The Michael Knowles Show - November 08, 2026


How To Quit Porn

YES or NO： Dallas Jenkins Ep. 2099 - Trump Offers Dana White The White House Press Secretary Job

Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

196.67

Word count

6,466

Sentence count

286

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 visit betmgm casino and check out the newest exclusive the price is right fortune pick
00:00:06.920 betmgm and game sense remind you to play responsibly 19 plus to wager ontario only
00:00:12.340 please play responsibly if you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to
00:00:16.540 you please contact connects ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge
00:00:23.660 betmgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with i-gaming ontario
00:00:27.920 is a culture we're talking more about pornography and pornography habits right but it's just not in
00:00:34.720 the correct way in a time where we don't have any like coming of age rituals for men specifically
00:00:39.320 right this is the porn has actually become the coming of age moment for for individuals you
00:00:44.980 have to figure out the why behind you looking at pornography 87 of every guy out there is
00:00:52.620 at least using pornography once a week i want to talk about porn and who better to talk about
00:00:58.760 porn with than joe alto the head of growth at relay health joe thank you for coming on the show
00:01:04.420 thank you for having me on michael how are you i'm doing very well and i figured for the audience
00:01:11.580 i just will just cut right to the chase okay because the internet largely because of internet
00:01:16.580 pornography has just zapped everybody's attention spans and killed everybody's dopamine receptors
00:01:21.580 and turned us all into frothing beasts so okay everyone everyone is exposed to some degree
00:01:31.020 to pornography a huge number of people men and women regularly consume pornography and
00:01:40.440 another huge percentage of people cannot stop using pornography even when they want to and
00:01:48.620 by the way basically nobody talks about any of that uh that's basically that's the situation
00:01:53.160 we're in that's the yeah that's the gist that's the gist okay so before we get into relay and the
00:02:00.500 app and a way to try to get people off of this very very serious problem what is the lay of the
00:02:06.980 land i mean how has pornography use accelerated uh we know that kids are exposed to it at very
00:02:13.260 very young ages? What are some of the negative social pathologies, the physical effects?
00:02:18.280 What's the what's the 30 second elevator pitch for why you should get off porn?
00:02:24.080 Yeah, 30 seconds. OK, here we go. Well, you know, as you said, Michael, we're exposed to it younger
00:02:29.920 and younger nowadays. Right. So there is, you know, there's statistics. The statistics are
00:02:33.960 kind of all over the place. But, you know, you can see some that 80 percent, 87 percent
00:02:39.080 um of every guy out there is at least using pornography once a week right and as you pointed
00:02:45.320 out right it's just getting younger and younger right so some young boys young girls numbers
00:02:50.040 were really bad i actually didn't know it's 87 of guys yeah yes what's difficult about the stats is
00:02:57.260 that no one actually wants to admit that they're looking at porn right so that's that's the hard
00:03:01.840 part right so it's you know in people when you get into these uncomfortable situations when you're
00:03:06.380 getting pulled i mean who wants to answer honestly right but yes there are some stats out there at
00:03:11.020 least once a week 87 of men 18 through 65 are using porn at least once a week and again i think
00:03:19.800 it's actually more egregious than that a bunch of people are lying about it so the number is
00:03:24.000 almost certainly higher than that at least once that's that is actually higher than number that
00:03:29.280 i would would have expected okay sorry i interrupted you no no no no no no it's crazy
00:03:34.020 it's crazy and you know young boys right especially young boys are being exposed to it um you know i'm
00:03:40.400 a former therapist myself uh clinical therapist and you know when i had conversations with men
00:03:46.200 as i would help them work through these types of issues um i've had some tell me that you know age
00:03:51.420 five age six is when they were introduced to pornography i'm not even talking about like
00:03:56.800 the pornographic right like ads on tv or music that you listen to whatever like legitimate on
00:04:01.540 the internet you go to you know yes pornography.co.uk and there it is there it is yes that's
00:04:09.680 exactly right and so what this does it and let's let's actually get away let's actually not be so
00:04:16.240 hyperbolic for a second let's just 11 12 right essentially when people our age right mid 30s
00:04:22.760 were probably exposed exposed to pornography right your parents had no idea what the hell
