Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau & Luke Malone (on child sexual abuse prevention)

On expert, I'm Dan Shepherd, I'm joined by Lily Padman.

“- Hi. - Today we have Dr. Elizabeth Laterno”

in Luke Malone, if ever there were a cause for a trigger warning, this would be the episode we are going to get deep into, what could only be described as an epidemic of child sexual abuse, one in five kids, hence the title of their book that they collaborated on, called One in Five,

why child sexual abuse is our biggest public health crisis and what we can do to stop it. Dr. Elizabeth Laterno is the director of more M-O-O-R-E at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is a center focus on child sexual abuse prevention.

So we have like one of the most foremost experts imaginable, incredible origin story, how these two ended up working together. She was going to get interviewed by Luke and was reluctant to do so and it's turned into a long collaboration for both of them. And Luke is an Emmy-nominated journalist

who has reported on sexual abuse for 15 years. So he is so dedicated to this topic. And there's so much stuff you would not have imagined otherwise, is a very revealing episode. I learned so much in this episode.

- But also just so people aren't like, I would, I just would never listen to it.

But there's like good, they're trying to make a lot of progress and the goal is to end this and it can be done. - Yeah, yeah, they have a lot of solutions and a lot of understanding of all the different ways of this expresses itself.

So please enjoy Dr. Elizabeth Laterno and Luke Malone. ♪ He's in a chance for me ♪ ♪ He's in a chance for me ♪ ♪ He's in a chance for me ♪ ♪ He's in a chance for me ♪

♪ He's in a chance for me ♪ It's a little chilly out today. It's not for a day. Uh-uh, I know. I don't like it.

Where do you all live? Baltimore. Baltimore. So you get a lot of-- John's Hopkins.

You got to be there. Hopkins, your favorite. I hate that name. Do other people express their frustration with the double plural?

I live as his grandmother's last name.

Yeah. So, you know. It's been explained to me. People do that to their kids. Yeah.

Yeah. They do. Yeah. But two plurals. I know.

I know. It's horrible. It's not a litterative. It's awful. It's terrible to say.

But that's a tiny grievance. So much good work. Yeah. No. No.

You can pick it some other things as well. Yeah. I'm a blemish history. Sure. Antitrust issues.

But the amount of-- I mean, you know. Look, no one's perfect. No one's perfect. Yeah.

We have a kind of wealth. There's a original sin somewhere. Yeah. But it's good enough. Do something good with this.

Exactly. Take it. So Elizabeth, where are you from originally? I grew up in Ohio. What part of Ohio?

Sandusky? Mentor. Why can a movie inventor Ohio? Oh, did you really? Yes.

Home of Garfield? No, who? Oh, you ever feel that sound right? If there's quizzes on that, I'm not going to test. Oh, okay.

Yeah.

“You should always clarify if you're talking about Garfield.”

The cat. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's a very Ohio vibe to the cat. But yeah, I think you're right about that. But yeah, no, I grew up there.

Love Cedar Point. Lentisedar Point, a billion times. Did you ever go on a matching outfit with a boyfriend or a girlfriend?

I have never done that in our will.

But my mother, there were five of us. Three boys. She made the boys. We're matching outfits and all of our pictures. And at one point, about all of us tracksuits that matched.

Oh, okay. Hey, also something I have not repeat. She'll come and tell me. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Are getting into the really big wounds early?

Yeah. I feel like I have a kind of a good sense of whom mom is already just from that tiny little nugget. You love her family. Yeah.

Well, yeah, I have a great family. I got lucky. And then Luke, where are you from? Sydney, Australia. Oh, okay.

I've never heard of it. Where is that now? Just around the corner. I was down the road. You know, yeah.

How did you end up here? I came to New York specifically in 2012 to do my masters in journalism at Columbia.

“And am I right in that you guys form this kind of partnership and that you wanted to interview a little bit?”

And you did not really want to be interviewed by him? That's right. I had no problem being interviewed by you. Don't lie. On the record right now.

The sick when he was coming down. I had the flu. I literally went and found a colleague who had a couch who was like my one psychiatrist colleague. So of course, he had a couch in his office to lay down. But he was coming from New York to Baltimore and I didn't want it to the point.

But I was legit ill. It had nothing to do personally. Thank God you didn't. And what position did you hold at that time in 2013? Yeah, associate professor.

And the school of medicine. Department of Mental Health in the School of Public Health in the University of Johns Hopkins. Okay. What's your PhD in? Clinical psychology.

But I've been at grant funded researcher my entire career. But you're a professor too or not?

Okay.

“So when you were reaching out to Elizabeth, what topic were you hoping to interview her on?”

Well, I was kind of doing a story about a group of young, sub-identified non-offending pedophiles.

Let's really take a minute. Yeah, let's go back down. Young, self-identifying, non-offending. Petophiles. Petophiles.

And the kind of non-offending pile was important to them. And still is because I feel like people assume the pedophile that it means you've abused a child, you're about to abuse a child. And this was a bunch of kids who, and they were very young. They were kind of like 1718, 1920 who realized it's about themselves.

Didn't want to act. At the time there was no support for them. And so they'd form this kind of hodgepodge support group for themselves to figure out how do we reckon with this, like now I'm going forward. Really, look how did you stumble upon that group of guys?

Part of Columbia was doing a cathesis. I was literally that my grad thesis. I've been a journalist in Australia for six, seven years in terrible years. But for a while, and I wanted to become a serious journalist. I came here, went to Columbia.

Literally, it was just a thesis idea. It kind of came to me one day.

I was reading about the Jerry Sendersky sentencing.

And I was like, huh. Jerry wasn't born like a seven year old child molester. I wonder what happened before then to get here. Yeah. And then I started interviewing a bunch of guys who were in their 50, 60, 70s

who were attracted to kids. Didn't want to sexually offend against kids. But again, how do you even find those people? That could be your interest. But where would it start?

Yeah, of course. I mean, online in a very official channel, like nothing too shady.

“But there's a group called Virtuous Petophiles, which I think is a terrible name.”

And it's a rebrand. And rebrand. I bought it a couple of times and I couldn't haven't spoken to them for that. But I was like, guys, they're like, oh, but we want to communicate that way. Like, I'm like, it doesn't matter.

Talk about our oxymoron, we can add that to the list. It's just no one wants to see that word. That's why this topic is tough. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Brandings, aty percent of it.

So the Virtuous Petophile for very good reason. They couldn't have members who were below the age of 18. And above and again, most of the guys were like 40, 50, 60, 70. So I spoke to a bunch of them, interviewed them. And I was like, no matter how virtuous you are,

if you're like a 50 year old, who says I'm sexually attracted to eight year old children, it is so picky. Yeah. It's a too much of a hurdle for a reader to get over. Yeah.

And then also, I think intellectually, they've had decades to figure it out. Like what this means for them and their lives. And so I want to speak to younger kids who are kind of eight. The people might have a tiny bit more possibility for empathy towards. And also kids who are going through it right now.

What was the podcast, Monica? Tarten feathered. That's him. Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

“So this was like a thesis project and it became a print piece in this American life podcast out of them.”

Really incredible episode.

That was. Thanks. Everyone's on a bunch of stuff in this room. It's one to think. Came out in 2014.

I used to kind of resist. I was like, oh, God, this is defining my life. But it's kind of lovely to do something that people still are talking about. 12 years later, I would just wait. Yeah.

I will say this is going to be one of the most challenging episodes for people to listen to you and define compassion for it. And I hope we do a fair and good job. We have a history a little bit. We have a clinically diagnosed sociopath that came on.

Patrick J. I. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I have long said on here. And I'm a victim of sexual abuse. But I have long said on here.

I do feel bad if you are afflicted with pedophilia. I didn't pick not being attracted to kids. I just am not. And I don't think anyone would pick this. So just out of the gates, I'm so grateful.

That's not something I have to fight the urge of what kind of work where you doing that look would reach out to you on this topic. So I've been working on child sexual abuse prevention, policy and practice since grad school. So I'm at the 38-year mark.

It's what I've spent my entire career doing. That's a daunting endeavor. I guess I feel like I need a tiny bit of explanation how you could have been pulled to that. And stayed staying was super easy.

I don't have an orange and story that involves surviving child sexual abuse. I went to grad school for clinical psychology, doctoral program. Definitely didn't feel like I belonged there. And I had a teacher I wanted to impress.

And she handed out paper topics. And I got pedophilia. Her husband was also there. And that was his area. And also sex offending.

Those are two different things. People who have sexual attraction in children and people who offend against children are often two separate groups. But anyway, so I just killed myself writing the best term paper.

I possibly could prove to this faculty member and to me that I belong in this doctoral program. And she saw it and she liked it. She said, "Hey, do you mind if I share this with my husband?" And she did.

And then I started working in his lab. And early on, he invited me to kind of co-lead a group that was for men who had already offended. They'd served time in prison. And they'd come back into their communities.

This was in Maine, by the way. And they were refusing to acknowledge what they had done. And part of treatment for people who's actually a fan, particularly for adults, and at that time in particular. It is stand up and say what you did.

What you did wrong was very much modeled on AA meetings actually. Meaning they were mandated to some kind of self-help group. Not self-help. This was treatment with a therapist. A therapist said you have to stand up and say what you did wrong

They were not doing that.

“So they were in another group for deniers.”

And that's the group that my professor led. And so I got to be in this group. And it was in a small room with like six or seven guys. And I learned a couple of things. And one thing I learned is that these were not

three-headed monsters from some other planet. These were people. And some of them felt deep remorse for the harm they had caused to children.

And others were assholes that you would never want to know period.

But they were people first. And I also learned that I could hear these stories and work with them and leave it at the office and go home and have my life. And there are not a lot of people that can do that with this particular population. So I got into it really literally almost by accident.

But staying, it's a small group of clinicians and researchers that focus on perpetration, whether it's working with people who have already offended or in my case now, really shifting to preventing both victimization and perpetration and just prevention writ large, which is a lot of different ways you can prevent child sexual abuse. But the field is populated with really wonderful people.

And they just kind of wrapped their arms around me and kept me in. Yeah, I can imagine it attracts a ton of candidates. No. Okay, so back to you, Luke, when you reached Dr. Elizabeth, with you are hoping to find out what kind of treatment was in existence

or what kind of modalities existed? Yeah, pretty much.

“These are kids who, and they work kids, very young adults who wanted help.”

And they were just no help available. And Elizabeth had just founded this model more centre for the prevention of child sexual abuse. Now called more. And there's our fascinating. They'll also give me some backbone as a journalist and make up these group of kids.

I need to give it some kind of context. And I was very wary about being seen as some kind of pedophile advocate. Yeah. Which has followed me through over the years. I wouldn't call myself that, but I'm more comfortable with it now.

But I was very wary because it was the first time I've kind of done this dance. Being a view, both discussed. Every time the kind of pedophilia has come up on the show, there is this idea and you've mentioned it yourself. It's like murder is more palatable.

No, you can pedophiles. You could murder a child. Not great. But obviously, I recommend it. Somehow that's more palatable than sexually engaging with the kid.

It's something so Ikki. And also, I think, luckily, I'm a sophomore in this group. People who are unattracted to kids can think of it. I'm not going to be like you said such a horrible thing to do with. It's actually a huge jump for anybody to think like,

you know, I don't have kids, but I have friends with kids. And sometimes a little shits. And you're like, oh my god, I could strangle you. I got quite max here. So I think the jump to kidding a kid, we will hit as kids.

I was born in anyone. Yeah, violence seems more. We've all lost our temper. Yeah, yeah, you can have empathy for parents who do that, who snap in the same way that you don't have empathy for someone who sexually abuse as a kid.

Yeah, that's something to say. Because you don't want to kind of excuse behaviour. I'm going to minimize behaviour. No. I know.

But you want empathy. I mean, nothing to the person. It's a situation to stand back and look about how could this have been prevented or changed.

“Well, I think we would apply the supposed key kind of lens,”

which is like to feel morally superior is not really worthwhile.

Taking dangerous people out of our community is essential and has to be done,

but to do it without the moral high ground in the judgment. And the punitive desire to make people suffer because of it. I think is the highest road we could probably take. Yeah, but it's very human and just to step back for a second. I'm sorry.

That happened to you. Oh, you don't think. Thank you. I feel weird receiving sympathy for. Well, let's talk about that.

I don't know. Maybe that's common. I don't know. I don't know. But I feel like it's worth acknowledging that this is painful.

That a lot of people, a lot of your listeners are going to have experience themselves. And I would never say to empathize with the behaviour at all, or with somebody who has caused harm. But there's people out there who haven't caused harm. That I think we really need to focus a lot more attention on.

Yes, yes. Well, I did learn some stuff in researching your work, which was a little bit illuminating. I mean, I guess I've had this fear that this person that molested me, maybe had gone on and victimized a bunch of people,

and I never prevented that, right?

