Transcript of #2516 - Rowan Jacobsen New

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All day! Yep. All right. Very nice to meet you, man.

You too, thanks for having me. Thank you.

And thanks for doing this work, because you want to talk about a subject that's confused so many people. Is the sun good for you? Is the sun killing you? Why does it give you vitamin D if it's bad for you? Bad for you, why do people get skin cancer if it's good for you?

Yeah, it's super complicated and the messaging has not sort of admitted that and that was, yeah, a big impetus for the book.

When— what was your opinion of sun exposure before you started writing this?

So I had, you know, I had inherited the conventional wisdom from the institutions that it was really bad. At the same time, I will admit that my instincts were that maybe it wasn't as bad as they were leading me to believe, because whenever I was in the sun, I felt good. And I live in Vermont. By the time winter was reaching like month 6, I felt bad.

Right?

Right.

So I was like, there's more here than we're being told.

Yeah, that was my wife's opinion. She's like, the sun can't be bad. It always feels good when you go out there. I'm like, oh, it's a little more complicated than that. But that is the instinct. Like, it feels great when you're in the sun.

Like, ah.

It's like your body wants it.

Your body wants it. I mean, we now know that it literally triggers the release of opiates in the brain, sunlight. So yeah, your body wants it and your body rewards you when you get it.

So what is the issue? Well, let's go back to the beginning. So you had this idea that sun exposure is probably giving people cancer and sunscreen is good. You need to wear sunscreen, stay out of the sun. So when you started going into the research, what made you shift your opinion?

So it really started for me like 7 or 8 years ago. I was on this like science journalism fellowship. So I was just doing research and some of those studies hit, the one about opiate release in the brain and other studies showing that when light hits skin, cognition actually improves. Like your metabolism cranks up a little bit when the body feels sunlight coming in. And I thought, that's interesting. That's all good stuff. Then I came across a couple other studies that seemed to indicate that sunlight could lower blood pressure, which was really interesting. So then, you know, I still had the sense sunlight bad, right? So then I remember just like Googling like, so how much does sunlight like shorten your lifespan? And like the punchline is sunlight seems to extend your lifespan. So when I hit that, I was like, why are we not hearing this?

Yeah.

So that was the beginning.

And so then, so what is the problem? Like what, what is the issue with sunlight? Like when you think about skin cancer, what are the confounding factors that lead to skin cancer? Are we completely aware of that?

It's more complicated than we thought. So sunlight does increase your risk of skin cancer, but it, depending on the type of skin cancer you're talking about, it's not necessarily like a linear relationship. So yes, in general, too much sun increases your risk of skin cancer. But yeah, the question is, what are the confounding factors? How important is skin cancer compared to these other things? If sunlight reduces your risk of other diseases, how does that weigh against the risk of skin cancer? So it's not the type of thing that can, you know, be done in a 30-second PSA.

Right. So, sun cancer that does cause skin cancer, or excuse me, sun exposure that does cause skin cancer, what is causing it? Why is it happening?

So, ultraviolet light, which is the most energy-intense part of the solar spectrum, when those photons of light hit your skin, they go inside, right? We absorb all wavelengths of light to a greater or lesser degree. And that super high-energy ultraviolet light, if it hits a DNA molecule, it can mess up the DNA molecule, and then that can lead to mutations and skin cancer. Then it can also indirectly cause skin cancer by creating what are called reactive oxygen species, which are free radicals, basically. Mm-hmm. So it energizes these atoms that start to steal electrons from other atoms, causes a little chain reaction, which is what a free radical is. So ultraviolet light can increase your free radicals and it can directly damage DNA. So that's why it can cause skin cancer. So it was basically that learning that one fact back in like the '40s and '50s that made scientists start to say, uh-oh, light, skin cancer, maybe we should think about how much sun we're getting.

But this wasn't universally accepted, right? There were some people that, even back then, thought that sun exposure was very healthy for you. Like, when did we figure out that sun causes the body to produce vitamin D?

Yeah, that was an important part, and it's a big part of the story, I think, because that was really back in the '20s that we figured that out. And then even a little earlier, we realized that sunlight could prevent rickets.

Rickets?

Yeah, so rickets is a soft bone disease. Like, if you don't get enough vitamin D, calcium in your bones when you're a kid, when you're a baby, you get soft bones, you get rickets, really bad disease. And in the Industrial Revolution, kids started getting rickets. Farm kids never got rickets. Then suddenly kids are working in factories, they're living in cities that are choked with coal smog, they're living in tenement buildings, they're never seeing the sun, and they all start getting rickets, late 1800s.

Is nutrition a factor in that?

Vitamin D, it was all vitamin D. At first they thought maybe it was vitamin A, but it turned out that was how vitamin D was discovered, was some doctors figured out that it could solve rickets in kids, and then they figured out that if sun hit skin, that's how we made vitamin D. Then they figured out—

How did they figure that out?

They tested, they did some tests on, dogs. Actually, one of the guys who figured it out, he had a hunch that that's what it was. Like, they noticed that kids in the country wouldn't get rickets and kids in the city did get rickets. So they're like, "I wonder if it's sunlight." So then a guy took dogs and— and this was, I think, Scotland— stuck them in a— they actually thought it was dietary. He stuck them inside in this, like, little warehouse and fed them oatmeal, which is what everyone in Scotland ate at the time. And the dogs got rickets, and he thought it was the oatmeal. He's like, "Okay, so something about diet." But then he got lucky, 'cause he had deprived the dogs of sunlight, and that's why they got rickets. So then eventually they realized that light hitting cholesterol molecules in the skin actually converts the molecules to vitamin D. So vitamin D is downstream of cholesterol, but it takes that same ultraviolet light that can screw up your DNA. It actually breaks a bond in the cholesterol molecule, which allows it to, it gives it some movement, and it flips around into a new form that's vitamin D.

So once they figured that out, then they're like, "Sun's really good for you." So we had this era in the '20s, '30s, and into the '40s when everyone thought sun would cure everything, and they, like, went after it hard.

Really?

Yeah, like, parents would send their kids up into the Alps in, like, the '20s to institutes for heliotherapy. Kids would ski around in their underwear, take classes in their underwear. There's awesome photos from this era. Like, the instructors are in their underwear in the mountains outside in Switzerland teaching the kids, and everyone looks really healthy, right? So there's kind of like this idea that you couldn't get too much light, so people are literally burning themselves on purpose for health.

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Is that the issue? Is burning a giant part of the issue?

Yeah, so to give it away, now it looks like for melanoma, which is the most dangerous type of skin cancer, it's associated with burning strongly, but not with like gentle, moderate, everyday sun exposure.

So how much of a factor is skin type? Like people that are pale or have freckles and red hair and blonde hair, like how much of a factor is that in skin cancer? And then they mitigate that by gentle, slow exposure, like a little bit here, a little bit there, and slowly build up.

Yeah, huge. Skin type is kind of everything. People who have really dark skin basically don't get sun-induced skin cancer almost never. And the authorities don't tend to talk about that, 'cause they want things to be, they wanna have these one-size-fits-all recommendations. But those recommendations to basically always avoid the sun are written for the super fair people, especially if you have red hair, orange freckles, then you actually have a mutation in your melanin gene that makes you super susceptible to skin cancer from sunlight. So if you've got that phenotype, lots of moles, red hair, freckles, you do have to be really careful. Yeah. And you can only do so much. Like, you're not gonna tan that much anyway. Your melanin's just different. Everybody else, yeah, you're much less susceptible and you can tan, you know, you can make more melanin pretty easily through tanning.

I wonder what, if any, effect, have you ever heard of that, I can't remember the name of the peptide, but there's a peptide that people are taking now that causes their body to generate melanin, and they get really dark.

Yeah, yeah.

It's really weird.

Yeah, and I don't know what's going on there exactly. It seems like that peptide is maybe making you— there's things called photosensitizers that make your skin super sens— like, you just absorb solar radiation really well then, but not necessarily in a good way., and that can make you make tons of melanin to try to compensate. So I wonder, that peptide might be triggering melanin as a compensation mechanism for extra protection from sunlight, or maybe it's just making melanin happen independently of sunlight.

Yeah, did you put it into Perplexity? Oh, here it is. Melaton, melanotan, melanotan, melanotan, synthetic peptide analog of the naturally occurring hormone A melanocyte stimulating hormone stimulates the body's melanocytes to produce melanin, resulting in a dark tan. It's largely unreg— unreg— excuse me, unregulated, illegal in many regions for cosmetic purposes, and carries significant health risks. All right, what's the risks? Uh, it's not approved by the FDA, uh, for cosmetic use, and unregulated market means purity— okay, but that's unregulated. Notable risks include dermatological issues, rapid and uneven darkening of existing moles, the emergence of new moles and hyperpigmentation, concerns that could mask or accelerate the development of melanoma. Uh, what is this? Potentially damaging erections.

What? Raging erections.

Oh, that's right. This apparently gives people raging erections.

Why?

Prolonged, painful, and potentially damaging erec— damaging. Imagine you get an erection It goes so hard you redline the penis. Medical and dermatological organizations strongly advise against the use of melanotan because it's unapproved. There are no clinically established safe dosages.

Well, weird, because that, so alpha-MSH, the thing that it is mimicking, is that's how your body makes vitamin D. Melanin. That's how everybody's supposed to do it.

You gotta see the before and afters because they're kind of bonkers. I've seen some people get super— well, the problem is it's Instagram. You never know what's real. That's— that guy got a little tan. Let's see if there's any— okay, look how pale that— see, but that's not— how do we know if that's real?

Just like there's like a light on him.

Right, and then he's in a fucking dark closet in the last picture.

Before and after photos I've seen.

Is there a— that one right there, the low— the— no, the one— yeah, that one. Look at that guy.

Well, you know, it's a look. It's an interesting look.

He injected himself with unregulated tanning peptide, melanotan— melanotan 2. Click on that.

Seems like a joke a little bit.

No, no, this guy, this is the guy that I saw online. This guy's— he's the test rabbit. This dude went hard.

Did he get an erection too?

Yeah, he died from that.

I don't know.

So his before and afters. So let's see what his— he just— okay. Yeah, he just got darker and darker and darker. But I wonder if like, if I understand that it's unregulated, but if it was regulated and this is something they're trying to work with right now with peptides and make them regular. See, that's— the photo's dark though. I mean, that's like a shitty iPhone 1 camera. That's crazy. If that's real, like, this is nuts. There's something going on there. Like, you know what it looks like? It looks like those bodybuilder guys who use that, that, that ink, that dye on their skin to make themselves darker so their muscles pop out more. [LAUGHTER] So here's, here's better. Tanning Log Photos. These are better photos. That's crazy. But I wonder if that offers skin protection.

It would definitely offer some skin— I mean, if it is melanin, it's definitely— I mean, that guy can probably be outside all day.

Yeah, so that's the question. Is that available to someone who's pale? And if someone is pale, see if you can find an example of someone who's pale who took it. 'Cause you would think like, oh, well maybe that, maybe just we need to do studies and figure out what the dosage is and figure out how to activate that aspect of it.

Melanin clearly protects you from skin cancer. Like if you have super dark skin, like, you know, African ancestry, you're blocking, like your melanin is absorbing like 97, 98% of the UV rays. It's super effective.

But didn't Bob Marley die from skin cancer?

He did.

Pretty crazy. Okay, this is one.

Wow. It looks like the same person. Hard to tell without the face.

Same mold.

Yeah, it looks like the same mold. That looks pretty good.

But I would just also, wouldn't, if you were trying to sell some of this stuff in maybe nefarious ways, this would be an easy one to market. Tough and, you know.