00:04:26.260 they were doing when they bought a computer and it was just you know free free range right and so
00:04:31.080 you start looking at porn at 11 or 12 because it's highly intriguing. You're not going to see
00:04:35.980 a naked woman until more than likely many years after 11 or 12, right? So, you know, and it's 0.97
00:04:41.740 innocent, but you know, what eventually happens is this innocent thing that you're doing in the
00:04:48.360 secrecy of your home, um, becomes a crutch, right? So like you strike out in a baseball game in front
00:04:53.700 of your dad, or you get a bad grade on a test, or you actually do ask out a girl, right? And she
00:04:58.520 says no to you um and you get pretty upset you get sad you get you know depressed right and what
00:05:04.520 do you do well you look at you look at porn right because you know it's been making you feel
00:05:08.660 physically good for the last six months year what have you you start creating these crazy
00:05:13.760 pathways in your brain to associate anytime you associate a negative emotion right you you look
00:05:21.960 at porn so you have guys our age you guys you guys you have guys older right um any glimpse of
00:05:28.580 depression boredom anxiety unconsciously you go to porn so you got a generation of young men
00:05:35.340 who believe that these urges are random or why can't i you know why can't i figure this out well
00:05:41.340 it's because like i said unconsciously every emotion that you have that's distressing you've
00:05:48.000 created like a neurological pathway to associate porn and pain right i don't know about you michael
00:05:53.240 i mean i i have four kids at home so i have been anxious and you know bored and depressed and you
00:06:00.560 know just in our human anthropology that's one area i was i was gonna say i also have four kids
00:06:04.660 as of about two weeks ago and same here i was gonna say here actually i'm anxious i'm stressed
00:06:09.320 i'm not sleeping i'm you know probably shaving ears off my life the one thing i never am anymore
00:06:14.640 is bored i'm like i am i have no time for boredom but but to your point on how people would fall
00:06:21.080 into this sin when they get bored i remember i have a buddy from high school who told me this
00:06:26.780 is in college or something uh we were talking about how you know sometimes summer break you
00:06:31.500 don't have that much to do you're just loafing around and i said yeah what are you doing and
00:06:35.580 he introduced me to the phrase procrastination and it's not i shouldn't yeah i shouldn't laugh
00:06:42.920 of that it's kind of bad but it but yes people do that you know they say well i've got some free
00:06:47.240 time on my hands or i'm feeling uneasy or i just want to i just physically want to feel good i know
00:06:52.220 what i'll do i will uh abuse and degrade myself yep yeah no that's exactly true and like i said
00:06:58.680 before we have a whole generation of men where you know this isn't being it's it's really odd
00:07:04.380 like i actually feel that where are we 2026 there's been no time where we've actually talked
00:07:10.760 more about porn, but we haven't, and the detriments that it has, right. And the
00:07:16.240 increasingness of the pornographic culture in which we live in, but we've talked about it almost
00:07:20.500 like in a, you know, joking around kind of way, right. It's, it's a thing that we know everyone
00:07:25.560 does, but we haven't necessarily been talking about it in a serious way in which, yes, this
00:07:31.880 actually does affect divorce rates. Yes. This actually does cause the most erectile dysfunction
00:07:37.460 that we've seen in young men ever is, again, within the past 20 years, right?
00:07:43.400 And there's no reason why, unless you have a serious health condition,
00:07:46.600 why a 32-year-old man should be experiencing erectile dysfunction, right?
00:07:50.620 And so we're seeing these numbers and we're seeing these statistics
00:07:54.160 and we're not really talking about it, right?
00:07:57.280 I mean, pornography addiction in and of itself is actually, you know,
00:08:00.360 we can't, according to the DSM-5, right,
00:08:02.780 we actually can't call it an addiction, right?
00:08:04.460 Because it's not listed in that manual.
00:08:06.220 Yeah, the DSM-5 that has also told us that when a boy thinks he's a girl, it's not necessarily a mental illness either.
00:08:12.180 Yeah, that vaunted, authoritative DSM-5.
00:08:15.280 No, you're right.
00:08:15.760 Yeah, if you're going every day or every week and you're watching horrific, degrading acts on your computer in a room alone and then abusing yourself, we can't possibly, and you can't stop, and it's a compulsion you feel whenever you're depressed or whatever, we can't possibly say that that's an addiction, right?
00:08:33.980 Yes, yeah, no, absolutely, right?
00:08:36.220 So you can't, so we're not going to use the word addiction anymore.