That's maybe a bit of guilt I've had. But then in reading some stuff today from you, I'm like, maybe he never did that again. He was probably 17. I was probably 9ish somewhere in there. And I'm like, oh, that had never even occurred to me.

So we should lay out what the kind of numbers are, because it's really important. And your book one in five really tells us right out of the gates. Yeah. So one in five kids will experience some sexual abuse.

Some form of sexual abuse or attempted sexual abuse online or offline. So this is kind of the first what we call prevalence statistic that combines both online and offline victimization. And these are reported. No, we would never rely on reporting.

Okay, I was going to say. Because so few get referred to. That would mean, yeah. Yeah, you know why I got that. Yeah, I got it.

Eight of a sudden reported. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Some sort of conditions I went into. So my colleague and friend David Finkelhor has done several prevalence surveys across

We get a nationally representative sample, large sample of adults, reporting back on what happened to them. He's also surveyed kids 10 to 17. Large samples and you ask some questions about things that have happened to them. And you can develop a much more accurate sense of how prevalent is this.

Then if you rely on reports to law enforcement or to child protective services, which are usually the markstream versions. But it's still someone is saying verbally that it happened to that. Self report. Yeah, so these are some reports surveys.

Yeah, I would say probably there's more than that. Yeah, probably the so-called survey is can give you a pretty good sense.

So certainly there will be people who are never good and met.

One thing that's remarkable to me about self report surveys and we do these as well. These prevalence surveys where we're asking people have you engaged in these behaviors against a child. Yeah, yeah.

“Is how many people will acknowledge illegal and stigmatize behaviors?”

And ridiculously, but it's true being a survivor can carry some stigma still. Oh, yeah. But people if they feel safe, if they feel like you're not going to report them, if it's anonymous and confidential, folks will reveal things. If you ask it in the right way also, like if I asked you, have you raped somebody today or in the pet?

They won't say it, but if you use behaviorally specific language, you get really good data on all kinds of behaviors. So one in five currently, what historically do we have any sense? Did anyone do that caliber of work in the 80s to know what it was then? It's on the decline.

Yeah. It is in many ways. And David Finklehor, he's been in the fields since the 70s, just brilliant, wonderful, and someone I very much love and respect. He was doing surveys.

The U.S. was actually doing surveys back in the 80s and 90s.

And one thing that was really surprising with the earliest surveys was how common it was. It did seem to be increasing over time. But then starting around early 1990s, 1992, we saw real declines in sexual abuse against children, like on the order of 60% decline.

So really, really, really good news to many children still being sexually abused, but really good news. What do we attribute that to? I can just guess that. Yeah.

Totally what the 80s might is. Well, what would you guess? Yeah. Total lack of supervision. You had both parents now in the workforce,

and or increasing divorce rates, my case and go mother working her ass off. And we were just free to rob. That's supervision. Yeah.

There's really not a lot of supervision. Yeah. Dickmo was probably higher, maybe then. Or just ignorance.

“I mean, I think a lot of people didn't really know how bad it was for kids,”

honestly. I think one thing that we talk about in the book that really helped start the decline was bringing it out of the shadows. So having more people talk about it, and we're grateful for this opportunity along the same way.

But secondly, feminists, when they were working on really to bring rape out of the shadows, they brought child sexual abuse with it. Child sexual abuse is not the same thing as adult rape. It's not solely or perhaps even mostly a gender-based violence kind of thing.

But lots of people who are raped as adults, were sexually abused as children. It's a risk factor for future sexual victimization to have been sexually victimized as a child. And that helped and then self-help groups for survivors, for parents, started being kind of a separate force,

and that also further brought it out of the shadows. So just talking about it, then the research showing the kind of damage that can occur. It does not. You are not destined to a miserable life.

If you have survived child sexual abuse, and I want to be careful to say that. Although, it's a risk factor. Well, it's a risk factor for almost every bad thing you can experience. You've got 70% chance of addiction.

I mean, there's some startling. It is absolutely a risk factor,

but I just would never want to suggest that someone is doomed.

Because that also is not true, but we do want to know what are the real sequela, the consequences, and they're terrible, and they don't stop with addiction. There's mental health consequences like PTSD.

There's physical health like cancer. We've done economic analyses and shown that survivors earn less over the course of their lives now. Should they drop out of school more? Less academic achievement, less employment,

and then higher risk of future victimization, both physical and sexual. And if they have mental health problems and physical health problems, they can't hold down jobs. You know, it means you are.

So it sounds like something crazy. Even though I was kind of shocked in this book about, cancer and hypertension and hot attacks, it would all be kind of linked back to cardiovascular problems, all things back to CSA,

which is even if someone has been kind of like working from a different perspective in this for many years, still shocked. Yes, so we'll be using CSA. It's worth noting right now.

We'll be using CSA a lot and that's. Child sexual abuse. There's also childhood sexual violence, which is another term that folks use as well. Okay, so of this one in five,

“again, I think this would be shocking for a lot of people.”

What percentage is happening adults to children versus children to children? It's a good question. And it is shocking. So in the United States, when you ask people on these surveys,

did this happen to you and then follow up with who did it? What David Finkleholder's research has shown, and others in other countries, but this is a U.S. specific statistics I want to be precise.

usually a few years older. When you shift to online,

and I do want to back up for one second,

we've seen dramatic declines, and they've kind of stabilized. And so we need to figure out how do we get further down, reducing child sexual abuse. That's mostly a hands-on.

So of course, before 2010, you didn't even have tech facilitated abuse, so it could only go up because it launched roughly with the internet. Although there are some data that suggest that tech facilitated abuse is also starting to level out.

We can start getting some declines or two. Can I ask to get nitty-gritty what constitutes online sexual abuse? Is that, like, coercing a child to share nude photos or something?

“Yeah, that's what there's all kinds of coerced”

and non-consensual image sharing. So we share images, kids share images. It's kind of normative in the context of a dating relationship or romantic relationship, but non-consensual sharing of those.

When adult is asking kids for nude images,

that's facilitated abuse and exploitation.

When adult share, child sexual abuse materials between themselves, or upload them, or create them, all of that is technology facilitated abuse. There's grooming,

we're an adult may reach out either, pretending to be a child themselves or not. Kids want attention, and they want attention from adults. And they're also kind of get it detecting.

They have much better skills than I do for sure. So there's all of those things, and there's not bright lines between online and offline or in real life. They usually co-occur.

I hate to point this out, but yeah, that is one of the saddest subtexts of all this is that the predators are really good at spotting who's vulnerable, and the kids that are vulnerable already

were dealt to shithand.

This is kind of the reward for that shithand.

It's so true. It's kind of obviously vulnerable. We've got some data that we've just collected and just started analyzing about abuse and the context of K through 12 school settings,

and kids who have intellectual and developmental disabilities, kids who identify as LGBT, cute, queer kids, experience for her, rates of abuse, and kids who don't. So people are very good at identifying vulnerable kids.

Kids are vulnerable, just at any kid can be abused, and then there are groups of kids that are, yeah. But there's one more percentage of,

“well, I think it's useful to kind of draw out.”

The 70% is at the hands of other kids, usually a few years older, but then like 90% of child sex abuse is at the hands of known entities. Yeah, I think we've moved past range of danger,

but there's still that kind of echo hangover of stranger danger. And there are people who do it, there are stranger people who groom kids, there are kind of predators. But even online, what's even further shocking?

I'm even online at mirrors a little bit more. It's not 70% I know the percentage. No, it's more like 60% are unknown to the child, and 40% are known. And again, those numbers vary depending on the country.

So there's a little more stranger danger, you know, the Australian accessing live images of a child, and the Philippines. But it's still mostly the people in your life. So 90% you know the person,

and then 70% it's not an adult. So the 70% feels like something we could address successful. Yeah, absolutely. More than the adult that this is a pattern of the behavior.

“Yeah, the person who wants to go out and find somebody like that.”

Yes, and his probably got well worn. Skill set for that and a lot of other things. Yeah. Now, I'm really curious how we define it when it is. Both parties are under 18.

What about the two nine year old boys showing each other their penises or what about these consensual, certainly sexual activity, but there's really no age gap or there's one year age gap. Where do we draw this line to call it abuse? Well, it's so funny to say two nine year olds,

because I got a call from lawyer in Texas once saying, "So I have a nine year old client who's been charged with child sexual abuse by the local prosecutor because he was skinny dipping with some other kids who were, you know, within one or two years he was the oldest, but it was like a nine year old and an eight year old and a six year old

who were all friends." So in our country, fairly uniquely, there are states that don't have lower ages for criminal culpability. And when we think about sex, we kind of automatically add years to a kid so they're no longer a kid.

If a child does something sexual, they stop being a child and they become an adult and they are treated like an adult, as if they should have known better. At the same time, we don't give kids education about sex ed. We often hide that on purpose, kids who get sex education,

don't learn that touching a younger kid's penis is off limits. They learn not to hit or punch or kick a younger kid. But they don't learn that penises and vaginas are off limits. And they figure it out eventually by about age 15 kids understand much younger kids are off limits to come back to arrest data.

You see this increase from 12 to 13 to 14 year old of arrests for sexual behavior against younger kids. And then it drops and you're like, "Oh, the penny drops. They've figured it out." But we don't tell them that.

I mean, that's one of our prevention programs is to work with kids in schools before they've made any of these mistakes, to give them the information, skills, tools and knowledge to say, "Hey, by the way, younger kids, not okay, ever even if they're walking around naked or playing with you

or seem to be doing something sexual with you."

They're not small adults.

The kids don't have some kind of knowledge about a lot of things that are okay and not okay until they gain some life experience or we teach them that. But again, the scenario where it's two 10 year old boys, it's consensual, normal sex claims.

It's how, and it's somehow shamed by it. We all have experienced being young and young. Yes, yes. So they're like, "Zilly, things with your friends and I think some people, yeah."

So where do we differentiate? Children should be a protected class of people. They're vulnerable by definition. And they're vulnerable no matter what they've done. So I would like to see more protections.

Some kids are going to need help. They may need therapy. They and their family. For engaging in harmful and/or illegal behaviors.

“But I think we also need to do a better job of recognizing”

that sex play between close and age peers is normative. When it is mutually desired, it's not harmful. And we have laws that criminalize that as well. And so kids get caught up in a justice system that treats them again as if they were a 35 year old predator

when they're not. Some kids do cause harm. I definitely don't want to minimize a nine year old who was sexually abused by a 17 year old. Yeah, yeah.

I had lots of little boys showing me their penises but that was something much, much, much better. And that is very different. And that 17 year old is not a 35 year old. And probably knew he was causing harm

or what he was doing was wrong. I mean, that of known the degree. It was unlikely to have known the real degree of harm that that kind of behavior causes. And there should be separate strategies.

And there are. There's really good evidence-based treatment programs for kids who have caused harm. Where they're very unlikely to do it ever again.

“This will remind us is in your TED Talk.”

So of the miners who are arrested and convicted of a sexual abuse case, what percentage of them do it again? Less than 3%. I can't say do it again.

Less than 3% are ever arrested or convicted again. Stay tuned for our share expert. If you dare. We are supported by all state.

Checking all state first could save you hundreds on car insurance.

Not checking your gas gauge before hitting the road. You genuinely thought you could make it. You were wrong. That's a very long stretch of highway. Where you learned exactly how far fumes can take you.

And it's enough enough. Yeah. Checking first is an excellent plan. So check all state first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds.

And for fast reliable help when you need it add in all state roadside plan today. You're in good hands with all state. Potential savings vary insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions and availability,

insurance provided by all state, North American insurance company, North Brook, Illinois. Roadside assistance plans provided by all state motor club. Incorporated in all state affiliate. That cannot be said for the adult.

Well, so there's a lot to unpack there. Sexual recidivism rates for adults who have been convicted of sex crimes against children are less than 10%. Also that's lovely. It's still very low.

That is not the narrative. It is not the narrative. But do we believe that? A lot of people don't. The kid numbers are based on research by my friend and colleague,

Michael Caldwell, who looked at data across over 30,000 cases. So if it was 10 cases and one kid had reoffended, I would not be comfortable saying it's that. But when it's 30,000 cases, and then I was involved in a research project that included, oh my gosh, I forget the exact number.

But maybe like 120,000 adult cases. The data are, in my opinion, and controversial. When you get to hundreds of thousands of cases have been followed from first defense to 20 years later, 25 years later, and you're seeing a 10% recidivism rate among adults,

and less than a 3% recidivism.

“I think with kids, the consequences are really severe.”

If you get a judicator for this, and it's a pretty clear message, don't ever do this again. I think we could give them that message before they do it. But it makes sense to me that with kids, they don't do it again, because now it is indisputable.

They get it. This was wrong. This was harmful to that person that I did it to. It was harmful to me. I don't ever want to be in prison again.