Definitely. Look, this is part of the unregulated market problem. Is we don't know. And also, you know, you're getting 99% bro science on this stuff. You know, like, who's—

Screams bro science.

Screams it from the top of the hills. What legitimate scientist is out there injecting himself with Melanotan?

But the other thing is, if you do it naturally, right, if you just get a little sun every day and slowly build up, you're not just making melanin, you're also, increasing your body's damage repair system. Like you have all these like nucleotide excision repair, things that fix your DNA and fix cells that have gotten screwed up. And that will also ramp up every day. And it's not just sunlight, like exercise, same thing. Like anything that stresses the body a little bit, it's like hormesis, right? Mm-hmm. So all those things are gonna cause, your damage repair system to crank up and be ready. So you could probably want those to, like the melanin and the damage repair to like go up together.

Right, so you would wanna, if let's say studies were done, let's say we found what the effective and safe dose is and how to administer it, you would wanna do it along with sun exposure slowly to try to ramp up your body's ability.

Added note on this, Uh, this happened 14 years ago.

Whoa.

Which is strange. Here's some of the side effects he said, but he also said he's pretty much impervious to UV at this point.

Increased libido. Didn't see that one much either. He said he didn't get it. Wait a— okay, sides are decreased appetite, very mild nausea, more for some, none for me, decreased libido— increased libido. He said he didn't see that one much either. Some get facial flushing like a niacin dose. Never got that either. And the most strange thing is that it feels really good to stretch, like when you first wake up. Interesting. Huh. Um, did you do it for the skin coloring? Yes, I did it for the skin coloring. I'm pretty much impervious to UV at this point. I have faded about 25% since returning from Florida January 31st. Will be dosing again probably in March. Is this guy still alive?

That's my question.

14 years, what is that, 20?

Click on that link where his profile. Let's see if homeboy's alive.

I'm afraid to see where this takes us.

Right, yeah. He's not.

Is this Reddit?

Uh, see, a year ago he's commenting, I never did it subtle.

Okay, so a year ago he's still alive or someone has taken over his account. In theory, you could use an old school quartz tanning lamp. Okay, so you could tan with it.

And he's in a weird Reddit there, so we gotta stop looking.

Why?

I don't, I mean, this is not for the show, but he's in a weird Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

That's why I was afraid to go that way. That's a problem. Well, only crazy people are willing to try something like that. Like, do you remember that there was a guy, God, I think it was on Oprah or one of those shows, where he was taking, was it silver?

Yeah, colloidal silver.

That's right, colloidal silver. And his whole, his skin turned blue permanently.

Yeah.

Like a Smurf.

Yeah.

Poor guy.

Yeah.

And he wound up dying. Yeah.

What, when, and how did it kill him?

I don't know if it killed him, but he's, I believe he died young. That's homeboy. Not good.

Yeah, that's just not a good look.

You would think you'd start turning a little blue and you'd go, hey, maybe I need to back off this colloidal silver.

Papa Smurf dies.

Yeah, I mean, what the fuck, dude? That guy, I mean, maybe he could have gotten some lanthanum and evened that out. —It'd just been a nice chocolate, you know, like a bluish chocolate.

I mean, he looks delicious, I'll say that.

Yeah, this is argyria, argyria, the rare disease that turns people blue, caused by a buildup of silver in the body which discolors the skin. Wow. 2013. He died from unrelated causes. Whatever that means. I mean, anybody's taking that much colloidal silver, you're probably making a lot of other mistakes.

I mean, yeah, like—

You're a risky dude.

So many options.

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Um, back to Bob Marley.

Yes.

He did die of skin cancer, and that confuses a lot of people. So he had melanoma on his toe.

Right.

So, and that was a kind of melanoma that's not caused by the sun. And everybody gets it, no matter what race you are, everybody gets it at the same rate, which is quite uncommon. They know it's not caused by the sun, but— it complicates things for people, because people are like, "I got melanoma on my toe?" And they think it's from the sun. And they're like, "How did that happen?" Right? Like, what's melanoma doing down there? But so, it does— not all melanomas are caused by the sun. There's, you know, most probably are, but it gets really weird with melanoma. It's associated with— burning, with intermittent sun exposure, like you work in an office all year, and then you go to Cancún and get fried, that's a pretty good recipe for melanoma. History of sunburns also will double your risk. Chronic exposure, where you have an outdoor job every day, lower than average risk of melanoma.

Really?

Yeah, so it gets weird.

Like landscapers or something.

Landscapers have, outdoor workers have fewer, have a lower incidence of melanoma than office workers.

Wow.

And we don't hear that.

No, no. I mean, I was looking at Instagram the other day and some poor guy had this— I don't know what happened to his face, but he had some sort of skin cancer and they had to take a graft and his— it was on his nose. So it was like a flap of skin was like almost covering over his eye. And you know, his message was wear sunscreen. This is what happened to me.

Well, so I mean, yeah. So I don't wanna downplay skin cancer 'cause it sucks when you get it. If it's, you know, they have to cut off a hunk of your ear or something, that definitely sucks. Even if it's not life-threatening, sucks.

Yeah.

So, but, and so yeah, like, but that's generally from overexposure, like—

Burning.

Burning. All the experts I was fucking with said don't burn.

Right, burning is the one that people always say that it's not just burning, it's burning causes damage that starts to, appear years later.

Yeah, and there's, there's dialing in on that more and more. It can start much like burns during childhood is actually the highest association for melanoma.

Really?

Don't burn when you're a kid, so we're all screwed.

Oh, that sucks. That sucks, cuz I fucking cooked myself as a kid.

Same here. I grew up in Florida, fried, you know.

Well, when I was a kid in the '70s and '80s, you know, you wanted to get a tan, especially when I lived in Boston. It was cold as shit in the winter. When it got warm, you know, you're a Vermont guy. Yeah. You got out there, you like, ah, put baby oil on, we fried.

Totally, I was just looking at some of those Johnson Baby Oil ads from like the '60s and '70s. Oh my God, yeah.

Yeah, it was basically cooking lube.

Totally.

Yeah, it just helped you cook better.

But you remember George Hamilton, like the actor?

Yeah.

Mr. Tan, he was all about that. Just the other day I was like, how's he doing? 87 and ridiculously healthy.

Really?

Yeah, he's going strong.

Yeah, I met that guy. He did an episode of NewsRadio once. Yeah, he was tan as fuck. Yeah, that was his thing.

That was his thing. It became, yeah, what he was known for. And still, he's still going.

So he's still tan?

Yeah, you should see him. He looks great.

What does he look like? Pull up a photo of George Hamilton.

I mean, great for an 87-year-old.

Yeah, look at him, still tan.

Tan and shiny.

What a weird thing to be known for. He's the guy who gets tan. You know what I'm saying? I mean, try to remember a role that he played.

That's true. I think he was Dracula in some bad 1970s, like, comedy. Look at that. That's a tan right there.

Right, so how was he getting it though? Like, I remember when I was a kid in Boston, a lot of people used tanning beds, especially in the wintertime.

And they still do. Like, those are actually, like, On the rise. And they do, they seem to raise your risk of melanoma for sure. There you go, that's how we did it.

Ah, look, he's got a Reflecta Tan thing. So he's just out there getting sunlight all the time. And he didn't look bad. That's, you know, that's a weird one, right?

He claims he's never had skin cancer, I think.

Well, he probably was doing it so often that his body was prepared for it, right? Look at that photo of him with that lady. In the corner. Yeah, look at that. That's nuts.

See, that's the thing. I think, like, if you're getting that regular dosage, your body is producing all of these compounds whose entire job is to make sure your cells don't turn cancerous. Because, you know, living things have been working on this for 500 million years. Like, they've been getting hammered by the sun every day, and they gotta deal with it.

Right.

So it's when, it seems like when your skin is totally unprepared and you shock it with like a massive dose that it's not ready for, then you're in trouble. Like that's the kind of thing that triggers trouble.

Was there any pushback on this research? Like when you first started examining this and realizing that sun exposure has a lot of benefits, Were any dermatologists saying, "Hey, this is dangerous information. You shouldn't say this"?

Hell yeah. I've been denounced multiple times by the American Academy of Dermatology. Really? Like officially. They send an official letter when I write an article and they say, "Nobody should be getting any sun exposure." That's their opinion?

No one should be getting any sun exposure regardless of the benefits, the vitamin D, the—

No sun exposure without protection. From either sunscreen or clothing.

Wow.

And if that makes you vitamin D deficient, take a pill. So that's what needs to change, 'cause those pills haven't panned out in tests. They don't work like natural D does for whatever reason.

Really?

Yeah, they don't work at all.

What do you mean?

So everyone thought, like back in the '80s, '90s, everyone started noticing, scientists started noticing that people who naturally had people with lower amounts of vitamin D in their blood had higher rates of all like the classic chronic diseases. So they started thinking, okay, vitamin D, it's like a magic pill almost. It'll cure, it'll reduce everyone's risk of all these diseases if we raise their rates of D. So they started recommending vitamin D pills, which I think are still like the number one supplement in the world.

I take it.

So then they did all these clinical trials to prove that it would help. Huge, huge clinical trials, tens of thousands of people, follow-ups that went for many years. None of them showed a benefit.

No benefit in terms of your immune response?

No benefit for any condition.

Now, did they take vitamin D along with vitamin K2 and with magnesium? Because that's what's recommended.

So I don't, I mean, there were a bunch of different—

Apparently vitamin D by itself is not effective. That you need vitamin D with K2 and magnesium, and I think there might be another one. Well, see, put that into Perplexity, please. See what it says, like, what are the benefits of vitamin D and what should it be taken with? 'Cause I think magnesium and K2 are the big ones, and that together they have a sort of a synergistic effect.

Yeah, that could be, like, yeah, I'd be curious.

Yeah, I think vitamin D by itself, the body has a problem absorbing it. It's like, there's a lot of things like that, like zinc is like that, you need an ion Biotin monophore to absorb zinc, so you take it with quercetin.

Yeah. Well, one thing, D, the way you're, it naturally comes in through the skin, and it comes in with a whole bunch of related compounds.

Right.

And so yeah, I do think there's sort of a synergistic effect when it's combined with the right things.

But D from the sun has always been known as the best way to get it. For sure. The best way to get vitamin D, the most effective, the healthiest way is through sun exposure.

Yeah, that's how the design's supposed to work.

Perplexity says vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, build strong bones and teeth, support muscles and nerves, plays a key role in immune function. It's best absorbed when taken with a meal or a snack that contains some fat and often paired with calcium for bone health. Um, what— so please put in what are the benefits of vitamin D taken with K2 and magnesium. See if it says that, because this is what my doctor who is a vitamin specialist recommends. Benefits when taken with K2 and magnesium. Dun dun dun. Okay. Taking vitamin D together with vitamin K2 and magnesium can make each of them work more effectively, especially for bones and heart, as long as the doses are appropriate for you. The trio mainly improves how your body handles calcium. Interesting. D helps you absorb it. Magnesium, uh, helps activate D, and K2 helps send calcium into bones instead of arteries. D increases calcium absorption from your gut and supports bone, muscle, and immune function. Magnesium required to activate vitamin D. Low magnesium can blunt vitamin D's effect and also directly support bone structure and many enzymes. K2 activates proteins that move calcium into bones and teeth and keep it out of the arteries and soft tissues, helping bone and cardiovascular health.

Potential benefits of the combo: better bone support, heart and artery protection, more efficient vitamin D use. Okay, so the doctor is correct. So maybe that's the problems that these people were taking it with low magnesium, low calcium, didn't have K2.