00:08:38.340 No, I'm kidding. Right. Exactly. No, but yeah, you,
00:08:42.360 you have all these spiritual, physical, mental ailments that's affected,
00:08:46.980 even like things like productivity, you know, again,
00:08:49.200 I'm not going to lie and pretend that I know the stats specifically on this
00:08:52.620 off the rip, but there are stats out there. I mean, there,
00:08:55.360 there's the porn consumption in America is,
00:08:59.700 and I really wish I remembered it, but I'll just say this anecdotally,
00:09:02.900 the porn consumption in America,
00:09:04.580 a high level of it is actually nine to five. So during working hours, right? So how many
00:09:10.040 individuals do you have that? Yeah. Yeah. That are looking at pornography during working out.
00:09:16.260 So it's like your holistic health, your work productivity, your marriage, right? The, the,
00:09:21.520 the secrets that you tell your wife that you don't, or even just like how taxing it is, right.
00:09:27.180 To not be able to leave your phone out on your kitchen table when you're with your kids or you're
00:09:32.580 taking a shower, right? Because you're petrified that your wife might go through it, right? So
00:09:37.660 it's, it's this constant being on guard. And I don't know about you, but again, with the four
00:09:42.420 kids, there's no way the, the, however I can like less the stress in my life. That's what I want to
00:09:47.640 do. I don't think anyone wants to live, you know, in a high cortisol, high stress state. So it's
00:09:52.600 even like little things like this, you know, and again, I point out the divorce rate, you know,
00:09:57.180 I'm sure there are people out there. Right. But, you know,
00:10:01.300 one of the questions I ask guys is, you know,
00:10:04.560 does your wife want you to do this? Just like point blank.
00:10:06.940 Like, is your wife going to be, is it going to be a net positive? 0.99
00:10:09.740 Is your wife going to be pumped about, you know, you looking at porn? Right. 0.96
00:10:14.140 And the answer is more than likely no. Right.
00:10:16.720 So I have a general rule in my house where it's, you know, 0.88
00:10:19.780 if my wife really doesn't want me to do anything just for the betterment of our
00:10:23.480 marriage and just the betterment of my sanity, I just don't do it.
00:10:26.780 Hold on. That's a, that's a tricky line because you're right about the porn thing. You're totally
00:10:31.940 right about the porn thing where you say, all right, one, I don't imagine this. You got your
00:10:35.520 phone there and your kid sees some porn on your phone. Or do your point, do you think your wife 1.00
00:10:40.340 is going to think you're like hotter? You're more of an Adonis because you're, you know, creepily 0.95
00:10:45.540 going into the other room and, uh, you know, I don't want to, I have to speak in euphemisms
00:10:50.640 because this is a family show, but you're, you know, making the bald man burp or something,
00:10:54.420 you know it's like you don't want to nobody wants to think about that and so right no obviously your
00:10:58.740 wife would find that repellent and gross uh but if your wife for instance doesn't want you to smoke
00:11:04.440 cigars that's a firm line in the sand and well there's always a line you know rudyard kipling
00:11:10.020 wrote a poem about this anyway that's a rant for another time no no no my wife doesn't want me 0.51
00:11:14.600 using nicotine pouches but i still do so you know you mean because you're a millennial man like
00:11:18.780 go this this porn issue 25 years ago and who now today are all replacing it with a different
00:11:25.900 addiction again a topic for a very important topic for another time and I actually am kind
00:11:30.380 of jonesing right now if I can find one in my desk on the on the porn thing though yeah you
00:11:36.040 keep you bring up this this link to divorce and I think a lot of people don't believe that they say
00:11:42.240 no well look sometimes the wife has a headache and you know men have needs and so actually maybe
00:11:48.120 this could be good for my marriage, you know, cause I'm just taking care of business myself
00:11:51.980 and it's no big deal and I can control it. How on earth could you say that looking at
00:11:56.580 naked ladies on the internet is going to lead me to divorce my wife? 1.00
00:11:59.860 Yeah. Well, because again, I'll, I'll point out a couple of things, you know, 0.91
00:12:05.520 secrecy is never, I mean, I, I, I've been married for eight years, right? Like every,
00:12:11.380 every secret that I've had has just boiled up to the surface at some point. So I also don't think
00:12:17.680 that a lot of individuals are probably going to be able to keep secrets again because think about
00:12:22.940 like the order of operations that you have to do right and so you know what's what's a recipe for
00:12:27.880 disaster in any marriage whether it's like you have a financial secret you have a extramarital
00:12:32.220 whatever it's like secrecy is not good in or in in cultivating a healthy marriage right it's poison
00:12:38.980 it's poison it's poison right and again and what we see is and this is an issue that um we're not
00:12:46.160 there's actually some people that are doing like really good work,
00:12:49.060 but the amount of like betrayal trauma,
00:12:51.020 and I don't like just like throwing out the word trauma,
00:12:53.080 but the amount of betrayal trauma that,
00:12:55.280 that a woman sees particularly right when she finds out that, you know,
00:12:59.940 her, her husband is looking at a woman that doesn't look anything like her. 0.51
00:13:05.740 Right. I mean, that, that does a lot. And then like, you know,
00:13:08.600 questions come up. Well, if you're, if you're looking at porn,
00:13:10.960 you've kept this a secret for, you know, X amount of years,
00:13:13.140 what else are you keeping the secret of? Right.
