The Big Porn Debate (3 Experts Debate): The Unseen Dangers Of Nofap, The Adult Industry Is Exploiting Our Brains, How Porn Will Change Your Brain!

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

This has never happened before. Today, we have three experts in their field with three different opinions debating the subject of porn. This is the first time I've gone on porn hub at work.

SPEAKER_2 (0:12)

In one corner, we have Dr. Rina Malik, the sex scientist helping millions of couples enhance their sex lives.

Erika Lust (0:18)

In the other corner, we have Dr. K.

Steven Bartlett (0:20)

The psychiatrist specializing in helping people with addictions to pornography and more.

SPEAKER_2 (0:24)

Who is up against Erika Lust, who runs a large pornographic production company?

Steven Bartlett (0:30)

No one can sit on the fence here. Is porn a benefit to people and society?

Erika Lust (0:34)

Definitely, and especially for people who haven't really had that right to pleasure, to understand their sexuality.

Alok Kanojia (0:41)

But I think what we're clearly seeing is a trend of it being damaging. Let me just share with y'all what I'm afraid of. It is doing way more to the brain than we ever realized. So the first thing that we know is that...

Rena D. Malik (0:53)

But there's data to suggest that couples that use pornography together have better sexual encounters. And women who use pornography have better sexual satisfaction rates.

Erika Lust (1:05)

And remember that women's sexuality has been so much about pleasing others. And you see it with the orgasm gap.

Rena D. Malik (1:12)

But my devil's advocate would say that there's a significant number of women interested in looking a certain way that they're often seeing on pornography. That's harmful.

Erika Lust (1:21)

I'm a bit suspicious about this because honestly that statement is from ten years ago.

Alok Kanojia (1:26)

But there's also unrealistic expectations about performance. That creates shame.

Rena D. Malik (1:30)

And small penis anxiety is a real thing. And it's often from watching pornography.

Erika Lust (1:35)

The real problem is we are not giving sex education to our young people. They are lost.

Alok Kanojia (1:42)

But it doesn't have to be an addiction. It's the way that you relate to it.

Rena D. Malik (1:46)

It is something that people can control.

Erika Lust (1:49)

And parents can learn how to have these conversations with their kids.

Alok Kanojia (1:53)

And there are a couple of really nice techniques that you can use. The first is that...

Steven Bartlett (2:03)

Let's start with introductions. Dr. Rina, who are you and what do you do?

Rena D. Malik (2:09)

So I'm a urologist, which is essentially a medical and surgical doctor of the genital urinary tract. But I see myself more as a digital opinion leader in the space of sexual health and urologic health. So someone who can talk to and speak about complex concepts in addition to sexual health in a way that people can understand.

Steven Bartlett (2:29)

Can you give me sort of a view of the variety of things that you've worked on in your career, the types of patients you've worked with, and the subject matter broadly that you've addressed and are confronted with in your line of work?

Rena D. Malik (2:40)

Absolutely. So as a urologist, we're trained to treat anything in those areas of the genital urinary tract. So that can be kidney cancer, prostate cancer, bladder cancer, sexual health, erectile dysfunction, female sexual dysfunction, kidney stones, children's issues. But then when I did a fellowship in what's called female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery or urogynecology. So I initially trained in dealing with voiding dysfunction and problems with bladder leakage, overactive bladder, prolapse, those sorts of things, and subsequently extended my practice into sexual medicine. So I take care of patients with issues with erectile dysfunction, arousal disorders, ejaculatory dysfunction, libido issues, lubrication issues, a whole bunch of different areas of issues that people deal with when it comes to sexual health.

Steven Bartlett (3:33)

Dr. K, same question to you.

Alok Kanojia (3:35)

Sure. So I'm a psychiatrist by training, but I had kind of a roundabout way to get there. So I failed out of college due to video game addiction and then went to India to find myself, studied to become a monk for about seven years, and then wound up going to medical school, becoming a psychiatrist. And now the majority of the work that I do is actually like focused on the Internet. So what I noticed when I was training was that if you look at like academic psychiatry or psychiatry, we focus on things like depression or bipolar disorder or anxiety. But I saw that there was a whole lot of evolving mental health problems for the digital generation, video game addiction, pornography addiction. And I noticed that most of the psychiatrists weren't focused on those. We kind of had an opioid epidemic that's still going on, a lot of problems with alcohol and marijuana, but there are all these digital addictions that are emerging. And those are the people that I work with now.