This Past Weekend - Sex at Dawn Author Chris Ryan | This Past Weekend #100

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

Sitting down with psychologist and author Chris Ryan to talk his best selling book Sex at Dawn, our mutual friend Simon Rex, and hitchhiking. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Ryan Sex at Dawn https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Dawn-Stray-Modern-Relationships/dp/1491512407 Instagram www.instagram.com/thatchrisryan Twitter www.instagram.com/thatchrisryan ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support Our Sponsors Timesuck Podcast with Dan Cummings https://timesuckpodcast.com/ Ridge Wallet https://www.ridgewallet.com/theo Use code “theo” for 10% off your order Greyblock Pizza https://www.greyblockpizza.com http://bit.ly/Modrats ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music Shine by Bishop Gunn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3A_coTcUek ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Man Up - Comedy Central Pilot based off the Podcast Episode 1 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F2AuyEbCI0 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComedyCentral/videos/540480146346331/ Episode 2 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGwxlvzpFdI Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComedyCentralCentral/videos/539377409789938/ Episode 3 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTxLcmKlA4Q& Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComedyCentralCentral/videos/539380113123001/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Theo Von/This Past Weekend Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theovon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theovon/ https://www.instagram.com/thispastweekend_/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoVon Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theo.von Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoVon/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MindGunters Patreon Gunt Squad: Alaskan Rock Vodka Angelo Raygun Renee Nicol Matthew Snow Megan Andersen-Hall Stephanie Claire Ryan Wolfe Carla Huffman Austin Kehler Jeremy West Kenton call Steve Corlew Nick Butcher Megan Daily Joe Tromm Ken Melvin Troy Cosmas Matt Kaman Tom Kostya Mike Vo Micky Maddux Sam Illgen Ben Liimes Alexis Caniglia Stepfan Jefferies David Smith Logan Yakemchuk Aidan Duffy MEDICATED VETERAN Ken Comstock Dan Ray Audrey Harlan Matthew Popov kristen rogers Josh Cowger Kelly Elliott Mark Glassy Dwehji Majd Jason Haley Jameson Flood Jason Bragg Cory Alvarez Christopher Christensen Scott Lucy Benv Deignan Cody Cummings Shannon Schulte Aaron Stein Lorell “Loretta†Ray Stacy Blessing Andy Mac Campbell Hile John Kutch Adriana Hernandez Jeffrey Lusero Alex Hitchins Joe Dunn Kennedy Joey Piemonte Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Shawn-Leigh henry Laura Williams Alex Person Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Calvin Doyle Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Matt Holland Charley Dunham Casey RobertsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This NBA season, make every three-pointer alley-oop and buzzer beater even more exciting with FanDuel. Download the app today to see why we're North America's number one sportsbook. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. This episode is brought to you by Grey Block Pizza. Grey Block at 1811 Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. I want to thank everybody today. This is our 100th episode. And so I'm going to get into it more on the Monday episode.

But thank you so much. This is absolutely crazy. I don't really know anything that's 100. You know, I think my grandparents, the oldest one of my grandparents was I think 90. And I think I petted a turtle once, actually recently in Maui. And it was, somebody said it might have been 100 or something. But you weren't supposed to pet it also because they said it's $5,000 if they see you touching it. So it's pretty much only the rich people, I guess, really get to pet it. Because the government charges you that.

And anyhow, happy 100th episode. Thank you guys so much for being supportive for this long. Also, I want to let you know that I once stood shirtless with Dan the Man Cummins overlooking the African Serengeti. I asked him a question about something or other, and we talked for about an hour. He talked about something because that man can really just ramble. I mean, he's like just going down a beautiful just wormhole into whateverness, and that's who Dan is. And after the conversation, I was fulfilled to the max by whatever Dan said to me because he knows a lot about things you really probably don't even know if you want to know about or not. And he has a podcast.

It's called Time Suck, and it takes you on a weekly delve through thoroughly exploring and explaining a single listener-suggested topic. And if you don't want to go down a wormhole yourself, let somebody else do it. Find a topic you like. Each Monday, he has new episodes. It's irreverent and it's entertaining. And that's Dan Cummins. The man finds layers. Everything from menthol cigarettes, bees with autism, historical events, Loch Ness mice, mimes. Where are they now? Paranormal encounters and conspiracy theories. Time suck. Every Monday, the link will be below. Conspiracy Theories. Time Suck.

Every Monday. The link will be below. This is episode 100. And we're happy to have a man who, you know, who wrote a book recently called Sex at Dawn that I listened to. Slash read with my ears. He has a new podcast as well called Tangentially Speaking. He is a psychologist. He's an author as well. Chris Ryan.

Are you going to attack me at some point? Is this when things don't go well? This is a beautiful play. I mean, if it doesn't go well, maybe mean, I just... This is a beautiful blade. I mean, if it doesn't go well, maybe, yeah. Someone mailed that in, actually. I wonder if it's the same guy who sent me one. Reeves Blades. Is he in Texas?

I feel like everybody who makes a knife is in Texas. Yeah. Yeah, a guy sent me a handmade blade. The blade itself was made from the leaves of a suspension on a car oh different guy our guy said it was from the bones of his grandparents so that's the handle i think yeah yeah so different guy but yeah actually the blade could be um we're here with chris ryan how are you today i'm good i'm good i i'm shocked though i didn't know i was coming to a studio and this whole professional scene oh right on yeah i thought i was gonna go sit in your dirty kitchen and uh you'd have mike set up on the table next to last night's dinner oh man that's uh podcast normally yeah

that's true i guess yeah and we're still i think like that in our hearts i think we just tried to you know show up a little bit more in the atmosphere yeah you know i um a little stunned by the lights and all i ended i actually this i've ended up i'm mad i've read sex at dawn i masturbated not to the book it's been a big day for you but last night right here was something that happened to me last night this something happens to me a lot good i was hoping we'd talk about masturbation did you really yeah i i always talk about it okay and i saw you on rogan with your hat conversation yes and i was like oh good there's a guy i can talk about jerking off with yeah so good let's get right into it um and so here's what happens

for me sometimes if i'm jerking off right because i know I know you're a psychologist. And a jerk-off. And a, and a, and a. Yeah. Call me doctor. Perfect. So what happened to me was like, I try, for me, I try not to masturbate right now because I feel like for me, I've become addicted to pornography

and using masturbation as an escape. From what? I don't know. Probably from having like some real feelings about things or like if I start to feel something, sometimes I'll just go to masturbation, you know, or I'll go to watching pornography to kind of check out from whatever maybe might be possibly making me have some other feelings that I don't want to experience. So I was done working in my kitchen and everything.

I was like, I'm not going to masturbate, thank God. Made it through the day without masturbating or without watching pornography. So I shut down my computer, walked to the bathroom, and then I was urinating, and then I had some thought about, what was was it what a great dick I have in my hand right now got this great dick in my hand yeah no it could have been that I got this decent dick you know I have a short neck my whole you know I come from a long line of short neck people oh do you so my dick is that sort of you know it's squat it doesn't have the longest neck but it shows up you know but then I ended up more important than have the longest neck, but it shows up, you know.

You know, girth is more important than length. Is it really? Yeah. Well, thank you for, because my dick can hear that. Yeah. But then, so next thing you know, I masturbated and I was done. And then it was like, and then I felt bad. You masturbated into the toilet?

No. That would be, what's that called when you go from urination directly into masturbation without leaving the toilet? Being in a hurry. Yeah. Yeah, late for work. Late for work. So next thing you know, next thing you know, I had literally masturbated, and then I felt bad. And that's kind of where I was.

And so I just thought, man, I just feel bad about it. I felt like some sense of a negative feeling. And then I was like, well, maybe I'll talk to Chris about this tomorrow. Just ask him about it. Ah, okay. All right. So we're doing therapy? No, you don't have to have any thoughts. Oh, I have lots of thoughts.

But I want to know, like, I guess I don't like the fact that I feel bad about it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, the first thing I would, I don't know how deeply you want to get into this, but were you raised in a religious tradition? Mm-mm. So do you have, do you feel any sort of negative thoughts when you have sex with a woman? Or I don't know if you're straight. I assume you're straight.

Yeah, I'm straight. Yeah. I mean, unless something happens later in life, you know. I could have late onset homosexuality. It could happen. It could happen, yeah. But yeah, I'm straight. Yeah. I mean, unless something happens later in life, you know. I could have late onset homosexuality. Could happen. Could happen, yeah. But yeah, I'm straight. You should be hanging out with muscular guys like Joe.

Yeah, I know. Rogan's strong, huh? He's strong. How strong is he going to get? He can't get stronger. He'll break his own skeleton. He can't. Come on.

Yeah. It's true. Yeah. Have you seen photos of him when he was a young guy yeah he's a good looking dude very handsome he looked more you know yeah he looks very italian yeah exactly with the hair yeah i saw a young clip that he posted recently of him doing stand-up and it was like wow that's him yeah and he wasn't like as beefy by far and he was like a more sort of normal body yeah he could have been almost he could have been like a russian dancer or something but but one that you know kind of a lower key when that's him yeah that's him wow yeah he's already into the the muscle phase there yeah yeah but he would look to him he was more of a lean guy whenever he was first doing comedy yeah but yeah so then i just felt bad man i didn't grow up with a strong religious thing i think for me it's just i try you know the pornography has just gotten so strong that it's

hard to fend it off sometimes like yeah and i'll go immediately from my imagination where it almost evolves into a scene i could see from porn yeah and the next thing you know, I'm watching porn, if that makes any sense. So do you watch porn for a long time, or are you just going for five minutes and do your business? I'm in and out. I'm effective with the porn. So what's the source of the negativity? I don't know.

If it's not religious, is there something inherently ugly about coming, or you watching like porn that you're ashamed of? There's like it's really nasty and is there something in the porn that you're not into? What if there's no porn involved? What if you just jerked off? Would you still feel bad? I think if I did it excessively, I would still feel bad. What's excessively?

Like a couple times a week, I think. Why? Where do you come up with that number? I don't know. I think for some reason, I feel like it weakens me somehow. You feel that physically or on an emotional, psychological level? I guess I feel it a little bit physically but then it really like gets deeper into like um like an emotional psychological level yeah that i just feel like it makes me less of a man or

something sometimes that's interesting yeah i i don't have any of those associations with it i in fact i i'm very sort of wary of any of anything that makes me question messages that I get from my body. So, for example, I don't like alarm clocks. I like to wake up when I wake up. I don't like, you know, when I started reading all the shit about how you have to drink eight glasses of water a day, I was immediately like, where's that coming from? That's bullshit. Who says that? Yeah, camel.

