The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1369: Trepanation & Castration | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

Trepanation, voluntary eunuchs, and other things to never try at home. Nick Pell cuts through the crackpot science here on Skeptical Sunday.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/1369On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:The oldest surgery on Earth: How humans spent 7,000 to 10,000 years drilling holes in skulls — and why survival rates reached 40 percent, climbing as high as 78 percent in some pre-modern European populations, rivaling the best of early modern Europe.When the ancients got it right: Why trepanation was sometimes sound medicine — relieving deadly pressure from a brain bleed — even as it was also used to release evil spirits, treat epilepsy and migraines, or mark warriors and shamans in rites of passage.The modern movement's quack roots: What drives voluntary trepanation today traces to Dutch pseudo-doctor Bart Huges, who drilled his own skull chasing a "higher consciousness" — a theory with zero evidence and a mortality rate north of 25 percent.DIY castration and the men behind it: How thousands of voluntary eunuchs and unlicensed "cutters" operate outside medicine, and why researchers tie the drive to body integrity dysphoria, sexual fetish, and the elusive pursuit of total "eunuch calm."How separating crackpot theory from real science comes down to asking what the evidence actually shows, respecting bodily autonomy without romanticizing harm, and consulting a mental health professional before anything irreversible.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: FlyKitt: 15% off: flykitt.com, code JORDANAG1: Welcome kit: drinkag1.com/jordanQuince: Free shipping & 365-day returns: quince.com/jordanZipRecruiter: Learn more at ziprecruiter.com/jordanSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. We had the best time in Victoria, BC, staying with our friend Chad, who lives up there, also happens to be an incredible fitness trainer, leave it to Chad to sneak a strength training block into a relaxing vacation. But staying with somebody local, it made the whole trip feel different. It wasn't the tourist version of Victoria. It was the Here's What You Actually Need to See version. We flew on a seaplane, wandered Government Street and Fantan Alley, found an amazing

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Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host writer and researcher Nick Pell. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn 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. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers.

On Sundays, though, is skeptical Sunday. A rotating guest co-host and I will break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunked common misconceptions about that topic, such as acupuncture, the death industry, homeopathy, sovereign citizens, e-commerce, scams, diet supplements, and more. And 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, 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. Okay, today it's 2026 and just about everybody has some kind of body modification. Tattoes are everywhere, and even if that's not your thing, most women have their ears pierced at the very least. It's not shocking anymore. And unless somebody is super heavily tattooed or has a lot of facial piercings, nobody even bats an eye. But some people are into some pretty extreme body modification. There's scarification, subdermal implants where they put silicone beneath your skin to reshape your body,

or things like tattooing the eyeballs. That's a thing if you haven't been watching Nightline or whatever. Even beyond that, however, is what we're going to talk about today. Now, before I go any further, I just want to say we're going to be talking about some pretty intense stuff here today. So if you have small kids, grandmas, maybe you're squeamish or just easily offended, Maybe it's time to switch to another episode because it gets gross kind of quick on this one. Today we're going to talk about people

who want to drill holes in their head and cut off their body parts for fun, including their junk. I swear, guys, I wish I was making this stuff up. This is real. And so how many people are doing this? How did this become a thing in the first place? And of course, the question everybody's asking at home already,

why, why, why? Here to help me drill into the facts is who else, writer and researcher, Nick Pell? Of course I had to pick you for this one. Nick, it's time for another deep dive into the world of the absolutely bizarre. And I'm guessing you've got all your body parts, but I've never really inquired as to whether you've still got your penis. So was this the casualty of your love of body modification as well? Dude, I think piercings hurt too much. I am not cutting off

body parts. Yeah. What about drilling a hole in your head? Going to pass on the hole in the head as well. So you originally pitched this to me as just being about the hole in the head thing, which apparently has a name because, of course it does. Yeah, it's called trepanion. trepanning or bur-holling. It's very ancient and there's even a joke about it in Ghostbusters. This reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole through your head. Remember that? That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me. We have evidence that people have been trapanning for between 7,000 and 10,000 years. Okay, so it's old, but dad, does that make it a good idea? I don't know.

To be clear, right off the bad, nothing that we're going to talk about today is a good idea. in the least. Please do not do any of this. I also want to say that we're going to talk about why people do this and provide some answers that are more interesting than they're insane. And just because the people doing it might not be insane doesn't make it a good idea any more than the old, hey, it's a very ancient thing makes it a good idea. Absolutely.

Again, do not do this. But I want to provide some answers for this that are maybe a little more nuanced and in depth than just calling them crazy. So getting back to Trapanning, it's possibly the oldest surgical procedure in the world. In some parts of the world, it was actually very common,

and there's one burial site where a third of the bodies were tripaned. How many people were surviving this? Because, okay, anyone can drill a hole in someone's head, but getting them to actually heal from that as a whole different story. About 40% of

surgery participants survived. Okay. You know what? Those aren't the best odds in the world, but that is a whole lot better than what I thought you were going to say. Yeah, in some pre-modern European populations, you saw survival rates of 78%, which is honestly pretty damn good. But that's the high water mark and only available in a specific region at a specific time. It's also on par with surgery survival rates across early modern Europe. So someone really knew what they were doing pretty early on. It's comparable to very complex cancer surgeries. The difference being that you actually need those.

Right. Yeah. And also, they're extremely complex, whereas this is just drilling a hole into your head. Yeah. How can you tell if someone survived a surgery like that or not if you're just looking at their bones? We know because there's new bone growth around the hole. Like, the hole's never going to close, but there's new bone growth if the person survives. If they didn't survive, there's just a hole. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So before we go through the nickel tour of 10,000 years of drilling holes in the human head,

I want to get a sense of how this is done, and maybe more importantly, why. There's a whole saying, I need that like I need a hole in the head, but apparently a bunch of people really actually do think that they needed a hole or need a hole in their head. It reminds me that family guy episode. I need another expense like I need a hole in the head, and I don't need that. I'm telling you, this thing has turned out to be nothing but a bird. Oh my God, Peter! Why did you get that?

A few of the fellas at work talked me into it. Said it was something I might need. Well, it's horrible. And the worst thing is I found out I got it on the gay side. Hey, are you coming out tonight? I'm not gay. They put their hole in the wrong side. So, in ancient times, the tools aren't terribly sophisticated,

but it's worth noting that there are Flint tools from the Stone Age sitting in the British Museum that if you touched them, you would cut yourself pretty badly. Stone Age tools are a lot more precise than you'd. probably think. That said, they're nothing like a modern scalpel or probably even a box cutter. In any event, cultures are using the dominant material they have around at the time. That could be stone. It could be bronze. It could be copper. There's some island tribes who made knives from shells. There are ceramic knives and there's some of the sharpest blades around. So it wouldn't surprise me

if a Flint tool at one point before being buried in the sand for 5,000 years or something, that could have been sharper or as sharp is a metal knife. There's no reason it couldn't have been. You're chipping the end of that thing, right? So those things can get ridiculously sharp. Anyway, it does sound like they're using all-purpose stabby things to get through your skull. That sounds promising. Yeah, the Greeks and Romans were the first to invent specialized tools for trapanning. And to be clear, Europe is still trapanning into the Renaissance. So if you have any notion that this is savages or the ancients, that's most definitely wrong. By the Renaissance, they have drills dedicated for the purpose. This is probably a dumb question, but that's probably a lot of the show anyway. Was there any kind

