't swallow. It just like almost can't be.

And again, I'm open to being wrong, but God, it almost just can't be as bad as smoking. I mean, you don't have fire involved that you're inhaling. I mean, there's so many things wrong with smoking. Smoking is just about the worst thing that you can. do for your health, smoking anything. The thing about nicotine is, yes, it has negative health effects, but most of what was killing people with cigarettes was not nicotine. And that's just one of the reasons why Zins have taken off.

What are some of the negative health effects? Because I got a lot of negative feedback when I said nicotine was bad for you on a previous episode of the show. Actually, I think you might have even said that on a previous episode of the show. It was about vape. Oh, no, you know what? It's probably a vape episode. Anyway, I was able to cite studies showing tumor growth with nicotine.

But it's a sacred cow for nicotine users, the idea that it's just totally not bad for you at all. Boy, isn't it amazing that addicts do lots of mental gymnastics to act like their addiction is a multivitamin? Yeah. I can't imagine what kind of feedback you would get for doing a show saying that marijuana doesn't give you superpowers or gambling your life savings away isn't one valid life choice among any. Yeah, you might hate my inbox, but okay, go with that theory. I'll bet I would because, you know, there's a reason I keep myself hidden from the adoring public out there. So what are some of the other reasons that Zins took off? It's discreet. It doesn't make a cloud like vapes.

It doesn't require you spitting a grotesque brown liquid into a cup. You pop them in, you spit them out when you're done. So you can be anywhere. You can be on a flight. You could be at your kid's school. You could be at a hospital. Any of these places and still enjoy pure nicotine satisfaction. They also don't smell.

Right. Which again, I will maintain to my death, that is the main thing non-smokers hate about cigarettes. Yeah. Yes, that's it. I still hate that when someone's smoking and I'm breathing that in. I'm like, do your gross smoking drug habit somewhere else. But, you know, yeah, I feel bad. I will walk a mile to walk through a plume of secondhand smoke because I love it.

Yeah, I know you love it. It's an intangible. You can't really deny that there's a certain amount of social cachet to it. There's the neutropic angle that's part of it. You mean Zins, right, not smoking? Yeah. So for those who don't know, neutropics are basically drugs or supplements that allegedly improve cognitive functions.

Some guys in Silicon Valley love them because they think they're going to give them a competitive edge at work. Yeah, I mean, Zins just became cool somehow. Yeah. And don't ask me to explain why. It's just like the heart wants what it wants. Yeah, well, the marketing departments have also done a really good job marketing and addictive drugs. So those two good marketing addictive drugs, they work well together. So all right, so you

mentioned that this is better than smoking. How much better and how do we know? I mean, we went through anecdotal crap like obviously it is, but you said there's not a ton of data. Well, I misspoke slightly. It kind of is a ton of data. The problem is that it's extremely time limited. So there's tons of studies about Zins, but people have been doing them for what, 10 years? Not even. Right. So if there are delayed effects that take 30 years to study, we just don't have any idea what those are yet. Yeah. So take everything you're about to hear with a grain of salt, but it's still worth diving into. To briefly remind people, the main killer from smoking is that you're inhaling combustion. It's not the nicotine, per se. It's the smoke. The nicotine is what keeps you

coming back for more. That and the rich smoky flavor. Hell yeah. Are you sure you don't want a cigarette, man. I swear they changed the formula of my brand. So no. But like I said, if I'm out somewhere and somebody's smoking, I'm walking through that cloud of smoke. My kid says that cigarettes smell like Laughlin, which is this like cheap, low-class knockoff version of Vegas near where I live. Love to see them catching strays on this episode about a Zinn. Yeah, I was just going to say, now I'm going to get emails from people who are in Lachlan. And they're like, it's not that bad. Vegas sucks. You can't park anywhere. Yeah, the average age of people in Laughlin is about 89 years old, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Again, my inbox has all kinds of people in it. Cigarettes have a number of things that Zins don't have in them, like carbon monoxide and tar. They don't cause particulate lung damage that you mentioned earlier. Right. So we know, even without a lot of studies, that at the very least, Zin is not going to have any of the health impacts related to these, which is mostly what people, what smokers are going to be worried about. They're not worried that nicotine's going to kill them. Right. Zins aren't going to give you lung cancer or C-O-P-D, right?