I don't ever want to have this happen again. Yes, it tells about the current standard for what happens when a kid is convicted. So, it varies. In a varies within state, it certainly varies between countries.

A lot of times, it never gets reported and nothing ever happens,

and that's not helpful to either person. If they go through juvenile court, it's called an adjudication, but it's essentially the same thing as a conviction. It can vary. You could get probation.

In some states, you can be given an opportunity to go through treatment, and have your record-wide clean. You can get five years in prison. You can be put on a sex-if-under registry for the rest of your life and have that go up on the internet,

which 9 and 8-year-old have, and so have 17-year-olds. It is highly variable. What we know is that prison is not a helpful consequence for kids.

Registration and notification are very harmful for kids.

It just ruins our lives. You have to confront the trade-offs.

“So, it's like, okay, we send them to prison for five years.”

There was a 98% chance they weren't ever going to do it again anyways. But now their time in prison is going to up their chance of criminality outside of sexual abuse. Maybe three standard deviations. So it's like, we're trying to... ...do other ways.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, prison generally makes kids worse. It's not a personal argument. It's not a safe stable and they're trying environment. And they're trying to be used in prison too.

So they're very things we're reporting to try and prevent. We're like, okay, throw them aside. They've done something bad. So it doesn't mean that it would happen to them. And if you're the person to victimize with that person,

absolutely sure. I don't know. If you're worried about kids being abused, and you kind of putting up in very young kids, like 17 year olds, in with much more sexually dangerous, 35 year olds.

Yes. It's not going to end well. There's also this, I don't know if it's true or not our legend. But prisoners seem to deal with sexual abuse inmates in a certain way, or at least that's this stereotype I've heard.

They are often... They punish. They punish. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I got to do some research at Fort Leavenworth,

military complex in Kansas. And it's the oldest prison in the United States. So I was doing this research in 2000. And they still had skeleton keys for some of the doors. It's a maximum security military prison.

And the cells go many levels down below ground. And a lot of the people that came in with sex crimes had to be put in, protected solitary confinement. And again, not a lot of people are going to care, or feel much empathy, or may be glad.

You did this to somebody, so now it's being done to you. That's fair. Okay, so there's multiple different groups we need to address.

“So one, and I think this is the one we're currently on,”

which is there's going to be a big, big chunk of kids who may do this in their childhood, abuse another kid who are not pedophiles. There are confused from a little bit of issues. You can be impulsive. You can be around.

They're doing good kids doing all kinds of bad things. You can be bored. You can think you had consent because who teaches kids what consent is. How you get it. How you give it home to the last.

I have the time the kid is in freeze mode. How are they doing interpret that frozen spirit? Exactly, right? For adults. Yeah, so this is a very difficult thing to talk about.

So I want to preface this carefully.

Most kids who survive child sexual abuse will never go on to cause harm to another child.

They're at greater risk of doing so. So kids who have sexually abused other kids, cause sexual harm, harmful sexual behavior, are more likely to have experienced sexual abuse themselves. This is less true for adults.

The further you get away from something's happened to you, the less impacted has on you. But for kids, it's still pretty true. I believe I'm trying to know and I hate saying it. I'm adding benefit of having him molested as people.

I mean more suspicious of you. You know, so that's like insult to injury. We had this one time Monica read this data years ago to my heart. Eat that fuck. I don't want someone to think because I'm very vocal.

But that's what we're saying. It's not the majority. It's still tiny. But I do accept it. I accept it.

I accept it. In front of my computer to go and you don't have to say it. You don't have to say it. You don't have to say it. Yeah.

There's so much you could talk about this. The standard pages. You could leave that out. Oh, I'll see. I think it's important.

Well, it is because again, you want to throw the book at a kid. Well, what if that kid was also victimized? So we're going to put him in prison for five years. How does that make sense? And they're often like repeating the behavior that they were abuse themselves.

I'm exposed to developmental inappropriate material, which now we have the worldwide web and access to legal pornography. But this is not developmentally appropriate for kids. And we have no guardrails, no age verification. And then we're like, OK, have all this.

But don't do anything stupid. So there's all kinds of pathways for a kid to go down that path. We use pseudonyms in the book for a lot of the people. Conor was a great example of this because he was young. He was 11, 21, started in 13 when he was caught.

And he was sexually abusing younger relative. But a first of all, it was just kind of play. It was like, show me a penis. It got more than that, certainly. I don't want to minimize it.

But then he was put into some kind of presidential facility for some other unrelated, non-sexual behavior. And some kid in there tried to rape him, penetrative rape. When he got out of that residential facility, or we can release. He tried to rape or did rape his younger relative. It doesn't minimize what the effect on the younger relative was.

But like, there's a clear path between. And this one instance and there were things around this. But I think it does happen. We were able to frequency. And then he was sucked into the system.

First of all, juvenile prison. But then he was sucked into the adult system, where he was sexually assaulted with an imprisonment. His story may seem like an outlier. But this happens to kids in the US all the time.

Yeah, it's terrible that the initial trauma begats more or more.

But doesn't always and usually does not go on to increased risk for perpetration at all.

So there's this group. Yeah. Now there is another group.

“We're not going to label those pedophiles, correct?”

You know, some kids hit puberty, 14, 15. And some of them are attracted to younger children. And so they have pedophilia. Yes. But most kids who are offending don't.

Right. I'm just saying of this number, which is 70%. Which is huge. It's a little higher for hands-on than it is for online. So, you know, somewhere around 40, 50, 60 depends on the type of online offense.

Good luck. Huge. Right.

Like it's just huge, exactly.

Yes. But I just want to be clear when we're breaking apart. In my mind from what I read, it seems to me that there is a group of kids that are impulsive. They're this or they're exploring and they make a mistake. But they're not going to go on into adulthood with an attraction to children.

Right. They age out of it. Right. So they're not pedophiles. Correct.

And if they have perhaps participated in something, we would label pedophilia. And then there's another group that are pedophiles. They are attracted to children and they're going to remain attracted to children for their life, probably. Correct. Okay.

So that group, of course, on the compassion ladder, which is harder and harder to have. Now we're getting into something that's probably quite hard for people to have compassion for. Do we have any sense of that huge number, 70%?

“What percentage of those are, whatever we call on the DSM, that condition?”

We're doing a ton of research on this. So we've just completed nationally representative prevalence surveys of perpetration behavior in five countries. And we're still analyzing number crunching all those data. But somewhere between one and four percent of adult males, 18 and older, will either have sexual fantasies about children or engaged,

sexually with a child, with or without fantasies. So again, people engage, sexually with children without having strong sexual attraction to children. So it's somewhere between one and four percent of adults. In terms of how many people actually have pedophilic disorder or pedophilia, we don't have a good sense of prevalence of that.

Based on what we do know is probably maybe less than one percent of the population. What I'm going for is the approach and modality to help deal with the huge number of use that are doing. Yes, that are not pedophiles. Is not going to be the same approach we have to apply to the pedophiles. This is going to be a completely different approach.

You need different approaches for sure. But teenagers who recognize that they have sexual attraction to children, like the group that Luke met and introduced me to, were kids who had sexual attraction to children who did not want to act on it. And for them, some of the similar things like,

here's what would happen in the child if you did act on it.

Here's the consequence is getting that information out for both groups. I guess my point is you don't need a strategy for the kid who grows out of it itself. No, for life. When they turn 15 and they start recognizing, oh, they're too young blah, blah, blah, blah. They don't need an ongoing life strategy.

You're absolutely right. So now we got to talk about for these kids that are going to need an ongoing life strategy. First of all, just them identifying feels completely new. And I'm so grateful like the kid that was in your dot that they would admit that, and that they would attempt to address it the same way I have to address my addiction to alcohol.

There's really new and novel, and I'm just wondering how this wave has even started. It almost seems unimaginable in quite brave of them, really. It's self-diagnocent admit this.

“I agree, but I think they don't have much choice in a sense,”

because in speaking with Adam and people over the years, there are many kids who probably commit suicide. Because they don't see a way out, they don't see a way to not harm a kid, or they don't see a way to live in any way that's sexually fulfilling certainly. And I don't want to break it down too much, but there is like a distinction.

And I mean, it's kind of you can slice this pie down to like just fill it up the way. No, we're drawing arbitrary lines, but even with this group, people attracted to kids, the terminology they use is age of attraction. If you have an age of attractions about attracted to kids aged 4 to 12, 4 to 8, whatever case may be.

It can be gendered, it can be age, but also can be a fixed attraction. I'm only attracted to kids. And even Adam, who's not, it taught me like, "Oh, this poor son's at bitches." So he's like a young, softest red pedophile, who's like, "Oh, those guys have no hope." Because he has other attractions.

He's got that kind of weak up here age attraction. There's one question I want to ask that is an ugly question, but I know many, many people have this thought. And I personally do have this thought.

“If you can admit that the only sexual cessation you'll ever experience is with a child,”

why don't those people take a medical approach to stopping hormonally their sexuality period?

If you can first admit, it will never be something I can explore.

Why wouldn't you shut it down hormonally? A chemical castration. Chemical castration, testosterone blockers, something to turn you off as a sexual being. People do.

So there's a great study. The first, we call it a double blind placebo. Randomized clinical trial. The gold standard. Thank you.

The gold standard. A colleague of mine, Christopher Ramm, led this. He's a psychiatrist at Kierlingska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. And he ran it. And some people who have that attraction can manage it. And so they can go through life without offending and can manage it.

There are people who feel like they are going to offend and they want help. They had guys driving 500 kilometers to come get this much shot or whatever it was. The chemical castration. Yeah. And it does it dampens down everything. So if you have attraction to adults, that's going to go down as well.

But there are people who do want that. And making that available through your general practitioner would be great. A point worth making is that it is really hard to not have sex with your desired object.

We have a lot of machinery to drive us. Exactly. Right.

“And I think a lot of people could use help at least some of the time.”

And a lot of people are not going to need help all of the time. And we've had people tell us who have sexual attraction and children who have used the interventions that we use. And we get feedback from them. And they're like, if I could just have someone that I trusted to say, take my computer. I'm in a bad place right now.

Right. You just laying out of this for the next 24 hours. And then I'll be okay. And you get over that urge because sexual urges do wax and lean. And to have strategies for folks who are at risk to be able to ask for help.

But asking for that kind of help is just almost impossible. I think what you said about having it available. I think I've been talking about chemical castration. It's like, I can identify who's a pedophile. I'm going to be a pedophile and chemically castrate them as if it's kind of imposed upon them.

Having chemical castration, kind of medications to like dampen sexual drive. As an option that people can get somehow because no one's going to sign up to be a chemical castration forcefully. No. I'm not in favor of the state identifying pedophiles.

I'm asking the question of the people that are non-offending pedophiles who have a desire to never offend.

Don't they want the assistance or is that not a feeling to them? Yeah. I think it's easier to get. Also to go to your GP. Yeah.

I want medication. Yeah. Exactly. Even if you said I want zero sexual desire. Most GP's are giving me like that's not a healthy.

Can we speak to your therapist about that one? There is a hurdle to talk about this, even to your doctor to a therapist. And that is a real hurdle because if you know to meditate a reporting, which is a very real, but very good thing. But kind of can have these. When they side effects, have these effects of people who do have these attractions.

Don't feel comfortable seeking therapeutic hope. I wouldn't imagine any one is afraid of being arrested just for acknowledging that's the desire. Even if you've not acted on it. Absolutely. And some people are.

And so it makes it very hard to seek out treatment. We have a online intervention that's free and anonymous and there's no human. It's self-help entirely.

And we've had one and a half million people go visit that website since 2020.

We lost it in 2020. One and a half million. And 50,000 have gone into one of the sessions. There's like five modules. But there's no person.

So there's no risk of mandatory reporting. And it's for people with sexual attraction in children who want help to not offend it. Or also who want help to live a healthy happy life. And be able to manage this. Do they function at all like a other 12 step program?

Like is there a group therapy dynamic? Well, this is a self-help intervention. So it's just fully you go through the stuff all on your own. There's interventions where there's a therapist to work with you. Usually with cognitive behavior with therapy strategies.

There are self-help groups like the group that Luke mentioned. There's many more options now than there ever were. And they're still available pretty much exclusively in high income countries. And not available on very many others. I could not admire anyone more than admitting and self-reporting that.

I mean, I truly, I can't imagine anything braver. Because again, we know they're the most detested group to your point. Yeah. You know the murderer. Yeah.

And you know that going in. And you've seen those shows in the movies. And so I can't think of anything braver. And to just write like, oh, I'm broke.

“I mean, like, the mental hurdles you have to jump to be like,”

God, I'm like this. And that penny drops. It's a bad thing. That I cannot, I can't really imagine having to reconcile that. But when they're in therapy,

is the goal of the therapy to have them become more attracted to adult. We learn that that's not a winning. I can't get conversion there. Exactly. Really legal in the United States.