of anesthetic applied? Because especially in people during the Stone Age, I know they didn't have what we have now, but tell me they had something. I don't know. But we can surmise pretty reliably that as soon as they figured out opiates, cocaine, and alcohol, they were probably just using whatever of those they had. If you're cutting a hole in my head, I want all. of them. Like, I want the fruit wine, I want the coca leaf, and I want the poppy, whatever. I don't know how you would apply that. I want all of it if I'm getting a hole in the head. Yeah, a lot of times, though, it was used to treat head wounds, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it does kind of sound counterintuitive to treat a head wound by giving somebody a head wound, but I'm guessing

they're trying to relieve pressure in the skull from a hematoma, from a brain bleed, right? So you get bashed in the head with a rock during battle or something like that. Your brain is bleeding and you show whatever signs they know to look for. And they're like, oh, he's going to die if we don't cut this patch of skull off of his head. Yeah. So the reason for bringing this up, head trauma is kind of an anesthetic. If a person is already out of it from getting whacked in the head, it's probably going to be easier to drill a hole in their head.

Oh, okay. Yeah, after a massive head wound, I'd imagine they'd be a bit out of it. So are they just walking around with an, open hole in their skull for the rest of their life? Or you just, hey, you should probably wear a hat from now on. It doesn't sound like a good idea. Because I'm thinking ancient times were dirty, right? You're walking around dirty streets and defecating in the open with no sewage and then you can't go swimming or anything. I mean, I don't know. Do you just have a hole in your head? No, the skin grows back, but the hole in your skull is going to be there forever because they remove tons of bone to make it.

Where on the head they do this varies from place to place. It's typically the frontal and occipital bones. So that's your forehead and the bump on the back of your head. We found people who had multiple surgeries. Sometimes they got more than one hole at once. Sometimes they got holes at different times. Jeez, this is probably a silly question. But you think after you had one hole in your head that if you needed another hole,

they'd be like, no, no, no, we're in luck. This guy's already got a hole in his head. his brain is going to be able to, I don't know, vent or whatever you want to call it, right? Like, why would you need more than one hole? I guess I'm probably going too far down this particular thread here. But, all right, let me skip to another silly question. Is there a safe way to do this? If you're a neurosurgeon, maybe.

And even that's super risky. There's very little tolerance for error. Once the duramatter is penetrated, it's likely going to be fatal. What is the duramatter? Is that the little bag your brain is in kind of? I don't really know. It's like the outermost layer of your meneges, which I don't know what that is either. Yeah, I think that's a sheath for the brain, right? It's a sheath for your... Yeah. I guess it's your brain bag. Your brain bag. Yeah. If you're studying to be a doctor,

you should definitely maybe do some further research. But for the rest of us, it's a brain bag. Yeah. Fortunately for everyone involved, neither of us are doctors. It does, though. It provides your main line of defense against trauma and it keeps the blood and the waste out of your central nervous system. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. So got it. So once that's penetrated, there's basically zero chance for survival because all kinds of gross stuff's getting in there and then you got a problem. It's a major medical emergency.

Yeah, so infection and bleeding also going to be big risk factors, I'd imagine. I guess if you don't bleed to death, infection seems like the way that you're going to get taken out. Yeah. You need an experienced neurosurgeon right away. if you have a big hole in your head. Yeah, okay. So let's get back to the history of Trapanning.

So you mentioned that head trauma was a reason for people doing this during the Stone Age. What are other reasons the ancients were drilling holes in their skulls? Were there other reasons? Because of course there were, right? There's going to be some reasons where it's like, oh, that made sense. And then there's going to be some reasons where you go, oh, yeah, that was a bad idea. They've got to let the evil spirits out. All right.

I both love and hate that I can't tell if that's a joke. That's not a joke, right? So sometimes it would be done after the person died to let their soul out in ancient China. There was some belief that it opened up communication with the dead or with spirits. By the way, fun fact, we didn't have any archaeological evidence that trepination existed in China until 2007. So they just dug some people up in 2007 from thousands of years ago and they're like, hey, they got holes in their head. Yep. Wow.

Yep. And it was like the one place where they hadn't found it yet. Huh. Yeah. That's pretty neat. So basically every major ancient civilization had figured this out. It is actually interesting. Yeah.

That's why we tuned into skeptical Sundays, folks, for useless trivia like this. This is going to be a question at your bar trivia night, and you're going to be glad you listen to this episode. That's right. The classical world, the Greeks and the Romans, by the time we get to that part of human history, it's the main treatment for epilepsy and other similar disorders. Hippocrates and Galen. Both recommended it for the purpose of treating epilepsy. My epileptic father, I bet, is real glad he grew up in the age of phenobarbital and not trepination. I bet.

I actually never knew your dad had epilepsy. Wow. He does, but it's more like the Julius Caesar falling on the ground and then wondering where the hell you are type than the convulsive kind of epilepsy. He has like the falling sickness, as it's called in Shakespeare version of it. So, yeah, he just falls to the ground and then he's dazed and has no idea where he is or what's going on, which is great when you're an iron worker. Yeah, I was going to say people at work need to know what's going on. I was at a gym. I've told this story on the show before, so I'll keep it brief.

I was at a gym back when I lived in New York, and I heard a bunch of people screaming. And my old business partner, he ran and he's like, Jordan, this guy's having a seizure. So I ran out there. And everyone was just standing around as this dude convulsed on the floor. and so I moved a weight off of him that he had, I think, holding. And luckily it didn't hit him in the face or anything. It just sort of landed on his chest. He was like a dumbbell.

And then I like made sure that nothing else could fall on him. And then he sort of at that point, I don't even know what you would call it, woke up or like came to. And I said, hey, man, hey, you're having, you had a seizure. We need to call an ambulance. And he goes, no, no, no, no, don't call an ambulance. And I was like, okay, but like you had a seizure. You should go to the hospital. and then he goes, oh man, hey, do you want to get out of here?

Let's get out of here, bro. And I was like, I don't actually know you. And you're on the floor at the gym, and you just had a seizure. And he looked around and everyone was looking at him. And he looked really embarrassed almost. And he's like, I should go home. And I was like, I think you should probably go to the hospital because I don't know anything about epilepsy, but you just had a seizure at a gym.

And he's like, don't call an ambulance. And he just left. And I was like, I can't tell if he's still out of it or if he's just so incredibly embarrassed that he doesn't want to be here anymore. And it still haunts me because I'm like, should I have let that guy go? I don't know. I was like 25, so I don't know if I did the right thing. I have no idea why I'm telling you this. Allow me to assuage your conscience. He was probably fine. Okay. Thank God. He was probably fine. Because it was scary. I mean, it wasn't like what you see in the movies. He wasn't like foaming at the mouth and like flailing around like crazy. I don't even

know if that's real. Maybe that's like a certain kind. It is, but it's not like everybody with epilepsy doesn't do that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it was just more like he was on the bench and then he fell. And I think his buddy thought, oh, dude, you fell off the bench. But then he, like, didn't get up. Yeah. And then everybody stood there like a freaking idiot. Even though everybody had a cell phone in their pocket, nobody called 911.