You drink when you're thirsty. That's why you have the sense of thirst, right? Eat when you're hungry. Like every instruction that I get from society telling me to not trust the messages I'm getting from my body, I'm immediately. I'm getting from my body I'm immediately and now I know some in some cases they're probably right but 90 percent of the times you know that I've I've lived long enough now to see that information be discredited again and again and again like that water thing yeah that comes from a study that was first um put out years ago by Gatorade right Right. And it wasn't about drinking water. It was about drinking the fucking Gatorade.

So it's bullshit. There's no scientific basis whatsoever for saying you have to drink a certain number of glasses of water per day. How much water is in the food you're eating? How dry is the atmosphere you're in? How much are you sweating? If you're in Arizona or Maine, it's totally different. And your physiology, right? Like some people don't sweat some people sweat a lot it's total bullshit yeah so my feeling

about masturbation is like unless there's some you know you were alluding to earlier like maybe there's something that's making you feel anxious and so you jerk off as a way to distract yourself from solving a problem or dealing with something in your life that's making you unhappy. I'd say that could be an issue. But to me, it could be alcohol. It could be collecting baseball cards. It could be online shopping. It could be chasing pussy.

It could be lots of different ways to distract yourself. pussy it could be lots of different ways to distract yourself and masturbation actually is probably one of the least destructive of all of them you know you're not pulling anyone else into your trip it's pretty quick and you can get back to your life it feels good i haven't i've never felt guilty about jerking off wow and a few times a week shit dude at your age yeah a few times a day i was jerking off like morning night and lunch break if i could get it wow how old are you 30 something i'm 38 dude come on that shit's got to go somewhere yeah i guess i don't know no this is this is uh like yeah i don't know why somewhere I guess I developed some negative. You know what?

You know what? Sometimes I think it is. And I'm sorry. I'm not trying to push on you. I know you do give therapy to people. I wasn't like. No, I don't care. Okay, cool.

We'll talk about it. Yeah, I asked Joe Rogan about you the other day, and he said, man, that guy's just one of the best guys to talk to. And I thought that that was, it made me feel a little bit more at ease um just because i didn't want to seem i don't know how i wanted to seem but anyway it made me feel very at ease uh i picked it up like i said i watched your thing and there was a moment i didn't watch the whole thing i think i watched i don't know half of it or something who has time to watch podcasts i don't know hey out there you do and we're glad um but uh i was watching your thing and there were there was a moment where there's something about sex came up and i could see on

your face that you were you were like there's something that was bothering you you said like yeah sex i don't know like people bump against each other till they come and like i don't know yeah yeah people yeah it doesn't something about it think doesn't, it seems primitive to me in a way where it doesn't seem novel, like new or novel or exciting enough to keep doing it so much. Yeah. Like, I feel like maybe I am afraid if I have sex, you know, with somebody that I care about that I'm going to, like, really care about them, you know? Like, maybe there's something inside of me that there's, like, a fear that, you know, because I have an easier time having sex with someone that I don't care about than someone that I do. And there's a huge disparity there for me. And I feel like, you know, I don't care about than someone that I do. And there's a huge disparity there for me. And I feel like, you know, I don't know, maybe that's something that if I,

like there's a part of me, there's like a fear inside of me that I can't even access sometimes where if I have sex with somebody that I really love, you know, or something that I'm going to, I don't know, that it's going to backfire somehow. I don't know that it's gonna backfire somehow i don't know but anyway i'm not trying to be a freaking weirdo just no man we're all dealing with that stuff there's nothing weird about it i i relate to that i mean i don't know i don't know if you if this is stuff you want to get into but um if you lost someone that you really were close to when you were young uh that could easily create a fear you know in my case i moved a lot when i was a kid and so i lost friends a couple of years and it was hard for me to really care about people later in life because like i sort of had this built-in

expectation that i was going to lose them and so the more i cared about them the more it was going to hurt yeah and so i uh for a long time and and i could argue still in a way sort of skimmed across the surface like i don't have kids um and uh i moved a lot physically in my adult life you know i kept rolling and it was easier for me in a way because i didn't have those deep roots you know people be like don't you miss home i'm like home i don't have home you know my friends are spread out all over the world yeah there's no place i could point to and say that's home. I couldn't even tell you I grew up there.

I was there. I went to three different high schools. Oh, man. Yeah. So maybe that's happening with you. Maybe there's part of you that's like you cared about someone and lost them, and now it's to to care about somebody else yeah but that's good because what it means is that you're you're still connecting your sexuality with intimacy i think a lot of people especially a lot of men partly because of porn and what's going on in that world

um i think they've lost that connection and once you lose it it's really hard to get it back i mean you still you still have it and it's still really present for you so that's beautiful so once you meet the person or people or you uh you know develop in a way where you're comfortable being vulnerable that way that road's still open for you that and that's going to be beautiful for you yeah man it's yeah i appreciate you know thinking about some of these things yeah it's hard for me man that shit is just so hard for me and it's almost like at a thing it's like a thing i can't access you know like when you say like the you know the i'm sure like moving around from place to place and then, you know, yeah, like who knows what persona you probably had to create to juggle being accepted immediately when you got into a kid was the fucking pedantic, I don't need anybody.

I'm smarter than everybody. Fuck you guys. Right? Like, yeah, I'm sitting at lunch alone. I'm reading this book. And I'm in my world. I don't care. I don't have friends.

I don't need friends. I was't care. I don't have friends. I don't need friends. I was that guy. And then it wasn't really till I followed that persona right through college. And then I hitchhiked to Alaska from New York. I skipped a year of college and I decided to go to Alaska. So I hitched from New York to Alaska and back. Wow. And I was in Alaska for two months or something in the summer. And on that journey, my whole life changed.

Like I, it was actually this Memorial Day, it was 35 years ago that I got to Fairbanks and I ate a Snickers bar in a grocery store without paying for it. And I got busted and spent four days in prison, prison jail right because they didn't have jail so they put me in this prison waiting for over memorial day weekend oh but i i met all these people who were fucking great really cool people and like they built their own houses and they were really kind to me took me home and fed me and i bet that kindness probably really felt that did that help kind of give you a perspective switch? Yeah. Their kindness, their acceptance, their generosity to me.

And I – you know, and these are people – I was this pedantic. You know, I was going to go to Oxford and get a PhD, and I was Mr. Genius. Save the world, yeah. Well, not really save the world. Or rule the world yeah well not really save the world or rule the world or just be be recognized as being really smart and teaching literature and i love the literature of adventure like melville and joseph conrad all these guys are on whaling boats and going around the world that was the shit i loved and so that's why i wanted to do this adventure

of my own right and but i met all these people who were so kind to me and I sort of said, okay, now I have stumbled into their world and they've accepted me and helped me and just incredible kindness. If one of these people had stumbled into my world, they would have been laughed at and rejected and nobody would have helped them yeah because my genius friends were miserable ass well not assholes they were friends but they were miserable and their relationships were fucked up and they didn't know how to do anything practical and i looked at these guys and it's like okay they don't like study these books and whatever but their lives are great and they have good relationships and their kids love them and this guy's like living with this really sexy woman and she's really into him and he fixes his car and he made this house and i want to be like that guy like i admire that guy and so it was a real sort of turning

point in my life you know where i was like oh i don't want to be a college professor no at all smug no at all yeah and i'm not accusing you that i can yeah yeah i can totally associate that's the road i was going down right and as you say it was a defense mechanism it was because i felt afraid and alone and so i had built up this armor you know this pedantic i'm smarter than everybody armor yeah matt dude i can so relate to that i mean i think and i want i definitely want to ask you some questions about the hitchhiking but i can relate like when i got into like um you know i'm about almost two years sober when i got an aa that was i think in a way some of my hitchhiking moment where like it was the first time like I felt like people accepted me in a way where I wouldn't have done the same for them.

You know, it was people that, you know, I'd always really had nothing growing up, but then here was people that had even less and they weren't, you know, there wasn't judgment. And it just like, yeah, I mean, it just kind of, it's almost like if you took a tree and shook it, it like, and the tree had never felt that before. And suddenly like the roots in the soil, like just vibrated a little and we're like, oh, things feel a little different now. Yeah. And that's suddenly how, like it was just a perspective switch a little bit.

Oh, wow. Like the thing I've always wanted was to feel some sort of acceptance and to feel you know just cared about um and then that's when it started to adjust oh well this is how if somebody can care about me this way i can do this for others and then i feel even better then when i care about somebody right and it blew my fucking mind out of the water. And my heart, because I never, I just hadn't put it together like that. Yeah, so, I mean, if that's just two years ago, you're still opening up. You're still getting used to this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I am in a lot of ways, man. That's what, yeah, I mean, I think I am in a lot of ways. And that's why, you know, I know you're friends with Simon Rex, and I love being around guys like that. Like, he's such a, like, he's been so good to me as a friend, you know? Like, it's almost, I mean, it really makes me, he doesn't even realize, I don't think, how, like, special of a person he is, you know? Like, he's just constantly, like, loving, you know?

He is. loving you know he is he's he's so i mean i i know you're you're in this world of people who are famous and they've been in movies and they did this and then they did that but simon is one of these guys who is so fucking down to earth and kind and just like a he's just such a decent person yeah and all the movies and the you know the stars and the hot women he's been with and all that it's like somehow it hasn't destroyed him yeah that's a hell of an accomplishment yeah because it's all the hot women too i mean literally if you're hanging out with him you end up becoming almost like a concierge for pussy like you're basically just no matter where you are. It's like, it's baffling, man. I went to a 4th of July party with him at Soho House in Malibu. Oh, that's fun.

It was like, and it's so high school. It's so much like high school. There's the cliques and there's the popular and there's, you know, different. And for people who don't know, Soho House is like this sort of private club you have to be a member and it's right on the beach it's in malibu so i go and it was like hanging out with the captain of the football team in high school it was like wow this is what it's like to be with the cool kids i ended up with the supermodel that he was seeing at the time like sitting on my lap the whole night and everyone's like why is she sitting on that old dude's lap like he must be rich

and then and then she walked me i was like yeah like after a while i was just like this isn't my world you know like i'm not i'm not even yeah i'm not competing here i'm like i'm not gonna get late i'm not i don't even want to like i don't even want to like this just isn't my world you'd have to pretend so far outside of yourself to really be comfortable in there and you're kind of glad you probably aren't well i'm too old to pretend you know i that's la you're not yeah i am i mean i don't know where it doesn't't matter where. I don't pretend. I don't pretend about anything. I'm so bad.

Like, I don't even. Sometimes I don't even pretend I'm not farting. I just be like, you know, like, oh, geez, I forgot there are people here. That's awesome. I'm sort of feral, you know? So. But Simon didn't ever. Look, if Simon takes you to that kind of thing, he never makes you feel.

You're never not still the same. Like you're never not just still his buddy. Oh, no. And it feels like you two could just be wherever. He never goes so high up to the scene that he's disconnected from the reality of like his buddy he brought to a bar. Exactly. Yeah. And that's something that I find is just remarkable about him.