I think that's kind of one of the main thing. I know a lot of people are worried about vague and nefarious chemicals in Zins, though, but how much is that a thing? Because I don't know, I'm also kind of scared of what would be in something like that. Okay, so first, cigarettes contain high levels of T-S-N-A's, which are tobacco-specific nitrosamines. These are very potent carcinogens. Zins basically have none of these. Zins use pharmaceutical-grade nicotine salt. Independent studies have found that while some pouches contain trace amounts of TSNAs or heavy metals like nickel or formaldehyde, the levels are significantly lower, often 90 to 99% lower than those found in combustible cigarettes or traditional dip or chew. basically it's not a thing. Nice. Okay. That's pretty good news. And by the way, for people who are

like, that's wrong, there are sources in the show notes for every episode of Skeptical Sunday because I was like, oh, that's a bold claim. And then I see this little five next to it. So it's like, okay. The other side of smoking is the cardiovascular damage. I can't see how sins are going to hurt your lungs, right? Because you're not inhaling them. But isn't all of the, all these substances, are they causing damage to your heart somehow? So this is where things start getting tricky. Nicotine itself is a sympathomimetic drug, which means it mimics the fight or flight response. Both Zins and cigarettes increase heart rate and blood pressure. They cause vasoconstriction, which is the narrowing of blood vessels, and they increase arterial stiffness.

The difference is this. Smoking adds carbon monoxide, which displaces oxygen in your blood and puts an immense strain on the heart. Zin users avoid the carbon monoxide. but they still face the baseline cardiovascular strain of chronic stimulant use. That said, as somebody who has heavily abused both nicotine and caffeine, drinking a ton of coffee is way worse. Subjectively, I've never smoked or zined so much that I was sweating and my heart was pounding. Oh, interesting.

Okay, you should probably cut back on the coffee in white monsters, dude. Probably. Zins can also cause gum bleeding and gum reselling. over time, which definitely sucks, but it's not going to kill you. Not going to kill you or make it impossible for you to climb a flight of stairs. Okay, you got me on that. I would definitely not like to lose my teeth, but I also would prefer it to carrying around a tube of oxygen with me everywhere that I go.

Yeah, my wife used to work in a place that sold oxygen tanks. It's so grim, man. People will be smoking cigarettes carting those things around. Oh, my God. Isn't that dangerous? They can't explode doing that, but they could catch fire maybe? I don't know. They can explode.

Oh, my God. And they're still not stopping. Well, hopefully some people out there make the switch when they hear this episode. What are the downsides? People also get heartburn and really unpleasant hiccups. I have to drink something when I pop a fresh one or I get really gnarly hiccups. Chemically, the chemical profile is almost identical to nicotine gum. I think the difference is that nicotine gum is seen as a bridge to quitting, whereas, you know, Zinner's going to Zin.

If you're a smoker switching to Zins is a massive net win for you, I don't. don't really think there's any room for debate on that. Okay, but that doesn't make it harmless. It's an improvement over smoking cigarettes. And the bar is on the floor, for sure. Right. But before we wrap the health issues, I do also want to say it can mess up your sleep. I pop a Zinn after dinner. That's my last one for the night, because if I have one right before bed, boy, I'm going to have a bad time. We should also point out that nicotine is a wildly addictive chemical. and if you're not already addicted when you start with Zinn,

you soon will be. Lastly, we don't know the long-term effects of chronic pouch use to say nothing of the flavorings or other additives in Zin. Now here's where things start getting

possibly a little uncomfortable. There are some health benefits associated with nicotine. You've been dying to talk about this for like a year or more. Yes, since Nick Pelt episode one I've been dying to talk about it. That's right.

He's like, oh, we should do it one about nicotine and why it's good for you. So for those of you, you don't know. Me and Nick are, obviously, we're good friends. I've been listening to him talk about how nicotine is good for you since I don't even know, like, the first time we ever met. I mean, it's just one of your sort of running themes for your whole life, adult life.