Nobody did anything. Everybody just screamed and stared at him and then AJ ran in and got me. I thought that was the weirdest reaction. Like, there were 20 people in there. Not one person did anything. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, there's a guy at my gym who regularly has seizures and, like, I've seen him have a seizure.

There's not a hell of a lot you can really do. Because falling is the main thing that's going to... Yeah, holding a weight and falling was what I was concerned about. You did pretty much everything you could do by moving a weight off of him and assuming that he didn't drive home, which given that the story took place in New York... He didn't drive home. Unless he's a taxi driver, he didn't drive home because nobody in Manhattan has a car. Yeah.

Yeah, so unless he drove home, he's fine. It was one of those residential bill. He probably lived in that exact building and just walked up to... his apartment. All right, that makes me feel a little bit better. All right, 20 plus years later, I can shake that one off. Okay. In fact, our engineer Jace, the man editing the show right now, he has epilepsy. He gets photosensitive grand mal seizures or tonic clonic seizures, which are the full convulsive kind, although thankfully doesn't have him very often. He told me that his are normally very short, and he generally doesn't want to go to the hospital after a typical seizure either,

so maybe that guy at the gym wasn't acting as strangely as I thought. Jase did point out a couple useful things, though. Clear anything dangerous away from somebody having a seizure. Put something soft under their head, a coat, a hoodie, whatever. And once the convulsion stop, put them on their side in the recovery position to keep their airway clear. Don't put anything in their mouth. Contrary to the movie myth, they're not going to swallow their tongue. They actually will not do that at all. And you can injure them by trying to shove something in their mouth. Time the seizure, if you can, stay with them while they recover. Seizures can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the type. And if the Caesar reaches five minutes or another starts before they've recovered or they're injured and

they're having trouble breathing, then it's an actual medical emergency. So call for help. And when in doubt, call for help. I mean, they can always refuse the ambulance when it gets there if they want to here in the United States, but you'd hate to have somebody need help and you're just sitting there wondering what to do. I think this could actually save somebody or help somebody witnessing a seizure. So forgive this little aside, but we wanted to clarify that for everybody. And anyway, we are way off track. Take us somewhere. Yeah, there's a guy in my old man's whose daughter was having something like 50 grand mal seizures a day. Oh my God.

They would do fundraisers for her. So to kind of like bring it back to what we're talking about. Yeah, there's people who have epilepsy that's so bad that drilling a hole in your head can seem like, shit, if that's going to stop this, I'll give it a shot. If you're having 50 seizures a day, that's one every half an hour. It's more because theoretically you're sleeping for half of that. So you're having a seizure like every 15 minutes? She was having seizures constantly.

Yeah, it was bad, yeah. You can't function. You're just basically at home waiting for the next one at that point. Yes. Oh, my God. That's awful. So some people have, like, really bad epilepsy where you're like, you know what, drill a hole in my head? So basically you're like, kill me or drill a hole in my head and try to make it stop at that point?

Because they didn't have medication back then. My God, these poor people. Holy moly. So the ancients, like, in addition to the epilepsy thing, they thought it was good for migraines and other chronic pain disorders. Okay. No one is really sure of the extent of it. Maybe common, maybe rare, we don't really know. Sometimes in tribal societies, people would keep the bones as an amulet.

It was believed it could ward off evil spirits. Look, if the takeaway from today's episode is maybe don't drill holes in your own skull, congratulations, you're already ahead of a shocking number of people in human history. Speaking to making better decisions than medieval brain surgery, let's hear from the sponsors who keep the show running. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by FlyKit. FlyKit is our secret weapon for international travel.

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joke around a little bit, get to know other show fans. It's kind of a fun time in there most of the time anyway. That's the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. I don't mean to laugh, but as a treatment for migraines and pain, like, hey, with this giant hole on the back of my head, I barely can feel the headache I had in the front. Thanks, doctor.

Thank you. Other times it was a right of passage. Sometimes this was into a secret society. Sometimes it was into the shaman class. And other times, still, it was part of becoming a warrior. It's not much of a secret if you can tell who's in it because they're the guys that have holes in their head. Told you the skin grows back.

It's like, hey, I think he might be part of the Illuminati. What gave it away? Well, he's got a giant hole in the back of his head. And so does that other guy. And they're both oozing green pus every time. You can smell them coming. It's a real secret society. Oh, God.

You said a warrior kind of thing as well, becoming a warrior? Yeah, it's worth kind of mentioning and passing that the warrior class throughout most of ancient civilizations is the most prestigious class to belong to even more so than the priestly class. If you're wondering why somebody would do this to be a battlefield grunt, you're kind of missing the point. It's like, this is how people got rich in the ancient world and owned a lot of property and stuff like that. So I see. Okay, I didn't realize that. I actually thought that being the priest or whatever, the clergy was the highest. So warrior was above that. I did not realize that. I kind of figured. Read genealogy of morals by Frederick Nietzsche. He details the transition between societies that prized priests over warriors. That's cool. And like very early human civilization, it's much better to be a warrior than a priest. I guess you'd want that, right? Because if you want your society to survive and expand, you want your best to reproduce and go out there and figure out ways to get more stuff as a opposed to just like, hey, I'm going to be gone for a month in a monastery meditating with no kids ever. Tripping my face off. Yeah.

No, actually, we want you out there pillaging another village and stealing all of their stuff and bringing it back here. That's where we need you. It seems like a bad idea, though, to take all your strongest warriors and drill holes in their head, especially seeing as they were probably going to be fighting other people at some point and getting hit a bunch, maybe in the head. But what do I know? But if they survive, think about how strong they must be. Yeah, you got me on that one. Okay, what about in later times? I'm not going to start down the path of all ancient cultures where pig ignorant savages that cut holes in their head, but obviously there's a lot more knowledge and scientific know-how during the Renaissance in Europe than there was during the Stone Age or the classical period. So why are people still drilling holes in other people's heads or their own heads during the age of Michelangelo? Why did this persist? Some of it is for the same reasons. It persists as a for migraines and epilepsy.

You might think that's pretty drastic for a headache, but you got to remember there's a type of migraine called a suicide headache that's so bad that people literally want to kill themselves to stop it. It's not a euphemism. People would literally rather die. I've heard of this. I've actually, I dated a girl in college

and she had headaches that were, they weren't suicide headaches, but they were so bad she had to take pills. And I remember she didn't want to keep taking the pills. And I was like, how bad can they be? And this is early Google, right? So I remember Googling it. And it was like, basically she was on some sort of hardcore narcotic.

And when she took the pills, she was like a, you know, when people are all pilled out, you've seen it, you lived in Hollywood. It was like that where it's just like you're like an annoying, very drunk looking and sounding person that is off their rocker and you don't want to be around them. And that was what these pills did. They're like a drunk toddler. Yes. And that was what these pills did.

And she was 20 years old and she didn't want to be like that around other people all the time. So she stopped taking them. And then I remember she just couldn't leave her room because she would be burying her head in the corner of the couch waiting for the headache to go away. It's just terrible. Yeah, I'm terrified of these because they're common among middle-aged chronic insomniacs. So every time I get a headache, I'm just like, oh, shit. But I don't have them. Oh, I see.