Yeah, I thought I'd be— like, I'd be curious if like if there was an effect on disease incidence for that combination. I don't know, 'cause the D on its own, yeah, it didn't show any effect, but sun exposure—

Let's put that in. Does vitamin D taken on its own have any health benefits? Let's see what it says to that, 'cause I'd never heard that, that D on its own was not effective at all. I've just heard that it was minimally effective, that you had to take it with other—

It seems like it only helps people who have who are really deficient. Like if you're super low, like below like 16 nanograms per milliliter, then probably it's a good idea. But like for people who already had like at least 20 nanograms per milliliter, it didn't seem to have any of these benefits that they were seeing in people who naturally had high rates of sun exposure.

It says, yes, vitamin D on its own has several well-proven health benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and immunity.

Just like a general answer.

Huh. Bone strength and fracture prevention, muscle function, adequate—

I didn't add own, sorry.

What's that?

I didn't, I missed the word own, taken on it.

On its own.

That's probably why the answer was weird.

So let's see. Yes, has clear proven benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and correcting deficiency.

Yeah, so that's gonna be for people who have super low levels.

Preventing rickets, there it is.

Yeah, but so they had thought that it might reduce incidence of all these other diseases based on what they were seeing for people who naturally had high levels through sun exposure, and it didn't. So then—

Wait a minute, people who had high levels through sun exposure?

Yeah, 'cause your natural level of vitamin D is sort of a direct meter of how much sunshine you get.

Right, but this is natural level. You're not talking about supplementation at all. Right.

Okay. So that was why, like, people who had high levels of D without supplementation have lower rates of like every disease you can think of.

Right.

So the hope was that raising everyone's D to those levels would have the same effect, and it didn't. Like, New England Journal of Medicine actually did an editorial in 2022 saying, "Stop prescribing D, it doesn't work," which is sad.

God, that seems, —incorrect though, because if you're taking it with magnesium and K2, it seems that they do work synergistically, and there seems to be proven health benefits. That one of the problems, I think, is like, I, I think people generally want to avoid recommending supplementation for some reason.

Mm-hmm.

It's kind of a weird thing, like they want to dismiss it. Like, I had a doctor once that told me, don't bother taking vitamins. Just eat a balanced diet. And I was like, look at you. Guy looked like shit.

He didn't look as good as you, right?

He looked terrible.

Doctors, yeah, I'm amazed how poor, what poor health they generally seem to be displaying.

I can't take it, I mean, it's so hard to take seriously a guy with a gut when, well, he just, he looked terrible. And he was telling me that I just need a healthy diet. And I'm like, okay, I do have a healthy diet, but also I feel different when I take vitamins. And my blood work, reflects that.

Yeah, I noticed that when I started going to all the conferences of the sun researchers, and they're all in like the basements of hotels, and those guys all are as pasty as it gets. Like, do none of you guys like, you know, practice what you preach, really?

How strange is it that human beings with all of our knowledge, with, I mean, obviously there's much more to learn, we're still confused about how we interact with our environment.

Yeah, absolutely, 100%.

With sun, which seems to be like, it's there, it's everywhere. It's like you're always in the sun in normal, in the normal world environment where human, outside of cities and all that stuff. It seems like we would have an understanding of what happens when you're interacting with sun.

Yeah, and light period, like light of all kinds. Like it seems like there's the sense in biology that light didn't matter. It's like, just ephemeral, which, you know, the quantum physicist 100 years ago understood that light and matter are just like two halves of the same coin, right? And that light totally affects the behavior of molecules. We're made of molecules. Light's going to matter. So I actually think like that's where I eventually got to with the book. I was like, we need to think about our light diets and our like lightscapes that we're, you know, surrounding ourselves with like more seriously than we have.

Well, it seems like your work is based entirely on the data. So what did these dermatologists have to say about the data if they're denouncing you and they're saying that, you know, this guy should not be listened to, the things you're saying are dangerous, like, but you're talking about data. So I don't understand how they can just make those flat statements like that.

Right. And what I think we just need to have a conversation about the data and, you know, there's no like right answer ahead of time.— but they don't— like, their job is to prevent skin cancer. So if that's your only job, you're gonna tell people, "Stay out of the sunlight." Forever. Forever, right? And no one can call you on that. No one can say, "Hey, like, I got skin cancer, it's your fault." Right, but doesn't sun exposure improve cardiovascular health and lower blood pressure?

Yeah.

And isn't cardiovascular disease a far more dangerous problem than skin cancer in terms of numbers?

It's number one. 20 million deaths a year, cardio. So anything that moves the needle on that is awesome, you know?

And it does.

And it seems to, like all the studies show it does. But they're all observational studies, right? You look at populations, you're like, oh, these people have more sun exposure, lower blood pressure, lower rates of cardiovascular disease. But then, you know, the other side will say, you know, correlation does not prove causation. Like, prove, show us that it's, You know, do your giant clinical study where you stick half the people in the sunlight and they live longer, which is not gonna happen.

Right, yeah, but it's like, are they willing to have a conversation with you?

They're not willing to, they don't wanna look outside of the sun and skin cancer question. Like, they're not willing to entertain any of the other benefits that are outside of their field. So there's got to be somebody out there who can be the generalist, who can like think about it holistically.

That seems so ignorant.

It's the state of science now. Like the science is, you know, like a field of micro-specialties.

Would you like some coffee?

Yeah, I'll take a little. That looks good when you're pouring it. It's also a very shiny press.

Oh yeah, French press. Cheers, sir. Cheers. Is coffee good for you?

Coffee is awesome for you. Coffee is shockingly good for you.

Talk to me, let's go.

It is fucking crazy how good coffee is for you. I've been like startled by the power of the evidence.

Yeah, I've read both. I've read it's bad for you, and I dismissed it because I'm biased. And I love coffee. And I just— it just tastes too good, it feels too good.

I like it.

But I've read a lot of benefits about it.

I think it's the best possible supplement.

Really?

If you think of it as a supplement, it's the best. And I think it's all due to mitochondrial function. I think it makes your mitochondria just spin, you know?

Mm. And is it particularly because of caffeine or coffee itself? Is the coffee bean?

You know, I mean, caffeine, I think it's caffeine, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's other stuff in coffee that's contributing, 'cause, you know, like tea doesn't seem to quite like deliver the goods like coffee does.

No.

But caffeine is actually, the plants are making it to kill bugs.

Right.

Right? Because it makes the bugs' mitochondria run out of control, and they basically like blow up. It does that to us, but we have these other like governors, like, that come in and slow down that ramp-up, so we get the nice ramp-up without the explosion. So it's good. So it makes— you know, we produce energy more efficiently with less wear and tear.

That's all I need to hear. I'm in. I just love coffee. I'm not giving it up. But I've heard many people say that— Michael Pollan had a really interesting anecdote. He laid off coffee for I think 3 or 4 months as an experiment, and then he had a cup of coffee and he said it was like taking a psychedelic. He said, "I just felt so amazing and the effect was so profound." He said, "I really wanted to do it only that way where I only take it very rarely, but then I fell right back into my old ways." He went right back.

Yeah. I remember that article. It was great. And also you said none of the— caffeine researchers touch the stuff. I'm like, that's not good. But yeah, he went right back to it, and I think he's a proud coffee drinker.

Yeah, he is. He went right back to it. But so have you had any conversations with these dermatologists that are denouncing you?

No, but I'd like to actually. I think—

Are they willing or have they avoided them?

They have so far really avoided. They just say, "We're not ready to look at any of that research." God, that's so weird. I think it's gonna change. I think actually, like I said, I think light medicine is actually gonna become very important in the next 10, 20 years, and dermatologists are kind of positioned to be the leaders on that stuff, 'cause skin is the primary interface with light for our bodies, and they should be experts on all this. Red light therapy is a big thing now. And dermatologists are doing that, even though the evidence isn't great for that, but I think there's probably something there. But they should basically, I think they need to be thinking more about all of these different wavelengths of light as healing modalities and how to work them into regular programs.

I've talked about this before, so I apologize to anybody listening, but I've essentially, I completely stopped my macular degeneration with red light therapy.

Wow, yeah.

Not just stopped it, but reversed it. Like, I don't need reading glasses anymore. I've been using a red light bed for about 2 years now, and from the time I started using it, within about a month, I started seeing benefits. And so Gary Brecko was on the podcast and explained it to me, and so I went out and bought one of these really expensive, it's like a tanning bed, this thing you lie in, and I do it 3 times a week for 20 minutes.

So all over?

Yep, naked, just lie down in there, and I keep my eyes open. And I went to a tanning bed once, not a tanning bed, a red light bed once at a health clinic, and they were like, you gotta wear these goggles and make sure you close your eyes before the light goes on. I was like, okay, I did all that. And apparently there's some benefit that even when blindfolded, it increases your vision.

Yeah, for sure, and again, I think mitochondria are part of the answer. There's a guy at University College London Glen Jeffrey, who this is his whole field, optometry and red light. And he has shown in multiple different animals, including humans, that red light improves mitochondrial function and improves vision.

Yeah, I mean, I'm 58, and for me to be 56 and saying I'm fucked, I had these fucking things everywhere. I had these reading glasses, I had them all over my house. I'd gotten up to 3X, these are the cheap Amazon ones. I had a nice pair, but I keep losing them, so I just went out and bought cheap ones. They seem to work, and it was just fine for looking at a computer, you know, reading my emails, reading my phone, and I needed them to read my phone. I don't need them anymore, like at all.

Yeah.

I don't use them anymore. My vision's not perfect. It's not as good as it was when I was 20. But it's way better than it was when I was 56.

And yeah, I think, so the mitochondria in the eyes have to fire faster than any mitochondria anywhere else in the body. The eyes burn through energy like no other cells, 'cause it's like, you know, it's kind of the toughest task. It's like they gotta go super fast. So they, yeah, those mitochondria need to be, on top of their game, and it seems like red light benefits that in particular.

What seems so closed-minded that these dermatologists aren't willing to say, maybe we're looking at just insufficient amount of data, maybe we're looking at this wrong, maybe the whole thing is much more nuanced, and maybe there's benefits if done correctly. I just don't understand why they're not— if there's all this data, which clearly you show in your book that there's a tremendous amount of data. Why?

You know, like, so there's this saying attributed to Max Planck, who's this quantum physicist, "Science advances one funeral at a time." Right? So I think we gotta let the old guard die off a little bit, but I guarantee there's a young generation coming in who's gonna be really interested in light and how they can use it.

Oh, certainly. Well, I think there's so many conversations available online now from actual researchers and people that have put in the time and put in the work and explored things from this position that like, hey, maybe the old guard are not correct. And the data seems to show that that's true.

Yeah. And it's fun. I mean, playing with light, it's super fun. So like, this is a way you can, you can like make your world a little bit richer is starting to think about this stuff.

Well, it's also like, don't you want to be informed? And if there's— if we do understand that it has an effect on mitochondria and there is all this evidence that red light seems to have some benefits, like, Wouldn't— I just don't understand how someone could be an expert in skin and ignore that.

Well, I think that— and they'll be— they won't object to the red. Some of them are using red light therapy because there's no risk of skin cancer from red. It's only the UV and maybe a little bit of the blue that contributes to skin cancer. So that— it's the UV where they get a little wigged out.

Yeah, but— but even that. It seems like there's a— like, in your book, you show there's a tremendous amount of data. There's health benefits to it. So I just don't understand.

And that data, it comes from all different other fields, like immunology, cardiology. So, and like scientists are sort of increasingly hesitant to trespass on their other domains.

Right.

Like they're not gonna walk across campus to the other building anymore.

Yeah.

And that needs to change, you know?

