 Welcome to the new episode of All That Jazz. I'm your host, Matias, and I have with me my friend, Luke Ford. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, Matias. Good to see you. Good to see you too. So you are Australian slash American. That's what it says in the Wikipedia and your author of five books. And you have an interesting background because you did blogging and now you're a writer, but also you are a regular man. So let's go back to your, to how we all started in Australia. So anybody that looks you up, you're one of my most well-known people in the podcast because you do have a Wikipedia page for what it's worth. And so because maybe partly because your father was also a very known man, but also because of your work later on as particularly blogging. So how was your, how did you grow up in Australia that maybe motivated you to become a writer later on? Yeah, I remember there was a time in second grade. So that's that's when I entered school because my parents had the attitude you should enter school late. So I was about age eight and second grade. And we took the school trip out to a bridge, a small bridge across a creek. And the teacher gave us an assignment of just writing about what we were seeing in the creek. And so there were all these submerged logs covered with moss. And so I just started jotting down observations. And when, when my teacher read, read my observations out loud, people were affected by them. And I thought, wow. And so from that day on, I knew that, that I had an ability with words and that I couldn't hear the last bit. I said that from that day on, I knew that I had an ability with words and that I could affect people with the words that I chose. So I've never, never doubted my ability to, to write and to use words to move people. Yeah. It's not strange that sometimes what happens to us in childhood, like, do you think we get imprinted with certain thing? Or do you think we just pick it up? Like somebody says this and we instantly believe it. And then we just run with it. Right. But it helps if it's connected to reality. So I was gifted with words. It wasn't, it wasn't something that was disconnected from reality. My father was gifted with words. My father did a PhD in rhetoric. He did another PhD in New Testament studies, but my father was a master and so I inherited those abilities. And so the incident in second grade made it explicit, but I think I was, I was even, I was writing stories by this age as well. And my mother would type them up and she would share them with people at the college where we lived. So I was getting a lot of feedback on my writing at an early age. So you got to also support from your mother. Yes. How about your dad? Probably I just don't remember what my, my father said, but there was, there was no doubt that I had verbal abilities. So growing up in a religious household and where, where your father is well known for writing, I guess, religious books, right? Yes. How, how did that affect your view of religion? Well, at first I took it for granted that, that our religion was the only true religion and that this was the, the really the only way to lead a life and I wanted to become a Christian missionary and some of my friends also wanted to become Christian missionaries. So we talked about becoming Christian missionaries and I would sleep on the floor to prepare for becoming a Christian missionary. And so I took it for granted that this was the one true way. Still, my father got dismissed from the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1980 when I was 14 and under the pressure of this theological controversy for the first time he bought a TV set. So he used it to relax, but for me, it just opened up this whole exciting world. And so when we moved out of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, there was this whole exciting world on TV that captivated me and grabbed increasing amounts of my attention. And so where your attention goes, that's where you go. And so my father formed his own evangelical Christian foundation. And so we still went to church every week, but it was, it was the world that I saw on TV that became more and more important to me. So I wanted to be a sports reporter. I wanted to sleep with lots of beautiful women. I wanted to get out there and explore the secular world. So the attractions of TV and of radio became more and more important to me and the religion in which I was raised steadily reduced in importance, particularly when we moved out. Sorry, Luca, I couldn't hear the last bit, but my cut out. Some technical difficulties. Sorry about that. So I think I'm back. Yes. Yeah. So when I was in the Seventh-day Adventist community, it was tight knit and all my friends were Seventh-day Adventist. So that reinforces the religion. But after age 14, when we moved out of that tight knit community, then it opened up more space. And so I had increasing numbers of friends who weren't Seventh-day Adventist and I was increasingly watching TV, listening to the radio. And so I steadily, you know, drifted out of the Seventh-day Adventist perspective on life. Hmm. Do you think that being, would you say you were kind of sheltered from the ordinary life until you were 14? Yes. So I only went to Seventh-day Adventist schools until I was 14. Oh. And all my friends were Seventh-day Adventist. Do you think that contributed to you then quote unquote, rebelling and going off to the path that your parents have chosen for you, let's say? I'm not sure if growing up in an insular world contributed to my rebelling, but I tell you what, moving out of the insular world actually probably opened me up to rebellion more than staying in it. As long as I was in it, all my friends were Seventh-day Adventist. And so that was the only way I saw the world, because that was all I was getting reflected back to me. Right. But then it was inevitable that at some point you were going to find the outside world. And I think that happens to a lot of people that grow up in kind of insulated bubbles in a way. And then they come out and I guess if they have no prior exposure to that, then it's kind of hard to reconcile the secular ideas and the vast Wild West of freedom compared to the strict upbringing. Well, I think it depends on how happy people are in the world that they were raised in. If people are happy, they're not going to leave it. If people have friends in the world they were raised in, they're not going to leave it. But if people are unhappy, then they're likely to leave. And I was not happy. I was not a happy kid. And so I was looking for happiness. I was looking for joy and I was looking for everything to try to staunch the pain and the suffering and just the inadequate way of leading a life that I felt I had. By the way, you mentioned before sleeping on the floor. I haven't heard that. Is that something that in that particular church was praised like you sleep on the floor to kind of build up the spirit? Maybe. I don't remember. But I just remember from my books on missionaries that they didn't usually have luxurious accommodations. Because I do remember some saints, also some Catholic saints doing that. They would try to deny themselves and sleep on the floor and stuff like the famous Father Pio, for example, sleep on the floor. But yeah, that kind of style of denying yourself, that's seen as good and challenged themselves. Right. So there's usually an element of self-denial, I think, in most religions, because when you bond through suffering, it's a powerful way of bonding with other people. So when you suffer, you look to other people for connection and to talk about what's going on. So I think all religions place restrictions on people to, I don't know, to bring about a unity, to bring about humility. I think the specific types of restrictions and painful rituals will vary. But