Yes. I'm a big proponent of nicotine use. Yes. Possibly because I've been heavily addicted for decades and this is now like my toxoplasmosis where I'm collecting cats, you know? Yeah. Possibly in giant bold underlying. Yeah.

But possibly also because I'm right and it's actually good for you. There's a few different ways to break down the positive effects of nicotine. We're going to start with purely physiological effects. Nicotine in any form increases alertness, improves reaction time, suppresses appetites, and for some users, stabilizes mood. What specifics do we know about the physiological effects? Okay, so alertness, comprehensive meta-analysis of 41 double-blind, placebo-controlled studies found that nicotine has significant positive effects on alerting attention

and sustained attention, which includes both accuracy and response time. Unlike many other stimulants, nicotine's effect on attention isn't just a buzz. It specifically helps with what's called vigilance, which is the ability to stay focused on a boring task for a long time. perhaps why cigarettes are so popular in China. The same meta-analysis found that nicotine consistently reduces reaction time in both smokers and non-smokers. Studies using choice reaction time tests where you have to make a decision before reacting show that smokers or nicotine patch users often react 10 to 20 milliseconds faster than placebo groups, which doesn't sound like much but is considered significant.

The same meta-analysis showed that nicotine significantly improves fine motor performance. That's the steadiness and the speed of small finger movements. This is why pro gamers love it so much. So it's basically steroids for professional gamers, e-sports people, etc. Yeah, it's not a bad way of putting it. Appetite suppression seems obvious because it's a stimulant and you're putting it in your mouth and you probably don't want to have lunch while this thing is in your mouth. Yeah, everyone seems to gain weight when they quit smoking.

part of what's going on, but it's not the whole story. We talked earlier about nicotine's role as a sympathomimetic agent, which means it triggers a mild fight or flight response. That naturally deprioritizes hunger in your brain. In addition to this, it activates specific neurons that tell your brain you're not hungry. Research also shows nicotine can increase a user's resting metabolic rate by 7 to 15% and significantly reduces how much you think you want to eat. This is why some people might call it gas station OZempe, except I don't have to look like I'm dying when I take it. There's no direct fat burning, but it does mean that you want to snack less.

I pop one whenever I feel like I want to snack because I'm like bored, you know, like bored eating. I just take it in. Yeah. You mentioned mood stabilization. Generally, people are irritable when they're craving nicotine and can't get it, but I suspect you don't just mean that. No, there's more going on here than popping a Zen makes you stop being irritated about not having a Zen. Okay, good.

For some people, nicotine stabilizes mood by modulating release of serotonin and dopamine, somewhat famously the only two things you actually enjoy. For regular users, this stability is often just the reversal of the irritability caused by. being two hours late for the next dose. So this is an area where we just need more research. All right, we just spent 20 plus minutes talking about chemicals that own you. Now let's talk about stuff that works for you instead. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by My Profile Guru.

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Go ahead and check us out on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Is there any evidence that nicotine can help with bigger problems, like conditions people might have, I don't know, ADHD or something like that? There's some, but it's very limited. Nicotine has been shown to. reduce ADHD symptoms by roughly 8 to 10% in some clinical trials. People with ADHD are statistically twice as likely to use nicotine, likely as a form of self-medication to increase dopamine levels that are naturally lower in ADHD brains. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, you just

think of them as people who can't pay attention to things, but there's a dopamine thing. Yeah, no, that's me, dude, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. This stuff is dangerous for me. The reason I haven't tried it is probably it's going to totally scratch the itch of me not being able to focus on something for a long period of time. But then I would be addicted to zinc or nicotine. And I'm like, no thanks. But I used to take Adderall, which is horrible for you. And I stopped taking that. But like, I just deal with ADHD brain now, which, you know, kind of also sucks. So the idea that there's like a pouch I could put in my mouth that would cure that is is tempting. But again, I don't want to be addicted to anything, really, but not nicotine either. Sure. It all, the nicotine can also have some

effect in preventing Parkinson's disease. Smokers have a lower risk of developing Parkinson's. I'm actually like curious if that's just because they die sooner. Oh, yeah. Yeah, uh, yeah, we might have to, you might want to look that up. Oh, they don't live long enough to get it. Oh, okay. There's some research that suggests nicotine may be neuroprotective for dopamine producing neurons. Now, the skeptical Sunday caveat to all this is that there's some evidence, at least in terms of the performance benefit, that they only apply to non-addicts. We did have that study earlier where smokers and non-smokers alike had the same benefits. I don't remember seeing if that was regular smokers or they just handed somebody like a pack of cools.