Yeah. He has such a big heart. Sometimes I don't know if he even realizes it, you know?'t that part of the package oh yeah you know what i mean like if he did realize it then he wouldn't be so cool yeah like a woman who knows how gorgeous she is she's not so gorgeous anymore she's kind of annoying yeah yeah you know's, I mean, it's, yeah. Or someone who's, you know, wise. Like, I have this friend who's in his mid-80s, and he's sort of like my mentor, I guess, or, you know, whatever. But, like, if you went to him and said, Stanley, you're so wise, he would just laugh at you. He'd be like, ah, I'm just old, you know.

Simon's met him. And that's another thing about Simon. Like, Simon's gone out Of his way We drove to San Diego Together So he could meet this dude Oh right on Yeah I heard about that

Did you You drove Were you guys In Winnebago I have a Camper van A sprinter Oh that's what it was

That's awesome Now Simon just bought I saw some videos Yeah Yeah he just got one I just went in there The other day And checked it out

Yeah sweet Yeah he's a special guy Though man He's cool and he's somebody i think one of the first people in hollywood that like um it's it's crazy i've had a ton of other friends but it's like simon's a pretty popular guy and i have more time he makes more time to spend with me than yeah you know anybody yeah he comes and we go hiking up and yeah he'll buzz over and do uh and do yoga like in my you know it's always yeah it's just yeah anyway yeah he's a special guy man simon's starting a podcast soon he's gonna steal all our audience i know it is hopefully it's just audio tracks of all the uh relationships he's been bro. Did you see he got this whole Meghan Markle thing?

I know. He played it so well, though. He did. It was so well. He's like, even the garlic breath. For people who don't know, apparently he went on a date with Meghan Markle 15 years ago or something. Yeah, she's the new Queen of Scotland or something, right?

Yeah, I don't know what that is. Something. She just married Prince Harry. Yeah. Yeah, I guessry yeah i guess it's like monopoly over there still she's the banker throne anyway she's dating the banker yeah yeah uh but yeah but simon used to simon dated her at some point well like once they went out and and so the this newspaper like tracked him down and got an interview. And he was just like, yeah, she wasn't into me. I was into her. She wasn't into me. And so he played it beautiful.

Yeah, here he is. Actor reveals how he blew chances because of garlic bread. But then dated Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton likes her garlic bread, man. And the funny thing is, though, about Simon is, I don't know if we'll ever know. Because, yeah, he kind of took an L on that. He could have, you know, who knows what happened with him and her. I think, but he kind of played the gentleman role there.

Yeah, perfectly. Yeah. Right up to the point of saying he thought Harry seemed like a cool guy. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I mean, that is the i mean that is that is the classy move it's definitely the classy move i'm wondering how many dudes would have been like yeah you know uh you know we fucking you know we got nasty in a chevelle or something you know

i know you like a nice car chevelle yeah. A Cutlass Supreme. Oh, definitely. But yeah, he played it nice. I mean, but that's, this is a perfect example. That's, I mean, that dude is dated basically now the prince of whatever she is, you know, Rhode Island or whatever. It's the original Rhode Island, Britain. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of ladies, I'm looking through looking through you know i was looking through some

of your instagram and i saw you uh won an avn award yeah i'm very proud of that my mom had it on her mantelpiece for a while yeah yeah i uh a buddy of mine and that's a porn award sorry for our listeners who don't know the adult video and i don't know nation network something beginning with n you don't even get to the end you've already busted a nut Usually Yeah it's the Oscar of porn And you know there are all these categories Like you know best three way

Best like you know Anal best You know jizz on face I don't know there are all sorts of weird categories Yeah face painting they call it I think Is that what it is? Yeah I think so but it's only one color that's the thing the second people can start dying their semen via pills intravenously bro or something oh boy oh boy yeah so this buddy of mine was making um a movie like a high-end movie that he wanted to be sort of a crossover like porn but with

character development and really well shot and an interesting plot and all that that he was kind of hoping i think would would go a little bit mainstream and and uh so he asked uh so the the idea was that it's this couple, it's called Marriage 2.0. And the story is there's a young couple who are opening up their relationship because they've been together a while. They're starting to get bored. They're attracted to other people, but they really love each other. So it's a common conundrum. And so they decide, okay, let's fuck other but you know talk to each other about it and try to do this consciously and so uh the woman in this couple is a documentary filmmaker and so she's

having some issues and feeling insecure and jealous and whatever so she decides to make a movie within the movie where she interviews people who are sort of thinkers and writers about relationships and sexuality so my casilda and i play ourselves the authors of sex at dawn so there's like a stage set up i mean a studio thing and she's interviewing us about the book and then she starts to cry and runs off and then the next scene i'm in the kitchen with her and we're having this heart-to-heart about open relationships and yada yada yeah and um and it was it was actually i really enjoyed it it was uh interesting because i've done so many interviews you know sex of don came out in 2010 and i did a lot of press and TED Talks and CNN and everywhere.

And I bet you had more on the horizon. I mean, it still seemed, I mean, it fit right into my present moment. Yeah, I'm still, I mean, if I wanted to, I'd be doing three or four interviews a week about it. I'm sure. And then I have a new book coming out later this year, early next year. So then hopefully that'll. But anyway, the point of that is like i've become accustomed to ignoring cameras which i think is a big part of acting ah i see and so when we were doing that

scene in the kitchen it was very easy for me to just focus in on her and ignore the guys with the cameras and the lights and you know all that and it felt really good and after the director was like dude you're really good at this you should like think about acting and it's like yeah as long as i can play myself right you know i'm like jack nicholson like i'm gonna be a jack yeah you know uh yeah the second you have to play a mother of three yeah in albuquerque yeah exactly like a gay dancer from the 1800s like yeah i don't think so yeah and that yeah't think so. Yeah. So that was you guys' scene, and then that film won an award? So the film, I think the film won some other awards, but I was nominated for an award in a very special category, Best Non-Sex Performance.

So that's the story of my life right there. It's like, you kind of win you kind of lose you know it's like you kind of want to show it to your buddies you kind of don't it's like you know fastest slow guy in the race that's me i'm always at the you know the top of the bottom category yeah was there a moment when um your friend who was putting the the film together when he reached out when you were thinking wow i'm gonna get to fucking one of these things uh i didn't want to fucking one of these things right so maybe and you didn't want to i i get that i i couldn't do it but was there a moment at the beginning when he was first started talking

when you were like man at least hope he asked me to fucking well see i had worked in porn before okay so this wasn't a new thing for me i i had a job years ago when the internet was first sort of starting in the mid 90s and i had like logged on i finally figured out how to log on and of course the first thing was like where's the porn right yeah oh yeah all of it was just porn yes yeah and it was like this was back in the days where you'd like You'd get to a site and you'd watch The lines go across and like Oh, there's a nipple coming up here Oh, there's the top of her nipple

Oh my god And then it's just a hat, but you've already come It's just like a Yiddish hat It's like, oh no, I gotta start over again It was a Yomica So, anyway So I found this site and uh they had beautiful models and great photography and the sets were really nice and all this and then the text was in english and it was like ridiculous english it was so bad and so i copied it and at

the bottom was like a webmaster link or something and And I pasted it into an email, and I underlined all the mistakes. And I wrote this email saying, like, you guys obviously spend a lot of money on this website. It's really well shot and blah, blah, blah. But your English is really distracting. You need an online editor. I happen to be an online editor. I'd never heard of online editor. And I sent it off thinking

like nothing's gonna happen but it took me five minutes right i get a phone call a couple days later like can you come in for an interview this was in bar i was living in barcelona oh wow it turns out this giant swedish porn company had just relocated to barcelona called private and they hired me to be their online uh their in-house editor and translator so i'd so i'd been around porn sets uh a fair bit now being around porn sets because as just a regular guy right i imagine i'm up at a porn set dude i'm if i'm watching p you know or there's a bunch of people just standing there to say wreck the whole time like what is that like does it feel more like an art i've never been in one i've always wanted to go but i also like i can hook you up yeah sure it's the thing is it's not erotic right

it's not erotic at all and that's the thing it that's interesting on a porn set i mean orgies uh yeah, sex clubs. I've been to dungeons. I've been in a lot of these places. Damn. You look a damn Voldemort, bro. Yeah. Well, I mean, after Sex of Dawn came out, anyone with sort of an alternative approach to sexuality.

Came to you. Well, we're welcome. They know our book, and they know that we're welcome you know like they know our book and and they know that we're accepting of all these different things and we're not going to judge anyone so we sort of have entree into all those worlds um and yeah i mean i i've always been really interested in sexuality anyway so i've had i've been in a lot of weird kind of what most normal people would consider weird situations long before sex at dawn came. I mean, I've had probably – this is going to sound weird, but I guess I've spoken about this publicly before.

I probably had at this point, I don't know, half a dozen or more men say, dude, if you want to have sex with my wife that's totally cool yeah you know i think like i'm just not threatening they know i'm not gonna i'm honest about it i keep it's all on the surface yeah you're not gonna be slam dunk you might be shooting some three-pointers though you know like from outside yeah yeah but they don't you know i'm saying but they might be like yeah non-threatening yeah and i'm not gonna talk shit like right you know i remember this this there was a woman i was friends with the man and and uh the situation came up and she and i used to get together and you know we'd have sex and then we'd like lie there in bed and talk about what a great guy her husband was and literally that was that was what happened you know so i don't know why i'm talking about no it's no this

is interesting and i think a lot of our listeners and i mean even you know so i don't know why i'm talking about no it's no this is interesting and i think a lot of our listeners and i mean even you know i think there's definitely a a thing these days where you know people want to venture outside they do have so many other sexual desires that they don't express and a lot of times it's because of a marriage or because of you know there might be a religious institution that you know that they a template that they don't express. And a lot of times it's because of a marriage or because of, you know, it might be a religious institution that, you know, a template that they base their marriage on, which I think is understandable. You know, it's such a – that's such a narrative in our world. And it's such a life for people, you know,

that I think a lot of guys are probably afraid to even broach the subject or bring it up. There's probably both spouses in a lot of marriages and relationships just laying there thinking some of the same things. Yeah, and that's one of the best things that's happened as a result of Sex at Dawn, that I get emails from people saying the book enabled them to get into a conversation. And then once they got into it, as you said, they found they were thinking the same thing. And it actually enabled them to be so much closer together, you know, whether they do anything different or not. Right. Just the fact that now we're talking about it and we're being honest about it, that can take so much pressure off, you know.