Yeah, we've had those discussions too with scientists that are super frustrated, especially when they try to get interdisciplinary groups together to study one particular thing and everyone's resisting because they have their own work that they're working on and they don't want to get involved. And it's just like, guys, this is what you're here for. There's not a lot of scientists. You got to do your job because like you're the only ones that are doing it. Without you guys, we're fucked. And if you're out there relying on old insufficient data, or, you know, you have this very small dataset that shows that there's negative outcomes to sunlight, and so you just throw the baby out with the bathwater, like, you're doing the whole field a massive disservice.

And the other part of it is that science, it's sort of very self-reinforcing. It's all grant-based, essentially. Like, if you're a scientist, you want to do a study, you have to apply for a grant to get the money to do the study.

Right, right.

And there's generally a handful of entities that are like handing out the grant money, and it's the old guys waiting to die who are gonna approve what they think is the truth. They're gonna fund the study that fits with what they already know about the world. So it's this kind of crazy system where the only way you can get money to do a study is if you're already telling them what they know.

Right.

Right, so it's very difficult to get funded to do something that goes against the grain. Increasingly so, and that's a problem.

And so much of it is dependent upon the ego of the people that are at the top of the organization.

Ego is definitely part of it.

It's a giant part of it because if they've based their entire career on telling you one thing that turns out to be incorrect, they're very reluctant to correct themselves.

Yeah, there's not just a— it's very rare to find the individual who's well-known in the field and is eager to self-correct, you know.

So have you had any conversations with any of these dermatologists?

No, but I'd love to.

Not one? That seems crazy. Have you reached out to any of them?

I have. I've reached out and I get the boilerplate. Like, we don't want anyone in the sun, take your D pills, doesn't matter. And the one that really, that I think has gotta change is the skin color question. 'Cause fine to go with the recommendations for avoiding sun, for people with fair skin, but for people with dark skin who have almost no risk from sun-induced skin cancer and can benefit hugely from things that will lower blood pressure and lower cardiovascular disease, it seems like you're not being fair to those people.

Not only that, it makes you feel better, which is very important just for sanity.

I mean, I think that gets underplayed. Like, mood, and happiness is kind of the whole deal, right? Yeah. And there's just no question that sun exposure makes you happier.

I spent a week with my friend Brian Callen and Steve Marinella in Alaska and Prince Edward Island, and it rains there like 350 days a year, and we got rained on for the entire week. And then when I came back to LA, I was driving around and the sun was magnificent. It felt so good. I stood outside, I closed my eyes, I, like, stretched my arms wide, like I was just taking it all in. And I called my friend Steve up, and I said, "Dude..." Because we were in the rain for, like, a week, I go, "I'm in LA right now in the sun, and it feels amazing. I never felt the sun like this before." It's 'cause, like, my body was saying, "You didn't get enough of this for a week. Now take it in, and we're gonna reward you with all these amazing endorphins and good feelings." Like, if that was a drug, that drug that I took, Like, if depressed people could take whatever I felt when I was out in the sun after a week in the rain, they would take it every day. They would change the world. You'd be like, "I could feel like this all the time." And it went away.

You know, it went away, 'cause LA, it's sunny all day long, every day.

Right, right.

So eventually I got accustomed to it, but that feeling that I get— that I got after the week in the rain and coming back and just be like, "Ah!" It was incredible. It was like a drug, an amazing drug, a happy drug.

Yeah, it's an awesome drug. I've felt it for sure, you know, especially like early spring. If I leave Vermont and I like have something in LA, I'm just like, like, why is everyone not just dancing on the streets? This feels so good, you know?

But the problem is Los Angeles, they're so used to it. They're so spoiled. Everyone there is so spoiled weather-wise. It's the perfect weather on earth. It's incredible.

Yeah.

Especially if you live in like Malibu where it barely even gets hot. So you're dealing with that cool ocean breeze and it's sunny every day, you know, like, oh.

Yeah, but how about here? Like, do you end up spending a lot of time outside here?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I do. I'm outdoors all the time. I work out outside. I do a lot of farmer's carries outside. I practice archery, so I shoot my bow outside every day and I love it.— I feel better. Even when it's hot out, I don't mind because I'm really kind of accustomed to it because of sauna use. I use a sauna every day. I'm pretty religious about it. So my body's really acclimated to heat, so it doesn't really bother me that much. I just bring a big jug, a 64-ounce jug of water with ice and electrolytes, and I just drink that while I'm out there.

Yeah.

So I shoot my bow for an hour and a half, 2 hours in 105 degrees. And I'm fine. I love it.

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

Yeah, I mean, it feels great. It's just you have to make sure you're not dehydrated, and you have to make sure you don't burn. That's kind of all it is.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's all it seems to be. But we do see, like, truckers that— have you ever seen those?

You're talking about that famous photo.

Yeah.

That is a crazy photo.

Crazy photo. So what we're referring to is there's a photo of this trucker, and the left side of his face, from the sun coming in from the window, looks like he's 20 years older on his left side than it is on his right side.

It's like special effects. Somebody melted the left side of his face.

What's that all about? Yeah, there's the guy. There he is. That's literally nuts. That's literally nuts.

Left side is just sloping off, basically.

His left side looks like a 100-year-old man, truck driver face. Years behind the wheel driving a truck, damage typically limited to the left side of the face. So it's literally called truck driver face.

Yeah, now, so that photo and that study got used to like, scare the shit out of a lot of people, try to keep them out of the sun.

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Yeah, and so there's a couple of interesting things there. One, that is shocking, but the question to ask is, why doesn't every trucker look like that, right? Like, if that's the problem, why does— why him? Like, because I've been driving a car for 45 years and, you know, My face is—

The same on the left as it is on the right.

Kinda hanging in there. But the other thing is window glass, I think, is actually a really interesting problem to talk about.

Yeah.

'Cause window glass blocks UVB, but not UVA, and there's two different wavelengths of UV. The UVB is the super high energy one. UVA is a little bit lower. It's kinda on the way to blue. And they used to think back in the day that UVB was the only one that caused skin cancer. And those old sunscreens that we used in the '70s and '80s only blocked UVB. Window glass blocks UVB, blocks only part of the UVA. So anytime you're driving or you're hanging out in a window in your house, you're getting a bunch of UVA. You're not gonna burn 'cause UVB is the one that causes burning. Mm-hmm. But you're still gonna get a bunch of UVA, which they figured out, like, in the '90s, does cause skin cancer.

Oh, wow.

So—

So sun through the windows—

Sun through the windows—

Is not as good as sun outside.

It blocks the UVB, but the UVA comes through, but you'll never have a burn reaction because of it.

But you might be getting damaged.

Yeah, and so, like, In the US, people get slightly more, slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the left side of their body. In the UK, they get slightly higher rates of skin cancer on the right side.

Aha, 'cause they drive on the opposite side of the road.

That's right, yeah. So window glass is—

Slightly?

Slightly, it's like 52-48, it's not huge.

Okay, but it's statistically significant?

Statistically significant, yeah.

Huh. So do you think it's this guy's particular genes?

There must be something weird about that guy.

Right. Well, how many instances of truck driver face do they have?

I just Googled the condition, and it's only him coming up in the photos. So this is the thing. There's one lady, but she clearly doesn't seem to have the same issue.

There's a lot of truck drivers that have been doing it for 50 years.

That's not the same thing.

Oh, that's not real. Is that real?

It's a different thing.

She's got something wrong with her jaw. Oh.

But it's coming up as the same condition. Unilateral derma, derma tootah, I can't say it.

Oh, so she had some sort of cancer that made its way into her jaw?

But I can't, I would assume that more cases would pop up, but it's literally just him.

So that's the thing, the real question is what's up with that dude?

Yeah, interesting.

Different truck, that's not the, oh, I don't think that's the same guy.

No, it doesn't seem like the same person, but might be, it's hard to say. 'Cause of different lighting.

But so the thing is, if, so those sunscreens that were acting kind of like window glass in the '70s and '80s and even into the '90s before we got the broad spectrum sunscreens, they're blocking the UVB, so you weren't gonna ever burn. And that's what SPF actually measures is how many more times you can be out in the sun without burning. So if you got, but it's based totally on UVB. So if you got SPF 30, in theory, you can spend 30 times as long outside before you start to burn. That's a long time, right? But all that time, UVA is just pouring into you, and they now know that UVA is the one that probably is most likely to cause melanoma.

Oh, that's crazy. Wow, so sunscreen. Now, I use a natural sunscreen when I use it at all. It's this stuff that's like beef tallow-based and has zinc in it. It's very white and obvious. Mm-hmm. You know, it's the spray stuff goes on clear, you can't even tell you have it on, but it's very effective. But I'm always like super hesitant. I'm like, what's in that stuff that we're gonna find out 15, 20 years from now? Like if it can block the sun, so it's a chemical and you're spraying this chemical on an organ, which is your skin. So your skin's absorbing it. I'm like, what's going on there?

And they used to say, oh no, no, it's not absorbed very much. And then the, FDA, CDC did studies a few years ago and discovered that it's absorbed at very large amounts.

Yes.

It turns up at high doses, or higher doses than they would like it to, in blood, breast milk, urine, you name it.

And what specifically turns up, and what's dangerous about it?

So they're suspected to be hormone disruptors, all those classic chemical filters like oxybenzone. There isn't much proof that they're dangerous in the amounts used, but they definitely are absorbed at much higher rates than we thought, and the FDA has refused to approve them as safe pending more testing.

Ooh.

And nobody's done the testing.

Oh.

But they're about to get phased out anyway. Like just as of a couple months ago, the government changed the rules and is going to let in, for the first time in 30 years, new ingredients which they've been using in Europe and Asia and Australia for decades. And the sunscreen companies have been asking to use them and haven't been allowed to, but now they're finally gonna get to use one of the main ones.

And what are these ingredients?

So it's called like, Bemotrizanol or something. And there's another one that you see in Europe called like Mexoryl 400, but they're way better. Like basically US sunscreens are a generation behind everyone else because in the US sunscreens are regulated as over-the-counter drugs. Bemotrizanol, yeah.

Bemotrizanol, highly effective broad spectrum UV filter blocks both UVA and UVB, approved by FDA as over-the-counter sunscreen ingredient in June of 2026. Oh wow, so this month. Yeah, just happened. Celebrated for being highly photo-stable, doesn't break down in the sun, transparent on the skin without leaving a white cast, and gentle on sensitive skin. So this is RFK Jr.'s stuff.

Yeah, this one looks really good.

So this other stuff that has been in there, why didn't it get examined if Europe and Asia and all these other places were using these different, safer versions?

Yeah, they all bailed on it. Long ago, 'cause it was all we had.

Damn it. That drives me crazy.

Yeah, well, so it's because, so FDA, so in the US, sunscreens are regulated as drugs, over-the-counter drugs, so you have to do all this safety testing if you wanna get a new ingredient in. Everywhere else, they're just cosmetics, so you can use kinda whatever you want with more minimal safety testing. So the companies wanted to use this stuff in the US forever, but the FDA said, Sure, just, you know, do the testing. But they didn't want to do— it was too expensive to do the testing. They would have to test it on animals. They didn't want to get the blowback on that. There are a bunch of reasons that they weren't willing to do it. Also, I think they're a little scared what they might find. So anyway, so our sunscreens have not been nearly as good as what's used elsewhere, both in terms of performance and like maybe safety. Safety. Suspicion. So that's gonna change by the end of this year. It's gonna get better.

Well, that's good. Are the— with the traditional sunscreen ingredients that we used to use, is there any negative health consequences of using them that they've shown? Like, is there any diseases that occur more readily or more frequently?