You're waiting for that. Hey, you know what? If that happens to you, call me. We'll drill a hole in your head and we'll do an update to this episode. We'll see if this works. So wait, those headaches, though, those are the ones that people would take acid to treat, right? They would take drug, like crazy stuff to try and treat that. Yeah, that's another reason why I'm good with the cluster migraine.

Hard paths on having to take LSD daily. Let's also not overvalue what people knew during the Renaissance. They didn't have germ theory. A bunch of people thought that bad smells were what made you sick. Yeah, Draccar Noir makes me want to kill somebody, but usually not myself. I do not understand the Dracar noir, hey man. I love it. It's the scent of a generation.

It is the scent of a generation. I actually used to wear it. And the reason was, I've said this a bazillion times, I used to be the only white guy at work. And I remember all the guys, they would be like, so I got some because I wanted to smell like all my coworkers, because that was like the in thing. So we all used to wear Dracar noir.

This is like the male version of periods sinking up. I guess. I didn't think about that. Yeah. And maybe it's the smell. of shame that's really getting to me. But I later switched to LaCost when I was 17 or 18. So I basically went from a middle-aged black man to a middle-aged white man

between the ages of 14 and 18 in terms of scent. Because Draccar Noir, that was like, yeah, if you were like a cool black dude in 1993, like that's what you wore. And then I switched to La Caste. Yeah, back home, it's like you're a Italian guy who goes clubbing a lot, I guess. For the record, my daily driver is Angel because I like to smell like a Reno hairdresser. My wife loves it. She's nodding in agreement off camera as I speak.

You just have to have the afterglow of cigarettes and burned hair along with the angel. Dude, if I added Newport lights into this scent, I would have it nailed. I walk around. I'm like pig pen. You can see the scent lines. There's a cloud following you. It's so gross. But anyway, getting back to the Renaissance, there's a transition.

There's a, yeah, awkward transition. So, like, educated medical scholars during this period thought that wounds needed to be kept dirty to heal properly. Wait, hey, don't wash that wound. Do not wash that. Don't get any water on there. It needs to heal. Rub some goat feces on it.

There you go. That's better. Yikes. It was called laudable pus, and it was considered evidence of proper. healing. So the point is that people knew a lot more in the past than we maybe oftentimes think they did, but they also didn't know a lot. So one of the reasons why they're trampaning in the Middle Ages is because they believe in this thing called the Stones of Madness. And this is what allegedly causes insanity and educated men, not illiterate potato farmers, think they can open

someone's head and dig them out. By the way, potato farmers, we mean ancient potato farmers because right now there's a potato farmer who is taking that personally. So let's make sure we clarify that. This sounds nuts, but I guess, yeah, you don't know what you don't know. I can see why they thought having pus on a wound was healing because wounds that were healing would sometimes have pus on them, right? Because you're beating that infection. But like, you don't want to make that worse and they made a hard left where they should have made a right.

Okay. Yeah, and it's fair to say the ancient people were getting one thing about trappanning totally correct. It's basically the only treatment for hematoma, for brain bleeding. My half-brother, his skull drilled after a kegstand went wrong. Yikes. I've definitely done some dumb crap when I was younger and drinking, but that's next level. He was like 45 years old. I should not laugh.

Oh, God. It's fine. We can laugh about it. But yeah, he's a really bad alcoholic. Oh, my God. Decided to do a kegstand when he was 45 years old and fell face-first into the pavement of a garage. and needed to get a hole, trolled in his skull to release the brain bleeding. Oh, my God.

Yeah, that and lose it is CDL for drinking in one year did not cause him to stop drinking. Not a lot of good choices being made there. No. Holy moly. That's awful. I guess you think, oh, you can get a traumatic brain injury or you'd need this because you get in a car accident or you're in an ancient battle and you get it with a rock or you get hit with a sword or a mace on your head or something like that.

I didn't realize you could just fall on your head while doing a kegling. stand and suffer this much trauma to your brain. That's actually really scary. There's a Japanese wrestler named Katsuiori Shibata who got a brain hematoma from a headbut in professional wrestling. Jeez. Yeah, they need to drill a hole in his skull. My God. You're a lot more fragile than you think you are, but it's really, it's amazing that 10,000 years ago they had that figured out. If you think about it, it's pretty crazy. I mean, the other stuff It sounds nuts today, but you just kind of file it under people trying to understand things and doing a bad job of it. But the brain trauma treatment is wildly accurate.

They don't have the right tools. They don't have antiseptics. They don't have anesthesia. But they make it work. And they save lives doing this. I mean, if you go back far enough, they probably saved one of your ancestors doing this. Yeah. That's, wow.

That's really good insight, actually. Sure, they killed more people than they saved, but they kind of gave it a shot. And again, pretty amazing that they even figured this out 10,000 years ago. Okay, we're noticing that people die when they get hit in the head. Let's see what's going on in there. Oh, my God, look how swollen this thing is. Hey, here's an idea. What if we cut their head open before they're dead to see if this thing swelling has something to do with them dying?

And like, sure enough, they were right. Unbelievable. Actually, pretty cool. Yeah, and surgery in general killed more people than it saved until around the turn of the 20th century. It's an absolute miracle that we live in an age where more people survive surgery than die of it. It's interesting to think about that. Surgery is still a last resort even today. So back then it was like, hey, you are going to die.

If we try this totally dangerous thing, you're still probably going to die. But you do have a better chance than zero, and those are your odds right now. So let's do it. It's verifiably true that more people died of surgery than the surgery. lived up until the late 19th, early 20th century, that's when surgery becomes a net lifesaver rather than just a Hail Mary when you don't have any other options. And the Hail Mary's saves some lives, but without germ theory, antiseptics, long-lasting anesthesia, antibiotics, there's only so much you can do. So Trepination today, when it's done as a legitimate

surgery is called a craniotomy. It's much more sophisticated, much more antiseptic, surgical, but the basic premise is the same. You cut someone's head open and you save their lives, which again, it's nuts that some caveman figured this out. Yeah, that is crazy. So why are people still doing this today? I mean, I get it. If you got a traumatic brain injury, and this is the prescribed treatment for such, you go to the hospital and a neurosurgeon does it. But what's the deal with people who want it done, I'm not sure what they want it done for. Why are people doing this as sort of an elective thing? I don't get it. There's a persistent myth about headaches, migraines. We know that trepination is not going to fix this, but if you're getting cluster headaches

or you're having 50 grand mal seizures a day, I can see why you would be willing to try just about anything. But now we know that that doesn't work, so why keep doing it? We have a Dutch librarian name of Bart Hu Jays, I believe I'm saying that correctly, but he also goes by Bart Hughes. So I'm just going to refer to him as Hughes because that I know how to pronounce for the rest of the episode.

He's the guy we mainly have to thank for that. He popularized trepination in the 1960s. In fact, he drilled a hole into his own head with a dentist drill. Oh, my gosh. The belief is that you have too much blood in your brain and that opening things up is going to relieve the pressure

and make it better. It kind of sounds like bloodletting where they would just cut people or stick leeches on them for certain illnesses. Like, oh, you have too much blood. Let's get rid of some of that. It's really only similar

in that it's a quack treatment involving blood. Bloodletting has to do with a separate theory that illness is caused by bad blood. Oh, okay. It's not too much blood. It's bad blood.