So much. I mean, I've experienced this recently with a girl that I've been dating. honest about it that can take so much pressure off you know so much i mean i can experience i've experienced this recently with a girl that i've been dating and like um and yeah just to be able to communicate it's almost amazing that you can't communicate sometimes even though you're in an environment where you're supposed to be able to communicate well you're yeah you're in a relationship supposedly with the person you feel closest to in the world. And yet, right from the beginning, there are these areas where you're lying to each other. Yeah.

About something really important, right? Really intimate. Yeah. Like, oh, no, baby, I'm not interested. I'm not attracted to other women. Yeah, I'm not. That's bullshit. That's bullshit. And it's bullshit when she says the same thing to you.

So here you are lying to each other, right? About something that, of course, you're attracted to other people. Come on. Yeah, it's like if a hot chick walks by, you always have to pretend like you just watched a really slow bird fly by far away. And you always get busted. There's something on my shoulder. It's bullshit. I remember I was sitting in this hotel lobby in Sydney.

I was down in Australia at this great conference called the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Wow. It was great. Yeah, in the Sydney Opera House. Fantastic. Anyway, and I was sitting in this lobby and this smoking hot woman walks by. No bra, tits bouncing. Tits out?

No, well. Oh, in a shirt dressed and you know but they were in some sort of holster i think they were just swaying man like god intended you know god dude if a huge tit fucking hit me one time and knocked me and i died i'd be cool with that like damn a tit killed that dude but how dope is that yeah okay so the woman's walking across the lobby she's walking across the lobby she's walking across the lobby everybody's looking which is what she wants you know like come on and i i sort of see across the lobby there's this couple and the dude is like pretending he's not looking but he is

and the woman the wife is pretending that she doesn't notice that the dude's pretending not to notice and it's just like this shit storm of fucking bullshit you know yeah and it's like what is the problem if your husband's alive of course he's noticing this woman right you're noticing this woman we're all noticing her like are you supposed to like not look at sunsets either know, no, you're the only beautiful thing in the world, honey. Yeah. Like, come on, people. Like, even the clock in the lobby stopped ticking for a second. Exactly.

Like, everything is just held up. The reception guy's like, can you just wait a minute? Yeah, I'll get to you in a minute, sir. The fruit stopped ripening. The elevator is like, er. Yeah. Oh, I've been in those environments when like the hottest woman in the world walks to the room and you're just like, my God. Yeah.

And your tongue falls out of your mouth and then a tongue falls out of your dick and you're like, wow, my dick. A tongue falls out of your tongue? Yeah. It just keeps going. All the way right up to her heels. It's like Monty Python now. Yeah. It's like a red carpet.

It really is. It's like a red carpet. It really is. I wonder if your tongue falls out almost as like this proverbial red carpet of your soul and you hope that this woman will walk right up into your mouth. Yeah. You know, with the heels. Oh, I'd let her. Yeah.

But yeah, so we get, we feel, so say in that instance, the man, you know, pretends he doesn't see and then the woman pretends that she didn't see the man see the woman. And I guess it's kind of a song and dance that we do, but do you think it's based from a good place? Because I feel like the man's intention was he didn't want his wife to feel bad or his girlfriend to feel unwanted. Yeah, but that's treating the symptom. It's not treating the underlying disease. Okay. The underlying disease is feeling that your partner being attracted to other people is an insult to you. Right? And that's a problem.

So I think if we can overcome that now of course i'm not saying you know you're walking down the street you're like damn look at that ass on that chick like dude be cool you know don't be an asshole and and same thing with women like you don't need to like uh be insulting to the person you're with, right? But there's no point in not acknowledging that we're living sexual beings and we feel attractions for other people. Yeah. And in fact, in a couple, you know, if I'm with my wife and we're walking down the street and, you know, we're holding hands and I don't see a hot woman, she'll squeeze my hand and

be like, ooh, 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock. Don't miss her. She's looking out for me. And that makes me feel so close to her because I don't have to pretend like, oh, yeah, she's hot. But I think we develop these pathologies because of the repression, right? Whereas if you're not repressing it, you're not pretending, you're not lying to yourself and to your partner, then it's not a big deal. Like, yeah, she's hot, whatever, great. You can enjoy it, but it's not a problem. Just like I don't want to buy every beautiful house

I see, right? I don't even want to go into it. I just drive on by and it's like, wow, that's a nice house, right so i think there's our appetites get distorted by repression it's like any pressure you hold it in it becomes explosive you know and so those repressions are like things whenever you first start dating someone you say like oh i'm not interested you know i don't i don't think about other women or i don't you know instead of being like you know i love you but if I see a hot woman, I'm going to appreciate that. That would be, it would be almost unnatural. It would be me shutting down a natural desire within my body.

Well, it's like I said, like sunset. You see a sunset, you see it. Of course you see it. You've got an appetite for beauty and a capacity to recognize it. How is that a problem? Yeah. You know? And it almost goes back to what you were saying

earlier about yourself that you know you uh anything that doesn't feel natural you try and you stay away from exactly it's the same that's that same thing like i'm really suspicious of anything and we live in a society that's constantly telling us to distrust our appetites you know think about a little kid the first thing that little kid's learning is, no, you eat now because now's when we eat. But I'm not hungry. Doesn't matter, eat. Oh, go to bed.

But I'm not tired. Doesn't matter, go to bed. Wake up. Oh, I'm really sleepy. No, it doesn't matter. Wake up. Ignore your body. Ignore your appetites.

Ignore the wisdom that's accumulated over millions of years of evolution. Yeah. You know, telling you what to eat giving you appetites for the things that are going to be good for you ignore all that and do what we tell you because margarine is better than butter turns out margarine is totally fucked but when i was growing up you were told oh stay away from that high fat diet that'll kill you no actually what you're giving me will kill me. So things taste good for a reason, right? Things, our bodies and our, I think, our something deeper, our spirits, our souls, whatever we're going to talk about, they yearn for connection with other people. And one of the ways that that's expressed is through

sexuality now i think because we live in this distorting environment that can get twisted up and and uh become problematic in lots of ways like relating to some of the stuff we were talking about earlier like porn you know over um attention to porn or whatever or this incel thing that's happening now or like dudes in high school are shooting people because they got rejected they're not getting laid um any time these natural appetites are repressed and denied bad shit starts to happen and now when you say when you talk about i love this this thing about the incel like you know people you know guys high school guys who are in the you know more nerd category or not nerd but whatever category the unwanted or if they feel on undesirable yeah you

know or outcasts and they end up um you know shooting up a school and taking out some type of wild activity like that. In addition to, say, if other people are getting sex around them and then at the same time there's this porn that makes it seem even more like sex should be so accessible. I feel like that might be even a greater pressure than we probably faced when I was young. You just heard a rumor about so-and-so fucking. And if you didn't know him, you couldn't even ask him if they did fuck.

You just had to assume that. Like I remember in seventh grade or sixth grade, heard about two people fucked by a pool on a bench or something, you know. Which now, as I've gotten older, seems way uncomfortable to me, right? Especially in the Louisiana summer. But at the time, I believed every second of it. Whenever I saw that person, I believed it, but I didn't know that boy well enough to ask him. So that was my, I only felt that one,

oh, I'm not as good as him maybe in that world. But now if you feel a few of those things, and then you also have this porn constantly available, like sex is, yes, everybody should be able to have it. Well, not just porn but advertising yeah right everything they're selling hamburgers and trucks and beer and it's all tits and ass and you know yeah everything's about sex sex sex everywhere and then they tell us also that we shouldn't look at women a certain way now there's this whole other movement like don't look at women

sexually but yet you've raised a society for the past 40 50 years of seeing sex along with you know here's some tits with this you know blender you know i'm saying you can't make a shake without a bad combination without a shake yeah it's a dangerous combination but you can't you know it's that bait and switch that advertising has done for a long time sure and then now it's there's this huge push against those same people who are really just victims of advertising to say that you can't look at women sexually. Yeah. There's a lot going on. There is.

There is. And I think the suffering of the teenage male who is not able to connect with women is a huge problem that isn't getting talked about. I mean, now with the incel, it's starting to be talked about, but still not with any kind of sympathy or understanding. And look, just to be clear, I'm not saying that this is the fault of women. I'm certainly not. No, it doesn't sound like that at all. I don't think anyone's taken like that. If they are, they're out of their mind. Yeah. But it's't sound like that at all i don't think anyone's taken like that if they are they're out of their mind yeah but but it's important to say that because i think women you know historically get blamed for a lot that that they're as much victims of or more victims of you know like promiscuity you know um in sexodon we argue that we evolved to be pretty promiscuous species which is evident in you know so much

everywhere uh but a lot of times people would be like you know well why aren't women more relaxed about sex then why aren't women you know just more openly just fucking whoever they want well how about because for thousands of years they've been burned at the stake for doing that for doing that for even talking about it yeah yeah or like left to starve in the streets right you dirty whore get the fuck out of my house you you looked at another man you know it's like the women have have for thousands of years had to deal with incredible oppression oh they've taken the brunt of evolution in a lot of ways well i'm not even talking about evolution i'm talking about culture okay yeah they've taken the brunt of yeah what have they taken the brunt of yeah it's like whenever there's something they women have put up with a lot

yeah yeah so when i talk about the frustration of teenage boys who can't connect to women yeah that's why i'm very careful saying i'm not blaming the women i get it um but it is a problem and i think there's a lot of rage because and it's not just sex i mean hey a four there's nothing hornier than a 14 year old boy yeah oh i put one in my fucking dick right now if i could just to help me i'd drink the blood of one, bro. Yeah. Well, they used to take the testicles of chimpanzees and grind them up and then inject that into men's testicles. Damn. Yeah. Damn. Whoa, bro.

Yeah. People do some weird shit to try to get horny. Wow, dude. I would hide one in my ass. Maybe I'm not shooting one into my nuts with a needle. You'd hide a 14-year-old boy in your ass? No, no, no. Hide.

They're coming. I'd hide a couple chimpanzee nuts in my ass to strengthen me. I'm on Cialis right now from India. I'm buying that shit. It makes my legs sweat, But it makes me feel alert Now wait a minute You're bumming out because you're jerking off Three times a week but you're taking Cialis

If I want to be sexually involved Or feel that way Sometimes I'll pop on Just to feel that extra adventure When I'm walking around town Extra adventure Yeah because when I was young I used to bone up like a damn

You know, like somebody looking for nickels at the beach You know But now I just don't Did it beep too? I wish it would I mean, it should have I think it could whistle a little

But now I don't get that anymore You know, I just don't And I don't get it in LA that much There's so much going on here. And I feel like I'm hyper aware sometimes. And I feel a constant anxiety when I'm here. But the second I land in any other city, man. I mean, it could be Toledo and I'll fucking be erect right when we hit the runway.