Not that have been proven. There's like toxicologists are a little suspicious about some of them. Like, they've definitely been shown to mess up coral. —right? Like people—

Coral reefs, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's one of the things they found after COVID, right? They used to think—

Exactly.

They used to think that it was the warming of the environment. This was one of the things that climate change people used to say. The climate change was destroying the coral reefs, and then it turns out actually it's all these people that have sunscreen all over their body and they jump in the ocean and they're essentially poisoning the reef.

Yeah, I mean, it's all of the above, I'm pretty sure. But yeah, the sunscreen, at that kind of concentration, if you got a bazillion snorkelers in the water, can definitely mess up the coral pretty bad.

Yeah, wasn't there some sort of a study that examined what happened to the reef after COVID? There was one particular reef that was in this highly visited area where people would jump in, and they showed a massive increase in the reef after COVID.

Yeah, well, Hawaii banned use of those sunscreens. A bunch of places banned that style of sunscreen. But the—

But they don't really check your bags, though.

Yeah, right, what do you mean?

You know what I mean? When they say banned, like, people are gonna take it anyway.

But it doesn't look like, I don't think it has much impact on us, unless you're using a ton of it, which of course, now some people are.

So it's not great for you, but it's not the worst.

Yeah, there's been a bunch of studies that just looked at, like, on lifespan, and sunscreen doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever, like positive or negative on lifespan.

Mm, so it just might have some sort of an impact on hormonal function?

Yeah, it could well.

Endocrine disruption?

Endocrine disruption. There's a guy named Graham Peasley at Notre Dame who found that many, many cosmetic products of all kinds, are actually contaminated with forever chemicals. Mm. And even if they don't have it on the ingredients, like anything that's like water resistant or super smooth is quite possibly gonna have forever chemicals in it. And some of it is actually coming from the plastic containers 'cause those get, they basically get like fluorinated with this fluorine gas before they get anything in them, which is supposed to make them a little smoother, the inside of the containers, but it turns out that actually leaks forever chemicals into the product, whatever's in there.

Mm.

That's what he found.

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, this is a problem with hot coffee when you're drinking it out of a paper cup.

Very similar, yeah.

Yeah, people don't realize the paper cup is not capable of keeping that liquid. Yeah. It would turn to mush.

Yeah.

And the reason why it doesn't turn to mush is 'cause there's essentially a condom, like, around the inside of the coffee cup.

Exactly, yeah.

And, you know, Paul Saladino broke a coffee cup down to show what it looks like on the inside, and you're like, "Oh no, you're pouring hot liquid into plastic, which you're never supposed to do." And it's also like most coffee machines, like a giant percentage of coffee machines have just plastic everywhere. I got rid of mine. That's why we use French press at the studio, and I use that at home too, and I have one of those little— Me too, yeah. AeroPresses to make an individual cup of coffee.

Yeah.

It's like the plastic is a real problem, and heating it is terrible. We know that about water bottles. Like, you're never supposed to drink out of a water bottle that you leave in the hot sun in your car.

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

Right.

Cooking.

Yeah.

And leaching into the material.

Yuck. Yeah, not good. People don't think of the skin as an organ. And I was explaining to a friend of mine the other day, he was using hand wash, that fucking hand sanitizer stuff. And I'm like, man, I don't think that's good for you. I mean, I think if you want to wash your hands, you should just use soap and water.

Yeah.

And then I read this article about it, like, oh yeah, that's a toxic chemical. Like hand sanitizer, when you're using it every day, you're essentially exposing your skin, your organ to this like, what exactly is in hand sanitizer and is it bad for you? Because I remember this article, but I just like went over the headline and briefly started reading it and then I had to do something and I put a bookmark to it. I was going to go back to it later and I never did.

Okay. I thought you were going to say like something happened to the bookmark.

No, no, no, no, no. I just, I never went back to it. But I remember during the COVID times, everybody was just like hand sanitizer everywhere. I'm like, I just don't think that can be good for you.

I mean, anything that's antibiotic, right? Anything that's killing biological life, probably you wanna be at least a little bit hesitant with.

Mostly alcohol. Mostly alcohol. Well, even alcohol going through your skin like that. Isopropyl alcohol sometimes used instead of or with ethanol, similar levels. And then this word, benzalkonium chloride. Chloride in many alcohol-free products. All right, but see if you can find articles on the dangers of using hand sanitizer, because this is what I had read briefly. Ah, just say—

Overuse it, you're gonna fuck up your skin biome, but I don't—

Yeah, that's what it's saying, overuse.

I just know that.

I know a guy's got OCD And he's, you know, a hypochondriac a little bit, and he uses hand sanitizer all the time. It's kind of crazy. Oh yeah. And a friend of mine, without knowing, went to look at his house, 'cause his house was for sale. And he's looking at the house, he's like, "This is a very nice house." And he opens up a closet, and one of the closets was filled with hand sanitizer. And he got so freaked out, he didn't want to live in the house anymore. He's like, "I don't want to buy this house." Like, this guy, like, whatever weird thing he's possessed with that he needs, 50,000 fucking bottles of hand sanitizer.

Yeah, hand issues are just—

Classic.

Overuse, and then don't not use it on your hands, obviously. Don't breathe it, don't drink it.

Right, only use it on your hands, yeah.

But Jamie's right on the skin biome. Skin biome's turning out to be really important.

Right.

There's, they call it the gut-skin axis, where your skin microbiome and your gut microbiome are chatting all the time. You can change the composition of your skin microbiome based on all kinds of stuff like products, sun exposure, everything you do.

Probiotics.

Probiotics.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, in the jiu-jitsu world, in the early 2000s, people started really getting into probiotics. They started really getting into acidophilus, yogurt, kimchi, fermented vegetables, and stuff like that just to prevent skin issues.

Interesting.

Because jiu-jitsu, because you're getting scratched up and you're rolling around and there's a lot of infections and a lot of people get not just infections like staph infection, but they also get ringworm and a bunch of stuff like that. And so some people started using antibacterial soap. And the problem with that is it just nukes all the good flora of your skin.

Right, yeah.

So then there's a company called Defense Soap and they, developed a soap specifically for grapplers, and this soap has tea tree oil and eucalyptus, and it's very healthy for the skin, so it promotes healthy gut flora, but it does kill all the cooties. It kills all the mat cooties.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's basically what you want. That microbiome, it can take a lot of natural abuse. It's there, it naturally lives on skin, so it's usually getting being like roughed up by the world. But yeah, chemicals that are too strong can take it out.

And the gut flora is important as well. It's like you gotta think of the whole thing as one sort of ecosystem. Your whole body, it all works together. And if your gut biome is all fucked up and you don't have healthy gut flora, it can affect all sorts of different issues.

And yeah, it shows up on the skin for sure. That's well known.

So when you first started getting pushback against this, were you surprised? Did it upset you? Like, what did it feel like to get attacked by dermatologists?

I am naturally conflict averse, right? So I was kind of like, do I even want to talk about this? But it was such interesting information. I thought it was important, so I wanted to. It started, I wrote an article for Outside back in like 2018, and I titled it, Is sunscreen the new margarine? Right?

Ooh.

So, right there, that's pushing buttons.

Yeah.

I probably, you know, in retrospect, I don't push as many buttons today. I just point to the data.

You just didn't like it? Didn't like the response?

Well, I mean, it got a massive response. It went truly viral, as they used to say. But it actually detracted— like now, I think those old sunscreens, really were, like margarine, detrimental, like the ones that only blocked UVB. So I think I kind of got it right, but also it, like, the title detracted from the information in the article in a sense.

But why? 'Cause margarine sucks.

Margarine sucks. Those old sunscreens did suck. The new sunscreens are fine.

So it's a good comparison.

It turns out to have been, yeah. The more we learn about those old sunscreens, the more it looks like a sort of catastrophic, mistake that then got fixed. But yeah, so that— like, so now the book is out, suddenly I've got all these, like, beauty magazines contacting me. And they have this image of me as, like, you know, the Unabomber, like, hanging out in my cabin and firing off these missives.

Really?

Yeah.

From beauty magazines? —magazines.

They were nervous to talk to me, 'cause they thought I was gonna be, you know—

A kook.

A kook, yeah.

Wow. So the first article, so it was "Is Sunscreen the New Margarine?" So that was the first one. And what was the response to that? So do you remember the first really negative response and how you felt about it?

So yeah, so there was an official letter from the AAD, like, you know, And they're very polite, but they're like, here, we think this is misrepresenting the information. And we think this is dangerous. If you're telling people that they might benefit from more sunlight, that's dangerous. So that's probably, and then when that came in, I was like, so that needs to change. If we have it in our heads that exposure to any sunshine is dangerous, We're not seeing the forest for the trees. We've lost the thread on this one. So then, so I did a bunch of other articles. I did one article that focused specifically on the skin color issue. Like, do people of color, do we need to stop telling people of color that they need to protect themselves from the sun? And then I did a couple more recently for The Atlantic. Mm-hmm. Just on like what should recommendations be? How do we— can we do recommendations that are not one size fits all?

Well, skin color in particular is one of the best signs of adaptation to environment. I mean, that's how human beings were able to get vitamin D from the sun in a place like Scotland. When people moved there, they got pale as shit.

100%.

Completely makes sense.

Yeah. And you can track it. It's like the gradations. Of lightning go with that move northward.

Yeah.

And so you could tell, like, white skin is like a desperate attempt to get enough light in a, you know, screwy northern environment.

Right, but when those people that have ancestors from that screwy northern environment move to California or Arizona—

Or Australia.

Yeah, and Australia is real bad, right? Because there's all the people that used hairspray in the '80s. It caused a fucking giant hole in the ozone layer over Australia.

Well, yeah, essentially.

Yeah, Australia, when I was there, they have these signs on buses, like these warnings that show skin cancer, like these horrible lesions on people's faces and stuff, and it's just this warning to wear sunscreen, protect yourself.

They're right, that's the textbook case where you've got a horrible mismatch between the population and the place. —like super, super high levels of sunshine in Australia, weak ozone, like redheads from Scotland who are trying to deal. So their skin cancer rates are literally like 2 or 3 times what they are anywhere else in the world.

Wow. Now, how much of that is because of the skin color of the general Australian population other than the indigenous people, and how much of it is because of the ozone?

So the ozone is healing itself slowly. We're getting there. So that's probably less of an issue now. It's really, it's a really fair-skinned population in a super bright, intense environment. So they do need to worry about it. But the problem is the rest of the world has kind of set its rules about sun exposure based on Australia.

What's interesting also about Australia is like, I wonder how long it takes for human adaptation to start to show itself. Like, do you think like in 100,000 years from now, people that live in Australia will be dark?

Well, you— David Reich did that great episode with you, right? Did you have David Reich on?

David Reich?

He's the Harvard ancient DNA guy.

Did we? No?

So he just came out with a new study like 2 months ago.

We've had so many people on, I can't remember who I've had on.

I can't either. That's the problem. I was like, if I didn't hear it here, where'd I hear it? Anyway— It might be Lex. It—

Or Superman.

It just, that movement started a few thousand years ago. Suddenly, like, that pale redhead gene came out of nowhere and like skyrocketed. So it can change pretty quickly when the environmental factors change. Really?

And it's not the only one.

That's only a few thousand years old?

The redheaded gene, yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, it was kind of like lingering quietly in the background, and then like—

Maybe that's why gingers get so much hate, 'cause they're just brand new.

They are, they are like the next new thing, kind of. But yeah, 4,000 or 5,000 years ago, it suddenly explodes in popularity, but in a very particular place in Northern Europe.

Oh, and most likely as a result to the environment.

Yeah, 100%. Wow.

Yeah. So I wonder how long it's gonna take. I wonder if we could go into the future, if the same population lives in Australia now.