Yeah, I believe that's it. You get rid of the bad blood and good blood comes in. It doesn't matter if you get it right because it's total bullshit. So it's like they made it. He might as well do the same. Okay.

Yeah, I didn't do a deep dive into why they stuck leeches on George Washington and killed him. You know what we should do a skeptical Sunday on, dude? You know how barbers used to be the people that did bloodletting? Yeah. And they would also do all kinds of weird medical treatments that were like, now you get your hair cut there. But they would take teeth out. They would do bloodletting. We should do an episode on barbers and just not modern barbers, but barbers from like

two or whatever 100 years ago and all the stuff that they actually had. Basically, they were the doctors. back then. Yeah, barber surgeons. Yeah, let's do one on that. Because that stuff is bizarre. When you hear about it, you're like, wait a minute, what? You don't go there to get a haircut. You go there to have them, I don't know, scrape the wax out of your ears with a scalpel and then take a tooth out that's bothering you and cut some veins open because you got the bad blood and I don't know, burn you with acid. I don't know what else they did, but I'm sure there's more. I'm positive. There's more weird stuff that you would never do today in any medical setting. Skilled barbers can still, if you got like a crazy ingrown hair, a Barber and get that right out, man. You're not going to like it. Oh, man. If they will get it out. I've seen it.

It's a sight to behold. I'll stick to watching Dr. Pimple Popper handle those. Yeah. So Hughes didn't specifically tripan for the purposes of relieving headaches. He did it because he thought it was some magical life hack that helped people achieve their full potential. Wow. Self-help by way of drilling a whole. on your head. Probably worth noting that this guy, by the way, not a doctor.

Well, he did go to medical school at the University of Amsterdam, but they refused him a degree because he was an advocate of marijuana and LSD. Oh, so almost kind of a doctor. You kind of like made it through the hard part. Yeah, he made it through medical school. In 1964, he published a scroll. Yep. A scroll called the mechanism of brain blood volume, BBV, aka Homo sapiens Correctus, where he details his theory on balancing the amount of blood in the brain with the amount of spinal fluid. I know wellness culture is out of control, but burhole for mental clarity feels like a bit of an overcorrection.

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Jordan Harbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Might have been a little bit ahead of his time, though, on the cannabis and LSD thing. I mean, I don't know what he advocated using it for, but cannabis and LSD are very low on the list of harmful drugs. Very low. Might pass, though, on the dentist drill through the skull thing. Maybe I'll stick to the LSD. Amanda Fielding, also not a doctor, but a British artist who followed Hughes and lobbied the British National Health Service to begin offering trepination as a covered medical treatment.

She was not successful in these efforts. Her partner, Joe Mellon, tried three times before he successfully tripaned himself. That's dedication, but I would say you should probably have someone else tripan you because it's going to hurt if you do it. it yourself. It's going to hurt when somebody else does it, but maybe you're strapped down. I think the problem is trying to do something like this to yourself. It's going to be a bit tough. Wow. Or give him some ether or something. Damn. You mentioned ingrown hairs before. You're having someone else do that, but you're going to drill the hole in the head yourself. I don't know, man. Maybe have your barber do it at that rate.

His second attempt was such a failure that he needed to be hospitalized. He was really committed to the bit. Oh, drill joke. Like it. Wasn't meant to be, but sure, why not? All right. Fielding was a countess. She passed away in June 2025. She was also very pro-LSD. So I think it's maybe safe to say that modern trepination has more to do with the whole psychedelic drugs are going to optimize my life and whatever. Then it does body modification. Tell me more about this crackpot theory about spinal fluid and blood in the brain, though. What are they trying to rectify? So like a lot of quack theories, it starts with this premise that humans are supposed to be doing some other thing.

Our natural state is wrong. Yeah. So in this case, Hughes says that when people began to walk upright, the blood in their brain started draining into the rest of their body and the way to correct this was to Trapan because it increases the blood flow to the brain. He thought that it worked as a sort of vasodilator in the manner of ginkgo below. Wow, okay. So this is wildly unscientific. Also, why not just try some ginko biloba instead of drilling a hole in your head? Maybe start there. I mean, vaso dilator is cool. So you take

Cialis. No, no, no, no, I drilled a hole in my head. I don't need Cialis. I'm going to go ahead and stick to the Cialis. Thank you. Love Cialis. You sure beats a hole in the head, am I right? All right. Yes. We have a whole episode about Cialis and other dick pills, that's right, by the way, for anybody interested. I don't need to do the research to know this is a wildly unscientific theory. Yeah, we don't need the citations to show the lack of citations on this particular crackpot theory. Yeah, this is like Buckminster Fuller saying that humans are evolved from dolphins. Like, nah, I don't think we are.

But it's the basis of the modern trepination movement, I guess we can call it. There's also some stuff about how children don't have fully fused skulls, and we can return to this more innocent and childlike state of consciousness by drilling holes in our head. It's so easy to, I was going to say poke holes in this event that's a bad pun. I don't really follow the logic. Look, babies, they don't have teeth either. Sure, their skulls are infused, but they don't have teeth, okay? Do I return to a baby-like state if I rip all my teeth out with pliers?

No, I doubt it. Somebody try that and let me know. You know what? I'm applying for some insurance. My insurance broker is going to be like, no, don't try that. don't do that. I have to say, or go ahead and do it, but realize that you should not take my advice because I'm as much of a doctor as the people we're talking about right now. That's my point here. Unbelievable. Yeah, Hughes has at least been to medical school. That's true. I'm even less of a doctor

than the guy who's recommending that you drill a hole in your head. So put the, do that math. Yeah. Hughes thought that trepination cured psychosis among other benefits. You can find pictures of him online with a hole in his head as gross as it sounds. Oh, wait. I have to look at this. right now. Oh, you're going to regret it. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, wow. Okay, you're right. This is grosser than I thought. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't that. I warned you. Ew. Oh, man. Oh, because he did it himself. Because I was like, why would you pick that place to do it? And the answer is because he can reach it. Oh, man. Folks. Don't Google this. I'm telling you. you, don't Google it.

Oh my gosh, dude. These people are insane. Come on. Anyway, continue. You got to get me away from this. The segment of the show where Jordan makes grossed out noises. We're going to have a whole supplementary B-reel. Jordan going to like a groaning.

Yeah, I mean, oh. So disgusting. He eventually dies of heart disease at the age of 70. All right. So he lived in full life. Sure. And he died from causes completely unrelated to drilling a hole in his skull.

If you're feeling especially brave, you can watch a short documentary that Fielding made called Heartbeat in the Brain where you can watch her partner getting tripaned. Oh, gee, after that image search, gee, I hope they have that in 4K. I've got to go download that right now. That's disgusting.

I'm silently woozy over here just hearing you talk about these pictures, which I have seen. I have not watched the video. I am all set with that. No, I'm good. Hughes talked about achieving a higher state of consciousness, and this is one of the main reasons why someone would voluntarily drill a hole in their head when there's nothing wrong with them. No real statistics on modern trepinations, which, again, separate from necessary craniotomy.