You get a Toledo hard on. I think that's the name of the roller derby team. I think it's the name of a steak that's served there, too. Well done. But no, I want to get back to some of the stuff you were talking about with young men. I think there's another element there, and this is just that a lot of young men were raised out of split parents. And so I think there's this weird connection, too, where a lot of men looked at their mothers as fathers as well or something and so there there's an element there i'm finding in my generation where

even you know in their 30s a lot of men are having trouble uh with women and we noticed it even just from the podcast man so many yeah guys reaching out like addicted to masturbate, addicted to porn, or at least they feel they are. Yeah, and you see it in Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Joe Rogan, me, you, Duncan. I think the podcast world, a lot of what's going on there is a lot of the audience is young people, and I think disproportionately men, looking for some sort of guidance. Because as you say, they didn't have a father figure in the house. And there's a big hunger for that. Justifiably so.

And I think it's, you know, when somebody acknowledges their vulnerability, that's such a strong thing to do, you know? Amen. Amen. vulnerability, that's such a strong thing to do. Amen. So people who are doing that, who are reaching out to you or Joe or me or whatever, I always really respect that because until you know you need something, until you know that you're missing something, then you're just an asshole.

Yeah. You're just running around thinking you got it figured out, doing damage. But once you stop and say, oh, wait a minute, I got to stop and think about this and ask somebody for help, that's a really important moment in your life. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you say that vulnerability, that asking for somebody for help. I remember, yeah, I mean, I still notice just how huge that is now. Even if I'm having a moment with

someone I feel like I don't want to tell them some something to then like take a moment and actually share whatever that is you know that feeling you know like you know right now I'm upset and you know the reason why is this instead of just leaving the house and you know that old fashion I'm you know caveman run out of the house and hold it all in, that vulnerability. It's amazing how I never in my life knew how to be vulnerable. I just didn't even know you could. I felt probably vulnerable, you know, but I just never knew how to, you know, even tell a woman like, look, I'm, you look, I feel nervous or I feel this way.

Or to show up, even if you go to talk to a girl that you think is attractive, you're like, I fucking, you know. Usually if I saw a girl as attractive as you, I'd just go jerk off in my car, but I'm trying to come over and say hey this time. Yeah. Just vulnerability is huge. say hey this time yeah just vulnerability is huge and the thing that that young men don't understand i certainly didn't understand when i was young is that like women are way ahead of us in a lot of ways and one of them is that wow i feel like i'm listening to the book right now this is so crazy i just had that moment just because of your voice sorry oh right oh yeah um i interrupt you though and one of them is one of them is that women in not all women but a lot of women are deeply attracted to vulnerable

men like not i'm not telling you like cry you know like all the time but i have found that women like like i get a lot of emails from people saying, oh, I could, my girlfriend would never accept like, you know, I can't talk about this stuff with her, blah, blah, blah. Right. The thing is, I also get those emails from women saying, I wish my boyfriend would be more honest with me. I wish he'd tell me, you know, the thing is when you're really honest and vulnerable with a woman, it makes her feel safe because she knows you're real. Yes.

And she can trust you. Yes. And that you're not thinking something that you're not going to say, you're not hiding things. That's what women are really afraid of, is like, what are you hiding? What's going on? What do you have in your pocket that's going to come out and stab me in the back? Yeah.

what do you have in your pocket that's going to come out and stab me in the back? You know? Yeah. And so if they meet a guy who's like, look, I mean, when I met Casilda, I laid some shit out on the table to her about, you know, being attracted to other women and stuff. And she said to me, she looked at me and she said, you know, I grew up in Africa. I've been a psychiatrist for 10 years or whatever it was

and i know how men are i know how the world is but you're the first man who's ever had the balls to tell me that right like she knew it she knew everything most women know how men are they know how we think they know but the fact that i said it out loud and I said it to her early and I was like, look, here's who I am. You got to know this. That established a basis for our relationship. We're still together 20 years later. And I think that women will forgive and men, too, I think will forgive a lot more than we think if they know you're being honest with them, if they know you're being straight and they don't need to worry about what you're not telling them. No, I couldn't agree with you more.

I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I've spent relationships in the past just hiding the truth and things that I was cheating or lying or running around with other women, but I still was in love with the person that I was with. And then that made everything else so complicated. Because then every time I looked at my girlfriend, I had these lies inside of me. And so it just created – and then I would begin to resent her for not even knowing I was a liar at some point, which was so baffling. It was like, you know, just what a sickness it all becomes.

Yeah, yeah. But how does a man who's in a relationship now and they see, you know, that they wish they could be more honest, is there a way for some of these guys to kind of backtrack, or women, because we do have a lot of female listeners as well, for them to backtrack and, and get into a more comfortable space. Well, yeah, I mean,

it, it, it's harder when you're already in the relationship to sort of go back and reestablish where you are. But I think a lot of people do that. And, and I think, you know,

what I say to people is figure out what your non-negotiables are and then don't negotiate. I think that's a mistake that a lot of people make. So, if you're already in the relationship, then the question I have is, do you have kids? If you have kids, they really kind of have to be the top priority 100 and um so then it's about okay how do we keep this ship afloat as you know until these kids are up and out on their own or whatever the best we can do um but if you're in a relationship and you don't have kids then it's like uh you know take some mdma and have a go for a hike you know go camping and get real with each other go sit by the beach go sit by a campfire get away from all the distractions and yeah lay your shit out, you know? And because, I mean, it's so funny.

The way we live our lives is like, oh, I want to be with you for the rest of my life, but I don't want you to really know who I am. Well, what the fuck kind of relationship is that? You're going to spend your whole life with someone who doesn't know you? Really? That's what you want to do?

Why? Because you're so ugly that you're afraid if they know you that they'll leave you? Well, I've got news for you. They're're thinking the same thing and there's no more beautiful moment than when you show the thing that you're afraid of to someone and they're like yeah i i knew that was there i love you anyway man of course that's that's a relationship that's and that's real love that's real love exactly yeah i had a moment with my mother i think um where i realized like that no matter what she ever did to me or whatever i

thought she did or even things that or however our relationship was that i loved her in spite of that and i'd never had that thought before like my my whole life, I'd always, you know, I think I still battle with a lot of things because, you know, my father was 70 when I was born, you know, my mother was working all the time. There just wasn't, you know, a lot of disconnection, things that were, that are almost just built into the fabric of me, you know? But I think I'd always held those things against her or put them on opposite sides of the scale of my love for her. So one kind of had to be balancing the other or something. And this was the first time I ever thought that, you know,

and I said to her, I said, look, you know, no matter what ever has happened between us or even that I've thought has happened, you know, that I love you no matter what you ever did to me or I thought you ever did to me. And that was like one of the greatest moments I ever had in my life. And I didn't know I could even have that. But it was like the scariest thing for me to say that I would love somebody even if they hurt me or I thought they did. And it was powerful for her too,

because I'm sure she probably has thought in her life that she didn't do good enough, because I bet a lot of parents feel that. All of them. Yeah. Yeah, and it's- It goes back to vulnerability, just like, I don't know. I don't know why I brought that up. Well, you know, unconditional love and acceptance.

Yes. Also, there's a difference, you know, talking about romantic love, there's a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. And I think we tend to conflate that and get those things mixed up. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Because I feel like I could have some trouble with that. Yeah. I think being in love is that, we say falling in love in English. In Spanish, there are two words for love. There's te quiero and te amo. And te quiero literally means I want you. It's about desire, possession. you want to be with them all the time you you just want to fuck all the time i garamba exactly that kind of love um but then that wears away that

burns off you know and then then you find out if you love the person or not. And the problem is that people are making these major decisions in their lives, like who they're going to have kids with and live with and introduce to all their friends and all that, based upon that drunkness. Yeah, you know, that she's so hot and I love the way you know what he's got a great job and a great sense of humor and whatever and then you get past that stuff and it's like oh you're just a person i'm just a person now we figure out if we respect each other if we actually want to hang out you know so that's love and that's what's left when that other shit burns away, if it was ever there to begin with, right? And so, there's this book called The Erotic Mind by Jack Morin that probably came out in the 70s or 80s.

I remember there's a- Is that recommended reading by you? Well, yeah. I don't really remember the book, to be honest. I just remember this one formula in it. So I can't really recommend the book because this is all I remember from it. But he says, attraction plus an obstacle equals passion. So you think of every love story.

It's, I want to be with you but you're you're married yeah you're from another religion you're in a high tower yeah exactly your parents our parents won't let us we're different classes we're different races and we're in the south and you know whatever and so that obstacle builds up it takes this desire where if there were no obstacle it might be like yeah you went out and whatever she's cool but you know yeah it's just a long hair girl that lives on the first floor exactly exactly but it turns into this giant love story because of the obstacle yeah so what do we do so you meet let's say you meet the woman of your dreams she lives in new york and you're in

la and oh you know you see each other and now there's an obstacle it's really hot and you can't wait to see her and you schedule your tour so you can be where she is and you do all this stuff and then eventually gets to the point where like you know let's move in together and so she moves out to la and and now you're living together and six months later it's like fuck what did i do yeah what have i? You're hanging out with the plants instead of her. Yeah, my life was so good before. You started a garden. You removed the obstacle.

Yeah. So are you saying that it's better than to keep an obstacle in the relationship at all times? Is that one element that we can use to help our relationships? And I know you're not saying, I know we're just thinking, but are you thinking that maybe the alternative to that is a different path where there's a love first, a reality first, and then the sex comes kind of tertiary to that? Well, what I'm saying is that it's the nature of existence for the passion to evaporate when you've removed the obstacle and so you can't blame that like a lot of people get together and the sex is really good that's super hot and then four years later it's like it's kind of worn out they're not and they say oh this relationship this isn't the right guy. This isn't the right woman.

This relationship isn't as good as I thought it was. That's not necessarily true. What's happened is that you've just, you know, you're a certain kind of animal and you get bored. And it's not, that doesn't mean that that's not a good guy or a good woman or a good relationship. It just means you're homo sapiens, right? Like if you ate Thai food every night for the rest of your life, after a while, you'd be like, fucking Thai food again, right? Yeah. That doesn't mean Thai food's not good.

It's my favorite food in the world, but I wouldn't want to eat it every night. It's like doing magic. Like I tried to do a magic for a while, and after a while, I was like, fuck magic, dude. You know? Fuck magic, yeah. I mean, at a certain point. But yeah, that's what you're saying. So it's like. magic for a while and after a while i was like fuck magic dude you know fuck magic yeah i mean at a certain point but yeah that's what you're saying so it's like yeah you wear it out the fascination and that doesn't mean it's not the person's not cool so what i'm saying is understand that understand that and don't blame yourself or her or right or if you want to maintain that

then yeah you got to keep an obstacle then Then say, we're going to have a long distance relationship or we're going to vacation separately. Like learn, like miss each other sometimes. Yeah. You know, don't work together. Don't be together all the time, even though that's what it feels like you want to do. That's a disaster. That's, you know, you need resistance. You work out, you need resistance. You need to lift the weight. You need resistance. You work out.