I think pretty much all groups, not just religions, have painful rituals to enforce group bonding. Like sports, would you say that they have painful? I guess there's a lot of, there can be a lot of shoving among fans as well. There's, especially if the fan groups, especially in Europe, fan groups are intense and soccer and basketball, and then they fight each other. That's kind of, that's painful. Yeah. And athletes, when they're training, they go through a lot of pain. So I think all tight end groups have painful rituals to bond people. All of them. Wow, that's interesting. Well, I guess even like waking up and going to, if you have some kind of meeting or something like that, when you don't feel like it, that's so-called pain, but it's not, okay, it is some small way. You have to make a sacrifice, isn't it? Right. Right. And take something that you were having for granted and take it away and be like, this is my sacrifice. So when does your family then move to United States at some point? Yeah, we moved to the United States in 1977. So I was 11 years of age. And so I've lived most of my life in the United States. So I came here in 1977. And so I've lived about 43 years of my life, 42 years of my life total in the United States. I've lived about 11 years of my life in Australia. Okay. Okay. So not much time in Australia. So I feel more American than Australia. Yeah. Definitely by the amount of time that I've spent. On the other hand, nine of my first 11 years were in Australia. And so the first years in many ways are more formative. So I was just in Australia for two months and I felt very, very comfortable. I felt very much like, oh, this is my home. And I thought a great deal about moving to Sydney. And then I came back to America. I thought, oh, I should at least fly back to my life in Beverly Hills to, to see how I feel there. And then I get back to Beverly Hills and this feels perfectly comfortable to me too. So I kind of fall in love with both places. Right. Right. And especially because you live there for so long, obviously, you're going to, your heart is there as well. Let's say. Yeah. I've spent almost all my time in the US in California. So California is a beautiful place to be. So in California, were you still a part of the father's religion, your family's religion? Yeah, from age 11 to 14, we were at a Seventh-day Adventist college, Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley. And then in 1980, my father moved out of the church and we moved about two hours north of the Napa Valley. And my father set up his own non-denominational evangelical Christian foundation. And so I would occasionally get back to Pacific Union college in the Napa Valley because I had so many friends there. I loved it there. And our new, a new evangelical Christian community was still about 80, 90% of people from a Seventh-day Adventist background. But it was, it was a watered down version of community. So when I was living in Seventh-day Adventist college campuses, such as I was for most of my first 14 years of life, and everybody I knew was a Seventh-day Adventist, but, but now I was increasingly making friends with people outside of that fold. Well, what's the difference then between a Seventh-day Adventist school and the other public school? Oh, so many differences. So Seventh-day Adventists are vegetarian. Oh, okay. Seventh-day Adventists keep the Seventh-day Sabbath. So they observe the Sabbath from sundown Friday night to sundown Saturday night. Seventh-day Adventists abstain from nicotine, alcohol, caffeine. It's a very distinctive way of life. What about tea? They abstain from caffeinated tea. So is green tea, is green tea caffeinated? Well, some green tea is caffeinated and some is decaffeinated. Right. Okay. Because right now I'm drinking. Oh, that's why I think Mormons have similar, don't they? Yeah. That's why they don't drink tea because it's, could be addictive. And that's why it's forbidden. Yeah. Yeah. So, so then you're there and you make all these friends with, with other people and then they kind of change your mind on things. So perhaps you're going to, you're probably reading a lot because given that you're a writer, you were probably an avid reader as well. Yeah. So it wasn't so explicit that they were changing my mind on things. It was the experience that there are all these other good ways of leading a life. So initially up until about age 18, I still thought that the way I was raised was the best way to live. So I would experience other homes and other ways of living. And I'd still think that my way was the best, but I, you start to see people outside the fold is increasingly human. You recognize that they have the same complexities as the other people you've known. And you, you increasingly come to terms with all these different ways of leading a life. So as long as you're, or you're, everyone you know, it's just something I've been as you don't think about any alternatives. So then you start meeting people and it's not an explicit changing of your mind. It's just, your focus just changes and your attention changes and possibilities start, start bubbling up for you that you didn't have when you're in a more insular world. You know, there's a saying and a lot of like self-help circles that you're, you're the average of the five people who hang out the most. And I guess in some way, because you're, you actually like taking in a lot of their attitudes and views on life. And, and so it makes total sense if you live in an insular environment for a while and then you're there and then you all your friends, all your associates are in that circle, but then you move outside and then it's totally different because you haven't meet different kinds of people. And then, then you outlook changes inevitably, right? Yeah. So I started sneaking away from the house on Friday night to go to basketball games at my school to cover them for the local newspaper. So I was now really interested in pursuing a career in journalism. And so I would tell my parents that I was going to a Bible study. Then I just, you know, run after that to the high school. And so I was, I was enjoying the fruits of breaking the Sabbath. And, and so that, that became increasingly appealing. And then I imagine your parents found out. No, they never found out. Oh, they never found out. Okay. I guess, I guess the only, well, I guess the, um, so was it stark then you did? They thought you were in the church like holding in all this, you know, and then all of a sudden they're like, well, Luke is not going to church anymore. How was that? How was that process? Well, the first big difference that they, they saw was, uh, I went to my high school graduation, which was held on a Saturday. And so, Oh, and before that I took the SAT core test. So it's a scholastic aptitude test. And I took that on a Saturday and I could have made arrangements to take it. Not on a Saturday, but I just went along and did it on a Saturday. So I was already, already changing. I went to my high school graduation on a Saturday morning, instead of going to church. And then that night I went to my first secular party where people were drinking and I had like, had some alcohol. And so the next morning when I got home at 4am and the next morning when I got up, my father says, Oh, you look 10 years older. So, um, so I think they were starting to get information. So then I went away for a year after high school. I went away to live with my brother in Australia. He's an atheist. So, that's quite a statement though. Hold on. Like 10 years older. Like he kind of saw, he saw you right away and he, he can into it that maybe you were hung over a little bit, but he can into it. Maybe the, the attitudes that we're holding and he saw right away. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that made explicit things that were kind of implicit for years. And, um, was it, was it then hard to reconcile that with a dad being in a, in the public eye and then you, um, because obviously there must be some pressure on the kids to kind of live up to the ideal image of the family, especially if the, the parent is so prominent in a certain religion. Well, both my older brother and sister had rebelled. So it was, it was kind of easy for me to follow in their footsteps. Like my parents eventually said that I was the most compliant of all the kids while I was living at home. And then I became the biggest heartache after I left home. Oh wow. Okay. And, was this a sort of, was that comment a source of, of, of like this affirmation or like, like did you like to hear that comment? I didn't have any strong feelings. I just recognized the truth of it. I'm not somebody likes confrontation in his personal life. So I, I can hear you. I went out again. Sorry. Yeah. I would code switch. So like most kids, I would speak, I would speak one way to my parents and speak in a completely different way once I left the house that when I was in the house, I would just instinctively obey the rules of the house. But when I left the house, I did, you know, whatever everyone else was doing. So while I lived at home, I conformed because that's how I am. I don't like to confront in my personal life where I'm living. I don't want confrontation and drama, but then once I got out of the house, I'd do what I wanted. And I was largely able to get away with it. And then would you say that conforming was one, one style that you maybe were grew up as a kid, but then later on the perhaps to develop the other part of personality. Is it where this is, this is me just blabbering on. But what I think might have happened is that you then to develop the other part that the unexplored part, you became like a rebel against the upbringing. I would just say that's not accurate. No, I did completely rebel against by my upbringing. I became an atheist for four years after I moved back to Australia with my brother at first I was going to church. Then I got a job that required me to work on Saturday morning. And then I decided to just, you know, completely give up religion. And so when I came back to the States, I still live with my parents for another three years, but I, you know, I was an atheist and I didn't go to church. And I didn't keep the Sabbath. And they didn't give me a hard time about it. They thought it was just a phase that I was going through. Yeah, there's something to be said about the love of parents. They try to. I mean, life is so hard in a way and to have, to have parents there and, and obviously if they try to dissuade you every day and try to convince you that wouldn't, they knew that that wouldn't work. Right. Right. So they did, they did. They probably did the best they could at the time. So then how does the blogging then start? Well, initially I wanted a career in the mainstream news media, but that was my, my goal since eighth grade. I wanted to be a journalist. But when I was, when I was 21 in the, in February of 1988, I got really sick. And so I tried to continue on with my life. I went to UCLA for a year, but I was sick the whole time. And so I was eventually bedridden for six years with something that doctors call chronic fatigue syndrome. And it, it stayed with me essentially ever since then. It just, I got partial relief after six years. And I, I only really overcame it about six months ago. I've been a lifelong vegetarian cause that's what some of the Adventists do. But I took these grass fed beef organ capsules about six months ago. And suddenly I just felt amazing and, and the fatigue that had dug me for almost all my life just disappeared. So I don't know why it was just such a night and night and day experience of taking these beef organ capsules. So I finally, six months ago, finally overcame the chronic fatigue syndrome. But anyway, that, that severely restricted my life. And so I started looking for work that I could do from home. And so I thought I'd write a book and I thought, oh, I'll write a book on a history of sex and film. And then I developed thousands of pages of notes. And someone said, oh, you should put up a blog and put, you know, porn banner ads along all the, the writing that you've done. And so I did that. And I was able to start making my living from that. And so I was able to make my living as a blogger from 1997 to 2007. Now I could only do it by writing on the most salacious topics possible. So blogging about the, the porn industry and some aspects of Hollywood and the, the overall sex industry. But I love that I could work from home and that I had, that I had, you know, tremendous freedom. So that's how I got into blogging. And then because, you know, I was blogging about the porn industry and didn't always observe a good journalistic protocol. And I made some major mistakes. I also enemies. Yeah. I made a lot of enemies. I got sued five times for libel. And, and I diminished my ability to ever get a job in, in the regular news media. The lawsuits that you lose any of them. No. So there was one, one case that my insurance company settled, but the other ones, other ones I won, but it is still, so not a pleasant experience, but anyway, I, I fell in love with blogging because I could just say what I wanted without the restrictions of an editor, without thinking about the repercussions of what I'm going to say to the rest of the staff. And so just, I think temperamentally as a, as a rebellious type, particularly while suited to blogging. Hmm. And you decided to write on the pornography, because I'm guessing at the time you were using pornography. So you naturally thought this is interesting. And also a lot of people naturally, no, not, not, I shouldn't say naturally. I just say they, they are interested in pornography. So, and you saw it as, as a, as a way of making a living, I suppose. Yeah. I was interested in it, but it was also the only topic that I could make a living writing about. So it was, you know, it's very difficult to, to write for a living. And this was a topic that galvanized tremendous attention. And so I'd have 10,000, 15,000 readers a day. What would you write about though? Can I ask like, Well, I'd interview the people in the industry and how, how did they get there? And so people had fascinating stories to tell. And in many ways, these are among the most honest people I'd met because they were outside polite society. And so they didn't have to observe the norms of polite society. And so they could say, they could say some very funny truths, which I really appreciated. Also there was an organized crime element in the industry. So I wrote a great deal about that. The economics of the industry, the industry often led the way in technological change. So I'd write about that. And law enforcement's attitude towards the industry because industry dwelt in kind of a gray area between the legal and the clearly illegal. So there were endless things to write about. Well, so then did you also make, I suppose you make, if you cover something for so long, you made friends in the industry and did you ever get like, almost like, not involved, but I suppose you were not involved, but just, you know, first person close up view of what's, what goes on. And as someone that just tries to stay away from it, I can see the lure of it, you know, the lure of trying to, especially if you're reporting on something like this. And so what's your relationship with the people in the industry at the time? My relationship was fairly distanced. So none of them were in my real life. This was a topic that I wrote about. So I used to cover the San Francisco 49ers National Football League team. And so I would, the training camp was at my college that I went to. And so I would go to the camp. I'd interview the