Right. So not like a surgery that you get at a hospital for a reason, like a brain tumor. This is just people drilling holes in their head for funsies. Yeah. We have. One very unreliable source that says it's between 40 and 100 people, that sounds way high to me. Like extra zero is high. Yeah, this is like Van Gogh cutting his ear off. Yes, more than one person has probably done it, but is it thousands of people probably also no. Okay, so you're saying this is probably more like maybe four and ten people have done this in the United States. Until somebody gives me evidence to the contrary and believe me, I looked, I'm going to be shocked if you can find

10. Yeah. I'm actually shocked that you of all people have never met anybody who was into this. I feel like you were on some forum or went to some meetup with somebody who did this at some point in your life. I used to be on a body modification social network ages ago called BMEZine. And there were people on there who were either interested in it or did it. This is 25 years ago. So I genuinely don't recall that anybody actually went through with it. But that's also a sample that is ultra correlated to people who are going to go, hey, Yolo, drill a hole in my head. Yeah. If you're super into body modification to the point where you're on a forum for talking about it,

you're innovating in the space theoretically, right? Potentially. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I mean, I was one of the first people in America to be dermal punched. What's that? You know, people who got big holes in their ears, big gauged out holes in their ears? Yeah, that's pretty normal, right?

I mean, I didn't stretch mine. and I didn't pierce it with a large needle. I had skin cut out of my ear. I still have holes in my ears, and I haven't had anything in my ears since I was 20, maybe. So it's like a giant piercing, but they used a cookie cutter instead of a needle.

They use a biopsy punch. Oh, my God. That sounds extremely painful. Yeah, it didn't feel good. Didn't feel good. Oh, my God. Okay. So the other thing, too,

is if people are getting it done, presumably they're living because we would hear about it on the news. Like, this is news of the weird. Yes. This is a total, like, fun little headline. So it's all taking place outside of the medical system. People aren't really advertising it when they do it because it's illegal.

This kind of reminds me of a more extreme version. You've heard of people, in fact, we do a soundbite on Feedback Friday where this guy says, I am addicted to lit filler. So this guy, he actually was giving somebody a BBL. using, I think, high alluronic acid, which is like the filler that people get in their lips, and she died. So in the UK, there's a different word for it, but basically he was supposed to answer bail, which I think is go back after being bailed out of jail, something pretrial. Anyway, now he had passed away a couple of weeks ago from also getting some kind of cosmetic

procedure that also went wrong. So it came full circle. And he has also passed away. And it makes like international news headlines because people are dying from cosmetic surgery that they're performing legally in London. They're just doing it negligently and people are going to prison for it for manslaughter, but it's not like, oh my God, somebody's doing this. It's like you're just allowed to do this at certain clinics. So Trapanning probably not legal because super, super dangerous, but that doesn't mean that people aren't offering to do it or trying to do it. I don't know. I'm so curious. Actually, what law is being broken by choosing to drill a hole in your own head? anything? It's not a good idea

and I'm sure it's against the law. I just can't put my finger on exactly which one. Most people don't quite have the gumption to drill a hole in their own head so they outsource it to someone else. Yes. And that someone else is the one who's going to get prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license. In fact, this happened in Utah in 2000.

Two guys were arrested on just that charge. Oh my God. So for trying to drill holes in someone's skull, how did the cops find out he was drilling holes in somebody else's skull? Somebody darked. Well, he was very discreet about it and sent the footage to 2020. Okay. Man. All right.

Yeah. Peter Halverson was his name. He's a trepination advocate who founded the international trepination advocacy group. I tried to find their website and it's gone. So I'm guessing that didn't pick up a lot of traction. Surprise. Which is no, it's not surprising at all because they arrested him as soon as the segment aired. Oh, they aired it?

Oh, God. And then the police are like, we should probably do something about this. We have it on tape. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. His patient, I guess we can call him, decided that he wanted to drill a hole in his head because, drum roll.

John Lennon once thought about it. Oh, my God. These people, man, that's a ringing endorsement. I love that John Lennon didn't even do it. He just allegedly thought about it. And that alone was enough for this Yutz to be like, who's going to do this for me? Who's going to get this done?

Where do I sign up? Yeah. This was like the only news story I could find about trepination that wasn't archaeological and then there's Fielding's obituary from 2025 as a profile about her There's a story about how John Lennon wanted a hold real bit is that. I hope no one reads that story and decides to actually follow through it. I mean, this is just like so crazy to me. Yeah, please do not do anything John Lennon wouldn't do.

If there's no evidence that this actually works, and indeed all of the evidence says that it does not work, what are the people who actually went through with this? What are they saying about the results? Is there anybody out there that's like, I swear by this? People need to do this. They need to get into this. This needs to be widespread. Yeah, they say that it creates mental clarity, increases metabolism, cures depression, heightens consciousness, that sort of thing. You can attempt to quantify all of this, but it's mostly going to be self-reported. It's going to be very subjective. So it's nearly impossible to study on it in any truly scientific sense. You can track people, how do you feel on a scale of one to ten? But it's not falsifiable. You just have their subjective feelings to go by. They could be lying. Yeah. If I got a hole in my head and someone said, hey, what are the results?

I probably wouldn't be like, you know what? I shouldn't have done this. Turns out it didn't do anything. I would be like, oh, you have no idea what you're missing. This is amazing. My IQ has gone up. So I was going to ask why people lie about it, but I don't even know, man. Maybe it's psychosomatic, right?

It could be lying. Like you said, that's a good reason to lie. But lying implies that it's an intentional effort to mislead. Maybe they feel something. I think I would convince myself that I felt something that wasn't just, ouch, if I got a hole in my head. So if they feel better in some subjective sense, maybe in that way it's kind of worth it. I mean, placebo effect, of course, but maybe it's better than wanting to kill yourself all the time if you have horrific epilepsy that's untreatable or insanely painful headaches or some other

real issue. And I honestly cannot believe I just deployed this argument about drilling holes in your own head. But here we are. I guess I'm trying to steal man. I'm trying to get people the benefit of the doubt here. Trepanation is extreme by any measure. It carries a great deal of risk, even when it's performed by a qualified physician, which again, we're calling that craniotomy. But It's dangerous when they do it. The guy drilling a hole in your head is almost certainly not a qualified neurosurgeon. Listeners can go check out the ketamine episode if they want to get a sense of how open I am to experimental or heterodox medical treatments. The issue is that you do ketamine infusion therapy.

You're there with a minder who knows emergency medical stuff and you're having your vitals taken. It doesn't get much safer than that. Now compare this to an amateur surgeon using a dental drill to bore a hole in your skull. These are not remotely comparable, especially given the low tolerance for error. I have to say a dental drill sounds like it's too small to do this, but maybe that's what you want, so you don't actually hit someone's brain by mistake. But still, like it just sounds like it would take forever. I'm so curious how long this.

It must be hours of drilling and doing this and pain management. Yikes. I mean, look, you did also talk about how it was possible to die from ketamine in that episode that we did. And we got a bunch of people that were upset that we didn't acknowledge that Matthew Perry died of a ketamine overdose. First of all, we taped that episode before Perry's cause of death was fully established. Second of all, he was not in any way, shape, or form in ketamine therapy. His doctor was just selling him ketamine. Allegedly, or is that all wrapped up? No, the doctor is convicted. It's not alleged anymore. Got it. The point is that I feel like I may be overstating it, but I don't think there's any. This isn't the ketamine episodes. I did verify, but I'm pretty sure there's not been any fatalities related to ketamine therapy as opposed to recreational ketamine abuse, which are very different. There's a study in 2022 anyway from the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse that found that there weren't any, so maybe there have been some sense then. but up until 22, no.