Like, smoke them if you got them, Johnny, and let's take this test. But yeah, if you're a regular user, there's some chance that all you're doing is getting back to baseline, maybe. I think the other thing to remember is that the benefits don't come. in isolation. You know, you're dealing with the health risks as well as the improved performance. Sure, but everything in life is a trade-off. Yeah, people are touting nicotine in general and Zins in particular is neutropics. Are there neutropic effects that we didn't cover? Well, we touched on them, but they're worth maybe calling on their own, task initiation and reduced mental fatigue. Okay. Task initiation is the cognitive ability to start a project without undue procrastination.

So getting down to things. Exactly. Nicotine aids this primarily through its impact on the mesolimbic dopaminergic system. Wow. Okay. What the heck is that? It's the brain's primary reward circuit that connects the areas responsible for processing emotions with those that control action. When you do something the brain perceives as beneficial, like having sex, taking a stimulant,

this system releases dopamine to create a sense of pleasure and to teach, train you to repeat that behavior. Basically, nicotine triggers a direct release of dopamine. It essentially greases the wheels, making the brain feel like the task is more rewarding than it actually is, which lowers the mental barrier to starting. So nicotine tricks your brain into thinking that starting a new task is going to be awesome, even if it's just doing the dishes. Yep. The catch is that this is the most well-documented example of, now you just need nicotine to get back to baseline. In terms of mental stamina, I think of it this way. Mental fatigue is your brain's battery draining after a long day of work. Nicotine is a kind of booster pack for that battery because it mimics acetylcholine the chemical your brain uses to stay

alert and process information. I can't remember where, but I read about how high performance tech companies people are using Adderall and the modafinil, which is like that fighter pilot drug or whatever to get through the day, and Zinn is kind of like the last couple of hours. Medaffinil is actually crazy because most like anti-sleep drugs are just stimulants that make you super jacked. Medafinil, if I understand it correctly, cuts the wires between the part of your brain that tells you you're tired and the part of your brain that feels tired. I tried it because people were like, you've got to try this, it's amazing. And I didn't have any sort of effect where people or people are like raving about it. And I was like, I'm not more productive, but you know what? I got.

super angry. Dude. I got really cranky. This guy that I know, I'm so glad that I didn't take medafinil because I had a bunch at one point and it was like the absolute period of my life when I should not have been taking medaphanel. And this guy that I know was like, oh yeah, don't touch that stuff. It's like all the side effects of meth with none of the benefits. Yeah. All I did was get super angry and I remember talking with a guy who's like, oh, I know tons of people that do this. The doctor basically that prescribed it was like, what side effects are you having? And I was like, I'm super angry and I hate everyone. And he's like, oh, that's really rare, but quite severe and you should not take this because it only gets worse from here. Because you get really dependent on it,

apparently. And he's like, and the side effects get worse. And he's like, if you're getting that from like your first dose, you don't want to be hooked on this. Like you said, like your friend said, side effects of meth, right? I've never tried meth and I never will. But like, I was just kind of like, this is stupid. This is stupid. Everybody's an idiot. This is stupid. Why am I going to be doing this? I'm going to yell at this stranger. And Jen was like, you're not taking this. Again, this is. awful. So for the guys who are doing the medaphanel-adderall stack, Zinn is like, yeah, you use it to power

through the last part of the workday. Yeah, but once it wears off, you get addicted and you just need it like you said, to get back to baseline and function normally. Yeah, that's kind of the catch here. I mean, I just love nicotine. I love having the lovely feel of nicotine coursing through my filthy little