players. I'd interview the coach. I'd go to press conferences. I went to games. And so for me, this was just like covering any other team or group or journalistic beep. So I would, I'd go to events. I'd go to filmings. I would make arrangements to interview people, but I didn't bring anyone into my real life. What do you think about the effect of pornography on people? I think it varies. So some people can double in pornography without any observable harm. Some people even seem to flourish in the porn industry. Most people seem to be damaged by it. I think it probably has a negative effect on most people who dabble in it. But not, but not all. Some people, it's devastating. So the people that flourish, you mean that the actors, the producers in the industry themselves? Yeah, some actors, some producers, some directors, some business people, some sales people in the industry seem to be enjoying flourishing lives. So I can't tell you that everybody in the industry is absolutely miserable because that wasn't what I saw. Right, right. But so we just say that they actually like also well adjusted individuals that despite their profession, they have somehow kept their feet on the ground. They're not the drug addicts. They're not, let's say, morally reprehensible. And they're just a regular citizen, except they have a odd job. Yeah, some people you could not point out any obvious pathology. And I like that obvious pathology. Yeah, so people are complicated. So I know people want to just paint like everyone is in the industry is evil and messed up. And that wasn't what I saw. So plenty of people were messed up, but plenty of people, they found recovery from drugs and alcohol in the industry because they found a family. They found a substitute community and a lot of people got sober in the industry for a lot of people working in the industry was an improvement on what they were doing before. Oh, like, like hit men or something. I'm kidding. What they were doing before what like what? Well, some people were drug addicts and alcoholics prior to entering the industry and in the industry, they got sober and they improve their lives. Right. And I suppose a lot of people then not only actors, but people that watch it get destroyed inside and then outside as well. Like observable, observably destroyed. I can hear you. So there's a lot of talk in the industry about porn years. Like one porn years equal to five regular years. So the industry would take a lot of a lot of a toll on people. And so people would age and some people would commit suicide, but I'm not sure that the suicide rate in the porn industry was higher than say among dentists. I think dentists have a really high suicide rate. So definitely some people, many people dramatically deteriorated in the industry. And then for the user, it can, it can trigger, you know, can trigger despair, it can trigger alienation from other people. I think it tends to, to warp your, your mental processes. So you get this overwhelming dopamine hit and it tends to hijack your thinking processes, which then interfere with your ability to interact with people in, in normal life. So it increases the isolation that at first it was, it was the cure for people feel isolated and alone. They look at porn, they feel good, but then looking at porn often traps them into a downward spiral that leads to increasing isolation and difficulty interacting with other people. Yeah. Yeah. And, and. Yeah. Visibly, like I seem, it seems to be morally or ethically, a lot of things are problematic with the porn industry. Like what was your, because my experience with it as a, and also I saw some studies actually, this is not so much my experience, maybe a little bit, but I saw credible studies saying that a use of porn is, is related to like what they call porn induced erectile dysfunction. Even among young people, like in their twenties and I've read online some horror stories about people that have overused it and, you know, masturbated many, many times in a day. So it's, it's, oh man, the horror stories are truly horrendous. It makes me kind of sick, you know. Right. But the horror stories come from people generally speaking with an empty life who were so intoxicated by pornography because it, it filled that, that hole in their soul. So people who are that despairing, that isolated and that lonely, they're wide open for something to come along and, and to mess them up even more. Now my focus was not primarily on the effect of pornography on the user. I'm sure a lot of people have done studies on that. Yeah. My focus was on the people who made it. And when I was in the industry, one of the benefits of being around the industry is that it basically killed my own attraction to pornography. So while, while I'd had at times, you know, an overwhelming attraction to the product, once I started writing about it, that, that was vitiated. Like, like what, what made you turn away from porn? It wasn't, so you're saying it wasn't the effect it had on you personally watching, but they saw how it was made and people like what made you turn off, turn it off? Well, if anyone sees how anything that they love is made is going to, you know, probably reduce their, their attraction for it. So once you start to know, once you start to know the individuals who are in the porn, they're no longer erotic objects. It's like, you know, I know that woman. I know these people. So it makes it much more difficult to eroticize people that you know. And then just, just being around the industry and interviewing people, I just felt this growing sense of just like disgust and wanted absolutely nothing to, to do with the industry, aside from what I needed for writing my blog and learning my living. Okay. So it wasn't, so for you, it wasn't the watching. It was actually, you saw the, you got a feeling from covering the industry itself, which is interesting. And then, but then why, why is it then that now that you're not covering it years later, you still have, because you don't know the people that are doing it now. Someone could argue by that logic. You don't know the people. So you could potentially enjoy it more now because you have no relationship with those people now. Right. So I just had a realization in, in 2011, no more porn. And, and I needed, I needed some emotional sobriety. So I started attending 12 step programs. Some of them had, you know, strong components of porn addiction. And for me, emotional sobriety became a top, top goal. And I just didn't want to, just didn't want to contaminate myself with, with the filth anymore. So there were a lot of things that I started dropping from my life. I mean, there are even, there are TV shows that I watch. I can't tell you in advance, but I mean, I was able to watch Game of Thrones and it didn't affect my emotional sobriety, but there are other TV shows that, that I would feel affecting my sobriety. So I would stop watching. Okay. So that's, I feel like that's a pretty honorable thing to do, to avoid temptations. I don't know how much you know about Billy Graham, but I heard somewhere it said, there was a documentary that he would even avoid, as he was so obviously so famous, that temptation would be everywhere. So he would avoid being the same room with any woman other than his wife. So. Yeah. That's Mike Pence. Mike Pence won't. Mike Pence as well. I guess. Yes. He went out of a meal with any, any woman, unless there are other people present. Yeah. And I guess that's in some, I guess that would, that would save some people some, you know, some heartache and some potential lawsuits and whatnot, but. Yeah. And for me, I wasn't thinking about it in terms of temptation. It was just that I like every part of my day to build profitably on the previous. So normally I get up at about 530 a.m. I have a cold shower. I take a protein drink. I listened