You need resistance. You need to lift a weight. You need to push against something. And I struggle with that at times. There are moments when I'm needy, when I feel needy. And I will, instead of experiencing some of that need or that desire, letting it build up, even for that person, I'll immediately call them or immediately text them. And it kind of takes a little bit of valve off of the overall desire for them.

And I think in a weird way that now I'm thinking about it, it might be what happens to me sometimes sexually. I'm afraid to let my sexual desires build up because maybe I'm afraid of what will happen then. Maybe I'm afraid of, you know, what will happen then. Like I'm not thinking I'm going to be a rapist or nothing like that, but I'm just thinking that I might, you know, create a stronger bond with a woman that I really care about, you know. So I think maybe that sometimes, I never really thought about it, but that could be some of the reason why, you know, go to pornography or find an outlet, you know, masturbate or something. And I know I'm, you know, I don't mean to keep coming back to my case, but I just, I noticed that I have an unhealthy relationship with it. And so I'm still in the search of kind of figuring out what some of that is, you know. Right.

Right. And I'm okay with it because I am, you know, I'm open into learning and I'm, you know, taking on new ideas. Yeah. I did want to ask you about hitchhiking, man, if you don't mind. I know it's a full circle, but bro, sometimes the ride, you know, sometimes you don't know where the ride's going to go. Yeah, I think I was like the last of the hitchhikers. You know, nobody hitchhikes anymore.

People are like, man, there's one left and it's a dude? All right, I'll take him. It's like me and guys who just got out of prison are the only people out there. Do you think we lost something by not having those days? What was that like? I mean, you threw the thumb up or you were meeting people at truck stops? No, I just sat and stood on the side of the road. That's awesome.

You know who did it recently, actually? The director. James Franco? I wouldn't be surprised. But no, this guy who did Pink Flamingos and Faster Pussycat Kill Kill Kill. He's from Baltimore. John Waters. Yeah, he hitchhiked across the country.

No. And then he wrote a book about it. A musician? No, he's a film director. That's Roger Waters, I'm thinking. Roger Waters. John Waters is a homosexual man? Yeah.

Yeah. Small mustache? Yeah. Really cool guy. Super interesting dude. Yeah, people say he's the best. Sorry to mean to describe him just as a homosexual man. Yeah.

He's an artist. Yeah. He's a producer. He's a creator. And his films are like flamboyantly kind of campy gay. Yeah. It's not like he hides it or anything. He's Palm Springs.

He's like the mayor of Palm Springs. Oh, is he? I hides it or anything he's palm springs he's like the mayor of palm springs oh is he i i don't know if he is but everywhere you go there everybody says they know him oh yeah but um anyhow go on i'm sorry he he did it so he hitchhiked across the country yeah wow yeah and i remember like a van of like musicians on tour picked him up they drove by him and they're like that was fucking john waters like what they like backed up and he goes like you're john waters like yeah yeah so a lot of people picked him up didn't know who he was though yeah so he just you think the fancy umbrella would be a dead giveaway though the cape but yeah what how fascinating was it fat were you did you find there was more fear by the pick-upper or by you?

Well, I think if they were afraid, they didn't stop. So I don't remember many people being afraid of me. If they were afraid, they didn't stop. That's a good point. No one's like, I'm so fucking scared. Let me stop and open my door. Yeah. That's a good point.

I never thought about that. Screw a roller coaster. I'm going to pitch up a hitchhiker yeah you're making a commitment too i mean i i'm we hitchhiked i met so i hitchhiked from new york to seattle the first year i did i did this twice two years in a row um so i went from new york to seattle and then i took the this uh alaskan ferry up the Inside Passage to Stadigway. And that's not another John Waters reference either, guys. The Inside Passage, yeah. No, the Alaskan ferry. Oh.

Yeah. Sorry. They both work, right? They both work. That's true. And now, so the ferry was that. So that was more of just kind of a traveling thing. It wasn't a hitchhike.

You didn't have to hitchhike to get on no no i just paid and um you could camp out on the on the deck they had like a cover it was amazing and the stars you must have seen must have been well yeah i didn't see a lot of stars because it doesn't really get dark in alaska in the summer so but orcas and bears and bald eagles everywhere. It's really nice. So, up the, it's like four or five days up the Inside Passage, and then you get off at either Haines or Skagway, and then hitchhike up through the Yukon, and then across to Fairbanks, and then down to Kenai and different places. I went sewered in different places. So, it's a long fucking hitch.

And it's a man fucking hitch and that's a manly trek too i mean that's a lot of you know you're seeing a lot of animals you're seeing a lot of nature so imagine at that time you said it was kind of a transformative time but there's also this this ambience of that you're not alone in the universe there's other animals there's you know and that's a manly trek that's ice cold out there not in the summer oh yeah in the summer it's pretty warm um but yeah i mean there are bears around and you got to have all your food with you you got a tent you're sleeping by you got you know you got to take care of yourself it was a rite of passage for me it was good and then yeah and then coming back i took the train across across Canada one year and then I hitched from Montreal down to New York to see this woman.

That was a weird one. I was coming down through the Adirondacks and like the middle of nowhere and it was getting dark. And I was starting to think, you know, okay, I'm going to like another 20 minutes and i'm gonna go you know find a place to crash in the woods here and um this guy stops and i get in the car and the dude's like big muscles tats crew cut ex-military looking guy and uh i always had this like I wore jeans and I had these NAMM boots and I had a knife inside my boot under my jeans and my right leg. Just because it- I see like everybody's really- If shit got weird, I'm sitting there and I can just-

That's easy. You know? It's not like having to open, like, hold on, let me get a knife and open your bag. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. Like, can I get in the trunk? And I never had to use it.

I never pulled it out. But it was just like if somebody – if things got really weird – You had it. I had it and, you know, something. Anyway, so I get in this car and there's a little small small talk with this dude and you know where you going where he was in alaska and uh and he's like yeah yeah okay he says um so you like knives like that and i was like uh yeah yeah like damn knives are cool and he said i noticed you have one in your right boot wow i was like uh so then you feel like a murderer

well i feel like i'm about to get murdered maybe like how did he know i have a knife in my right boot like it's under my jeans maybe he was right like maybe he could smell knives i guess so i'm like i say well it's just i'm hitchhiking it's just, I'm hitchhiking. It's just something that, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, yeah, that's cool. That's cool. And he grabs his belt buckle. He's got this big belt buckle. He pulls and there's a knife.

No. It's a handle of a knife and the blades like under his belt. And he goes like that and he's holding it right in front of my face. This fucking like six inch dagger. Fuck, you thought you were dead. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to die now because I'm in the middle of nowhere. Sun's going down, no cars anywhere. That's where people die.

Yeah, he might dump my body anywhere. Yeah, he's probably been riding up in 90-yard for a decade. He's like, hey, finally got a hitchhiker, another one. Anyway, so this knife's right in front of me. And I say, oh, that's a nice knife. He says, yeah. And I say, can I hold it? And he's like, yeah, go ahead.

And so I took it, and I was like, that's beautiful, man. And I give it back to him, and he puts it back. And he says, yeah, I got another one here. He's got like three knives on his body. Oh, my god. Turns out this dude was a prison warden. There's a high-security prison up there. And he was a warden

and so when he saw me on the side of the road he scanned me and immediately saw a bulge in my jeans you know wow and he's like yeah that's what he does for a living you know and that that was an important experience for me because it made it clear to me that that the the the knife was not going to save me the knife was going to get me in trouble and that there were like i was an amateur and there are pros there are pros and before you'd always thought you were the pro i thought i got a secret yeah and it turns out no dude you don't have a secret like if you're dealing with someone where you would need a weapon the chances are you're dealing with someone who's five steps ahead of you wow and you know it's like lying to cops like a detective not a guy pulled you over

you know speed right detectives spend all day being lied to yeah you know they you're not gonna bullshit a cop you know it doesn't matter if you're smarter than him he does that for a living you don't it's like get into a fist fight with joe rogan like it's not gonna go well yeah you know it's just not gonna happen it's so funny reminds me i recently got pulled over and uh and since i quit drinking and and doing drugs for now um i it almost made me feel cool to get pulled over. It was like 1.30 in the morning. The cops stopped me.

That's right. You're actually innocent. Yeah. Well, she walked up. And also, I was like I was breaking the law a little bit. Like before, I always felt like I was breaking the law. But now I'm like, oh, cool. It was pretty cool.

You pulled me over. And, you know, thanks. You know, kind of give me a little bit of street credit. And then. Can we do a selfie? Yeah, almost. But then I said, when she came back, she'd ripped me this ticket. And I think it was a woman, you know, it was kind of one of those kind of, you know, wild cops, you know, but, and I said, how did you know I wasn't drunk? You know, I said, I just haven't drank for a few years. I said, how did you know? I'm just curious. She goes, have you ever been around somebody that's drunk? I said, yeah. She goes, that's what it's like. We know. It's like, you

know, most of the time you can tell. She's like, it's not that big of a crazy mystery, you know? And that put it in perspective for me. I was like, oh, wow. This whole time when I've been drinking and driving, I was like, oh, I'm playing this big secretive game but really it's so obvious yeah um it's not it's not exactly what you're saying but i can i can understand as a young man we're like oh i got some growing up to do because there's some real men out here well it is like you think i mean that's sort of the essence of being young and maybe being drunk is thinking you're getting away with shit that the people around you yes they're just being nice to you you know they're just not calling you on your bullshit but everyone knows it oh that's so the essence of being young yeah it's so the essence of it you think you're pulling it but you're just seeming like an idiot in front of people that

already know i'm talking about that the like being innocent and how like exciting that could be sometimes i just did this road trip to new orleans and back oh nice in the van you know all across texas and it occurred to me driving across texas is like i don't have any weed in this car like this might be the first time in my life that I've ever driven across Texas with like, they could pull me over, they could search the car, they wouldn't find anything. It's amazing. It almost felt like a wasted opportunity, you know? Yeah, but at the same time, you were almost so much more advanced than you probably had been 20 years ago when you would have had all the drugs or whatever.