But I remember like some of the research when I first reached out to you back in 2012, 2013. A lot of the research. And it's going to start somewhere. It was just like, oh, we know a lot of people who go on to a fence actually against kids. I like left handed.

Have a high IQ. Have been hit in the head with a baseball at some stage. And I'm like, this doesn't really affect me. Yeah. But I think what they're up to.

And you're like, yeah. And also, it was kind of about there's some previous studies and correct me, if I give this wildly wrong. But basically, you do things like show people maybe sea sand, like falling under child pornography.

And then kind of encourage them to before they all get them to switch it to peer appropriate stuff, which is very much a lot for the conversion. Yeah. And that's true, right? Yeah.

You didn't do it. People were doing what they thought might work and changing someone's sexual interest doesn't work. So then figuring out skills, tools, and knowledge to manage, who can I reach out to, who might be safe to talk to, who I can go to in a moment of need.

And again, letting people know, making sure they understand that if you do give into this, this causes real harm. Here is the damage.

And also, here's what you can expect if you get caught.

But then also, you know, not just avoiding harm, but then how do you give people goals to strive for, living a healthy happy life? And so on our online intervention, we interviewed people who have made it to their 30s, 40s, 50s without offending.

We have these little snippets of real discussions with people. You don't have to offend.

“There's nothing that says you have to offend.”

You can get through this.

Here's what helped me. It's crazy to parallel between addiction treatment. Because you come to the program to quit drinking, and only the first couple steps are about drinking. And then the rest of the program is teaching you how to live a sober life.

Quitting's day one there. So now what's the rest of it? The rest of it is like learning to live a sober individual and conduct yourself in a way that will keep you sober. It's how to live life, not how to quit drinking.

Yeah, and that had to avoid alcohol, but had to find other things that are so appealing and attractive and wonderful that you want to do them. Yes, one of your main pushes is to have a bit of a paradigm shift in how we think of this and take in it out of the criminal sphere

and putting it more into the public health crisis framing. What I think and what I would say my field believes is that we need prevention, healing, and justice.

“You have to criminalize these behaviors.”

You don't have to treat children like criminals, but you have to criminalize sexual abuse. And for a long time, it wasn't. When I lived in South Carolina for 18 years, when I first got there, there was a state senator

who was talking to a reporter. So on purpose and saying, well, you know, and says to something that happens in the family and should just be dealt with in the family. Now, hopefully today you wouldn't see that,

but we see politicians. Who's that boy guy? Oh my gosh, that's exactly how I was thinking about and folks rose to his defense. Well, you know, she was 15.

He was in his 30s and he was, you know, a prosecutor or whatever he was. And she had no power in this at all. No, I can't believe anyone vote for him. I know, and defended him, I think I heard

the defense while Mary was 15 when she had Jesus. And you're like, oh, I know. We're not saying don't have just as don't have consequences. But I'd like to go one figurine.

We're spending $5.8 billion a year to incarcerate

pedophiles. People who sexually offend. Sexual offenders. $5.8 billion being sent downriver at the end of the river. Right.

Exactly. And $3 million is spent to prevent it by the government. That's whatever time the statistic came up. That statistic is exactly right now. That's good.

Well, yeah, but it's probably going to be by now. You know, we did the pay pass. So that's why I'm like. Yeah, I was going to let it slide. No, no, no, no, no.

I'm not going to let it slide. I'm not going to let it slide. I'm not going to let it slide. I'm not going to let it slide. I'm not going to let it slide.

I'm not going to let it slide. I'm not going to let it slide. I'm not going to let it slide. I'm not going to let it slide. I'm not going to let it slide.

I was up on the hill on Thursday. Thankfully, we have bipartisan support to kind of keep that money in. But we're trying to grow it. We're like, this affects one in five children.

And we're putting $3 million into the research on how to prevent it.

Also, even if you're just fiscally minded, you don't give a fuck about victims. And you're fiscally minded. Well, we should invest in reducing the $5.4 billion. Not corrected for inflation. That we're spending no incarcerate sexual finesse.

“Why on earth wouldn't we try to prevent it because it'll save us money?”

And it's not just incarceration. We have an economics paper that shows that it's close to 9.3 billion that we can see in cost to the US economy directly attributable to child sexual abuse. There's a moral argument. There's a child rights argument.

And there's an economic argument to say, it's so much better if we prevent it. It's so much less expensive if we prevent this from happening in the first place. And then you don't need treatment. You don't need law enforcement as much as you once did. And it's still very, very difficult to squeeze those dollars out of the hands of politicians.

It's just hard. What does help want it? Help on it is a prevention intervention that we developed it more. It is four people who are attracted to children who want help to not offend and to live a healthy life. It's online.

We launched it in 2020. We developed it in collaboration with law enforcement. Survivors and victims advocates, therapists, preventionists and some other researchers. It is designed to be a tool that is safe and easy and free to access for people who want help and need help.

1.5 million people have visited the webpage.

50,000 people have gone into one or more of the modules. We just completed a randomized controlled trial evaluation. We're still crunching the numbers. I wish I could give them to you right now. But we just ended data collection in December and we're still working through all the numbers.

Facebook, meta, and Google send people there who appear to be searching online for CSAM. It is a resource. We've adapted it with support from Google for Spanish-speaking populations and adapted it specifically from Mexico. But we're hoping that it can serve most of Latin America and welcome the idea of adapting this intervention for other languages, other contexts. Where there's really not anything else, especially.

“We haven't addressed gender. How does gender plan all these statistics?”

As far as both the group that perhaps committed a sexual assault and then grew out of that versus the group that is lifetime pedophiles, how are those gendered? Not purely, but it's a majority men.

Young men and men. That's true of all criminal behavior.

“There's very few crimes that kind of women dominated.”

I was spoken to young women who were sexually attracted to kids and it is a rarity and everyone's kind of like, "We're not excited." It's not the right word, but just like, "Oh, but in terms of why that is."

It's kind of like a million-dollar question for criminologists.

You know, maybe it's easier to describe in terms of extreme physical violence. Because men, like, socially conditioned to be more kind of aggressive and things like that. In terms of why that happens. In terms of being attracted to kids, I wouldn't even begin to know what the answer to that is. Well, there's a couple of things for one.

For people who are attracted to pre-pubescent children, you get much less gender because they are less gendered. Like a ten-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl look a lot alike. And the younger you go, the less gender, it really becomes more about age than gender and innocence. So different things attract different people. And then there are certainly women who offend against boys, whether or not they have pedophilia.

You see this a lot in school. So where you see women getting convicted of sex crimes is their teachers. Yeah. And these are people and there's also male teachers as well who aren't attracted to children.

“Didn't go into teaching in order to find victims.”

But when you spend your whole work days surrounded by kids, that's a risk factor.

So educators, people who work with kids after school, people are in charge of kids with different settings. Youth counselors. Yeah, exactly. I mean, so you have stray sexual thoughts going across your brain all the time. And if you're with a kids all the time, those are going to collide.

Maybe you're particularly immature or maybe you're going through mental health or substance abuse issues or financial problems. And it's just more enjoyable to be in the company of a child who accepts you kind of unconditionally than adults do. And then you start to feel like you have a special relationship with this one child. And maybe this child's a little more mature and maybe this will actually help this child. And you go down this pathway that no one's not coming including you.

And this does happen where people drift into good people engaging in bad behavior. And there's a lot of steps there that you could intervene. Yeah, right. There's a lot of steps. Well, I just imagine like 90% of affairs don't start out with what's up.

Let's go fucking this hotel. It's a lot of texts. And there's a picture.

“Like I think the boundary you've drawn keeps moving.”

I wonder with female teachers specifically whether we see that overrepresented in terms of your gender question is because we kind of maybe miss the signs or don't read them. If you have like a male teacher, you can tell that focusing on a student, a young female student. I think people have their little kind of antennas up, but if it's a female teacher, I don't know. We make jokes about female. Oh, you like, you've got to make crazy.

I do also just want to say that for boys that have been victimized, they're much more likely to have been victimized by a woman. So it's still a minority, but it's not nearly the same level of a minority. Like there's some studies that show like a 50/50 split. So I don't think there's a huge group of undetected women out there that are offending, but it is not zero. And we overlook boys who are victims, and we overlook women who are offenders, and that doesn't serve us very well.

No, it's not good.

Is there anything like blame, a episode of Brave Lab, where the sky had surgery on his brain, and basically that he became a pedophile?

You didn't become a pedophile, it became somebody that was offending sexually. Yeah, so he had a corridor in his brain to stop the electrical storm that was causing the epilepsy. And they warned him he might have a shift in your personality and what it did is it shut down the circuitry that's going between basically your frontal wall. Disinhibition. Disinhibition, and there's no correction for it.

So his started like you're saying, it started with just he started watching pornography work. And then he started watching more extreme pornography. The dosage was having to change and go up like an addiction. There's a knock at the door and Homeland Security's there all of a sudden. But he isn't a pedophile because he didn't.

Why did you correct me on that? Yeah, and apologies. No, it's a good one. I want to be correct. I just need to know.

So I'm doing this right pedophilia is a strong sexual attraction to children. And there are people who have, and I'm not this kind of doctor. So let me be clear about that too. But there are people that have medical conditions that are disinhibiting. And it's sort of broadly disinhibiting.

And so it's not that you have sexual attraction to children per se. You don't have the inhibitions to just not reach out and do something or see something. Yeah, he was eating more. Yeah. You want to have sex with his wife more.

It was all of the reward system just without any regulator. Yeah. So where that's a different thing. So pedophilia really looks like it's something that you're born with. You become aware of it when you hit puberty and start having sexual interests towards other people.

There are a few conditions that seem to also drive illegal harmful behavior that are separate from what you're generally sexually attracted to. Okay. So you guys interviewed 13 non-acting adults who were sexually interested in children. And I'm curious. What kind of consistent themes did you keep seeing that they were desperate for help.

Mm-hmm. And they were desperate for help in their teens when they were most vulnerable. Because the only message you get is the Larry Nasser, the Jerry Sandeski, the Jeffrey Epstein that you are going to be a horrible person.

You're going to offend 100 times and there's nothing you can do about it.

That's the only message that they get.

“And it is so stigmatized and so horrible.”

It most can't go to your mom and talk. Adam did. But it took him years. One of the characters real people in our book. They wish there had been something like help on it.

So we did that study and service of figuring out what we needed to do. What kind of interventions were needed to give people a place that they could go to learn more and to get some help even if it's just reading and interacting with some video elements of the intervention. The help on it intervention. They really wanted help. They wish that there were people they could talk to without being afraid of being outed or being arrested.

Even if you didn't think you were going to get arrested, I would be afraid they're going to put me on a sex offender list or a watch list. Right, which is arguably worse than being arrested. Or also just that you're going to have a therapist who's horrified by you. This awful fear of negative social reactions is a real thing also. So those were the things that came out again and again and again that there was a real need and a desire.

One thing we haven't talked about is when Luke came in and interviewed me, he had met these young people who were kind of white knuckling it on their own. To not offend and to figure out how to get help between themselves that was safe. I wanted to do a prevention, but I really thought it was going to be to go out and find people and convince them to come get help. It had not ever occurred to me at this point in my career that there were people seeking help so that they wouldn't offend.

That was a complete game changer for me.

Thanks, but yeah, something else is kind of the theme that are kind of interesting to me is that because there were 30 39 people for the whole one. Some number of people. Yeah, that proved my reporting which was separate. I've spoken to like 100, 200 men and women who have a sexual interest towards kids. And in addition to all this is just how uniform it is.

Maybe there's like two or three outliers who don't follow this thing. But across the board everybody kind of they reach puberty. They start becoming sexual beings. They kind of like I'm sexual interested in that 10-year-old or eight-year-old. They start kind of growing up that age kind of stays the same or maybe goes down a little bit.

And then when they hit like 15, 16, 17, they're like, oh shit. What the fuck? Yeah, my self is not updating. Yeah, I'm going to pet a file and then they kind of fall into depression and comb all the things like alcohol and drug abuse. Before they kind of even get to this stage or Adam and co are trying to look for help.

And they're doing that all by themselves. Do they got to go through the whole journey of basically bottoming out before they're going to ask for help? Yeah, yeah.

“You have to be so desperate to ask for help.”

So where are you at the beginning to make sure we won't want to conflate pedophilia with homosexuality or even heterosexuality? Right. It's a different category, certainly. But it seems to follow the same thing. It happens at the same age as they kind of come to the same realization more or less at the same time.

And it's innate. Many people who are fan of it can get to that in a little bit, I don't know much on we have, but who offend who aren't pedophiles, like situational offenders. And that's something she put up in and because that's really interesting. For this category of people who have pedophilic disorder, it's an innate thing that they have no control over.