to a 12 step phone meeting. I have sponsors that I talk to. I do various physical procedures to locate and release unnecessary tension in my body. And so by the time usually I start working about 8 a.m. I am free in body, mind and soul. Like I've, I have stayed usually from checking my email or checking the news or checking social media for the first two and a half hours of my day. So I like to get off to a really clean start. And then I like, I like everything to build on top of each other rather than contradict or undercut. So I know many people I talk to after they eat a meal, they get sleepy. Well, I never experienced that because I eat meals with plenty of protein. So if you have a high carb meal, you're going to get sleepy. But if you eat a high protein meal, you're not going to get sleepy. So I want my meals to complement the rest of my life. I do a lot of live streams, but I don't do live streams that are going to undercut and damage and destroy the rest of my life off camera. So when I'm speaking publicly, I calibrate what I'm saying so that it fits in with the rest of my life. So that, you know, when I go to synagogue, when I go to work, when I go to a 12 step meeting, when I'm watching TV, when I'm reading a book, when I'm making a video, when I'm writing a blog post, I want everything to work together rather than to work against each other. So whether it's the food I eat, the music I listen to, what I watch, how I spend my spare time, who I hang out with, where I go and what I do. I want all of them to work together rather than working against each other. Right. And you mentioned synagogue. So how did you go from being an atheist to converting to a different religion? Right. I was an atheist. I got really sick and that threw me into an existential crisis because my life was built on all the great things that I wanted to do and now I wasn't able to do anything. Hold on. Do you think there was any, do you think there was any like thing you might have done at the time? Or do you think there was some kind of faded that you would be sick? Well, I think the vegetarian diet that I was on left me wide open for health problems. A purely vegetarian diet is damaging. And I think the studies about the effects of a vegetarian diet that are not funded by people with a pro-vegetarian bias make it pretty clear that the vegetarian diet is damaging for your health. So the, you know, I was raised... You think for all people or maybe some people are not because I had one time, I knew this girl that told me she was vegetarian for six years. And then she's like, then she ate meat one day and she felt like her body was like, ooh, I want this. But a lot of... I know I have vegan friends and they would never admit to this. You know, they would be like, oh, you know, we can survive on vegan diets, but maybe not everybody's meant to survive on that. Yeah, I think the vegetarian diet is damaging. I think it is bad for you and it strangled my life. I was deprived of the opportunity to have a normal life by the vegetarian diet that I was raised with. It precipitated all sorts of problems. So vegetarians are particularly susceptible to depression, to fatigue, to stunted cognitive development. I think it's a crazy, crazy diet. And so that left me wide open for all these problems that stunted my life. Now, I forgot what was the... The synagogue and the, you know, then you converted from being an atheist to becoming, converting to another religion. Right. So my world had fallen apart. And so I was looking for a way out of something that was beyond my ability to understand. I had no idea why I was so sick. And the months and years would roll by and I wasn't getting any relief. So when I was sick, I wasn't able to read as much because of headaches. So I listened to a lot of talk radio. And there was a talk radio host named Dennis Prager, who I started listening to regularly. And I formed a very strong attachment to him. And I'd call in to his show and I'd debate with him. And I really appreciated him at his show. So I ended up reading some books that he'd written, which were on Judaism. And then I'd met Jews for the first time at UCLA and became highly intrigued. And so I just started reading. So it began as an intellectual journey. Then I got to know many, many Jews. And I really liked their way of life. Wow. And so. So it was Dennis Prager that started you on that journey. Basically. Yes. Nice. Okay. I think some, some listeners, some viewers were would know Dennis Prager on. So he just went on. You had the interest, the inclination to go. And you met, you met a lot of Jewish people. And then, and then it started to grow in you. The desire. Why not me? Why not me? I'm sorry. Why not me? I don't understand. Become Jewish. Oh, well, I became intellectually interested. I became socially connected. And it just seemed like a good way of life. And I became convinced that this was a, a profound approach to living. I was just fascinated by all the Jewish books I was reading. And so I started making steps towards conversion because. I was also convinced that I was in need of community. When I was sick, I was particularly isolated. And I didn't feel like I could go back to the seventh day Adventism that I was raised in. I didn't have any desire for that. And so I needed community. And so I reached out to, to the Jewish community, made friends. We get my conversion process and passed my conversion in 1993. But was this a long process? Well, it was 1989 that I decided to convert. So it was about four years later to finally finish the process. Is it true that I've heard stories when I was in Israel, that other religions, when you want to convert, they're like, yeah, they don't come, but Judaism is like, no, you know, maybe, maybe not. Maybe, and then you have to come three or four times. And they're like, okay, okay, you want to do this. Yeah, they definitely tend to discourage converts because from, from a Jewish perspective, there's no need for anyone to convert. They're just fine as they are that all good people have a place in the world to come. And it's also a way of testing and, and winnowing out those who aren't going to be a good fit. So some rabbis who in charge of conversion programs, Orthodox rabbis have told me that 99% of the people they meet who want to convert a mentally ill. So generally speaking, people who convert from one religion to another are going to be quite high in neuroticism. There's usually going to be something, something off because people often to seek like to make a religious change to try to try to get rid of psychic pain. And I'm sure that that play played a role in my life as well. But I, it's largely a matter of, can you fit into the community? That's, that's probably a major criteria of the people who ever see the conversion process. So first of all, they discourage and then, then they start to slowly admit and to test and to see whether you can fit in with the community. And my personality turned out to be a good fit with the Jewish community. Meaning that I know Jewish community has the way they study the faith is very intellectual and perhaps that is why a lot of particularly Israeli citizens, they, they, there's a lot of Nobel Prize winners that are Jewish and all that. So do you think it's directly related to the way the religion studies itself, the way the way it starts to people? I think it's much more that the religion is a reflection of the DNA of the people who participate in it. So let's say the divine revelation had been given to a different tribe, tribe with very different proclivities. Then I think the religion would have developed very differently, but high IQ people want intellectual stimulation and low IQ people are not capable of intellectual stimulation. So I think, I think it's the particular people that produce a culture. And so even