00:13:14.760 When did you do this? Did you do this when the children were in the house? Did you do this when I was in the house? Right. Again, like what other types of secrets do you have? And so it's not a lot of marriages. Right. Including mine. Right. Including my own have gotten past the point where it's like, yes, you know, you were dealing with pornography addiction and you two came together in a moment of strength and godly unity and decided to figure this out. Right. But how often than not does that not happen?
00:13:43.900 And it doesn't happen all the time. Or, you know, for the woman, for, you know, good reason, just can't get past the fact that her husband is pining over, like I said, a woman that looks nothing like her. Right. It makes it closes her off. You stop having sex in the marriage. That obviously opens up to a lot of other, you know, things.
00:14:05.880 you know, you then you feel you have this sexless secretive marriage and you get bored. Right. And
00:14:12.160 you say, well, you know, maybe this isn't worth it, or maybe we've grown apart and, uh, yeah,
00:14:17.000 you go your separate ways. So it causes a lot of issues, as I said, and then for the individuals
00:14:22.440 who have, you know, what we call porn induced erectile dysfunction, right. Um, you can't
00:14:28.320 actually, you know, naturally achieve an erection while you're trying to sleep with your wife. And 0.95
00:14:32.920 what does that say right again and and no wife wants to hear about all the scientific reasons 0.51
00:14:37.360 for why this is and you know all you know i'm trying to work through this they they just want
00:14:42.260 it to be over right and sometimes they cannot stand being in that type of marriage for you know
00:14:49.100 while the guy is trying to get past this so yeah no it really is it's just depressing right it's
00:14:55.000 actually very depressing depressing i know buddy mine uh in in our 20s he i think he had that
00:15:02.780 He definitely discussed having some problems like that.
00:15:06.400 And in fact, I've heard this from multiple people.
00:15:09.580 Hey, Confession is in theaters November 11th.
00:15:12.440 Get your tickets right now.
00:15:13.500 Go see Confession.
00:15:14.440 Get your tickets.
00:15:15.460 Have you gotten your tickets yet? 0.88
00:15:16.780 So it's everything about it is degraded and horrifying and gross.
00:15:19.580 To your point, you don't want the secrets in a marriage.
00:15:21.200 Imagine you think about your wife doing that.
00:15:22.840 I don't want to think about that.
00:15:23.580 And even just, you know, Fulton Sheen, who's now been beatified, but the Archbishop Fulton Sheen,
00:15:29.280 he has this great book, Three to Get Married.
00:15:32.200 and where, you know, a marriage properly,
00:15:35.740 not to sound like the church lady,
00:15:36.980 but marriage properly is the husband and the wife and God.
00:15:39.260 God has to be in the center of the marriage
00:15:40.620 because otherwise you inevitably will drift apart.
00:15:43.840 You will betray each other.
00:15:44.940 You will do it.
00:15:45.440 So you have to have this sense.
00:15:47.140 If you are rigorous in your moral standards,
00:15:52.020 even we all fail our moral standards,
00:15:53.700 but if you're rigorous about your moral standards,
00:15:55.280 you would say, okay, well,
00:15:55.940 this sort of behavior is simply unacceptable.
00:15:59.020 It involves a grave gravely sinful act. It actually multiple gravely sinful acts. It involves a kind of mental betrayal, a betrayal of the will, physical degradation it. And there are ways I think this is the point that a lot of young men or maybe older men can't believe, especially hearing a statistic like 87 percent of guys use porn all the time is that they say, well, then you just can't stop.