And that's why I'm like, ugh, I don't want to always talk about pedophiles.

We talk about child sexual abuse, because there's many other facets to it. But it's the one that's kind of maybe the most interesting and novel, like an audience because it's the most demonized. And frankly, the grossest. And the scariest. And the scariest is how do we stop it?

So how would you stop it? Stay tuned for more armchair experts. If you dare.

“But if you accept that this is one percent of the population, you have to acknowledge there's three million people out there.”

So your options are either to hate and vilify them and have no understanding and watch them continue to have the amount of victims that they have. Or you can go, wow, this is a real thing that we're going to have to as uncomfortable as it is. Have some treatment for and some safety and acknowledging that they have it. That's incumbent upon us to kind of evolve into that. If we want there to be less child sexual victims, that's the only we can do.

Yeah, 100% agree. When we wrote a book on a similar topic, but it's worth studying. There are many people who have a block who just can't get them because they have lived experience and in my experience. And there's all anecdotal, of course, but some of the people have been most supportive of my work. And I work specifically on this, people who have a sexual attraction to kids who don't know a friend.

The people who support the most are survivors. They've written to me independently, kind of like DM or emails saying like, oh, you know, I don't hate my abuser. I'm still very troubled by what he or she did, but at least gives me some kind of context to feel like it wasn't my fault or the circumstances. And it could be broader than just me and even my abuser. And I think sometimes a lot of people with very good intentions assume what survivors want to need. Any talk about kind of empathy for what's papers attraction is just like how day you kind of minimize an experience of survivors and that comes from people maybe who don't have lived experience.

They're rare about me. I've been in this situation. I'll make pedophile jokes and I've been yelled at and I'm like, you don't get to tell me how I feel about it. It happened to me and I do think that joke was funny. And you who didn't experience, don't get to tell me what's right or wrong for me to find funny.

But I weirdly was just in this situation.

My kids know I was molested. They knew who else in the family was.

“And my daughter asked, would you beat him up if you saw him?”

This person who did it to a family member.

And I said, I'm so grateful I've never seen him because I would.

And it would be gruesome. And I know it wouldn't help anything. And I also know something happened to him. Yeah. And so that's how I feel.

And I'm both the survivor of it and have loved ones who have survived. So yeah, I know my instincts aren't the right ones. Like I have both those feelings. I would both want to hurt him. And I know it would not do anything good.

And he would not learn a lesson. And I don't think I know fully what happened to him. But him to that. That's my position on it. I think it's pretty human.

I mean, we discussed this even briefly yesterday. Like I'm very much against death penalty. Ideologically. I don't need to get too far into it. But someone I went to grad school with was noted horrifically.

I believe in the difficulty for that guy. I would want to see him. And like the most horrific of ways. I imagine there's people listening thinking like, oh, who would these two people defending pedophiles?

Sure, maybe to some degree.

But like I get it because I want this guy to be ripped to shreds. But for the person asking that, you're not defending them for the joy of defending them. Yeah. You're defending them in hopes of reducing the amount of victims there. Yeah.

Yeah. You really need to understand that point. What I want to do is end child sexual abuse. And it is uncomfortable. And you don't only have to focus.

And we don't only focus on providing solutions for people at risk of offending. You can provide solutions to a lot of things to technology to the way schools are built. The situational prevention strategies. You can work with parents and other guardians to make them more capable guardians to reduce risk. And these things work.

You don't only have to focus on people with sexual attraction to children with pedophilia or people who are at risk of offending because they're surrounded by kids all day. And we need to do more about reducing those risks or focusing on kids who are at risk because they're young and dumb. And they don't know the rules yet. There are dozens and dozens of ways that we can prevent child sexual abuse.

Yeah. So I love that that was in the book. It's like the onus of all this was put on the shoulders of kids in the 80s with these videos,

“which is like you need to identify rapport.”

It was all up to the nine year old to recognize the behavior of the kid in the car.

Or the man in the car. What is it? Recognize resistance to rapport. Yeah. That's the kids responsibility.

What the fuck are all the adults doing? There we are still. We may be beyond stranger danger kind of. But we are not beyond that. That is still what most kids get exposed to in schools.

Yeah. Okay. So let's do the pinned thing. And then I want to do the child sexual abuse prevention matrix. I just want to tell them what to do.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we put a pin in situational. Yeah.

You have kids who kind of have problems sexual behavior and humble sexual behavior. Pedophilic disorder, adults of pedophilic disorder. And then you have a barely big proportion. Half or more. Yeah.

We imagine half or more who are situational offenders. And these are people who have no preexisting attraction towards kids. But if you drop them into a situation and maybe they have drug and alcohol problems, compulsivity problems, immaturity similar to the teachers. And think of like a stepdad or a boyfriend who moves into the house.

The mom's working. There's like the 13 year old daughter. He may sexually offend against that kid. And causes the same amount of harm regardless of where it all comes from obviously. But you take him out of that situation.

He's not attracted to kids. He's not going to go out of his way to find that or reproduce. Exactly.

“So I think we focus on pedophilia per very good reason.”

But there's this maybe majority of people who are sexually offending who just have nothing to do with that side of thing. That's weirdly more scary than all. Yeah. But maybe there's actually the interventions.

And maybe you can speak to this interventions of maybe a little bit kind of clearer. Just go back a little bit about kids. A lot of kids offend thinking of the shifting boundaries thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. 12. Kids are using kids often at school because that's when they're hanging out together. Right.

And so they did this study where they went into schools and asked the kids like, "What does this happen?" And they're like, "Oh, it happens in dark stairwells between classes, locker rooms in the playgrounds when there's no parental teachers supervision." And they're like, "Okay.

Well, how about we post teachers in the dark and stairwells? We put posters in the locker rooms. We cut down the hedges." And they saw like an insane decline. Like 50% decline in this kind of behavior.

Something that really kind of just makes me crazy about all of this is that that program also had randomized controlled trials. Beautifully done. Great success. And then it was just far as I'm aware. It just kind of parked.

So we have things that currently exist. That work. That work. And they've been proven to work. And everyone kind of get behind because it's about kids victimizing kids.

And it's easy enough to do because it's in school. And cheap. And cheap. And cheap. And cheap.

And they found out if they did that curriculum about consent and stuff like that. And it kind of was as effective. It was just the curriculum or just the situational interventions like putting in some light bulbs. But we just don't do it. That's confounding.

Yeah. We underestimate what context creatures we are. That's such a good way to put it. I love that. We all behave in different ways in all the contexts as we are.

This is like Buddhism all roads all roads leave back the Buddhism. They do. I mean, I think people are just like, ah, it's too big of a problem. And just put them away.

Yeah. Put them away with the foster care system too. We've talked about that. Like, oh, it's just too hard. Like, there are things.

There's little things, but not everyone just is overwhelmed by the bigness of the topic.

“Well, I think the more complicated obviously the problem is the more inclined you are for a very quick and easy solution.”

You're incentivizing somewhere. Okay. So what talk about the child sex will be prevention matrix.

This is where we talk about the solutions where the first generation to have dozens of solutions.

Well, I think maybe quickly goes into your point before about the complexity. It's true that it's complex, but there's been certain public health problems that had as complex that we've addressed pretty well. And we look at like road and vehicle safety. And this relates directly to the matrix. William had in junior was a public health physician.

It was tasked with when they first had the US highway, whatever act. He was okay. Let's do a little matrix and figure out. We know all these vehicle accidents happen. People died.

People get maimed. This is what happens before during and after a crash. And whether it's like human focus or situational focused and do like a little grid or little matrix and be like, Oh, having supersonic chrome dashboards, a blind people and the sun hits it. Maybe we should address that.

People careening through their windshields as put in little seat belts. Safety gloves. It's so multifaceted. And then there's kind of things that are higher social level in terms of laws, and stuff around speeding and drinking and driving.

It took a little while.

“But again, we saw a huge decline that something that people previously thought was inevitable.”

We got to get around. This is the cause. This is the cause. People were resistant.

Like when they put in seat belts.

People were cutting them out of their cars. Child safety car seats. Folks hate those things. I used them. My mom used them.

She hated them. We never used them. I'm using them. Here's where I say I'm Amanda. That's true.

So you can apply a similar public health approach. It's a work for other things. Two child sex abuse. And that's where the matrix kind of comes into play. We didn't invent this idea.

A lot of people have taken it from roadway safety to child injury to child abuse and neglect. I think what makes ours unique is that we really apply it to child sexual abuse. Specifically. And looking at. All right.

Well, before abuses happen, what can you do? Well, you can go into schools and teach kids to recognize resist or report. That does not hurt kids. It's just not going to really move the needle. But you can also then teach kids.

Hey, how about not doing these behaviors? Here's how we avoid engaging these behaviors. And that does shift the needle.

“You introduce this idea and the idea is the only thing that could happen to you”

and the scenarios that you would be a victim. You're not even suggesting, like, guess what? You might also victimize them. Yes, exactly. That's a completely different thought.

No kid probably has prior to when they do it. No one walks around thinking, I'm an offender. Yeah. And no parent thinks my kids at risk of engaging in harmful sexual behaviors. And so we're just blind to the people that we love that they would do these things.

But kids do. And they're at risk for a lot of reasons that we've already talked about. You can go way upstream with school based and camp based and sports based. Programs that give kids information, but that also give adults information. Like, hey, when you're surrounded by kids, you might have some sexual thoughts.

Here's why we don't act on those thoughts.

Here's what we could do instead.

And also all the situational prevention programming. So policies and codes of conduct, you know, for educators, for scout leaders. These things work. They've implemented them like boys and girls club. Boys and girls clubs, big brothers, big sisters.

And the boys got now scouting America. I think they're called have been implementing these for decades. And we have a study led by my friend and colleague, Luciana Cindy Maiton, that shows the 31% decline of sexual abuse victimization in the context of participating in one of the big six US, you serving organizations, girl scouts, boys scouts, big brothers, big sisters.

Boys and girls clubs of America, the Y and for each. Yeah. 31% decline in a recent decade compared to the decade before it. Because they have been doing these things in hone in these strategies. Boys and girls clubs of America hired an architect.

Less knickles to help them figure out how do we make space safer. So this space is super dangerous. There's no windows. There's hidden cameras everywhere. All being victimized.

There's a large male across. There's a large there's a large there's a large. But put windows in interior doors so that if I'm going to be alone with a kid, I'm observable and interruptible. Or make them open the door or improve line of sight, cut back on the hedges, but inside.

Maybe don't have a bookcase in between where the security staff is or the entry staff is. And where the kids and other adults are congregating. These kinds of strategies really work. It's really, really exciting. And online, we could be doing the same damn thing as making it safe by design.

And really reducing the risk to kids, both of experiencing harm and of engaging in harm. And lots of organizations are being thoughtful about how to help kids think through. Do you really want to send that new picture? Do you really want to open that new picture? Let's take a beat, figure this out.

There's some creative stuff happening. And a lot more needs to happen to make sure kids are safe online. And we have good age verification. And then there's norms. You know, like that norm of will insist happens in the family.

So it should stay in the family. That's not a norm anymore.

Not sexualizing kids in advertising.

Would probably be a good thing.

“Just fun fact, Noah Hawley, the incredible writer of Fargo and so many other shows.”

His mother started this whole bringing incest into the light. In this 70s. Yeah. Her publisher was like, well, put it out. But how many people have been a victim of incest?

Like, who's going to read this book? And then all of a sudden, it was hugely successful. And that's when people started going, like, oh, this is a significant. Well, and when you think about teaching kids to recognize, this is a report report, report their dad.

Are you kidding me? So my friend Michael Sito is really working on because that's a big gap. We don't have enough youth focus prevention programs. We have some, which is great, but we don't have enough. We couldn't find any programs that really focused on how to keep kids safe in families.

And again, you don't do it by saying, hey, stepdad, you might be a sex offender in waiting that you don't even know how do you reach out to families. Blended families are at increased risk for sexual and physical abusive kids. I do not most blended families don't engage in sexual abuse against their unrelated minors, but we see in blended families where the male has biological or adoptive children

and stepchildren, the stepchildren are at much higher risk. So there's something very protective about being a dad. It's especially protective if you're involved in your kids' lives early on and often. So when you are really involved in caregiving as a father, that reduces the likelihood that you're going to engage in any kind of sexual or physical harm.

So another kind of societal level lever that we could press and reduce child sexual abuse at scale is to encourage caretaking by dad, like to really encourage that to make it more effective. Right, people think of the tattoo guy in the room as dangerous. And no, we need dads involved in kids, and of course kids need them as well.

But it is protective against defending against your own child. And my guess is it's also protective against defending against children period. You change enough diapers and bandage enough knees and put kids to bed. I can't tell you how it takes over. I've heard around say like, "Oh yeah, you used to be able to go to strip clubs."