Well, except, here's the weird thing. So Australians versus UK, right? Similar genetics. Australia, super high rates of skin cancer because of that sunny environment, but also way better lifespan than in the UK. Really? Skin cancer is a factor, but that sunlight is actually benefiting Australians more than it's hurting them compared to the UK.

Mm, I wonder if that's a healthy user bias as well, because one of the things about Australia is a lot of outdoor activities. A lot of people are doing stuff outside.

Yeah, and—

A lot of activity, period.

And that could be a factor. And actually, that's one thing I come down to in the book is it's really hard to disentangle all of these factors, but what's really obvious is just outside good, too much inside bad.

Yeah.

So whatever, like you don't even have to like break it down too much. More outside, covered up, whatever you want is probably gonna be good for you.

One of the things a friend of mine who's a doctor said that when he was working in New York City in the wintertime, he would find people with undetectable levels of vitamin D. —yeah. And he said it was a particular problem with people with darker skin, because if you have darker skin, you're gonna get less vitamin D from the sun for whatever exposure you do get, and then these people were all indoors all the time.

Yeah, that's a really bad formula. Like, yeah, if you have dark skin, you need 5 to 10 times as much sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin D.

Mm.

So you're really— if you have really dark skin, you're kind of designed for a very very bright, you know, tropical environment where you're—

Where you're outside all the time.

Outside all the time, you can handle 12 hours a day of sunshine, and in fact, you're gonna benefit from it. You get moved to a really dark environment, that's not gonna be good for you, so you probably need to compensate in other ways.

It's gonna be very interesting when genetic engineering reaches a level where we can turn those things on and off in people. And how do people react to fair-skinned people all of a sudden getting dark?

Like, like, you know, like—

Well, we are one race. We are the human race. There's a bunch of different ancestors where people came from different areas where they adapted to different environments, but the reality is we're just human beings, and we all started in Ethiopia and we spread out, and that's just the way it is. That's what we are. We are the result of whatever environment our ancestors evolved in.

Yeah, totally. And with skin tone, it's clearly, like, very, very specific reactions to that environment and trying to figure out what's best in each situation.

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

I mean, it's coming, right?

Right, it's coming.

All bets are off.

Yeah, I just wonder how many people are gonna be claiming cultural or racial appropriation with people just deciding to have a healthier skin tone that protects them from the sun more.

Oh, I see where you're going. Yeah. Oh yeah, well, yeah.

Like that guy with the melanatin I wonder— I wonder if anybody got mad at him.

Right, right? Like, what are you supposed to look like?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, what are you supposed to look like?

Yeah, yeah.

There was a lady that was on a television show once that was turning herself black. It was in the UK. And this lady looked— she looked like she had other issues. She had giant breast implants. She looked like a kook. Bunch of plastic surgery. But she was dark as a devil. Date. Like that lady. That's a white lady. So that's what she used to look like. And she's getting her boobs bigger and bigger. She wants them bigger. And so look, she keeps getting—

That's a little too far, maybe.

Maybe.

Wow, that's her?

That's her. So what did she do? Via intense use of tanning injections. Yeah, so she's, she's the ultimate melanotan hero.

Wow.

I mean, that guy— that lady got like Cameroon dark. Like, look at that photo again. Go back to that video. Like, that's crazy. That is crazy. That's crazy.

I don't know, maybe if you're in Australia, it works for you.

Uh, maybe. Well, it would, right? It would protect, because it is melanin. But obviously she's got, she's got other things going on.

Like, yeah, at some point you might, might, might have too much melanin. So here's the funny thing about melanin. As well. Like, so it's made by our melanocytes, which are what can become melanoma if they get screwed up. And those are in the very bottom of the epidermis, the outer layer of the skin. And it's an incredibly good absorber of UV, better than anything we've come up with. It's almost perfect at it. But what you want it— when your skin gets hit with sunlight, that melanin that's just been produced is at the bottom of the epidermis where the melanocytes are. So it has to migrate to the surface and then it kind of acts like, like, like little umbrellas. Like it'll like cover the nucleus of the cell and protect it. So you get these little like umbrellas, a line of umbrellas on the very top of your epidermis, but it has to migrate up because of sunlight. If melanin is lower in your skin, then it's going to absorb all that radiation farther down and actually it can cause— Cancer. More free radicals deeper in the skin.

And what would cause it to be lower?

So it starts lower.

Right.

And it only goes up in response to sunlight.

Oh.

So if you're never ever in the sun and you suddenly go out and get hit by a bunch of sunlight, your melanin's gonna be down too low and can actually create free— it can exacerbate the problem.

So this lady might be exacerbating the problem if she's just getting the melanin that way.

So yeah, I don't know, 'cause I don't know about this specifically, but you probably, yeah, you don't wanna just be like messing around with melanin, like to the extent that she is.

Oh boy. That's interesting, 'cause like the melanotan stuff, I have heard about it before, and I just, I never really looked into it, but the idea kind of makes sense that if you can make your body produce more melanin, that would protect itself, but I didn't realize that it has to be melanin from sun exposure.

You want it in the right place.

Yeah. Could both things work? Could you do it that way and with sun exposure, increase both? And would it give some sort of a benefit to have a higher level of melanin that could eventually get to the surface of the skin? Does that make any sense?

You're above my pay grade now. I think you might be above everybody's pay grade. I don't know if anyone has looked at that. I haven't looked at that.

It seems like something to look into though, if we know that there's a benefit to having melanin.

Yeah, it'd be interesting. I think the stuff's new enough that there probably hasn't been a ton of research on it.

So what does a pale person do? What does the old pasty white do?

Yeah. So full pasty white, like really pale?

Yeah, I have a friend, my daughter said, "He's white," and I said, she was really little, and I go, "Yeah." She goes, "No, no, no, he's white like paper." So if you're white like paper. He's from England.

Yeah. You do have to be really careful. You're not gonna tan that much. You just don't make that much melanin.

Can that change over time? Can they like slowly expose themselves to the sunlight, like 5 minutes a day, and just ramp it up?

Depends on your genetics. If you're like a full-on ginger, like true redhead, then you have a type of melanin called pheomelanin, not eumelanin, which is what everybody else has. And pheomelanin just does not do a good job of absorbing sunlight.

Oh no. At that point.

So there's no hope for gingers?

There's no hope for gingers in terms of sun exposure.

Damn.

The hope is just avoid that midday sun that's high in UV. Get the morning and like the sunrise and sunset stuff that doesn't have the UV in it.

Okay, so they can benefit from sun exposure, but they can't have like full-on outdoor sun exposure.

Yeah, they're the ones who need to be really careful.

So for those people, sunscreen is recommended.

Yeah, or just cover up even, I think better, you know.

How many other people are working on this stuff, and is everybody sort of in agreement with the data, the people that are examining it?

I mean, there's a ton of science coming out, but it's— It's early days for sure.

Doesn't it seem crazy that sun and our reaction to sun is unknown or at least poorly studied?

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's amazing how many things in medicine, you know, you dive into the research and you dig down a little and you realize that we're just kind of guessing still on many levels. Like, it's early days for a lot of this stuff.

Well, certainly for, like, stuff that they use for antidepressants.

Yeah, but—

That's—

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Sun— sun exposure is competitive with antidepressants in terms of lifting depression.

Isn't that nuts? And you know what's way better? Exercise.

Yeah.

Many times better than any known antidepressants. Regular exercise.

I mean, exercise is number one for everything. Cross the board.

Ginger people with melatonin peptide here.

Mm-hmm.

Seeing a few posts about it changing their hair color.

Interesting.

And this one's permanently.

What?

Yeah. Click on that.

Well, that makes—

This is, I guess this just takes it to the Reddit. It's just gonna show a YouTube video here, but there's multiple—

Changed his hair color.

Other posts about it.

Whoa.

And there's a, I was just seeing—

Wonder if that would work with people that are old. That have like white hair. I wonder what that would do.

Like a male melanin 2 page says like how it can affect hair color.

Oh.

I read through it real quick. This is not the best website.

Isn't it weird that women with red hair are hot and men with red hair are not? It's very weird because women with red hair are considered very attractive.

Yeah, this one's— this guy's He's got a spray tan.

Okay, but the people that take it, that one guy, is he like a one of one where it changed his hair color?

So that, like I said, so this website—

Click on that link, click on the video. Let's watch it for a couple seconds. See what this guy's showing. So this is him before and this is him now. His eyebrow and his beard color's changed.

Also, we clicked on the video, this might not even be him. He could be reporting the video about someone else too.

So before I got all gray and my hair started—

He looks pretty good, I guess.

Yeah. Animal lying by the side of the road.

Gray.

I actually used to be ginger. Now I was bullied a lot as a kid because I was ginger, I was weird, and I was chubby. That's the winning trio for being directions from this— going through a lot of changes up here, down there, you know, the stuff that happens during puberty. So I didn't immediately notice that my hair had gotten much darker. It was actually other people asking me what the hell I had done to my hairline, you know. On this picture, it's probably much clearer. That's a picture of me and my brother. We have the same genetics in regards of skin color and the color of our hair. And as you can see, my hair is now completely different from his. We used to have the same skin and the same hair, especially the color. Now, this is only from using using one vial of Melanotan 2 in the span of a year, even more than a year, and it was at low dosages. But with our genetics of big, tall, white, ginger, Belgian gingers, it completely changed the color of my hair and my skin, and the effects were very strong.

So the effects are permanent, so he still has dark hair. But what's interesting is in the beginning he had gray hair.

He seems older, obviously, right?

Right, but he had gray hair. He was showing, and his hair's not gray anymore.

Either.

Right.

I mean, gray, gray, yeah.

Gray and ginger.

Gray is a loss of melanin. Like, melanin's what makes your hair dark as well as your skin dark. So he's resupplied his melanin for his hair as well, it seems like.

That seems kind of nuts.

He said one vial for a year? Oh, then he's done even all over a year.

Right, so for a year, so his skin has gotten pale again, but his hair is permanently dark. So that's what he used to look like. He had red hair, he had a red beard, and he had gray hair. His hair had gone gray, and now his hair is dark. I gotta know if this guy's full of shit.

Yeah, and it's one— that's again, it's like there's only one person saying this.

Yeah, that's the problem. It's like you don't know what you're looking at. But that's crazy.

But it is, yeah. Melanin is the pigment for all of it.

Put that in. Does melatonin— how does it say it? How do you say it?

Melanotan.

Melanotan. Does melanotan have an effect on hair color? Put that into Perplexity. See what they say.

Yeah.

What does it say? Because I know a lot of people with gray hair that bums them out, and they dye it and shit, and that can't be good for you. You're putting fucking dye in your hair.

I know.

Yeah.

Stuff makes me hesitant. I'm stuck with the gray hair, I think.

Well, mine would be gray if I had hair. It's all gray in my beard now. It's gray in my—

Mm.

I'm gonna try it. I wanna try some Melotanan and see if I get dangerous boners. Melanotan does not have good human evidence of changing scalp or body hair color. Its main effect is on skin tanning and freckling, not on turning hair darker or lighter. But how's that guy? Maybe he's like a, just a weird case.

Uh, yeah, but it's gotta be hormone dependent.

What about the lady with the giant boobs? She had dark hair too.

She's saying, when I was looking through her thing, it was that she went through a permanent tanning process. So I don't know, she would've been taking extreme dosages.

But she's—

Also, her Instagram account is a mess. If it's even hers, it's the one that Google showed me.