00:16:25.200 it's just not possible to stop it's not possible to live life without pornography but the answer
00:16:29.760 of course is yes you can most people most statistically speaking every person who's ever
00:16:36.500 lived has lived without pornography right yes yes yes no it's it's very true and well this is again
00:16:44.180 this is what i was talking about before about how as a culture we're talking more about pornography
00:16:50.180 and pornography habits. Right. But it's just not in the correct way. So, and you know, it's kind
00:16:56.060 of like, you know, in a, in a time where we don't have any like coming of age rituals for men
00:17:00.600 specifically, right. This is the porn has actually become the coming of age moment for, for
00:17:05.680 individuals, um, which is, which is quite sad. So again, you, you, you talk about it in a,
00:17:11.120 in a joking way, you talk about it in a nostalgic way. Um, and I'm not saying, right. There can't
00:17:17.700 be an amount of humor about it because i actually think one of the ways in which you need to take
00:17:23.120 an aerial view of of this issue and say yeah you know what it is it's it's tragically funny that
00:17:29.920 this is what i'm doing right i'm you know this is true drew clavin made this point years ago
00:17:35.000 if you took the human suffering out of it all sin is really funny it's really weird sin is 0.79
00:17:41.240 thomas aquinas also makes this point in the summa sin is stupid because it's contrary to reason so 0.95
00:17:46.120 there's no such thing as a smart sinner. You're always doing like the dumbest things. And some 1.00
00:17:51.060 look a little more absurd than others. And when you think about the sin of you, you go into a
00:17:56.160 room and you call up these pixel demons to show pictures of people bumping uglies in these like
00:18:01.860 bizarre ways. And then you do a gravely disordered act yourself. And you're, this is how you're
00:18:08.120 spending the precious moments of your life. You look at that. If you take all the suffering out
00:18:11.620 of it, it's very silly. I mean, it's clownish behavior. Absolutely. No, it really is. And I'd 0.98
00:18:17.880 like that you brought up the spiritual dimension of it. I'm Catholic myself, right? So I'm a dirty
00:18:23.020 papist, right? So, you know, and I work with a lot of Catholic guys. I mean, that's just circles 0.98
00:18:29.820 I hang out with, right, is Catholic men. And I know a lot of priests. I'm friends with a lot
00:18:35.860 of priests, right? And it's, you know, something crazy. Like a priest told me, a priest friend of
00:18:39.580 mine once told me that 75% of weekly confessions, 75% of the individuals that he, that he, that he
00:18:46.900 sees, right. Are all discussing pornography. It could be the 14 year old. It could be the,
00:18:53.500 it could be, no, it's not. It could be the 75 year old. It could be the woman. It could be the
00:18:56.440 man. Right. And you see a lot of, again, I don't know. I don't know any statistics on this, right.
00:19:04.300 But it does also, it plagues you spiritually in multiple different ways, right. It takes you away
00:19:09.120 from your spiritual life because you know you think well i'm just such a you know a gross sinner
00:19:14.820 again like it's it's it's all incorrect thinking but it's you know if i cannot and i'm going through
00:19:21.180 the steps i'm going through i'm going to confession i'm receiving the eucharist yada yada yada i'm
00:19:25.320 even like maybe i'm talking to a priest for spiritual direction and i still can't kick this
00:19:29.180 habit well what does it say about god right and again that's that that's the that's the type of
00:19:34.720 psychology that a chronic, and you don't even have to necessarily be chronic, but someone who
00:19:40.760 regularly looks at pornography. Yes, there you go. That's the psychology that you, so you start
00:19:47.100 questioning the whole nature of God, right? Because of this, because of this sin. And what's
00:19:51.460 really tragic is, you know, I, again, I'm jumping around a little bit here, but like, you know,
00:19:56.540 if you look at the architecture of hell that Dante, you know, created years and years and
00:20:01.340 years and years ago right lust is what it's like limbo lust right i think it's like the second
00:20:06.720 circle of hell out of 34 there you go and so what that essentially i i think is getting at right is
00:20:13.700 there's a lot of other nasty sins that are probably more difficult to wrestle out anger fraud right so
00:20:22.120 you have again what's particularly spiritually tragic is that you have a lot of men who just
00:20:29.760 stay right in the lust circle right and you can and you're you're you're using all of your mental
00:20:34.960 bandwidth and all of your attributes just to get rid of this lust issue and you could be on your
00:20:40.800 focusing on defrauding people and betraying people yes that's you know at that point i was just having
00:20:45.700 this conversation with a priest buddy of mine just a couple nights ago a really really important
00:20:50.840 point because you think okay a lot of priests are hearing sixth and ninth commandment uh sins you
00:20:57.300 You know, it's a huge number of them.