And now I have a daughter that age and I realize, "Oh my god, I'm disgusted by that someone's daughter." Like it took that experience to go like-- Yeah, to go like-- Y'all develop empathy when her behavior. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The matrix is a lot in the normal things. And you can do it well before any offending is happening. We kind of made the internet impossible to share naked pictures of adults with kids. We could have made that. We didn't-- that was a choice.

We need to retrofit it now, which is just so ass and I, and it just makes me crazy.

“Then there's what can you do at the point where abuse is more imminent?”

And this is where people have risk factors like people who work with kids day and day out. People who have sexual attraction to children. People who have started looking at more and more extreme pornography. People who are online a lot and who are online with pornography a lot. That's a risk group.

That's a risk group. We need strategies that can work with them. That they feel safe going to, right? So if you say, "Hey, you're a potential sex offender. Let me help you. You're going to get no takers." But if you say, "Hey, you've got to figure out a way to make the safe and appealing."

And to give hope to people, people want to think that there's hope. And so to say, "You know what? We're going to help you. You got this. Here's some strategies for doing that." You point out something so obvious on the surface, but could get misses. If the only approach to it is with the criminal justice system,

what you're acknowledging is you're only going to get involved once the abuse has happened. It's too late. That's what you're funding.

$5.4 billion just on the incarceration.

God knows the investigation, the different police departments, the different task force. You're acknowledging you're only getting involved after abuse has happened. Why would we wait to that point? So much of it is just going to have to change the public's opinion on this, because I do think so many people think, "Well, why would we put money towards those people?"

Those monsters. It's just reshaping like, "We're not. We're trying to stop." We can end it. Exactly. We could end it. This is a behavior. It does not have to happen. You were reminding me of a stat earlier about policies that focus on people who have already

“offended like registration and notification. You have to have a conviction, usually, to even have those applied to you.”

And that only covers like 5% of all detected crimes. So even if public notification, civil commitment, registration excuse me as well, were 100% successful, which then not, but that's kind of very complex. You're still any kind of addressing 5% of the issue. So again, it's so tricky, because I remember being in a room doing some talk years ago,

and I was a global reinforcement, and I could tell that, "Who is this motherfuckin' to tell us what is going on, right?" And I could tell. I was like, "Oh, I'm not surrounded by friendly researchers." And like a lowly journalist.

They're not always friends like that.

But I remember just kind of realizing that, "Oh, this is going to be a really long hour talk." And so I just said, "Look, I can tell this is some weird tension in the room. A bunch of Lauren for us, and I'm just going to tell what I said to you guys." At the end of the day, we all want to prevent child sex abuse. We may have quite a different ideas of how to get there,

but we all want to kind of land on the same spot. Yeah. And also to be fair to those people, it's too much to ask those people

So it's like you're asking a cop to be compassionate to addiction.

Fuck that half the stuff he deals with is traumatic. That's not even the right person. They're like the least likely person that's going to find empathy. Is the person cleaning up the mess? Yeah, but we do see people.

“So Simon Bailey was the head of, I can't remember his exact title.”

He's from the UK, and he was high up the food chain and law enforcement. He's the first person that said we cannot arrest our way out of this. And when you have someone from that group who says, "We have to do prevention." That is a powerful ally. We have to have criminal justice.

But if 95% of sex crimes are committed by somebody with no prior conviction. That was the one in practicing excuse me. Yeah, then criminal justice is handling 5% of this. And that's not enough. We can do more.

So we need criminal justice. We need services for people who do survive for children and for adults who survived child sexual abuse. And we've got to invest in prevention. Early preabuse when abuse might be more imminent.

There's some really cool stuff where people who are putting in search terms that seem like they're looking for child sexual abuse materials. Now that you see great interventions that he with a warning that say, "Hey, this is illegal, harmful." But that also include a get help. And here's where you can go to get help. This is a get help.

This is a get help. This is a get help.

They do amazing work. So they're great partners of more.

And we really love Thorne. They started out where if somebody was searching online for CCM or appear to be through some algorithm of search terms,

“the thing that would pop up would be a map and the map had a pin in it.”

And the pin was where you were. And they said, "We know where you are." And this terrified people. Right? And terror is a good deterrent for about 5 minutes.

Yeah. And then it goes away and you can't keep terrorizing people. Yep. So then they and others are friends at Lucy Faithful and Internet Watch Foundation have done some really creative things where it's like this is harmful. And you can get caught.

Also, here's where to go to help. And two things happen. One, people who are just starting down the road to search for this Markstream content that evolves children stop searching for. A large group of a co-woo. I was at you a bit.

I'm not anonymous. Back to the hedges. Yeah. Well, or like, this could have caused some harm to me and them. And I don't want to do that.

And they go back to looking at legal adult pornography. And then some smaller percentage of people click on that. Here's where you go get help. Or interact with the little chat pod that's like, "How can I help you not do this?" So there are some creative strategy.

“And then there's post abuse, which is another place you can and should act.”

And we have treatments for kids who have been victimized. Trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy. Validated across dozens of randomized controlled trials. Really helps kids and their parents navigate the after. Yeah, the fallout.

There's great interventions for kids who have already caused harm. Really excellent randomized controlled trial evaluations. I led one of those. There's another one that I would say is even better because it's a lot less expensive. And then there's even interventions for adults who have offended.

The best intervention really seems to be for a guy coming out of prison. Is surrounding them, you know, with a parole officer who knows what he did. Another people who knew what he did, but are going to help him find stable housing employment and post social relationships. And those are the three keys to staying on the straight narrow.

Yeah. There will be people who reoffend whether they have pedophilia or not. There will be people who reoffend. There are psychopaths who just take what they want. They don't care.

Yeah. But most people are not going to reoffend. And most of them could use some support.

Yeah, well, one in five in this country equals 60 million Americans.

So that's an enormous group. Even if you go down 30%. That's 9 million people. If you could prevent 9 million people with any strategy. God, it's worth pursuit.

We would put more than three million dollars. Well, you guys, Luke Elizabeth, this has been very, very illuminating. And I'm couldn't be more grateful. I mean, I got to applaud you Luke. You at least have the force field of academia and research.

So you can pursue this without a terrible risk to your own professional life. There's actually pretty significant risk. But I imagine as a journalist, you are not going to get tenure. And you're not going to be free. So I do think you're taking on a lot of risks to make this your pursuit.

And I'm grateful for it. Thank you. Yeah, and I feel lucky. Especially work with Elizabeth for the past five to six years on this book. It's been a wild ride. Well, I'm so glad you agreed to get interviewed by him in 2012.

Me too. Yeah. Nothing but Joyce and Senate really has. And we're so glad that you agreed to interview us. Of course.

And the book is one in five. Why child sexual abuse is our biggest public health crisis. And what we can do to stop it. I'm reading upside down and I'm dyslexic. So you did it. I've really got through it.

You guys, this has been a delight. It's not a fun topic, but somehow you guys made it. It's meaningful. Yeah, enjoyable. So good luck with everything and keep out of please.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks for sharing.

He is at our pair. X word. But he makes post eight. It's all that time. Thank God.

My happy year. He's got a little help. The facts. Okay. I suppose it tells.

No, you take a time. We don't have time. Time is of the essence. No. Time is on our side.

Explain time is of the essence to me. Okay. Um, cue. Okay. Time is of the essence.

I mean, it is of the essence of life.

It's basically the the the carnal for which life.

It's that literally the essence of life. But I don't understand it in terms of like. No. Yeah. The immediate immediacy.

But maybe it's because time. It's it's gone. We just lost. It's it's going. It's.

We already lost. It's one of many. Uh-huh. Sayings that I have course. No, what the meaning is.

But if I really think of it literally. I don't know why it means what it means. Yeah, time is now. That's actually true. But essence is like when something has the essence of.

Right. This is probably old time.

“That's I think essence might have meant something different.”

I think so. Speaking of time is of the essence. Yeah. I have a lot to say on time of the essence. But you start.

Okay. Well, I was just going to tell a story about. Last week or last fact check that I didn't get to. But I don't have to. But it is a poop.

Tell me. It is poopy. Oh, yeah. I want to hear. Yeah.

I almost tunk it again. I got so close. I was going to paint the picture. Pretend you're an armchair and anonymous. Listen.

What backstory do I need? So this is really why I'm bringing it up. Because I was at a friend's house. Tiny. What time of day?

Um, evening like, um. I guess I got to the friend's house around five. I was fine. Uh-huh. You know everything was fine.

Did you eat at the friend's house? Uh-huh. But pizza. Cheese pizza. No problem.

No problem. Yeah. It wasn't that. Eight that started playing Majong. Hmm.

Hmm. Okay. You know, you play multiple games of Majong. I don't know. But now I can.

Okay. Yeah. So I'm teaching you that. And when you go to play Majong, you'll play like multiple games. Like sometimes they're just 20 minutes or whatever.

Hmm.

So you play the first game.

And it's fine. Everything's great. No. We start the second game. And I'm like, hmm.

I feel. Hmm. As just would say, skiddly do. Okay. Okay.

And out of 10, we're at a 2.5. Yeah. It's fine.

“And I was also like, I think this will pass.”

Yeah. This is fine. Sometimes it passes. Sure. And then it was just like, it would pop, you know, would pop.

It would pop back up the cramping. Okay. Not like a turtle. No. Not a turtle.

Okay. The cramp would come into play. Yeah. A little. Yeah.

And I was like, okay. Not really passing yet. Yeah. Um, and then I, I was like. And he's round of pops.

Little more intense. Yeah. But holding steady. But it was okay. Okay.

Now, at this point, I did, I was like, okay. I am going to need to evacuate soon. Hmm. Right. Are you trying to hurry the game along it at all?

So I, I mean, you can't really because you're like, waiting on other people. But sort of. I'm like, your turn. Yes.

Get a little bossy. We're playing with a kid too. I know. So um. I fucking go on there and ship my pants.

I know. Tommy.

“This is where I feel like I haven't done made no growth in life, right?”

Hmm. Because they're, they live in a house. There are bathrooms. Yeah. You could just.

I could have. Yeah. But I, not only could I not do it. I couldn't even say. These are close friends.

Yeah. I couldn't even say like, oh, my God. Like, I'm in trouble. I'm in trouble. Intestinely speaking.

Yeah. Yeah. And also they're like fun and fun. They're kids too. So they're dealing with food.

Yeah. They, they themselves have either. Sure. Sure. Um, but I'm in a safe space.

I know. But like, my brain goes into like a different mode. Also like, I was just evaluating where the bathrooms were. And I was like, I can't. They're too close to them.

Yes. Yeah. The options were a guess. Bath. Did you crush your mind and go like, I can run the Starbucks real quick.

Because they didn't want anything. I just really, I didn't pop your right. Yeah.

I just got to go to Starbucks right this second.

That is something like that is something crazy. I would. A solution you would entertain. Yeah. Um, I think there's a bathroom in the mast in the primary bedroom.

Okay. Okay. And a one in the kind of like. Living or basically. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Okay. So I couldn't be like, can I use our shrimp in your room? That feels a little strange without giving all the information.

Also, I'd imagine, because when I've been in this situation, you're not talking about also just taking a normal customary. I mean, I knew. Yeah. This is not going to be good. You're going to have to open windows and light things on fire.

Yeah. And I don't know about the volume. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the noise may be even.

That's what I mean. Oh, the volume. Not. Oh. That could mean two things.

Yeah. You're right. Hey, load. And I meant the all the Tory. But yes.

Okay. So any who. I'm like, it's, you know, starting to ramp up or still playing. We're playing the thing. God, you know, my friend wins.

It's like, I've never been so happy for.

To not win. Yeah. And then.

“And then she was like, do you have another game in us?”

And you're sweating bullshit. Yeah. You don't think so. Yeah, I did. I said, I, I think I'm tired.

Oh, you lied to me. Yeah, I lied. I said, I think I'm tired. And I was like, oh, no, that's totally fine. And I was like, what's going on?

Don't play again. Please, Ms. Monica. Don't want to do. I live for the whole week at school. This is the end. Oh, my God.

I immediately just shit everywhere. No. I said, yeah. You know, we're recording tomorrow. Why?

No, we were. But. Yeah. Because then they said, Oh, what time is it? Oh, fuck.

These are from a line. It immediately began tomorrow. Right. Now, but I did say I was like, like, 10. Oh, fuck.

What is? I think maybe what?

Or we had something at 10.

Yeah, probably. Yeah. So I was like, what should I know isn't early? Like, I didn't have it. But I was like, I got to go.

Like, enough of this shit chat. So then I was like, yeah, bye. You know, just getting up, not really helping put anything away. Now, really quick. Do any of these people listen to the show?

I mean, I have a sense this is going to get better. Okay. Okay. Okay. So I know what they're going to say.

I know. I can tell you right now. Okay. You're going to get a call. Yeah.