if you believe in the traditional conception that God gave the Torah to a particular people, the particular people are going to have a profound effect on how the Torah is studied and discussed and interpreted and implemented. So I think there's DNA, which produces culture and then a subset of culture is religion. So for example, West African Christianity is very different from European Christianity, American Christianity is very different from Australian Christianity. So the culture has a tremendous effect on the religion. And I think religion spring out of particular cultures, which are primarily formed by some combination of DNA and geography, DNA and environment. But don't you think that the Europe throughout centuries of being Christian was changed because of the religion? I think we're seeing that now with a large part of Africa is Christian and some is Muslim. And those are the two either Protestant or Catholic whatever. But let's just say Christian and Islam, those are the two predominant religions. And I think it's changing the continent mostly for the best, for the best. And also, I think the culture of Europe and the culture of United States has been massively impacted by the Judea Christian philosophy. Throughout the century, everybody has so many people being religious and all that. I don't know if it's the DNA of the people or perhaps it's the philosophy of the religion itself that then has the impact long term on the whole populace. Well, a good way of testing that is to look at Scandinavia. So Scandinavia is the first secular societies the world has ever seen. And they came out of the Protestant Scandinavian ethic. And so you can look at life results in Scandinavia. Scandinavia is 98% secular. And people have the same length of life. People lead very similar lives even though they're now secular as opposed to when they're religious. So I think Christianity doesn't have much of an effect on most of its nominal adherents. It's a communal or a cultural thing to do until it becomes a communal and cultural thing not to do. But I think Christianity is highly flexible. And it will adapt to all sorts of different circumstances. And I think it's much more changed by the culture that it's operating in than it's changing the culture. Well, you think Judaism is more... Judaism is pretty much the same way. So let's say you had a bunch of converts to Judaism with a particular DNA and particular proclivities. That's going to have a profound effect on how they practice Judaism. So Judaism and Christianity and Islam are profoundly affected by the cultures that they operate in. So Southeast Asian Islam is completely different from Middle Eastern Asian Islam. You don't find terrorists coming out of Thailand to the best of my knowledge. So just knowing that some are Christian or Jewish or Muslim doesn't really tell you anything. If you find out that they're Ashkenazi Jewish, Lithuanian for five generations, that tells you something. If you hear that someone's Muslim doesn't tell you anything. But if you hear they're Muslim and Thai, then you get a more precise reading on people. Thailand isn't the most Buddhist, though. That's the most Buddhist country, no? I'm not sure. I'm just using that as a Southeast Asian country. So there are plenty of Muslims in Southeast Asia, but they're of a completely different quality than, say, Muslims from Saudi Arabia or Iran. You know, I grew up in a country that's Slovenia, that's maybe three or four percent Muslim. And I had never seen somebody... I don't know what you call when a woman is in a full body. The only time... The first time I saw it when I moved to London, and that's where I saw it, because the Muslims in Slovenia moved from Bosnia. And Bosnian Muslims have been there for centuries. So they're very much more Europeanized, but the Muslims that come to the UK are the Muslims from the Middle East. So that's quite a bit different. Yeah. So obviously, yeah, the Muslims in Slovenia are a completely different group culturally from the Muslims in London. Yeah. So you mentioned 12 subgroups and all that, which is... I think AA is one of the famous examples. Did that, in any way, change the way you practice Judaism? Well, I think one of the reasons that I converted to Judaism was to try to get control of my unruly self. And I was looking kind of for relief from an unwanted self, like many people who convert. And then I realized as the years went by that Judaism, as I was practicing it anyway, was not doing that. It wasn't really affecting my moral character. So I only found emotional sobriety and relief from any of my more imperious and antisocial urges from 12-step programs. So by attending emotional sobriety through 12-step programs, I was then able to come to Judaism and to participate in the Jewish community a lot more easily. So I was creating less ruckus in the Jewish community. I was creating less turbulence. I was alienating fewer people. I was able to fit in. I was able to let go of more of my ego. I used to have this character trait. I probably still do, to the very extent. But I used to have this character trait where I wanted to take over every group that I ever joined. I thought I was smarter than everyone. And I would go to Torah classes and I would ask questions to try to make the rabbi look stupid. And that alienated me from a lot of people. And I operated that way for the first 25 years in Judaism and just made all sorts of unnecessary enemies and just made myself unwanted in many places. So once I was able to obtain some emotional sobriety and see to the extent to which my own choices and my own behavior was responsible for my problems, I was able to kind of let go of the chip on my shoulder against this person or that community in Judaism. And I learned to get along with people. And so it made my Jewish life much happier and smoother. Yeah, it seems like self-centeredness is the key to a lot of troubles. Because I found myself, particularly I observed myself in the last three years more so than any other time because I became more, in a way, more confident in myself. But also I noticed that I've been also extremely irritated when people disagree with me in some way. And I would get quite, sometimes quite hostile and stuff like that. So I'm like, hmm, this is quite strange. And then I noticed that some other people, they didn't have that. They were quite more easygoing. Because most of the time I'm easygoing except when it comes to things that I'm passionate about or things that I strongly have a vested interest. And I'm like, oh, I think this is right. And I'm right and you're wrong. But then I found 99.9% of the time if I do express it and especially in the strongest terms that this is not conducive to anything good usually. Yeah, so I just would build up all these resentments against other people and women that I dated and rabbis that I'd had falling out with. I just built up all these resentments and then things would spiral into rejection. I would get increasingly rejected because of my antisocial behavior. And then the 12 step approach I found incredibly helpful surprisingly because I'd always dismissed it. I'd always thought it was really gay and stupid that it was people who weren't strong enough to take responsibility. But I came to appreciate the 12 step approach of you didn't choose to be a sex addict or you didn't choose to be a debtor or you didn't choose to be an alcoholic. You didn't choose these things. Therefore you don't have to beat yourself down for the ugly things that I've done, say, pursuing intense sexual and romantic interactions. I've got a whole history of some ugly behavior and I don't have to hate myself for that behavior. I have a moral obligation to make amends appropriate but I didn't choose to be a sex addict. I didn't choose to have these various crippling emotional addictions. So