00:20:59.780 And sometimes guys will go in and they'll confess some of the other sins,
00:21:03.020 but really they're just waiting to get to the sixth and ninth.
00:21:05.200 Yeah, you're just, yeah.
00:21:07.020 But I made this point, and it was a discovery of mine
00:21:09.800 as I was reverting to the faith and trying to get my moral life in order.
00:21:14.160 I found something that's odd is I go to confession.
00:21:17.440 I receive absolution because, you know,
00:21:20.100 God gives to his apostles and their successors the power to loosen, to bind,
00:21:23.720 to forgive sins and to retain sins.
00:21:25.620 okay, that's the Catholic understanding of it. Traditional Christian understanding. All right.
00:21:29.500 So I come out and I'm feeling pretty good. And then I could go like that forever. Like basically
00:21:38.420 forever. I'm like totally fine. But the minute that I start to entertain a thought in my head,
00:21:45.060 or I, you know, I look at that lady on the street or whatever, the minute that I commit my will to
00:21:50.220 whatever intrusive thought or, you know, I don't know, accident that comes in my way.
00:21:55.160 The minute I start doing that, then I'm thinking about it all the time. Now I'm, now I can't get
00:21:59.600 it out of my head. And what's very curious about it is it, that experience does vindicate the
00:22:06.940 Christian understanding of how sin works, which is that God does give us the graces that we need
00:22:11.640 to resist mortal sin. Thomas Aquinas once again says that all people are going to commit venial
00:22:16.360 sins it's just a fact of a fallen world but uh once once you've committed a mortal sin and you're
00:22:22.900 not in a state of grace you're going to commit more mortal sins too it just happens i had an
00:22:26.320 exorcist explain it to me as demons basically just like traveling like pack animals like rabid
00:22:31.520 you know they kind of jump on you and then in the confessional they hack them off okay so i i
00:22:35.660 understand all of that but then finally to your point a long-winded way of getting to it is
00:22:39.840 then let's say you've got the six and nine commandment stuff down you're dealing with
00:22:45.240 lust pretty well and you're not allowing yourself to entertain these things whatever then finally
00:22:49.900 then you can be on guard against all of the other things oh good now you know i've got my mind over
00:22:55.520 here i'm so focused on lust that i'm not dealing with my wrath or my pride or my gluttony or my
00:23:01.200 this or that and these things can really spiral so you you have to advance in the spiritual life
00:23:04.720 because you can say well sins of the flesh are not as serious as sins of betrayal say that's true
00:23:09.580 but you know what it still sends you to hell and there are plenty of mistakes in history to say
00:23:13.620 that sexual sins send more people to hell than any other sin, even though they're not quite
00:23:18.200 as grave. That's a, that's absolutely correct. And you know, you, you, you hit it on the head, 0.60
00:23:23.300 right? It's, we're trying to advance our spiritual lives here. And like I said, like, I, I don't
00:23:28.900 think, you know, I'm not going to say like, you know, if a guy spends his whole life and, and,
00:23:33.000 and conquers, right. Looking at pornography and like good for him. Right. But, um, there's a lot
00:23:38.380 more steps, right. If you, if we're trying to imitate Christ here, there's a lot more steps
00:23:42.020 that we have to take and you know i'll tell you what uh kicking a porn addiction is easier than
00:23:50.620 trying to figure out man why the hell am i so angry all the time i mean it really like i mean
00:23:55.360 it really is like if you you know if you ask my dear wife what was the uh thing that she would 0.62
00:23:59.620 like me to work on the most it'd probably be why are you so damn angry all the time when you come
00:24:03.720 home right you know why are you why are you asking like this no that's not why there's 0.55
00:24:07.380 that's a funny that's a j right right exactly exactly it's like yeah yeah but no i mean and so
00:24:14.780 again it just the pornography issue just holistically it captures the individual
00:24:22.100 like i said physical ailments the spiritual um immobility that that you get when you when
00:24:28.920 you're just focusing on this and again i i go back to it it makes a lot of good-hearted
00:24:34.980 catholics christians jews what have you it makes a lot of good-hearted individuals question the
00:24:41.380 nature of god's existence in general it's a great point just because if god that is scandalous in
00:24:46.740 itself it creates scandal in the act that's a very very good point uh before i let you go
00:24:53.240 i suppose obviously you know you have this great app here relay which the audience knows about very
00:24:58.480 well but just before i let you go can you give a little bit okay people have we've now persuaded
00:25:03.720 to them. They don't want to burn in hell for eternity to, you know, put Norm MacDonald to
00:25:07.520 be violated by the devil for all time. Uh, so what do they do? What are the, what are the
00:25:12.980 practical steps? No, absolutely. Well, one of the, you know, well, I'll, I'll say this, you know,
00:25:18.260 I think there's like three micronutrients to, you know, if you want to put it in that way,
00:25:22.080 there's three micronutrients of, of, of kicking a porn issue, right? One is, and what we do at
00:25:28.300 relay, we're all about like the, why I went, you know, it's the beginning of our conversation.