Yeah. And so to say hello. Hello. Hey. Oh, my gosh.

I just heard Sally told me to listen to the fact. You told the mage on the story. And I want you know, Monica, you can totally go on our bathroom in our primary bedroom. I just, I felt like I was so embarrassed. I just couldn't.

“But you should know we would be honored.”

I know. It was not because you didn't create an environment that I couldn't do. It was, it's me. It's a me issue. Okay.

Thank you. Yeah. You have full access. Thanks. I probably still won.

All right. Okay. And you're right.

That's exactly how it goes.

So you get in the car. Get in the car. How far away did they live? Twenty minutes. Oh, yeah.

Okay. And I'm like, I can do it. Like, I can do it. I have no option. I can do it.

But then I did think like, you know, as I'm driving. I was like, oh, my, I don't know. I don't know. And you weren't wearing a skirt this time. I'm wearing jeans.

New jeans. Oh, boy. I was like, okay. And I had this. I had a sweatshirt in the back of my car.

Uh-huh. It was like, okay. Man, like, pull over. Pulled on my pants. Yeah.

Put the sweatshirt on the seat. Okay. Whooping the sweatshirt? Oh, wow. You were considering that.

Yeah. As a barrier. I didn't, I don't want the sweatshirt. So it was fine. Okay.

Okay. So as I put in the sweatshirt, that would be a barrier. You know, and kind of a die sort of. Yeah. I had to make the decision.

I mean, they're going to do that. Yeah. But I'm just going to keep going. You know? Stop being at a gas station.

No. Going straight to a gas station. It's not enough. No. Okay.

I didn't feel like I knew where they were. I'd be driving. It was not going to happen. Okay. That was just like, but the sweatshirt was kind of in the back.

And I was like, kind of leaning. Oh, okay. No. Whatever. I'm going full-fork force.

So I was speeding. Oh, wow. Good. Um. And I made it.

I made it. I made it. How? It was so close. And as you're running in your house, do you use that toilet right at your doorway?

Um. But you would need to go upstairs. It's just going to be emotional. Yeah. So did you get to take clothes off and stuff?

So that is what was crazy. It was like, it's just, it's right there. There's a bathroom right by the door. I just do that. Yeah.

And of course, I get in there. And I go all the way upstairs. I'm like, like a glutton for punishment. I go all the way upstairs to my bathroom. The muscle memory.

Yeah. I guess. Yeah. Um, I evacuated. Oh, one.

“It was, it's, you must have loved that moment though.”

Because you had been so, you had gone through so much. I got such a trial. Yeah. So the relief relief of nature was, so it was, but it was also like, it was a little pain.

Like, yeah. I didn't feel good, I guess. Because like, as it turns out. Yeah. And then, not to be so graphic.

I mean, whatever. Right here. Yeah.

Okay. Sure.

“Um, which then I realized, I was like, oh, I'm starting my period.”

Okay.

Which sometimes gurgles your.

Yes. It's like, this is all making sense. And why, like, the cramps. I don't know. Like, sometimes you can't tell what cramp is.

What? It's all affecting everything. It's a mess. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway. Um, let's go. So, that was, it was annoying because I was like, I, I don't, like, after I didn't feel spritly, like, I still felt kind of crampy and bad. Because of the period.

I think, yeah. Yeah. I would love an internist to explain to us why the period also and fucks up your GI. Those things are very separate systems, but this is consistent.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank God.

I got the home. I know.

I was like, this is going to happen to me again.

But then I had to take responsibility. I was like, look, I, in this case. You could have prevented this. I also think now that this is twice. Well, in, in, in two years.

No. Don't finish that sentence. Don't. Well, I don't think you know where I'm going for this. But.

So, we're averaging once a year now. It is time to have the trash bag in your car. That's nothing. You keep it in the back pocket of the seat. Well, how do you poop in that?

You can get a little toilet seat that has a trash bag attached to it. Also an option.

“But I think people would see that in her back.”

If she ever gave someone a ride, but then he's got one. We'll say it's for good. Well, you used my friends kids. Vinnie's up growing his. Yeah.

I can give you a look. Listen, no. This is no. But the trash bag, a big guy, a 55 gallon trash bag. Because then that's your sweatshirt idea.

But way more protection. There's no seepage. And then it's already in a trash bag. So great. You throw it in the.

No, you'd have to lay it down, right? Or no, open it up. But then how that feels hard to do? No, not those 50 think about the mouth of a 55 gallon trash can. Yes.

It's this big around. So you're saying I pull over to do this. This isn't well. I'm driving like the first time. Right.

You would probably want to pull this shoulder the road. Okay. Listen, no. This is what I was afraid you're going to say. I don't want to manifest.

This isn't a new thing of mine. This isn't a new thing. No, it is not. Do not say that.

I was never having to me again.

Do your mind has got a new thing.

“This is my hubris because I was too embarrassed to go.”

Number two in my friends house. Yeah. Like that's my issue that I need to work through. Yeah. Because you're nothing to throw it in there.

That's all I'm saying. You know, I don't think you're. I don't think you're. I'm telling the manifest. No, I am.

I'm telling the universe. Like, okay. Well, I'm making a different argument. So often when you prepare for something, then it won't ever happen.

Because you've wasted the time. Then you're like, Oh, my God. It is all this stuff. And then I never happened again. That's more to me.

That's the more common pattern. It's like, I bought this thing to deal with this thing and then never happened again. Okay. Okay. Now, when you have gone to the bathroom and your friend's house.

I'd have gone at their house. They don't have gone at a gas station. I've gone to Starbucks and sincerely. Yeah. And I have history to prove this.

I would have pulled over one on the shoulder of the road before I went in my car. I'm not going to use it as a porta potty. I would rather do it into the grass or weeds on the side of the road. We're different in that way. Yeah.

I would, I, I feel at least. There's something about me being alone that that is the highest priority in those moments. For some reason. Yeah. You want your privacy.

Yeah. So the car, it is just me and there. Yeah, but also it was dark out. Yeah. And sign of the road.

It's like, what was the opposite? No. Okay. All right. Plus I could get murdered like that.

No one wants to fuck with a girl, spring. No, no, no, no. Even the weirdest. Even the weirdest. The weirdest murders like fuck this.

I don't know. I think they might like it. Well, you're now you've really gotten into the most niche murder imagine. They're out there looking for girls like me. The dokey killer.

Exactly. Yeah. Has a great ring to it that someone's definitely taken that. He waits around porta pottys and he waits to hear his harness happening in the neighborhood.

You're like when people poop. Yeah. But I'm also not a killer. I know. Yeah.

Nothing could possibly make me happier. If I was driving on the road and I looked around. I was like, oh, there's Monica's car. Oh, there's Monica in the bushes. Oh, my God.

I mean, the amount of joy that would give me. You can really can't imagine. I can't be measured. Anyway. So I just wanted to be vulnerable.

Say that that time is of the essence.

“Stay tuned for our share expert if you dare.”

I no longer want to say my thing because that there's no way to top. Wait. Of course. No, I just time. We're talking about time.

Yeah. Someone, one of our guests. I wish I could remember. I have a hunch it was Angela Duckworth. Okay.

She has such phenomenal taste. Yeah. Someone told me to buy this book The Order of Time by Carl Low-Row Valley of Physicist. Oh. And it's been sitting in my nightstand for a few years.

Oh. And then I moved nightstands. I got a different nightstand against my well. But I got one. And then so it re-emerged.

And then I was like, oh, I'm going to. I'm going to leave through this. I find it mind blowing. It's so mind blowing.

“I just want to step the two concepts that they start the book with, which is our understanding”

of time is as flawed as our understanding of the earth being flat at one point. And if you think about like, it's just kind of unimaginable or on a sphere. Yeah, I know. The fact that anyone ever, any points is out. Both of these discoveries happen before we could ever test or measure this realization.

But yes, the earth being round is like, you can't conceive of that. Yeah.

And then second was that the sun doesn't revolve around us.

I know. You can't figure that out from our perspective. But both were figured up before we could actually test that. So time, we have as flawed of a sense of what time is. So just there's three elements.

So I'm just going to say the first one that I find to be so fascinating. So time is moving faster on a mountain top. Okay. Then it is at sea level. What how?

Yes, so if you are in Denver. Uh-huh. The time is moving faster than it is at the ski hill 20 miles away at elevation. What? Yes.

Like the perception of time are actually. No, here you have two atomically paired clocks. You know, that measure to the bazillionth of a second. Uh-huh. And you sink those here at LA.

Uh-huh. And then I send you to Mount Wilson with one of those watches. And you're up there for a while. When you return, um, your time will be further along than mine. And also to the degree that your head is living in a faster time than your feet.

Oh, my God. And this is all been measured. We can do that. We have the technology. What's incredible is that Einstein figured this out at like 23 years old without any way to know that this was the case.

And so what it says is, well, what's true time?

“Is it the time that was happening at elevation or was it at sea level?”

And the truth is there is no real time.

Yeah, exactly. You only have two times that are relative to one another. The example is to say like what's a true statement, point eight British pound's equals one dollar versus one dollar equals point those. Neither of them have an intrinsic value. We've been only related to each other.

That's their value. And that there is no same time happening anywhere in the universe. Every single location has its own time. That's only relative to other locations. I hate it here.

And then it gets into. So our first premise is like, oh, there's such thing as time that we can measure. Well, no, you can only measure at your location in space. So the number one definition we have of times like, well, that we know that's not true. And then the next one is that it's sequential or that there's an order.

But there's a past and a present. Oh, I know. Is this like time is stacked? Well, yes. So the example is like cause and effect.

And it's said in the universe and they do really good dumb analogy. So it's like, if you could imagine something was filmed anything was really filmed. You can't tell depending on what direction whether we watch it forward or backward. But what do you mean? Sorry explain.

Like if you filmed. It's got to be something without heat. Like if I filmed a ball rolling and stopping. Okay. It's as you can view.

You can view anything backwards in your mind. I'll tell you that was the beginning. When really it was the end of the video. Oh, oh, you're saying like, okay. If you like rewind.

You can watch it backwards or forward. Right. But you're starting it. You're saying.

An objective outside or can't tell what was first.

The only thing that the only thing in the universe that we can observe that we know definitively had a beginning and an end is heat can warm cold.

But cold can never create heat.

Heat can warm cold. So you have like this body of water. It's 100 degrees. You have this body of water. It's 50 degrees.

“If we film those interacting and this this temperature goes up.”

Uh-huh. We can establish the order of events because you'll never inject cold water into hot water and make it hotter. Oh, make it hotter. That's a raw thermal dynamics. But you make it colder.

You're affecting it. If you add cold water into something hot. Yes. But you can make anything hotter with cold water. Right.

It's it only has one direction. You can make cold water warmer with hot water. You cannot make hot water hotter with cold water. Right. That can't happen.

That's like a. Yeah. No. Yeah. The movable law of the universe.

So unless something has a heat transfer. There's no order. There's no way to know the order. Okay. I'm in that chapter right now.

I'm going to they're going to land the plan. I'm going to be able to say more about it. But I just was that whole that your heads experiencing time differently than your feet is long curves. God. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. So what's happening is mass the earth is well-being time. You can think of it as a body going into a tub and displacing water. So earth itself is warping time. So the closer you get to that mass, the center of that mass, which is why sea level

you're closer to the center of the mass than you are on a mountain top. The closer you get to the center of the mass, the slower time is going.

This is why finally now understand why there's no time in a black hole.

It's just like infinite mass. So it's time just slows down. What is the dead center of the earth? Like what's it made of? No, like on or on this planet.

Uh-huh. What is the dead center? What would be inside the sphere? You saw it's in there. It's up.

Up. No, like here's earth. Yeah. And the dead middle of it. As I say, we drilled 5,000 miles into the earth.

We'd be at the center of the earth. Right. That's where times moving the slower. Well, the equator is going around the center. Well, we've arbitrarily drawn that line.

Uh-huh. Based on it's where the sun is most directly hitting.

“That's how we picked that line as the equator.”

I thought it was the center. Look, it's a ball, right? Yeah. And we decided to go here and make the zero and make the primary and zero. Right.

And then that way we can graph everything out. But imagine those lines stay still and we just rotate earth. We could have picked zero is going through Antarctica. Right. That's just how we've constructed our maps in our earth.

Yeah, but I guess I'm asking, like, in the ball. Yeah. Yeah. So the center of the earth is here. Uh-huh.

So where is that? Where is that? In the earth. Where is it? We're kind of everywhere.

If you're talking about the center, you could draw a straight line out from the center to any spot on the outside sphere. There's a drug line from you and I right now to the center of the earth. And any point on the earth, there's a direct line to the center of the earth. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a scrambly. It's so. Anyways, I have a weird hunch that at the end of this book, should I fully understand it?