therefore I didn't have to beat myself down for them. So I was able to be more emotionally level because I no longer needed to beat myself down and I was able to accept my role in my own misery without beating myself down for my bad behavior. So if I don't have to denigrate myself, it makes it easier for me to see the role that I played in my own suffering and in other people's suffering. And it surprised me with an approach that just pragmatically worked. It enabled me to see more and more and more of my own role in interactions with other people and to see where I'm being compulsive and where I'm operating with blinders on and where I'm getting out of touch with reality. So the 12 step approach helped me to accept more and more of reality and when you don't accept reality, you get humiliated. So every time I get humiliated, I recognize, okay, what part of reality am I missing? For example, I was missing a bus and then if I had done more preparation to see where the bus stop was, I wouldn't have had that problem. So when I get humiliated, it's a lot easier for me to now think, okay, what part of reality was I in denial of? What part of reality was I not accepting? Where was I exhibiting a lack of consideration for myself, for other people, for important details? And one, there's a philosophy like Eric Hoffer that mostly lived in California in later years of his life and got to noble, not noble, what's the highest prize in American presidential middle of freedom, right? Presidential middle of freedom from Ron Reagan and he said that even if you're, I'm paraphrasing, that even if you're really observant, sensitive, you know, person that somebody that's not sensitive can be more observant of you than you are of yourself. So I really like that quote because it signifies that other people also have, they're very much perceptive, more than you are of yourself. So I guess when you, what I'm trying to say is when you went through a change, particularly, maybe with Judaism first and then 12 steps, what were some of the things people would say when you converted to Judaism and then later on when you start really actively working in the 12 step, particularly with a sponsor? I remember one thing that people would say is that you're always trying to show off how smart you are. And when you're asking questions at a Torah class, you're not asking to learn something. You're asking to try to advance yourself and to put other people down. So Jewish communities very, tends to be very intense, a very close knit. So yeah, I got a lot of feedback where, you know, I was saying inappropriate things at inappropriate times to inappropriate people. And I was just writing roughshod over other people, generally speaking in the pursuit of women. And it was kind of ugly and embarrassing. And yeah, I just developed a really bad, slutty reputation, which is not a good reputation to have within Orthodox Judaism. So I was kind of ill at ease with myself and ill at ease with other people. And people would ask me things like, you know, who are you mad at? Because, you know, I would explode and I would get angry, far disproportionate to the reality of the situation. And so the 12 step work helped me to come to terms with, you know, whatever gripes I had against, you know, my upbringing or my father or the bad luck that I felt like life had delivered me. So you would just say that you have forgiven your father, your parents or, you know, your upbringing the way it was? I feel like I'm more at peace. I mean, there may be things that I'm still missing. You know, I still have a lot of blind spots and I may realize later today that I still got a resentment about something, but I feel like I'm more at peace with reality. I think another thing that I know that you did for a while, or at least for learning to was always, was a somatic healing. Was it a healing technique where? The Alexander technique? Yes, the Alexander technique, right? So yeah, it has a healing component, but it's primarily an educational process to help you notice the things that you're doing and to let go of the things that aren't serving you. So for example, many people when they're speaking about intense things like I'm speaking about right now, they'll get all sorts of weird muscular holding patterns in their face. Like they might start developing, you know, a twitch in their forehead or, you know, their eyes might stop blinking or their lips might get really tight, their voice might get strangled. They may have difficulty breathing, their shoulders might get tight. They might start tipping back from their hips and compressing their lower back. They might start holding in their ankles and they might start locking their knees. So the Alexander technique is a way of noticing the things that we do that interfere with our best functioning. So the Alexander technique, it's an educational and awareness technique to notice the things that you're doing that are getting in your way that are inhibiting you from your best functioning and then learning to let them go. So if you were talking to me prior to the Alexander technique, I would have a lot more muscular tension. I'd have much more forward head posture like this. I probably have one shorter higher than the other shorter and have a lot more physical pain. And then all that pain and contraction that then feeds back into your emotions and your thinking. So when your body is tight, your thinking and your emotions tend to be much more tight and volatile. When you're at ease in your body, then you can be much more at ease in your thinking and in your emotions and you can see more possibilities than when you're just tight. When you're tight, it just confines your thinking. Yeah, it seems like the mind-body connection is so very strong that you can notice when somebody is... I don't know if it's an intuition or if it's... You notice the body or if it's both because people always get a sense of somebody's really uncomfortable. But I think it mostly... My hypothesis is that it's mostly an intuition. Mostly people, especially women, women can look at somebody and they're like, this guy is bad news or this guy is really shy or really uncomfortable. Some people are good at reading people. They would just see you in the way... Maybe the way you walk or something, they would just see this type of person because they've seen so many, especially security people and stuff like that, they will pick up on these things right away. So that seems physical. But then what you're talking about is mental. So it would seem that it stems from the mental. But if you adjust the physical, then it also seems to adjust the mental as well. So it's an interesting connection that it has. Right. The mind and the mental processes are part of the body. The mind is not separate from the body. And the emotions are also part of the body. So all these things are part of the same whole. They're not separate. So whatever your feeling is happening in your body. And so if your body is tight, that's then going to affect your feelings or certain feelings. Your thinking is happening within your body. So if you've got a severe toothache, that's going to profoundly affect your thinking. Or if you've got an ingrown toenail, that's going to affect your thinking. So they're all affecting each other because they're all part of the same human being. So your emotions are going to affect how your body is aligned. And your thinking is going to affect how your body is aligned. So if I sense a threat, like if we got into a very volatile argument right now, an inclination to tighten and to compress and to kind of go into some version of fight or flight. So I remember there was one time I did an interview with someone who wanted to get rid of every Jew in the world. And so that was the only time after an interview that I had like stomach pain. That