Yeah, I guess. I don't know. But I mean, that 20-year- that 20 year old me is your 30 year old me is like a little disappointed yeah i went through heathrow recently that's fair that's fair that's a mulligan on that one uh and man they it was a weird thing the the they you know put my bag through this thing and then they're like okay you're gonna wait over there and then they i saw them talking and then they took it and they put it through another one a line the security line that was closed down they put it through that machine and then they came back and talked some more and then they did something else then they and this guy comes over to me he's like you and i have to have a conversation i'm like yeah he's like what are your hobbies i'm like hobbies and that's a trick

question because you know you could have a ton of them yeah you know making wine well see the thing is i'm like i was like you when you got pulled over i'm like i know there are no drugs in that bag yeah i know like there's absolutely nothing that is going to cause a problem here and even if like there's some misunderstanding you google me i'm like a semi-famous author with a phd like i'm not a terrorist right so whatever it is you suspect is not real so i felt really relaxed you know and this is just like oh this is going to be an experience and so he's like hobbies i was like i don't know i don't really have any hobbies he's like well what do you do you know when you're not what do you do for a living i was like yeah i write i'm a psychologist

it's like what do you do when you're not working i was like dude like i'm 56 years old i jerk off i go to bed like i literally said that to him and he didn't laugh. Maybe have half a muffin. Exactly. A muffin top. Just the top because I like it crispy. But he, so he's not laughing. And then he's like, do you work with animals? No. Do you garden? No, I don't fucking garden.

I used to grow weed, you know, 10 years ago. Who is this guy, huh? He's very curious. Well, he's the fucking garden. I used to grow weed, you know, 10 years ago. Who is this guy, huh? He's very curious. Well, he's the security dude. Right. And then he says, well, we're going to have to call the police because you didn't give me what I need. I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, well, we found nitrates on your bag. And they're used for explosives.

And sometimes they're in fertilizer. But you don don't garden you don't work with animals so we got to call the cops call the cops dude but you know you're wrong he says the machine's never wrong oh sure this time dude so five minutes later i'm surrounded by nine like cops in body armor and you're out in front of everybody at the airport yeah probably embarrassing surrounded no i felt like fucking jason bourne dude i wanted to start throwing kicks and like run for it dude you should have just done a kick into the air just to kind of show off a little bit a little get a little bruce lee shit going on there. Yeah, it was crazy. And then they did the whole thing where they're talking, they're over there murmuring, and the dudes are watching me. And then one dude's up in my face like, what fight were you on? And where are you from?

And what are you doing? Like being a dick. And then he goes away. And then this other guy stands there, and he's like, yeah, don't worry. He gets a little intense sometimes. Oh, yeah, the nice guy. Good cop, bad cop. Exactly.

And I said, like, oh, you're the good cop. He's like, yeah, okay, you got me. I was like, yeah. At least you're not American cops, because I'd be, like, bruised and battered by that. Oh, they'll paint you black and shoot you, too, some of them. Exactly. Some of them won't. Exactly.

Yeah, man, it's alarming, dude. And plus, TSA, airport security is also fucking baffling sometimes. Like, what are we even doing, dude? It's not real. It's usually like there's one black dude trying to fuck all the other chicks at work there. There's kind of like somebody who's like a man and a woman and isn't telling anybody because they want to keep it a secret to themselves. There's one little gay black guy told me he had a small dick one time when I went through there.

Really? And you can't say anything because the second you speak up, you're going to jail. He goes, oh, it seemed like a small dick. And I was like, what? Did you say that? And then he acted like he didn't say it. And I know I heard it because I've never heard that in my life. I've heard, oh, your dick seems decent.

But I've never heard, oh, you seem like a small dick. I think that might have been a come on. Yeah, it could have been, but it's like you can't say anything to those people. And half of them quit school or used to play basketball with, and you're like, what the fuck? Yeah, they're making nine bucks an hour. And they're furious. Some of them want the world to end. One guy had this anarchist patch on one time on his thing.

I'm like, I know that sign. It was like this. So who knows? What the fuck? What airports are you going through, man? Just local. I mean, just sometimes out of Long Beach. So that could be it.

Long Beach. You grew up in Louisiana? Yeah, I grew up in Louisiana. So I was stoked to hear that you went down to New Orleans, man. It's the first time I've ever been there in my life and they would love you there i feel like you would fit in so well i liked i liked it i like new orleans but you know what i actually liked the sort of surrounding area more than new orleans yeah we stopped i forget there's this long bridge it's like 20 mile long bridge that just sort of like goes right up above the swamp

yeah chafalaya basin maybe or yeah like poncha train one of the other chafalaya chafalaya basin yeah and we stopped we stopped uh and somebody told us about some restaurant and we drove to this restaurant and we got in there and just as the the zydeco band was warming up and people are dancing it was great it was the middle of fucking nowhere yeah and they were the nicest people and the owner comes over he's like i saw your you got a van out there where you guys camping and i said oh and we haven't decided he said well you're welcome to stay here we got showers in the back you know hook you up and you, like just super nice people. Yeah, man, it was great.

Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. It's so much like so many times we brand a lot of America as like, you know, racist and angry and all this stuff. And I don't find a lot of that. I mean, I find you can find some of that if you're looking for it. If you're reading articles, you can find a lot of that. But I find a lot of times when you get out and you spend time with people, yeah, they're dealing with some things a lot of times.

And I think we have some overall issues in America that are historical. But I find that people are usually fun. And I don't mean to go broad on that. But Louisiana is a fun place, man. And the biggest thing they have there is just any type of tourist. People want to show you Louisiana. There's this thing they want you to love it. Yeah.

There's a lot to love. I mean, that's an interesting ecosystem, too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, you know. We didn't go out on any boats or anything. Next time I'm down there, I'd like to do that and go on the swamps and check it out. Dude, I'd love to go down there when you get on there sometime, just to see if you could you know introduce you to some other writers and just

hear you guys chat and think yeah go down with simon do a road trip it'd be cool man it'd be really cool we have a two questions that have come in uh nick did you have any um did you have any questions you don't have to have any either uh i did notice you don't wear a wedding ring and i was just wondering if that was like – I don't know. Because a lot of times I've heard a wedding ring attracts other women. So maybe if you're in an open relationship, you wear it. It's best of both worlds. I have a cock ring.

Big diamond on it. It's really – get those kind of sharp, though. That explains it. No, I – yeah. No, I don't do jewelry. Yeah. Right on. Yeah, I don't have one either, but that's because nobody – I mean, somebody wants me probably, but I just don't know.

I don't know if it's an old idea. But I don't know if – no one's ever offered me one either. And I have the worst fingers. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. I broke this one a couple years ago. I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah. I broke this one a couple years ago. I'm not sure. Yeah.

I mean, if it would just rattle on there, my finger's so skinny, it would just kind of rattle against the bone. We have two questions from callers that came in, and one is just, you want to go ahead with one, Nick? Yeah, here's the first one. Hey, you. You can call me Amy. I'm from Saudi Arabia. You can call me Amy. I'm from Saudi Arabia. I have been dealing with depression and anxiety too for maybe seven, eight months.

Probably more, I don't know. But I can't visit or see a therapist here because, you know, they're very expensive. And from what I've heard heard they are very bad. But honestly I don't know why I'm making this talk but maybe you can give me an advice or something that will make this more bearable because I had suicidal thoughts for quite a while now. And I still question why would someone keep on going when life is pretty shit. And it can be very bad here. So we get calls like this sometimes, you know, Darhotland, and we get tons of all types of calls. And I just thought I would, what would you

say to somebody like that that calls you know and just uh i'm not first thing i'd say is i'm not qualified i'm not a clinical psychologist right um yeah and i'm not trying to put any onus on you i know that you know um this isn't you know licensed advice or anything. Right, right. Yeah, it's very hard because she said she can't afford a therapist and maybe therapists, I don't know anything about therapy in Saudi Arabia. So I don't know anything about the situation, but if she's got suicidal thoughts and extreme anxiety and depression, it's important to talk to somebody. It's important not to try to go through that alone, I think. Yeah. And if she could find a good therapist, what they would be trying to help her do is to first to find the source of these feelings, right?

And whether it's in her family dynamics or, you know, it can be coming from lots of different places. And then to, once it's identified, to try to reframe it a way that um she feels more of a sense of control so um i like that so she's not as like a victim of it as much as she's a part of it yeah yeah i mean for example i have a friend in spain who who did his PhD research on psychotherapy assisted with MDMA, which is also known as ecstasy or molly or whatever. It's very useful in psychotherapy because it reduces the anxiety and the fear of the person who takes it. So once you've established a rapport with a therapist and then you can take some MDMA and have therapy, it enables the person to talk about a traumatic experience.

So he specializes in working with women who've suffered from sexual trauma and they haven't responded to any other type of therapy wow and his success rates are incredible oh that's dynamite yeah and what he's doing with them is is see the thing about ptsd is that people are afraid to um face the experience the memory so it pops up it comes up in dreams it manifests physiologically and digestive issues or skin problems or back pain or lots of different ways um but like so many other things in life the only way to get past it is to go through it you're never going to run away from

it you're never going to get away so you have to turn and face it but that's really hard because it's become this giant monster chasing you you know and um mdma can help people turn and so they turn and they re-experience this they they get back into what happened whether it was the rape or the the war trauma or whatever it was and they are they're able to reframe the experience now because they're re-experiencing it but with a sense of control and so from that point on in their lives they remember it differently and it lets some of the the air out of the balloon you know it it drains some of the power out of the experience so um you know getting to this person we don't know what is the source of these feelings but it's important not to go through this alone so if she can't afford a therapist or can't find a therapist i hope she'll at least

talk about this stuff in depth with a good friend yeah yeah yeah i think that's a good start especially like since you know it's far away if i'm sure they're probably friends or someone who can help you find somebody locally um yeah if we find a resource or something that we see if we can find a general like saudi arabia or middle eastern resource then we'll put a couple links up you know you remind me these days a lot of people are doing therapy online um so maybe she's not limited to saudi arabia that's a good point if she can call us someone online and if she can listen to the pot then we'll put a link up as well young lady uh to see if there's some online opportunities um we'll see what we can find we're not going to promise but we'll try

yeah um we had one more call that came in that we thought maybe you could be helpful with and i know that was general i was just thinking you know maybe with depression and stuff but i certainly appreciate you yeah my wife's a psychiatrist and she's actually thinking about the reason i know this thing about online is she's thinking about starting to do therapy online because you know we live all different places yeah the world and let us know we'd love to try and send her some clientele if we you know who knows yeah yeah it's it's an interesting world um we hit him with the off-speed stuff first this one's definitely more in your wheelhouse okay i'm from california i'm a 27 year old i've been struggling with the topic of monogamy. We're pretty much married. We have a four-year-old daughter together,

but we don't have sex very much or ever. I've been hitting the gym. I've been getting really fit. My confidence is skyrocketing. There's many women out there that I'm, you know, that I see trying to talk to me and stuff, and I don't know what to do, if I should just you know, do my

thing, break things off. I don't know. The relationship's kind of broken, and I feel like you know, we're not really in this relationship together. We're kind of just there for the kid.

I even brought up the topic of, you know, open relationship, and part of me was joking, part of me wasn't, and she gave me the ultimatum of, okay, well, if you want to do that, then does that mean I get to sleep with other dudes? That's just his conundrum. Well. And, yeah, we're not asking anything specifically. We just thought we would listen to that together.