constricted veins all day. But from the perspective of somebody who doesn't or doesn't use it at all, it may not make sense to pick up this habit. Maybe it's the thing you indulge in if you have a tight deadline or you need a little extra focus. Yeah, but then you're running the chance of getting addicted, man. Absolutely. So we talked a little bit earlier about harm reduction, which is generally something you only hear about,

well, with much harder drugs. So what's the deal with harm reduction and nicotine? Zins are just better for you than smoking from everything we know. There might be some studies in the future that show, us that Zins have insanely high rates of ultra-lethal mouth or throat cancer. Maybe that's true. We do not have any information telling us that yet. Gotcha. Okay. Plus, there's all kinds of health problems that come with smoking other than just cancer. C-O-PD, emphysema, hardening of the arteries, all that stuff. Smoking, again, just about the worst thing you can do for your health. It's really not

hard to find something that's better to do. Zins are better than tobacco in any form. But are they better than just not using nicotine at all. Right. But people are going to use nicotine. And as far as nicotine goes, zins are pretty harmless and inoffensive, comparatively speaking. Right. From the perspective of a non-user, what's the complaint? That you put little spit-soaked packets into the trash when you're done?

I mean, you litter maybe. Yeah. Littering, maybe. Right. So how does harm reduction work compared to abstinence only when it comes to quitting smoking? So abstinence works, but it doesn't work very well. Only 5 to 8% of smokers are able to quit cold turkey. Harm reduction in this case is more about switch to survive. You have to acknowledge most people can't quit without a substitute for cigarettes. And some people will never quit nicotine completely.

Yeah. My old producer, Jason DeFilippo, he told me that, and I'm pretty sure this is public. I'm not blowing him up. But he basically said quitting nicotine was one of the hardest things he ever did in his life. And he's a Hollywood guy from back in the day. And he was like literally quitting cocaine was easier than stopping nicotine. I've never been addicted to cocaine. So I couldn't really say. I don't know why that surprises me, but I guess it sort of does. I don't know.

The only thing cocaine does for me is make me able to drink all night and also want more cocaine. Well, that's kind of how it works. Yeah. In the words of Richard Pryor, cocaine turns me into a whole new man and he wants some to. Yeah. Okay, but you've quit nicotine. You've quit nicotine like a thousand times, right? Haven't you before?

Honestly, like I said, the issue isn't nicotine. It's smoking. Right. I love nicotine. I'm the worst person on earth to ask about this. I'm the guy who's never going to quit nicotine. Honestly, I'm like, I get the guy with the oxygen tank and the lit cigarette. Oh, no.

Like, that guy makes so much sense to me. I would quit caffeine before I would quit nicotine. And I love my coffee, my, uh, you know, monster energy drinks. drinks, man, I just like nicotine. Yeah, well, I can tell. I love how nicotine is hijacked your brain to make you into a nicotine spokesman. With harm reduction, the idea is to get people to drop cigarettes for a more healthy delivery system that's much less likely to kill them. Yeah? Yeah, for me personally, Zins are not as viscerally satisfying as either a cigarette or a pull-off a vape. It doesn't really have that, like, stabia in the lung quality that I always loved

about smoking. They should use your description of what you like about cigarettes in anti-smoking campaigns. With Zins, it's just like, yeah, like nicotine, it's something to do, it combats boredom, it takes the edge off. It's not the same. For me, vaping was like the worst of all worlds, because I would just literally vape all day and not get the consequences that come from chain smoking nonstop. Like when I was a chain smoker, I would get chest pains and I would like set a timer on my phone. This is when I lived in Hollywood. I would have like three cigarettes back to back. and want another one, and I would have to, like, set a timer on my phone about what I was allowed to have another cigarette.