was the one time, you know, even though I've studied the Alexander technique, my stomach still tightened up and started hurting me during that interview. So my stomach pain or what's going on in my back or my face or my neck, that's going to affect my thinking and my emotions. My emotions are going to affect my thinking and my body. So they're all constantly affecting each other. Right, right. Yeah, I would feel, I felt like that also, sometimes back in the day when I used to debate online. I remember there was this one girl from, I'll never forget this, from Maryland. I used to debate in 2008 prior to the election. And every day I'd come and I'd put these carefully constructed arguments and I'd have this terrible stomach pain while I was doing it, you know. But I was enjoying it at the same time. It's kind of, you kind of get the, you kind of get a secret payoff out of that. Otherwise you wouldn't be doing it, I think. Yeah, you can enjoy something and also be hurting yourself at the same time. Yeah, yeah. So you're an author of five books. We're down. So it's one is called a history of X. And one is called access communicated the rebel without a show. What does show mean? That's synagogue. Okay. And yesterday's news tomorrow's. And then what's the title of that book? Sorry. Yeah. So my first book was a history of X 100 years of sex and film. Yeah. I came out in 1999. Then in 2004, I published three books. What was a memoir of my life in Los Angeles called X communicated rebel without a show. Then I also published a book on movie producers called the producers profiles and frustration. And I also published a book on American Jewish journalism called this day's news tomorrow inside American Jewish journalism. And then in 2006, I published a series of vignettes called profiles in sex, love and death. That's amazing. Not many people in the world have written five books. You have. Yeah. It's a lot of work. So I haven't, haven't produced any since 2006. But isn't the market changing as well? Like you used to, if you wrote a book back in a day, like, in the 80s, they would, they would sell a lot more than now because now there's the attention is between books and tiktok, Facebook, you know, Netflix. People are divided by that. None, you know, less readers. Yeah. I do a lot more videos than, than no, no writing a box in the last 15 years. Yeah. Um, so, uh, do you still use the Alexander technique? Yeah. I still teach the Alexander technique, mainly to actors. And it's also something that I use for my own wellbeing. Not anybody that you would want to mention. No, no, you can't. That would be, but that was great. I've gotten to work with actors who are on Broadway actors in network TV shows. Not to work with billionaires. I've gotten to work with celebrities. It's, it's interesting. It's an elite profession. You get to meet some interesting, highly accomplished people. Cause three types of people take Alexander technique lessons. There are those who take it for pain. Cause I've got interfering muscular tension and compression patterns. There are those who take it for a high level of performance, such as actors, public speakers. And then there are those who take it for personal growth. They just want to learn more about how, how they're operating in ways that they're getting in their own way. So it attracts, it attracts a high quality of, of person. Nice. Would you say it's a, as similarities to, I once interviewed a woman that does Feldenkrais technique. I'm sure there are similarities. I just don't know much about Feldenkrais. Okay. So if people are, so I guess you're not doing this via zoom or something that people have to be there, right? No, I do teach sometimes via zoom. Particularly during the pandemic. So people can contact you for that. Yeah. Cool. Is there anything you'd like to add before we, we part? Yeah. So my Alexander technique website is alexander90210.com. So in Beverly Hills, then by my websites, look forward.net. Dot net. And then I've got a couple of YouTube channels, and I have a couple of them. I think you can just go ahead and check them out. Yeah. I agree. I'd like to talk about live streams and look his back. I'll put all these and, and a description as well. And last thing. This doesn't have to be too long, but. Since you mentioned Dennis Prager. I'm guessing that changed the political. Maybe you're not political before, but Dennis Prager as. Yeah, I am on the right. So I think I'm just biologically temperamentally predisposed to right wing politics. So I disagree with Dennis about many things because like everyone else is profoundly affected by the profession that he's in. So as a talk radio host, the easiest way to get and keep an audience is to agitate them and infuriate them and say, Hey, you're being screwed over by the elites. And, you know, I'm fighting for you. So I've come to a much more skeptical view of talk radio than I used to have. Right. But then if you did, so you think that if you did the same job as he does, that you'd have a similar position because of the incentive inherent in your position. I think it would profoundly affect me. I mean, whatever job you do, you're going to be affected by it. That's very interesting. So I'd like to think that I wouldn't wouldn't say many of the like he was very dismissive of COVID. And I think he's just consistently wrong about COVID. So I'd like to think that I wouldn't take some of his less intelligent positions, but under the pressure of keeping ratings like who knows what what crazy things would escape my mouth. What do you what do you say is your position then on COVID since you brought it up? Yeah, I think it's it's serious. And I think that there are some some issues where the elite are much more right than the populists. And so I think with regard to COVID, the elite are more right than the populace, that the left has been more right than the right, that that this is something that calls for big government and government intervention and intrusion, and and, you know, right wing themes of, you know, freedom and, you know, just let the people do what they want are not not an effective way of dealing with something like like COVID. So some circumstances, I think the populace are right and the elites are wrong. So immigration restriction in Europe and in the United States is a populist position. And I think that's the right position, affirmative action. That's an elite position rejected by by populace. So I think the populace are right on many things. But the elite are right and many things and the populace are wrong. Well, what do you think about the COVID vaccines that makes them your position that you think is right that they should everybody should take it? Yeah, I think everybody should should get vaccinated, meaning the vaccines approved for use in the United States have proved to be highly effective at reducing hospitalization and death. They don't necessarily reduce infection significantly. It depends. But they certainly reduce death rates and hospitalization rates. So I think government should incentivize people to get vaccinated. incentivize but not force. I'm not sure on that. Okay. Well, that that's probably the only thing I would in this part can disagree with you because I've had also full disclosure, I've had other guests on that have would disagree strongly with your position on this. But you know, I have to say as well, I don't know, I'm, I'm like, you know, I'm not 100 percent sure of my position on this. So I don't know, you know, I'm just skeptical of it. And I don't, I don't, I don't need it. So I'm not, I'm not gonna take it. Okay. I like that. The way you said, okay. All right, cool. Um, look forward, everybody. I really enjoyed the podcast video. Thank you for being on to talk to you. Absolutely. And thank you everybody for listening or watching the podcast.