Yeah, interesting. So are there any examples of somebody dying from a botched trepination? Of course, in history, that's probably happened thousands of times. Yeah. Anything that we know about. Since Hughes got people doing it.

A physician watched Fielding's video of self-trepination and was amazed that she didn't kill herself. Okay, but she didn't. Jordan, there's a mortality rate north of 25% when doctors do this for medically necessary free things. Oh my God, I didn't know that. So if we don't have tons of people dying from botched trepinations, it's because it's such a bizarre and viscerally offensive procedure that almost no one is going to do it unless they need to do it to survive. If this became a TikTok phenomenon, you would have teenagers dying every other weekend from it.

So the treatment plan was opiates, alcohol, maybe a little cocaine, and then a hole in your skull, which to be fair, still sounds like more fun than, a wellness retreat. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of the advertisers keeps the lights on around here. All of the deals discount codes and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. So what you're saying is that we have no reason to think home trepination is actually dangerous. Yes. And your sponsors are going to love.

Love that. That is a good point. Thank you for mentioning that. Don't try this at home, kids. Really, you're right. My sponsors are going to be like, you didn't hammer this one home enough. You know what's funny?

My sponsors have never said, hey, we don't want to be in this kind of episode, that kind of episode. I've never had a sponsor tell me what kind of episode to make or not make, but I still feel like I should probably say don't drill a hole in your head. I don't know.

The trepination thing, that went on way longer than I would have thought. I thought, okay, we'll do a split episode on these two topics. but I guess let's abruptly transition to people cutting off their junk. Which iteration of that? Yeah. This is another thing that doctors will also do for you.

Okay, that's true. People who are cutting off their junk because they think it's fun and cool and trendy? That also does not narrow it down. Okay. I know you're giving me a hard time on purpose. People who are not doing this through any kind of medical professional or under any kind of medical supervision. How's that? Yeah, man.

So we're going to talk about DIY castration now, which is something else. If you thought people drilling holes in their head was bizarre. I've never in my life wanted to cut my wang off or drill a hole in my head. They're both on the same level for me. They're on the same rung of the ladder that I will never touch. So gun to your head, which one do you do? No, I don't know. I mean, look, survivable?

It depends. Do I want to survive this? Because if so, then I guess I have to cut off my junk, but that really sucks. But if it's just you're going to die from this, then just drill the hole in my head and get it overwork. with. I don't know. By the way, are we talking, I can't believe I'm asking this, but I guess I have to. Are we talking about just the balls or are we sniping the wee as well? It's difficult to tell because, again, there's like shadowy scant evidence and research on this, but it seems to be the balls. Okay. Mostly just seems to be the balls. Okay. So that changes the equation for me then,

too. It's easier to pee anyway, I guess. Yeah, I don't want to have to learn how to pee, through without it, but now there's modern medicine, right? So if you didn't have your balls, like I know guys that have had testicular cancer and they just take pills and shots, it's not the end of the world for them. In fact, one of my buddies said that underwear fits way better and I don't know what I'm missing. And I'm like, well, I'll have to take your word for it, man, because not to go on too much of a tangent here, but he had one of his testicles removed. And I guess the other one also, there was some risk or something like that. I don't know. Maybe that's common with testicular cancer, and they're like, don't worry, we'll give you these prosthetic balls.

And he was like, no, thank you. I don't need that because, one, it's another procedure. And two, it's purely cosmetic. And I guess after he had had them removed, he was like, oh, my God, everything fits better. They're not like moving around weird in my pants. So he just elected to not have anything in his scrotum, which I thought was funny. Talk about body modification.

Are you jealous, Nick? Man, I'm so like, I don't feel good right now. castration is also one of the oldest surgeries known to man but it's usually a way of punishing or enslaving people so we're like at the other end of the the social spectrum in ancient society from drilling a hole in your head this is not a thing people elect to do for the most part

for the most part the cult of Cybele in ancient Rome around 200 was the earliest example that I could find of people doing this just because It was part of religious ecstasy. In the Eastern Roman Empire, there were castrated courtiers who were somewhat privileged, and it wasn't unheard of men to castrate themselves to gain access to this social layer. There's also early Christians who practiced castration based on a sort of peculiar understanding of scripture.

That's known, by the way, as voluntary religious castration, and it pops up again in the 18th century in Russia under the Scopsy sect. Thankfully, the American Shaker movement just stopped having sex and didn't decide to cut their balls off. The Castrotti were boys who were castrated to maintain boyish voices, but these were pre-pubescent children, so I don't think we can really say that they were doing it voluntarily. No, oh, man. Is that for, so they could sing? Is that what that's for? Yeah. Oh, man.

It's not confined to Italy either. It's kind of the only country in Western Europe that doesn't really do it is France. France in an era where this was normal was the outlier by being like absolutely not. And it's not a humanitarian thing. They just thought it was too Italian or too English or something. It was too foreign. I see. Is this during Roman times or is this how?

No, man. No? This is, I think the last Castrotti died in the 20th century. Oh, oh, man. Oh, my goodness. Yikes. Okay. Yeah.

But in modern times, it's usually criminal. punishment or as you mentioned, treatment of cancer. And that's it. But there wouldn't be an episode. Yeah, there's got to be more to it than that. We got some time left on the clock. Okay. Yeah. There's between 8,000 and 10,000 voluntary Unix in North America today, according to the experts, because yeah, there's experts in how many guys are cutting their balls off. Oh my gosh. To be clear, this has nothing to do with transgender identity. This is just guys who don't want balls. Ah, yeah, okay, thank you for clarifying that because I know it was in the back of my head, like, wait a minute, is that trans people, because that's not what I'm asking. So this is just

guys who are still like, hey, I'm a guy, just don't want balls. And it's not, I'm a guy who had cancer so I don't have balls. It's a guy who just didn't want them anymore and had them removed. Okay, so now we're back to the question of why. Again, underwear probably fits better. You're saving a ton of money on Gold Bond. What am I missing here? So unlike Trepanation, we actually have enough people doing this that we've got studies and statistics. The Oxford University Journal Sexual Medicine did a study on the men choosing to do this. And by do this, I mean perform the castrations. So there are guys doing this to other people who are not doctors. Okay. Yeah, they're called cutters. Oh, and I'm guessing

those, once again, not a licensed medical professional anyway, because we would call those people surgeons. They are not surgeons. The Oxford study found something that was very very, specific and maybe a little surprising. It does not shed light on the why, but it does shed light on the who. Men who voluntarily castrated had 10 characteristics that kept popping up again and again. Is that a dick joke? Again, unintentional. Okay. They tended to be very masculine. They were primarily homosexual in orientation, grew up on a farm, witnessed animal castration, had a history of sexually inappropriate behavior, were threatened with genital mutilation as a child.

Holy cow. Okay, this, all right. That took a dark turn, yeah. Yeah. They also had a history of self-harm. They were raised in devoutly Christian households, but what that means isn't, that can mean a lot of things.