But what's the erection connection? I don't understand how, you know, making more melanin—

What's the melanotan erection connection? I have heard that though. Actually, Brigham from Ways to Well, the local wellness clinic, was telling me about that, that some people have crazy erections because of melanotan. Yeah, like what? How? And some people don't, like that one guy that had taken it, he said it didn't affect him that way. But maybe, maybe he's broken. Does it say anything about—

It's coming up right now.

Why melatonin causes boners? Okay, it can increase libido and trigger erections in some men, but it's not approved for— well, I know it's not approved. How does it affect it? Stimulates melanocortin, melanocortin receptors in the brain. Which are involved in sexual arousal and erection control, not just tanning. Controlled tiles— controlled tro— jeez, I can't talk today. Subcutaneous melanotan-2 caused erections in most men with erectile dysfunction, often without sexual stimulation. Same studies found increased sexual desire in a majority of doses compared with placebo. Mm. Interesting. I wonder what the connection is.

It's the melanocortin. Like you said, the MC, what was it, MC4R up there?

Mm-hmm.

So yeah, MC1R is the gene for, that determines whether you've got the red hair or not.

Look at this. Common side effects were yawning. Nausea, yawning, and stretching. Flushing with decreased appetite. Some participants had severe nausea at higher doses.

Yawning and sexual desire is an interesting combination.

Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, I'm really horny, but I'm too tired to do anything about it.

Hypoactive sexual desire for premenopausal women.

Interesting. Interesting. Also shows erectogenic— I like that word— erectogenic effects in men with ED. Including those who fail PDE5 inhibitors. What is that? What is a PDE5 inhibitor? Interesting. Someone should— someone out there with gray hair should give it a go. Find out.

Sounds great.

Find out what's up. Doesn't sound like— other than dealing with boners, doesn't seem like there's any real problems. I keep going back to this you getting attacked thing, and I don't understand how someone could attack you with the data that you're showing, because like it's— you're not making any dangerous or, you know, any claims or any— you're not advising people do anything that's reckless.

Yeah, no, I mean, I purposefully have sort of— well, I've I really haven't— I basically tell people to figure it out for themselves, right? But it's only small amounts of sun exposure that seem to be necessary to get most of the benefits. Like, the jump isn't going from zero to some. You don't need a lot. Nobody really needs a lot unless you have really dark skin, then you can probably get away with a lot. So yeah, just a little bit of sun exposure doesn't seem like a crazy recommendation. Okay. But it's just because the messaging has been sort of so extreme and unyielding. Like, they've worked so hard to sort of scare people away from any sun exposure that I think backing that up a little bit is sort of uncomfortable, you know?

I understand, but I mean, isn't history filled with new discoveries and changing courses?

Yeah, and I think it'll change, but—

One funeral.

It's gonna be one funeral at a time. It's gonna be ugly all the way.

When you do this kind of work, like, have you discovered any other things that people thought were unhealthy that turned out to actually probably be good for you, at least if used correctly?

Yeah, that's such a good question. So the one, like, the metaphor that I think we're all familiar with and that I think maps pretty perfectly here is diet and fat, right? Like 20, you know, 25 years ago, Gary Taubes does that article in New York Times Magazine, "What if Fat Doesn't Make You Fat?" And we were still back in that era of, you know, carbs, cut all the fat out of your diet, carbs are good for you. Margarine, right? The margarine era. The top experts got it 100% wrong back then. And when they got called on it by like, you know, Taubes and others, Nina Teicholz, you guys have had Nina on.

I've had Taubes on as well.

Oh yeah, okay. You know, they fought hard and they were totally wrong. And we now, you know, we flipped, but it took a long time. And, you know, there was a little blood in the water during that process.

Oh yeah, I was in the early days of that and people were just warning me. About my cholesterol. What about your cholesterol?

Yeah.

What's really interesting is during the heart of that, when I, you know, I eat a lot of meat. My diet's mostly meat. I went to the doctor and I got all my levels checked and he said, are you on some anti-cholesterol medication? I said, no, why? And he goes, you have very low cholesterol.

Interesting. It's weird.

And I go, dude, if you saw my diet, my diet's like mostly meat and eggs and bacon. That's like a giant percentage of my diet. I thought that was really interesting.

I think, I mean, yeah, I think the evidence is pretty good. Like for keto, I think it's pretty strong. Saladino, I think, is pretty much spot on on a lot of this stuff. But so yeah, so that, like the ultimate experts all said that was gonna kill you.

Right.

Atkins back in the day, and they were all, completely wrong. So there's a long track record of the pros being wrong, I think, on a lot of things, but that's a really good example, and people can wrap their heads around that one, 'cause we now, I think a lot of people understand that low-carb really works well for them.

I mean, they completely flipped the food pyramid.

Right, which was a beautiful thing to do, and I can't believe it happened so fast.

Yeah, well, also with very little pushback. It's kind of interesting.

Super.

'Cause the evidence had already compounded to the fact that, listen, for sure margarine is not a good thing. It's not a good substitute. But also that all these healthy fats that you're getting from milk, that you're getting from eggs, eggs in particular, we've been told eggs are bad for you, the cholesterol in eggs. Eggs, you could live off just eggs.

Yeah, probably the perfect food.

Yeah, like eggs are fantastic. I always tell my friends that are vegans, I was like, listen, man, just get some chickens and they're your pets and they give you free food. It's like I have 16 chickens now, and I get eggs every day, and these chickens are pets. Like, I go, "Hey, ladies!" You know, I feed them, I throw the worms down. They're not afraid of me. They listen to me. When I open the door, they come running out, and they wander around the yard. It's like a great relationship. You get free food. You take care of them. You feed them, and they eat all the bugs in your yard, and you get these delicious, healthy eggs from them.

With those beautiful orangey eggs.

Yeah, so if you're worried about— if it's an ethical thing, you don't want animal cruelty, and good for you, that's a wonderful way to live, but you are sacrificing your health by not eating pasture-raised eggs. Just get the real ones. Not the bullshit ones, the real ones. Unfortunately, they're tricking people now. Some companies have been exposed for feeding their chickens turmeric. They feed them curcumin and turmeric, and they make it— 'cause it makes their eggs a darker, more attractive yolk.

I know, right? Well, that's like— it's so screwy, so bizarrely backwards.

It is, but isn't turmeric good for you? And wouldn't turmeric that you're getting from those eggs also be good for you? It's like—

Yeah, it can't hurt, I mean—

Right? So it's not like they're giving them food dye.

Right.

So it's like, yeah, you're getting these darker eggs because people like that, and the darker eggs come from turmeric, but still, you're getting turmeric then, aren't you? Isn't that how it works?

I mean, that's fine, but I think the chicken, I think it's the bugs that sometimes help turn them orange. Yes. Yeah, we get eggs from our neighbor. Like in Vermont, everybody raises, there's chickens running around the road everywhere, And yeah, they're delicious. Yeah, you can tell that they're getting it from the bugs and the greens and— Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And it's super healthy. I mean, but that color of things is also why they dye farm-raised salmon, which is really gross.

Right.

Salmon are getting that from bugs in particular.

Yeah, exactly. Little arthropods.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, like miniature shrimp kind of.

Yeah, that's why they have that wonderful-looking pink skin, that orangey-pink skin.

So in that case, the dye is maybe a little more suspect.

Yeah, well, the dye is very suspect, 'cause it's like, you know, these farm-raised salmon, they have pale skin 'cause they're eating bullshit.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

Are there any other things that you've stumbled across that turned out to be good for you that people were averse to?

I'm still curious about alcohol. You know how everything is flipped on alcohol? Like, First it was like, drink or two a day is good for you, and then suddenly they flip like a year or two ago and say, any amount of alcohol is bad for you. I looked into those studies and it seems like the takeaway really should have been, you know, moderate drinking doesn't do much of anything to you. Like maybe it is slightly good for you or slightly bad for you, but for like a drink a day or like, 1 to 2 a day didn't seem to have a whole lot of impact on mortality at all.

And also probably reduces a little bit of stress, relieves a little bit of social anxiety. And that alone is really beneficial. Like, how do you feel? Like, are you happy or are you stressed out? Sometimes a drink or two, you're like, ah, fuck it, we're fine. Everything's good. Like, that alone has benefits. Like what it does to your mood, that it's a social lubricant. It'll allow you to like maybe laugh a little bit more, have a little bit more fun.

Totally, which is why I can't give it up. Like that social environment is a really nice environment to be in, you know? And if, you know, a couple beers helps make that happen, it's a good thing.

I gave it up for about 8 months. I completely— problem is I own a comedy club and I was there a lot. And so everybody's like, have a drink, have a drink, let's do shots. And then next thing you know, I was in the gym the next day feeling like shit. I got tired of doing that to myself, and so I said, I'm just gonna stop drinking. Not because I'm an alcoholic. Wasn't hard to stop. It was super easy. I just stopped. And then I started feeling way better. I was like, God, why was I drinking for so long? This is so bad. And then out to dinner with my wife, had a margarita. Like, 8 months later, I'm like, let's have a drink. She wasn't drinking either. I'm like, let's have a drink. And like, this is nice. I like it. So now I limit myself. I just— I won't have more than like 2 drinks. Yeah. 2 drinks is kind of my max, but 2 drinks is right. 2 drinks is like, wee! As long as you don't have to drive, you're not going anywhere. You know, if I go to the club, I'm there for hours.

Yeah.

Completely sober after it's all over. It's like, I wake up in the morning, I don't feel like shit. Doesn't seem to be affecting my workouts. However, if you wear a Whoop or an Oura Ring or one of those tracking devices, you will notice in your sleep and your recovery.

You're not sleeping as well.

You don't sleep as well. You don't get the same deep sleep.

I can tell.

Yeah, just one glass of wine can fuck you up a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, and that, for me, that hit in middle age. Like, before that wasn't a problem. But now, yeah, like two drinks, two does seem to be the cutoff where, you know, life functions normally still.

Yeah.

But yeah, the sleep's not as restorative somehow.

Somehow. But I wonder if it's the timing of when you're drinking. So I wonder if you have like a glass of wine at dinner at like 6 o'clock, but you don't go to bed till midnight, I wonder if then your body has a chance to process it and then you're okay.

Well, that Italian style, right?

Right.

I feel like the Mediterranean lifestyle, they got this pretty much nailed down like 2,000 years ago.

Right.

It seems to work pretty well.

Which also brings us back to food, right? 'Cause the way they eat is so— it's so interesting how thin they are and yet they eat mostly carbs.

I know. I know.

Something's different there. A lot's different and we know what it is now. We know that there's a lot of additives and preservatives and it's also like they don't use glyphosate and—

Yeah.

They have heirloom wheat. So they have wheat that hasn't been optimized to have a higher yield. So it doesn't have as much complex wheat glutens. And so there's a lot of issues with our food, unfortunately.

Yeah.

And if you eat American bread, you know, the bromine, all the different additives, all the shit that we put in our food. That's so disturbing. Whenever I go to Italy, I'm so angry that when I come back home, I can't have food like this. Like, you have to seek it out. You have to go to like certain restaurants that only use like Italian flour.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, you look at those Mediterranean cultures and it just works for them. And yeah, like you say, you can't explain it in terms of like macronutrients or anything like that. Like it's something— there's something like synergistic about that lifestyle.

Mm-hmm.

I do actually think light is part of it too. Like, they got great light there.

Yep, they have great light, especially like the Amalfi Coast, those people.

Yeah.

But the other thing is also less stress. They're not as career-focused. They're more family-oriented, very tight-knit family groups. They eat dinner together. There's a lot of laughing, a lot of drinking wine. A lot of them smoke cigarettes. You go over there, like, cigarettes never went out of style over there. They're all smoking cigarettes. And you're like, how are you guys so fucking healthy? This is weird.