Mm-hmm. Which I might not be able to. Is it dense book? Mm-hmm. Like I said to Eric, you should read this book.

And he's like, are you listening to it? I'm like, no, I don't think this book can be listened to.

“I think you need to reread some paragraphs over and over again.”

But I have a bizarre hunch or optimism that at the end of this, I'm going to have a new grasp on spirituality. Ooh, I like that. Yeah, like I think if I think if I can really deconstruct, or understand how time is not the thing I think it is,

that might open the door to a lot of new possibilities and thoughts. Yeah. I started Project Hill Mary. Yeah, I rented it and I was watching, you know, 45 minutes. And I was like, yeah, I don't believe in any of this.

(laughing) This is fully made up. This life is made up. This is made up. How can it be?

How can this be? Like planet Earth and what's happening here? Yeah, you know. Guys. It's a miracle.

It's not real. We are not real. We're not real. None of this is real. (laughing)

I really started to feel like kind of crazy. Like, oh, oh my God.

Well, yeah, in the same sense, I'd imagine if you're like the first person

to have the concept of the Earth not being flat explained to you, it's very destabilizing. You're like, wow, my perspective can be that flawed. Right. Or they go, oh, guess what, no, no, we're just spinning.

The, you know, sun's over there. And we're just, we're going around it in a year. And we're just spinning all day.

That's destabilizing.

Like, well, everything I know is wrong.

And that's a scary thought. I know. But when you think, when you like really, really think about the story, the story of the world. Mm-hmm.

You mean, Earth or the universe? I mean, I mean, Well, one, but gets the other, I guess. But like, even just the Earth, okay. Mm-hmm.

And the evolution of all of us, everything. Right. From single cell to cell. Exactly. It's like, no.

Yeah. That is not real. I feel you. I have, I have a, I have a healthy,

“I think that's why it's very easy for people to believe in religion.”

Because. Yes. Because it's an explanation. It's a disastrous that all this happened by chance. I really was getting in my head.

And I was like, this is not like, I'm going to vaporize. Like, this is not. It's, yeah. You felt untethered, maybe.

Dangerous. Yeah. It was a little unsettling. Um. Did you make it through?

Or you did 45. Well, I had to leave. So I'm going to go back finishing. Yeah. He hasn't even met.

But he's like just now meeting. I assume the rock. Yeah. It's such a cute movie. Yeah, I like it's where he's gone.

My god. Yeah. So charming. It's just him. It's just him.

Very few people can do that. He's just so fucking charming. He is. Anywho. Um, yeah.

That's, yeah. Interesting that you brought that up.

“Because I've been also in my head about, you know,”

life and reality and none of it. It's like none of it. It's nothing. And then again, we come back to the same conclusion.

We always do, which is like.

And who cares? So if we found out as a simulation, then what? Well, I keep living this life that I'm living. I still have goals and hopes and I'm looking forward to things and saying, Okay, oh, it's all fake.

Well, I'm going to continue on. I'm not going to, what? Like, if I find out as a simulation about it, but I guess then I'm going to kill myself. No.

Right. Like, you're like, oh, just keep enjoying the simulation. I know, but it's like, Does it matter? Even a part of it being a simulation.

Even that was getting like, even that campy real. Nothing. Like, what? It's scary. Like, it is scary once you really start thinking about space and time.

And it helps you see how easy it would be to go crazy. Yeah. I was like, I could really, really go crazy. If I really started delving into some of this stuff, this is maybe not healthy for me.

That was my early 20s. I had like two or three years in my early 20s. That's how I am. Really? Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, I had two years in my early 20s where I was, I felt like I was on the path to becoming. Going nuts. Yeah, yeah. And I was kind of swirling with these kind of thoughts.

My challenge in nature, my openness to reject what is believed or known, which I would ever, I trend high on that spectrum. I thought, oh, you're in danger. If you don't accept these things, you're in danger of floating off. Yeah.

Yeah. To an abyss of uncertainty. Yeah. This is how people go nuts. Yeah.

I think I was right on the precipice. Well, I'm, I'm going to try to stay away. I'd rather not go crazy. No, yeah. You know, at this house.

Yeah, you want to stay away. It might be because of it. I don't know. Okay. I want to stop talking about this, making me a little doubt.

Okay. I showed, did I tell you, I showed Lincoln dances with wolves. So I know. Yeah, you said you guys had started it and I was very impressed, because it is, to me, although I was in high school, one of the most boring movies I've ever seen,

but I would like to rewatch, because maybe I just wasn't in the headspace. I love it. Yeah. But of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like a renowned film. Yes.

But again, it's always nice to be reminded of what people live like for so long.

If they even did. Yeah, just out on the frontier with like a book of matches and a rifle and like, you know, it's just wild how what we dealt with and Eric was going fuck. I mean, how were they alive?

“Like, how did they just exist and not go fuck this?”

And I said, and it's my theory on life, which is like, because whatever their situation was, it was incrementally better than the previous generation. So maybe they had 10 cups now instead of no. They felt lucky. They had some inventions that made them feel lucky, luckyer than the previous group.

And then you got to wonder what does to like the group psychology when we do pinnacle. I know. We're not there yet. I don't know. But there is a pinnacle.

I know. I'm getting, again, like, we're maybe getting close,

It's starting to feel like, oh my god, it might be at the end of this experiment.

Mm-hmm. What a privilege to be there at the. No, I don't know. I even have like, okay, so because obviously in the movie, the Earth is not.

It's like not viable for much longer. And I was like, okay. So if that happens, like what I guess just die, I guess. Like, I would probably try to, I had,

“I was like thinking this, you're like, okay, when would I die?”

Like at what point would I make the call? You're like someone with a terminal condition. Yeah. That has to decide when they take the solution. I'll tell you for me to be thinking like this.

I just know me. Like, I don't think this is good for my brain anxiety wise. No, no, no, for you, it's not great. But I'm, it's, I'm too far. I'm such, that's what it is.

I'm such a novelty addict. Oh my god. And I'm like, yeah, it could be, it could be bad. It could be good. It'll be new.

It'll, and that to me is exciting. Or to me, what makes it worth it. I'm like, yeah, I don't know what's about to happen, but something's going to happen. And I'm going to witness it.

That feels so good. You'll be dead. Well, we don't, we don't know which way it's going to go. So I don't want to have to go to move to another planet and stuff. No, no one's base ship like that's, it looks so miserable.

It could be fun. No, it looks really miserable. What if it's dealt to one? To, yeah, there we go, dealt with Centurory. I'm like, all right.

And then they have on the plane. They have like cocktail. No, they don't. Their food is bad. And they're drink.

They don't even have Hendrix, Jim. You could maybe bring your own Hendrix, Jim. Oh, anyway. Okay. Well, this got really intense.

Yeah, let's do some facts. This was an eye-opening episode, man. This was a serious episode. I have found myself repeating the two most jaw dropping bits of data that came out in this. Have you been telling anybody about this stuff?

Well, which, which are the two for you? Well, that 70% of the cases are from other children. That's wild. And then the other one that blew my mind is that like 50% of them are situational. Someone who has like permanent kind of feeling.

Yeah. Which that is somehow scarier. Well, not to me. Because again, and like, I think this is sort of the point they were making. Like those people.

It's like the difference between a murder and a psychopath. Mm-hmm. Like a psychopath can't control it. Like it is a real urge. It is driven in the brain somehow.

And a murderer could not murder. Given a different circumstance or the right tools or you know, whatever. Yeah, that was a part of a pretty sure glad.

Well, episode was like, it was both first order thinking and second order thinking.

But all these things that happened. Like some alarming percentage of murders are people reacting in situations. They're not premeditated. They're not like someone's going to off someone for money. It's like, that's a very low percentage.

It's people interacting in life who become overwhelmed. Yeah. Yeah.

“So that's why I think it's not as scary because I guess it's like the whole point of what”

Elizabeth and Luke are doing. It's trying to like mainly avoid that. You can imagine a future. It's like, oh, it becomes so fine to self identify as this. And the people know when they're pretty young.

It's not even like. And then get treatment for those people. Well, if you could take all those people out of. Not take them out of the population, but identify them. Get them help.

The problem would be over. It wouldn't be over. I mean, let's just even ignore the lessons that are doing it because there's this mostly situational. Right.

But the other people who is like, they've never had that urge before.

And then they don't have it again. You can't even really don't even know to be. Treating that. Well, yeah, but it's kind of like that's what we should all be doing. It's just like reminding people of the consequences.

Of these types of things. Yeah. Like, I think a lot of people who've been raped when they're young. They're not a pet. They're not always pedophiles.

They're rapists. No, and I mean, like, that's a power thing. That's, uh, there's, there's a lot more. Then there victims would age up with them as well. You're saying to some degree.

Well, yeah. I just mean, like, it doesn't mean just because somebody's had, yeah, just obviously. That's the whole point.

“But like, I think if a situational scares me more because you can't see it coming.”

I guess you have no awareness that you're capable of that. Right. And that is like inherently less treatable or dressable. Well, sort of because it's like, everyone's kind of capable of anything. And you just like, learn to not do bad shit.

Like, there's no one that's, like, these, these talk, she's talking about the teachers that are in these situations.

Like, there no one's unaware of a the social stigmatism and the legal issue with it. And yet they do it. So I don't think deterrents. Well, but I think it, I think they were argue that was the whole point kind of is like, it's not like, yes, it's, they know, but it's remind it's like, hey, this is about to happen to you.

If you go down this path, this is like intervention and things like that. The kids, yeah, like the kids who's pre funnel cortex, they need to understand like there's really bad outcomes for the victims that you probably wouldn't even have seen as a victim to explain it to you that they're a victim. And then they're going to have to. Yeah, then it's like, oh my god, it's that. I'm talking more of the adults that are in these situations where it happens once or it happens.

And they don't repeat it.

Sure, I guess the solution for that would be people in jobs that interact with youth need to have.

Some classes that say, hey, this could happen or, you know, this has happened to many people who are not pedophiles. Right, exactly.

“So you need to have, you know, like everyone's kind of in danger of this.”

So watch them saying, yeah, it's easier to address a tiny percentage of the population that is identified with the condition that it is like. That's every human being that deals with kids needs to be warned that other people weren't like that and did that is feels more daunting. Yeah, a long time for me to articulate that. I mean, I think it, yeah, I mean, I still, I still personally am more afraid of the, um, the like condition, but, but I see me mean. Okay, what are the chances of addiction if you've been sexually abused as a child?

This is from PubMed and so it's using, it's using some numbers that I don't really understand. It says, in multivariable analysis for men, first occurrence of physical and sexual abuse as a child was significantly associated with more substance use consequences adjusted mean increase in and then this is what they're using like some sort of system in DUC. Um, 2.5 for ages less than 13 to 0.5 times more likely. That's what I've not understood. Okay, we don't know what the metric is 3.3 for ages 13 to 17 compared to those with no abuse.

Oh, 0.01 with no abuse. Oh, so many multiple times a lot more a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I can tell you that my mother went to use in her cost of program, which is getting taking state sanctioned classes. They said you had an 80% chance of becoming an addict if you had been sexually abused.

Yeah, horrible. And I went. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,

It is funny where, of course, in understandably, we're so obsessed with finding out why things happen. We feel safer if we're going to see why things happen. But just like we have this endless desire to point to causality of say addiction. It's like, in my case, is it that thing?

“Is it that I'm eighth generation through the haunchles fucking full blown addict?”

Is it some other bit of nurture, you know, and then who cares? You know, for me, I mean, at the end of the day, it's like, I guess who cares? Yeah. Well, the reason to care is is not really want to happen. It's like, oh my God, like, if this happens to some, like, don't do this to people.

Yes. Yeah, points out the importance of preventing an addict. Exactly. For sure. But just like when you're, when you're oriented and addict, and you start looking back

on why you might be an addict, to some degree, it's like, you'll never know the percentage.

We won't know what part was nurture and what part was nature. And it doesn't really matter. I've been left this way, and yeah, it's good to figure out what triggers the addiction. Surely. But yeah, this other stuff.

Yeah, it doesn't matter. Okay. Roy Moore is the politician in Alabama. And there's so many offensive things about him. It's not just the repeated child or a fine.

“It's him also, like, trotting the town on a horse and of like, how do you do the costume?”

Yeah. What? Okay. The horse's name was Sassie. Yeah.

Yeah, I bet he named his horse Sassie. Exactly. Oh, Garfield the president is from or born in Orange Township, now Moreland Hills, Ohio. Okay. She was from Mentor.

Mentor, yeah. That's where the museum is. Are the Boy Scouts called Scouting America?

Noah Holly's mother came up, Luis Armstrong is her name.

Mm.

“Yes, she had a book in 1979 called Kiss Daddy Good Night.”

Rough title.

We're guarding child abuse.

“Um, let me just make sure I got 'em all.”

That's it. That's it. Yeah. I love you.