Oh, my God. Whereas with Zins, you just pop a few times a day and you're done with it. Yeah, and this is where I think it really has the advantage over vaping. It's a discreet event. Like, sometimes I'll pop Zins back to back. It's so rare. Even for, like, Mr. I love nicotine, it's pretty rare. I cannot be the only guy on Earth who switched from cigarettes to vapes because I could do it all

day. Like, I'd get chest pains and I'd still be smoking, but, oh, vaping, I could just do this all day and I can run a mile and there's no way that's good for you. No, no. Yeah, so it's not that there's no consequences. There's no immediate consequences. We have no idea what that stuff is doing to us long term, like you said. So yeah, wow. Yeah, so vaping actually just makes it like too easy to just do more of it. No, exactly. It's like remove the immediate negative quality of life consequences and just make this a thing that you're going to like pay for all at once when you get god knows what yeah and you've got a tiny USB drive that has five packs of cigarettes in it or something basically equivalent and it's cheaper and it's yeah yeah and you can travel with it and it's da da da you know it doesn't

smell i mean right there's just too many advantages to that it's like 12 dollars for a month of cigarettes and you're smoking like you know a cart and a week at that point oh my god gross loved buying them by the cart and i always felt like i always would like Like just high step it right out of that gas station with a fresh carton. It's so gross, dude. So gross. So back to harm reduction. People who switched you vaping or pouches are twice as likely to stay off cigarettes

than people using traditional nicotine replacement therapy. So like nicotine gum, lozenges, I don't know, what else there is? Patches, I guess. Yeah, patches, yeah. I think for some people, when you remove the act of smoking, from the equation. That's a big deal. Very few people have trouble quitting smoking because they crave nicotine. Nicotine cravings are gone in a couple days. You don't miss nicotine. You miss smoking. There's the whole ritual around it. You take one out. You light it up. My lighter was like so

important to my smoking ritual. I didn't want to light my cigarette off a gas station bick. I wanted my zippo. I wanted to hear that click when it open. The sound it makes when you flick it, the way that the first hit tastes like lighter fluid, then you have this thing that tons of people talk about, which is, it's a joke on movies and sitcoms and stuff, but it's true, like, what am I supposed to do with my hands? When I'm not smoking, if you feel awkward in social situations,

which believe it or not, I do, cigarettes are a great way to deal with that because it gives you something to do. It gives you somewhere to put your attention. It gives you somewhere to channel your nervous energy. Finally, there's the taste, in the feel of smoking. People have specific brands for a reason. You like the taste of your brand. You like the way it feels in your hand. You like the way that it hit from that cigarette, that brand

feels when you inhale it into your lungs. Non-smokers do not know how much smokers are giving up when they try to quit. Right. I've never been a smoker like you are, but I can see how you're also addicted to everything that goes along with smoking. It's more like quitting coffee than anything probably. Your cravings for caffeine, those are going to be over in a couple days, but you're not going to forget the fact that you like coffee with your breakfast and the way the beans smell in the morning, in the grinding, and the making the thing, and the sound, the foam, milk foamer, like, there's a whole, there's a whole ritual around it. There's a coffee brand cult ritual because there's ritual around it. Yeah, and Zin's working, getting people to pick up somewhat healthier habits. So giving up

smoking in exchange for Zins, yeah. Yeah. And the other thing, too, is when all you have left is the I think a lot of people are just going to say screw it and throw their zins in the trash and deal with the 72 hours of irritability and then move on with their lives. Is there evidence that supports that? So there's a term called the ritual gap and this is the part of smoking that people miss that isn't nicotine. That ritual is what psychologists call secondary reinforcers. Zin has none of those. There's no theater in it. You pull a little white bag out of a little plastic puck and you stick it under your lip.

Right. No one thinks Zins look cool because they don't look like anything when they go in your mouth. It's like having a piece of candy in your cheek. Right. And you don't have a lifetime of seeing James Dean and Steve McQueen leaned against a brick wall looking like the coolest human being alive and a big part of why they look so cool is because they're ripping a heater. Like, it's cool. What do you want me to tell you? Cigarettes look cool. Is that what got you smoking? Yeah, Duff McCagan. the basest of guns and roses. Yes. I thought he was like the coolest human being alive when I was a wee tyke of nine years old. And so I started smoking and I would let the ash on my cigarettes get really long to look like him.