Yeah, it is. It's, yeah, it'll be interesting on cigarettes if it turns out that in a certain context, they're not that damaging. And then out of that context, they're super damaging.

I have heard that with polyphenols. I've heard that, and this is a, I think, controversial as well, but it's cigarettes taken along with olive oil, and that a lot of these people have high olive oil rich diets, and that cigarettes along with olive oil, that the olive oil tends to balance out whatever damage that the cigarettes are doing.

That is super interesting.

Yeah. Which kind of makes sense.

And it's gonna be, like everything is gonna be something like that.

Yeah.

Where it's bad in a certain context, and then it seems to have been okay for people in a different context.

Yeah, yeah. Are there any other things that you've noticed? Like, I know you've done work on chocolate, right?

A lot of work on choc— yeah, I've— like, my first sort of big magazine story, Outside Magazine sent me to the Amazon on this, like, crazy hunt to— with this German guy. It was basically Apocalypse Now with chocolate, you know? [LAUGHTER] This German guy was going upriver into the Amazon to try to find this wild cacao, like to work with some of the indigenous groups to harvest wild cacao and make like the world's first wild chocolate. So I went with him, crazy, crazy trip. But yeah, I sort of fell in love with cacao on that trip. But it was like, we landed, we took a small plane and we were gonna land on this river and meet a canoe that was gonna take us upriver to meet with these indigenous groups. Troops. So we found a runway, right? This is in the Bolivian Amazon. I've been in the Amazon all of like 4 minutes, right? The plane drops us off on this flooded runway where like it was a crazy landing. We hop out of the plane. I'm glad to be alive. And then these 4 guys with guns come out of this little cabin and were like, "We're guard—" This is actually a landing strip that our Colombian boss owns, and we're guarding it for him, and what are you two white dudes doing here?

So, like, all the cocaine traffic comes through this part of the Amazon.

Whoa.

And we had just done what people actually have been killed for, which is, you know, like, if a couple of white guys drop in there, they assume you're, like, DEA or something.

Right.

So they were super suspicious. And I didn't— you know, they were speaking Spanish, so I was, like, catching every fourth word or something. I'm like, this can't be good because of the guns. But anyway, the guy I was with, the German guy, he negotiated with them and finally they're like, okay, just give us a landing fee. So we're like, sure. But yeah, so that was the beginning of my chocolate journey.

So what part of the Amazon were you?

Bolivia, which, you know, Bolivia, you think of like mountains, La Paz, but they have these lowlands which are like straight up like tropical rainforest. It's called the Beni, and it's like truly lawless area, like huge swaths of jungle, bunch of cattle ranching as well, and all the drug traffic comes through there from the Andes.

And you went in there just as a journalist?

Yeah, so this guy, this German guy, he'd been living there for 20 years, and he was trying to get this cacao, and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna "Go meet with these groups. Do you want to come?" And Outside had just come to me and they'd liked something else I'd written. And they're like, "Hey, we're Outside Magazine. What's the freakiest thing you ever wanted to do? We'll send you there." And I had a little kid at the time. So I was like, "I'm not going to be going off a 200-foot waterfall in a kayak for you guys." But then this heart of dark chocolate thing came up and I was like, I could do that, I could be like the comic guy for them. So it was this ridiculous journey where everything went wrong, but we did get some really good chocolate at the end of it eventually.

So what is the benefit of wild cacao?

It tastes really, really good, like better than the industrial varieties of cacao that most chocolate's made with, and it's just kind of a cool story, and it can be used to support those indigenous groups so that the forest doesn't get cut down and turned into more like cattle ranch. Because cacao grows in the understory of the rainforest. So it's kind of a way to monetize the full rainforest.

And keep the canopy intact.

Exactly, yeah.

What is the benefits of cacao like health-wise?

It's right there with coffee, you know, tons of polyphenols, little bit of caffeine. It seems to, you know, be anti-inflammatory, gives you a little boost, makes you happy for some of the same reasons and maybe some different ones as well.

And when you say it tastes better, like in what way? Like when you try it.

A lot more like aromatics and less bitterness. Like basically what happened with cacao is when it became a global product, the Europeans selected varieties that were high yielding Same thing that happened with tomatoes and everything else. They were high yielding, but they lost some of like the great aromatic qualities that like the old Maya cacao had had. And that's what gets grown all over the world. Most cacao comes from Africa now. And it's more bitter, less interesting, but way cheaper. So then there's this movement that started like 10, 15 years ago of people trying to go back to Latin America find the ancient heirloom varieties that had this great flavor and make better chocolate than had ever been made before. Sort of the most ancient is the stuff in the Amazon, which is where cacao originated, still growing wild. So it's kind of cool if you can go back to the primordial days and make chocolate.

Well, I mean, the example of tomatoes is a perfect example because heirloom tomatoes are sensational. They're so delicious.

So much better.

They're so much better. And then you have one of those bullshit McDonald's tomatoes that looks like a piece of paper. Yeah, is that cacao? That's what it looks like?

Yeah, so it's these pods and you open up the pod. It's kind of like the size of like a little Nerf football or something.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

I had no idea.

And so chocolate is made from the seeds inside. You gotta ferment them and then roast them and then you grind them into chocolate.

Where can one get heirloom chocolate made from this ancient cacao? Is there a company?

So the place I send people is Caputos, which is an online site. They're like the main importer of specialty chocolate. There they are.

Is that the people?

Yeah, so Caputos has most of the great wild cacaos available on their website. It's just like retail.

Caputos. So is it caputos.com?

Yeah, yeah.

It's from Salt Lake City?

Yeah, they've got a cool shop in Salt Lake.

Oh, interesting. Preserve Bolivian rainforests. Yeah, there you go. All right, Ritual Chocolate. Yeah, I've heard of people like ritual cacao ceremonies. I'm like, what are you doing?

So that—

What are you doing?

That, it's, so, That's a gringo thing. Everyone thinks it goes back to something like we're referencing some ancient Maya ceremony. Of course it is. It was a white dude in Guatemala named Chief— Look at these people. Yeah, there you go.

Look at these people.

It's kind of like ayahuasca with training wheels.

They do cacao. But like, what can come out of a ritual where you take cacao?

I mean, you know, same thing that can come out of ritual where you do anything else. Like you're focusing, you know, it's a mindfulness. You get a little boost from the cacao, but—

Not much.

Yeah, it's more about the ritual.

Why is cacao, what is a cacao ceremony? Why are they suddenly showing up all over LA? Yeah, you can answer that one on your own.

So, I mean, Jamie, if you can call up Keith's Cacao, there's this guy named Keith, I think he died recently. He's like the classic gringo guru with a big white beard who would have people in Guatemala, and he's just invented this cacao ceremony thing. Oh, white people. Damn it, white people. And then everyone else sort of took it from him.

There he is. Well, he looks like the type of guy— look at him, big old fucking dirty pot of cacao.

Dunk it in a costume. So he started it all.

Okay, poor Keith. These silly people. So, um, but what— there's like antioxidants in it, like there's other—

A ton. Yeah, it's good for you. It's totally good for you. And yeah, it gets your heart beating a little faster. There's some happy drugs in there. It's got a tiny bit of cannabinoids in it. But, and it tastes great. So, you know, what's not to like?

Anything else? Any other foods or substances or different things that you found out that were beneficial?

Well, how do you feel about oysters? I wrote a book about oysters too.

I eat them all the time.

Are you a fan?

Yeah, I like them. Are they okay?

I mean, they're great.

But?

There's no but. They're great. But I think we haven't figured out why. You know, they're like, you know, you're eating like a little living being. So I think, you know, there's like some chi factor there where the reason people get so excited and feel so good when they eat oysters, it's not because of like the nutrients. It's like there's something else that's in there, you know?

Well, isn't there zinc in oysters?

There's definitely zinc.

And they're supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect, right?

Yeah, so I think that aphrodisiac thing is like, it's more about the chi, like this living force that you're ingesting.

This sounds like hippie talk.

It does sound a little, you know, like chi's gonna get justified scientifically at some point.

You think?

Yeah.

So you think you're getting, What's interesting, there's another— a friend of mine made an argument for vegans to eat shellfish. He said, like, if you're eating clams and oysters, they're so primitive, they're more primitive than plants. He said there's more evidence that plants are conscious than there is that these shellfish are conscious.

Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, plants are pretty damn smart, so.

Yeah, weirdly so.

Yeah.

And mussels and clams and— Oysters, they're not. They're sort of alive, but they don't feel pain, and they just move. And because they move, they open and close, we've decided that they're animals.

And with oysters, that's literally the only thing they can do.

Yeah.

Like clams at least can, you know—

They get the tongue and—

Yeah, oysters, they're stuck. They just open and close. There's not a whole lot going on there for sure.

Right, but healthy for you.

Yeah.

Unless you get a bad batch and then you die.

They are definitely a source of food poisoning.

Yeah, I've heard people dying.

Yeah, yeah, they kill a few people every year.

You know, it's interesting, my wife got food poisoning from oysters once when we were on vacation. We were in Hawaii and she ate oysters and somehow or another she got it and I didn't. But then my daughter, who didn't eat oysters, also got the food poisoning because food poisoning apparently can spread through the air.

Interesting.

And so it's contagious.

Yeah. If you're— I guess if you're like ralphing hard enough, you're— you're flumming it through the air.

I guess. I guess. But it was really weird. And that's how we found out that food poisoning is contagious. And that's one of the reasons why they isolate people when they're on boats when they have food poisoning.

Yeah.

Because those people could actually spread whatever that is through the air.

Hmm.

Fucking weird.

Yeah.

Yeah. But that— I do— I do love oysters, but I do get nervous when I eat them, 'cause every now and then you hear like, "Houston man dies from food poisoning from oysters." Yeah, cold—

cold water. Cold water is, uh, is his friend.

It says, "Food poisoning itself is not directly contagious, as it refers to an illness caused by eating or drinking contaminated food. However, the specific viruses or bacteria responsible for the contamination are highly contagious and can easily spread from person to person through poor hygiene or shared surfaces." Yeah, so it's contagious. So the viruses that come from food poisoning are contagious. It's not like—

Through the air.

Through the air. Oh, so surface contact, is that what it is?

Yeah.

Oh, I see. So coughing and stuff, injecting.

Yeah.

And so you may be— interesting. The airborne confusion. The confused— show more. Confuse food poisoning with highly contagious stomach bugs like norovirus. The viruses are not airborne. They're highly contagious, can spread through the air in tiny droplets when someone vomits. There it is. Leading to contaminated surfaces or breathing in aerosolized particles. So that's what it is. It's the coughs. Yeah. Okay, I think we covered it. You think? Yeah.

Yeah. I think we, I think you're gonna get a lot of interesting responses.

Oh, good, guess what? I don't read them, so good luck to all those haters. [LAUGHTER] into the void. I've long suspected that sun exposure is probably good for you, and then it's really just a matter of like how much and mitigating the damage that you could get if you get burnt.

Turns out you were right.

Yeah. It just doesn't make sense that your body produces vitamin D through it. It makes you feel so good, and yet somehow or another it's bad. I think it's like many things, very nuanced. And so I'm really happy that you did so much work on it.

Thank you.

And I'm happy you rode the storm too.

Well, the storm's just coming.

I'm sure, especially after this show. But thank you very much, and tell everybody where your book is and how they can get it.

Yeah, so whatever their favorite online place, In Defense of Sunlight, Amazon, anywhere else.

And did you do an audio version of it?

Yeah, they let me read it.

Yes!

We'll see if that was good news or not.

Nice. I love it when someone reads their own book. It's very important, I think.

Me too. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you.

Bye, everybody.