Yeah, no, I mean, I feel like he got to the moment of truth there and he stopped. Like, does it mean she gets to sleep with other dudes? Because it sounds to me like she's open to the idea. Right. So what's the problem? So at that point, he needs to be, if he believes that for himself, then he should be able to believe that for her as well. Sure. Out of respect even.

Right. And then be able to voice that. Right. And that out of respect even right and then be able to voice that right and that's probably going to be very scary to do because you're gonna have to be vulnerable there right but again look at what look at this essence of the vulnerability what what are you afraid of you're going to lose the relationship sounds to me like you're pretty much ready to walk away from it anyway so what what's he really have to lose right right um that's a great point you know it's like yeah it might feel better to walk away or to cheat because then your ego is protected yeah you're in control of it yeah but you're you're being you're lying

you know and you're fucking up your daughter's life and you're you know so and you're being, you're lying, you know, and you're fucking up your daughter's life and you're, you know, so. And you're going to be living those lies then. Then you're going to be carrying around lies and you're going to feel like a liar. And that's not going to make you feel good. And then you got this little girl growing up with all this anger and distrust and, you know, how's she going to relate to men in the future? You know, listening to her mom cry and you know calling you a liar i mean i i think the the thing is we we forgive ourselves for lying because we think we're avoiding hurting people but in the end we hurt them worse and we hurt ourselves because

you know you when you're living a lie you know when you're not real and being real is always better i mean unless you're a fucking pedophile or something yeah and even then being honest with yourself about what it is you want to do will help you not do it right you know wow man i don't think some of the that's some of the truest stuff i've ever heard man that we think we when we lie that we're protecting people or that we're actually going to end up hurting them more. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

So in that case, I would say, you know, he got to the moment where he raised it with her and she's like, okay, is this a two-way street? And then he stopped. Like, if it is a two-way street, then, hey, you guys could end up having a great time. That's true, man. It could be a four-way street. Put up a four-way stop sign, you know? It could become an intersection. But, yeah, I think just being able to be brave in moments of communication is just, you know, it's something that, I mean, I think about all the time and that I'm learning about in my own life.

And it's just so great having you here today to help us think about some of this stuff, man, and talk about it. Thanks. Yeah, it's super cool, man. It's super, super cool to have somebody that's able to communicate on a regular man's level. You don't communicate to me like you're better than me. We're probably worse than you if we really did an analysis. No, but I appreciate it, it man it makes me feel uh it doesn't because sometimes i think a lot of guys feel afraid to you know not

be smart they're afraid to talk to somebody that's smarter than them because that person is just going to push that they're smart and not that they're also human. And I think that that makes people feel uncomfortable, you know? Yeah. But you don't do that. Or to me, you don't, man. Well, I'm not that smart. That's the thing. Anyway, I don't know what I'm trying to say.

I'm just trying to say thank you. Well, thank you, man. That's what I'm trying to say. That's cool. Yeah, and it's also, I mean, to blow some smoke your way, one of the best things that's happened in my life since Sex and the Dawn came out is somehow I've gotten to hang out with comedians a lot. And, you know, it just sort of feels like a natural community. And I'm sort of like an honorary member somehow.

Yeah. I fucking love it. I love it i love it because it's so it's it's like i was thinking on the drive over here laughing is like a brain orgasm it it just happens you know it's a it's a physiological reaction you have to something yeah it is a fascinating moment yeah it's magical i mean i know you said fuck magic but i think it's real magic. It's not a trick, you know? And what I love about hanging out with you guys is you're so fucking honest. And I think that's something I didn't realize when I watched comics from a distance on TV or whatever. It's like, okay, they're performers and it's an act but now that i've gotten to know uh a lot of of comedians i realize that the comedy comes out of uh courage of being honest with yourself and it's really it's fucking it's an

honor for me to hang out with people like you and simon and joe and brian callan and like you're all you all have that in common you're all like really sincere thoughtful people yeah it's great thanks man yeah I think that's a goal I think that's I don't know if it's a goal but it's something that I do want to be you know because I think you know when you when I look back on some of my life I don't always know if I was that way not because I didn't want to be because i was had created this other you know like you said this protective world where um i don't know who i was really but if you get stuck in that world you run out of material yes a hundred percent because i mean the material is in your

fears that's what's funny only in the last two years my comedy and my whole life has changed so much i think um yeah and i think some of it is just uh because i'm just trying to learn more about who i am and just trying to have feelings yeah um but it's been fascinating man you know i got into sex at dawn and i'll recommend this book to anybody like and you know and i don't want anybody to think that we're saying that or that i'm saying anyway that if you're in a healthy successful marriage or anything like that that you need to run around on your spouse or or anything like that if you're in a healthy, successful marriage or anything like that, that you need to run around on your spouse or anything like that. If you feel comfortable and you guys are having a good time, as far as I'm concerned, go and live your joy and more power

to you. And I think that everybody finds whatever works for them. But if you're out there and you're uncomfortable, then maybe some of this conversation helped with some of that or made you think about some things. This book, Sex at Dawn, when I first started reading it, I listened, I will listen to it a lot. But I didn't want to hear it at first. I shut it off after the beginning, because some of it to me felt kind of anti-Christian a little bit, right? And I'm not judging you or anything, but this was the experience that I had. But then I thought to myself, well, dude, you're not gonna, you know, you can't be an open person if you don't listen to stuff. And if you don't, and then I listened to it and I loved it. And I didn't think like it was anti-Christian. I thought it made me just realize that there's a lot of things in our past and in our lives and in our society

and in our evolution that have formed some of the ways that we live now that aren't even choices that I've made, but they're just kind of templates that I've kind of fallen into or that the river of my existences has passed through these certain banks that have always been there. And it made me just start to think about things more. through these certain banks that have always been there. And it made me just start to think about things more. And I don't feel any different at the end, but I do feel like I have just more questions and I'm more able to listen to new things. And this was a fascinating read for me, man. It was really, really cool, dude. It opened me up in more ways than I thought.

There's a lot of stuff about masturbation in there. Yeah. Well, look, that's the dark arts, dude. I'm trying to stay off of it. Oh, we have the gift for you, too, man, one of these Ridge wallets. So these things are dope, dude. I didn't like mine at first. Wow. But I love it.

And I didn't mean to knock your book at all. Does it come with money? There's no money in there? How kind of wallet is this, man? But they're really, really cool, man. What is it? It's just a new type of wallet is this? But they're really, really cool, man What is it? It's just a new type of wallet So it's like you

So it's just this basically, right? But you don't have to keep it in your back pocket anymore And you put it in your front pocket And at first I didn't like it But three days into it And I am hooked now Nice But we have a couple you can choose from

One that you like And yeah Oh, different colors? Yeah, some different assortments. You'll have to take one with you. Oh, thank you. What about the new project that you're working on that you mentioned? What's that going to be?

That's called Civilized to Death. And it's sort of an expansion of some of the things that we talked about in Sex at Dawn. It's a look at how the animal that we evolved to be is sort of out of place in the modern world. And it gets into some of the stuff I said about distrusting voices that tell you to question your appetites, you know, to not listen to your body because i i think the basically the story we've been told is that human beings are these horrible monsters and we need society culture to keep us in check so we don't kill each other and you know rape and pillage and it's thomas hobbes who said that before the state human life was solitary poor and nasty brutish and short right that's propaganda it's wrong there's no scientific basis for any of that so the book's in a re-examination of what kind of

animal is a human being what kind of species are we yeah and um to what extent is civilization a benefit or a detriment to our our existence yeah it's interesting because even when i was listening to sex at dawn i was like wow some of the you know some of the ways from the past we couldn't put onto now they wouldn't fit you know like if we wanted to live you know a lot would have to change if we wanted to live more to possibly what our nature is. Well, yes and no. I mean, the way I look at it is we live in an artificial world. There's no way around that. With seven and a half billion people on the planet, there's no way we're all going to just be hunter-gatherers or something. That's not going to happen. so we live in a zoo right but do you want to live

in the san diego zoo or the calcutta zoo yeah right like we can design an artificial environment and calcutta's in india some of our listeners wouldn't know that yeah is it yeah and it's a shitty zoo yeah it's just cages yeah right and most of them are unlocked too i bet uh but you know you go to san diego zoo and they design the enclosures with an understanding of what kind of animal this is. They don't just stick them in a cage and, you know, throw some food in there. Yeah. So, we can design our artificial worlds to replicate the world in which we evolved as a species. So, we can design our relationships for example

one of the things that makes people feel really good as you were commenting earlier with your aa experience is helping people yeah so that's part of our nature so if you're feeling depressed and disconnected one of the best things you can do is just go help people go volunteer somewhere at a hospital at a clinic work with animals work with kids lots of people need help and it'll help you to help them yes so it sounds like oh that's mother teresa bullshit it's not that's comes from an understanding of what kind of animal homo sapiens is right um that's true sleep is really important you're telling yourself you can get by in four hours of sleep at night you're full of shit you can't you're an animal you're an animal that needs between seven and nine hours of sleep every

night that's just the way it is yeah just like you need a certain amount of aerobic exercise to be healthy you need a certain diet these things can't be ignored. So understanding what kind of an animal Homo sapiens is, is essential for designing a life that's going to be fulfilling. Yeah, it's fascinating, man. Yeah, I never wanted to know. I think we're at a place in history where a lot of people want to start to know more about you know who we are and get the most out of their life i think we're i think we've come to the end of the road really yeah wow um so dude i i'd love to just have you back sometime and talk about just that yeah sure because i yeah i have a million thoughts on that i'd love to get into it but um is that okay with you sure if we

do it some other time? Anytime. Chris Ryan, thank you so much. We'll share all your links and everything. I'm happy to meet a friend of a friend, man. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, dude. Now I'm just floating on the breeze

And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take a little time For me to set that parking brake and let myself unwind. Shine that light on me. I'll sit and tell you my story.

Shine on me. And I will find a song I will sing it just for you And now I've been moving way too fast On the runaway train with a heavy load in my hands Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite and welcome to Kite Club, the heavy load of my head. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite, and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner.

The answer may shock you. Sometimes I'll interview my friends. Sometimes I won't. And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head. You have three new voice messages. A lot of people are talking about Kite Club. I've been talking about Kite Club for so long. Longer than anybody else.

So great. Hi, it's me. It's Theo. Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker. Charmaine. I'll take a quarter pounder with cheese and a McFlurry. Sorry sir, but our ice cream machine is broken. I think Tom Hanks just butt dialed me.

Anyway, first rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club. Second rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club. Third rule, like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts or watch us on youtube yeah and yes don't worry my brad pitt impression will get better