Me and my friends will call him duffs. And I told him this story when I met him in my 30s and he just like looked at me like I was absolutely insane. Yeah. Well, he was maybe shocked that a nine year old was smoking. because of him. But yeah, who knows what was going through is my mind. It could be worse. You could have idolized Keith Richards or something like that. Yeah, well, I got through a William Burroughs

obsession without sticking dope in my arm, so... Here you go. Good. A little easier to pick up the cigarettes. The other thing Zins are missing that cigarettes have is immediacy of delivery. You smoke a cigarette, bam, nicotine. It's in your veins. Zins, much slower.

So it's not the same gut punch of nicotine all at once. When you smoke, you've your nicotine fix in 10 to 20 seconds. Zins can take as long as an hour and your brain does not associate the pouch with an instant high the way it does a cigarette or even a vape. I see. That's great, but is it helping people to quit nicotine entirely or is it making them go back to smoking where they get slammed with nicotine in 10 seconds? Half of smokers who switched to zins never went back. Wow. 3.2% of study participants quit nicotine entirely, but the longer they use the pouches, the more likely they were to quit entirely.

Wow. Yeah, Zins just aren't cool or fun like cigarettes. If your current system is chaos, cravings, and regret, these next sponsors fix at least one of those. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to the show. I really do appreciate you supporting the show and the sponsors that make it possible. All of them are linked, searchable, clickable on the website at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals.

Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. So you quit the cigarettes and you get rid of the rituals, but you still have like, you're scratching the nicotine itch because you're only quitting one thing at a time instead of being like, okay, I'm going to get rid of cigarettes and go cold turkey, and now I don't have the ritual of like going downstairs,

taking the cigarette out, smelling it, tapping it against the pack, lighting it up, taking a drag, getting an instant hit, blah, blah, so you get rid of the ritual stuff with the cigarettes by moving from cigarettes to Zinn, and then later on, you go, hey, this isn't as satisfying and you just hopefully can then dump the nicotine entirely. Right, because nicotine is like, the cravings are gone in 72 hours.

I believe that's, yeah, it's less than a week anyway. No one's taking a Zin break at work. It's a maintenance chore. Maybe you like how they taste, but like go get some mince, little hard candies. Most people, as it turns out, don't like being addicted to nicotine. But for some reason, the only guy alive who does like being addicted to nicotine, is the one co-hosting this podcast with me. Guilty.

Real quick, zins are extremely similar to nicotine lozenges, and very few people use smoking cessation lozenges for very long. Yeah. The other thing is these are products for adults. They're clearly labeled as addictive. Is the marketing super restrictive, like the cigarettes market, like other tobacco marketing?

They actually can't be advertised as a product that helps you quit smoking. Whomp, womp, why is that? Isn't that kind of the point? Well, even if the science suggests, Zins are less harmful, which again, it does. Companies cannot use words like light, mild, low risk, or safer in their ads unless they receive a specific modified risk tobacco product authorization from the FDA. As of early 2026, companies like Philip Morris are still in high stakes public hearings with the FDA, trying to win the right to say their pouches reduce the risk

of mouth and lung cancer until that is granted they have to remain silent on the health benefits. Damn, what about selling them to kids? I know a lot of the younger crowd prefer these to smoking. All of the advertising restrictions that apply to cigarettes apply to Zinn. So, you know, you can't have Joe Camel hanging out with his friends looking cool as hell while he packs a lip. You can't use young actors in the ads. Oh, weird. Yeah, all actors in Zinn ads have to appear 35 or older. they can't go into Coachella and hand out free samples. If young people still go to Coachella, I have genuinely no idea because I'm a middle-aged man. It's probably super expensive.

I don't know if they can afford to go. I don't know if anybody they can afford to go. Zins can't even use influencers or Zinfluensers, if you will. Yeah, I will not. So basically they can't get around the tobacco restrictions on advertising to kids because it doesn't have tobacco. I thought they would try to slide through that loophole. I'm sure they did, but they're like the least popular industry in America. Like, you know.