Yeah, yeah. So we don't know what that means. And they themselves were often castrated in underground off the books, rituals. Oh, my gosh. God. And had body piercings and tattoos. What the heck? So, okay, gay-tatted, pierced bodybuilders with childhood trauma who were raised on farms. That's a super weird Venn diagram. Very specific. And I have to admit, a lot of that seems random and surprising. Do you think there's an element of like a kink to this or

something? Are there guys who have a sexual fantasy about castration? I can't wrap my mind around this. I think that that explains part of it, but not all of it. The study from the journal, the archives, of sexual behavior that gets into the motivation of men who have been voluntarily castrated, as well as the ones who are just interested in it. 17% of the participants were asked about their actual castration. 78% were asked about their desire to be castrated. The problem with the study is that it has a very low end. The 17% that we mentioned is 23 guys.

So it's not a lot, but probably hard to find guys who cut their balls off and want to talk about it. Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay. So, wait, 78 and 17 don't add up to 100. What's up with that? I don't understand. How do you have that? It wasn't clear to me when I read the abstract and the summary, but my guess is the remaining 5% are some kind of control group of guys that are just completely uninterested in castration. I don't know. Okay. The prevailing reason for wanting it was what's called Unicom, which is total freedom from all sexual urges. Got it. Kind of an extreme way to go about things, but maybe would have been useful for me

in college to be able to switch that off. I don't know. Kind of wanted to switch it back on, though, at some point. I was going to say, you're probably going to want to turn it back on. About a third of them, it was a sexual fetish. This is kind of maybe weirdly the one that makes the most sense to me, not because I have a castration fetish to be clear, but I think that given that most of the study participants hadn't actually done it, that it checks out that it could, it's just a weird fantasy they have. And maybe it's nothing more. Maybe it's just a weird fantasy they have.

But about as many guys just are like your kind of like your friend. They just thought they'd look better without balls, which the study interpreted to mean that they also wanted their scrotum removed. The abstract says that the scientists were surprised by the results in the study because they expected transsexualism and libido control to be the main drivers. The study also noted that online communities give these guys an outlet rather than just going to a stranger who likes to cut off balls. So the guys in the other study? Yeah. 40% said they would do it if it was cheap, safe, and easy. Okay. So the cutters are charging apparently. 25% wanted to try chemical castration

First, 40% were afraid to talk to their doctor about it. It was unclear if this was 40% total or just 40% of the 25%. When are they going to come up with a plan for cheap castration? Am I right? God, that's so weird. I am absolutely dying to know what cutters are charging. Yeah, inflation really has hit everything. Castration inflation.

Do you think it should be cheap, easy, and safe? I don't know where to begin. Yikes. No. Why not? Why not? Because there's a mental disorder associated with wanting to cut off your body parts, and we shouldn't be indulging people in it.

It's called body integrity in identity disorder, amputee identity disorder, and xenomelia. This is a fun little word to say. Yeah, wow. A 2017 journal of sexual medicine study found that over 70% experienced sexual arousal when thinking about amputation. this group was significantly more likely to be male, religious, and homosexual, and to actually pursue amputation. Again, this is all body parts, not just the balls. I bring this up because I think it means we may have a fair bit of overlap with guys who want to cut their junk off. And yeah, I'm pretty comfortable saying there should be some kind of roadblock in place, preventing people from

mutilating their bodies because of either a mental disorder or a sexual fetish. So you're saying there should be laws against this, or what do you mean specifically? I think it should be mercilessly and relentlessly gate-capped because being difficult and dangerous is going to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of getting people to not lop body parts off, balls or otherwise. But no, I don't really think people should be going to prison for it, which is ultimately the question you ask when you say, should there be a law against this? I think it's disturbing.

I think that we also have to respect somebody's legal right to bodily autonomy, but that doesn't mean that you make it easy for them to make irreparable changes to their body with long-lasting consequences. There are some people who try to add Unix to the LGBT category, which I think is really problematic for like a variety of reasons, but I'm going to read a disturbing quote from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health on the subject of people cutting their balls off. Like other gender diverse individuals, unique individuals may be aware of their identity in childhood or adolescence due to the lack of research and to the treatment

of children who may be identifying as Unix, we refrain from making specific suggestions. I'm not okay with even really investigating children who want to cut their balls off in a way that's going to facilitate them doing it. People can gripe about this being a moral judgment, and you know what? I feel super okay making a moral judgment about this.

Yeah, to be clear, we're not saying anything about adults. I can wrap my brain around how an adult can feel like they're another gender or whatever. I just can't wrap my mind around kids thinking that they're not supposed to have balls. That's a different thing. And I very much doubt many of our listeners today are considering either of these procedures drilling a hole in their head or cutting off their balls. But on the off chance that you are, talk to a mental health professional before doing anything irreversible, please. And hey, if you still do it, mail me your balls preserved in a jar.

I'll keep them on a shelf from my studio. That's an actual fetish, by the way. Oh, my God. They're called trophy hunters. Wow, whatever. Maybe not a shelf in the studio, but I still want to see those. Anyway, sounds like another skeptical Sunday episode, Nick, you're up. Trophy hunters. Jordan Harbinger, Trophy Hunter. Ugh, God, I don't know. For the rest of you, this all comes as an instructive lesson in separating crackpot theory and quack explanations from real science. And as far as trepination goes, I personally think it's fascinating that human beings figured out so early that drilling a hole in someone's head can actually save their life.

but hey, unless you're a neurosurgeon, maybe don't do that. Thanks again to Nick Pell for helping this episode make the cut. And thanks to you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.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 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sadlowskis, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Also, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked, so 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 that 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. We're more connected than ever and somehow more vulnerable than we've ever been. Cyber Crisis author Eric Cole explains how AI-driven attackers, corporate scales, scam operations, and aging systems have turned everyday tech into an open door. So you want to be 100% secure? You want your family to be 100% secure?

It's easy. Pack up your bags, sell everything, move to Pennsylvania and become Amish. Because I'll tell you, I hacked a lot of things in my life. I have not been able to hack a candle and a horse and bung. If you have no functionality or no benefit, you can be 100% secure. And to give you a more realistic example, my smartphone, as soon as you add any functionality, you're decreasing security. Security and functionality are inverse.

100% security is zero functionality. What is the value and benefit? What is the risk and exposure? Is the value worth the risk? If the value of benefit is worth the risk, do it. If the value and benefit is not worth, the risk don't do it. And the reality is, and I always tell people, the most dangerous word on the internet is the F word. And it's not what you're thinking.

The F word is free. Free is not free because all the times when you have a free app, you're basically allowing them to access your microphone or your camera or your pictures. If they ask you and you say yes and you give them permission, that's actually an authorized app and it's allowed. And the reality is most people don't even realize when they install these apps, they're hitting yes, yes, yes, yes. and allowing access. If I want to make my smartphone 100% secure, smash it, burn it, throw it in a ditch, turn it off, and it'll be 100% secure. It's actually freaking scary of how much you're being monitored and tracked with your phones that you don't even realize it. Check out episode 1247 of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Eric Cole, and you'll start looking at your phone, your home, and even the power grid

very differently.