Right. If you were literally selling cancer, you might be slightly more popular than tobacco companies. California and D.C. have banned the sale of all flavored nicotine products, which is super weak, because when I go visit my in-laws, I have to, like, bring my own stash. Or I have to get these California legal ones that taste like nothing. or they taste like tobacco. The ones that taste like tobacco are super gross. Like kids are not going to start using these.

Oh, maybe that's the point, Nick. Maybe, but you know me. I just think petty little tyrants like to use kids as an excuse to deprive adults of joy. Possibly. They can't advertise at all on television or the radio, and so most of the advertising is going to be point sale. Which basically is just going to be what, price-based advertising because everything else is illegal?

Yep. that's all they got. We're cheaper. So say I'm at home listening and I think Zins are for me. What are you going to tell me? Well, first of all, I want to know if you smoke, because if you smoke, great idea. Go buy some Zins right now. If you don't, it's probably a terrible idea. Right. Yeah. No one starts doing drugs expecting to get addicted. Everyone thinks, you know, I'm the one who's not going to get hooked. Nicotine is super addictive. You might get a little boost when you need it, but you're probably just playing with fire. But on the other hand, like you said, Zins are one of the least addictive delivery systems for nicotine around. That's a fair argument. I just think the boost you get

probably isn't worth the risk of getting addicted. Right. If you're a smoker, yeah, man, like start today, start yesterday. I think if you're currently using them, you need to be aware of the harm involved, because while they are good for harm reduction, they are not harmless. It's mostly all day use that's going to be an issue. All day. Oh, yeah, people who just do one after the other. Yeah, which I'm not doing that. Somebody out there's got to be, but for sure. Mr.

i heart nicotine is not doing that. I don't think it's very common. Make sure it's not interfering with sleep. You know, if you all of a sudden have dangerously high blood pressure, keep it eye on your gums. Yeah,

ask your dentist if your teeth are falling out from the Zinn. So here's the bottom line. Nicotine pouches like Zinn are the ultimate Roershack test for how we view public health. If you're looking at a smoker who's hacked up a lung for 20 years

and finally switches to a pouch, this is a miracle of modern chemistry. It's the closest thing we have to a get out of jail free card for the most lethal parts of tobacco, the fire, the tar, the carbon monoxide. So from a harm reduction standpoint, it's not even a close call. It's like trading a motorcycle for a minivan. It's not healthy, but it's vastly less likely to kill you on the way to work. But for the rest of us, nicotine is basically a loan shark for dopamine. It'll give you that boost in focus and task initiation today, sure, but it's going to collect that debt with interest tomorrow in the form of cravings, sleep disruption, and a baseline that slowly drifts toward irritability. All right. Thanks again

to Nick Pell for this amazing episode. And thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, Jordan atjordanharbinger.com, advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram, you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sadlowskis, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but not your lawyer. Also, we of course try to get these as right as we can.

Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked. Consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. Remember when Google actually gave you useful results? Facebook felt fun and Amazon didn't feel like a scam-filled maze.

Corey Dr. Rowe explains how tech platforms slowly trap users squeeze businesses and eventually cannibalize themselves, a process he calls in shittification. It's not just that companies become too big to fail and we bail them out, although that's happening. It's not just they become too big to jail, but they become too big to care. The insidogenic policy environment is what created this. To hear why the internet keeps getting worse, check out episode 1280 of the Jordan Harbinger show. This episode is sponsored in part by Everything Everywhere Daily. You've heard the phrase, learn something new every day. Sounds nice, but do you actively do it?

That's where Everything Everywhere Daily comes in. This podcast makes it effortless. Just 10 minutes a day, you'll walk away with a fascinating fact, a slice of history, a science gem. It's no wonder the show has climbed up to the top as the number one history podcast. It covers history, science, technology, geography, and stories of remarkable people always in a way that keeps you hooked. Not sure where to jump in? Start with these favorites. The eruption of Krakatoa, Nature's Fury, in one of the deadliest volcanic events ever recorded.

Or the spice trade, how a handful of spices changed the course of global history. If you want to make learning effortless and fun, check out everything everywhere daily. It's quick, fascinating, and a perfect way to stay curious. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.