00:25:31.620 I talked about, you have to figure out the why behind you looking at pornography. There's a lot
00:25:37.040 of porn addicts right out there that haven't looked at pornography, like a kind of like a, 0.91
00:25:41.300 like a dry drunk, right? You haven't, um, you haven't touched alcohol in 10 years, 0.92
00:25:45.560 but you're Jones in for it all the time. Maybe, you know, you got some sophisticated blocker
00:25:49.180 on your computer, right. Or whatever, but, and you haven't looked at porn, but that, that, that,
00:25:55.380 that addiction still like lies in your heart, in your mind. So you have to get not virtuous.
00:26:00.420 You're still, that's exactly right. And so you have to figure out the why you have to be able
00:26:07.960 to see the patterns and themes of your pornography behavior, right? Oh, I'm looking at a lot of
00:26:12.440 pornography every Tuesday of the month. I have no idea why I didn't even realize that's why,
00:26:16.200 well, you got, you got that truck payment that you can't necessarily afford the first Tuesday
00:26:19.560 of the month. So you have to establish that. And that's what we do with the app. And then going to
00:26:23.640 your point, right? You have to, you have to be situated with virtuous people. I mean, again,
00:26:27.600 you mentioned Aquinas a couple of times. I'll do it myself, right?
00:26:30.100 Aquinas says, right. If you want to strengthen the will,
00:26:31.940 you have to actually surround yourself with another,
00:26:34.660 with individuals who are virtuous and together you are creating this
00:26:38.620 virtuistic space, right? So we, the second micro micronutrient is community,
00:26:43.840 right? We need to establish community.
00:26:45.580 We put you in an accountability group based on a bunch of demographic
00:26:48.260 information. And you know,
00:26:51.760 the community feature in the app is actually the thing that the individuals
00:26:55.060 enjoy the most, right? Because again,
00:26:57.600 You learn from one another. You're there from one another. It's a brotherhood.
00:27:00.860 And also a sisterhood. We also relay is not just male focused. We do offer, I mean, I specifically
00:27:06.500 being a guy, right? I know the male psychology and anatomy better, right? But we do actually
00:27:12.020 offer this for females as well. The third micronutrient is we offer psychoeducation, 0.85
00:27:17.360 right? So we have a series, you need to know how it's affecting you. So we have a series of
00:27:22.040 different videos that explains how it does affect your erectile health, how it does affect your
00:27:28.040 brain, what it's doing to both, you know, your psychology and to your body. And so that's the
00:27:33.600 bit that triptych, if you will, is the recipe to gain success of pornography, right? And again,
00:27:41.800 that's everything we're doing within the Relay app. You know, and we also, I said before about
00:27:48.160 the accountability software piece.
00:27:50.160 It's people were asking about it.
00:27:51.560 We actually did not have it for the longest time
00:27:53.480 because again, we're so committed to the root work,
00:27:56.240 but we actually are launching a,
00:27:58.120 for your iPhone, we are launching Relay Shield,
00:28:02.980 which is a porn blocker accountability app.
00:28:06.520 And it's not just a porn blocker in the sense,
00:28:08.560 yes, it's not gonna,
00:28:09.340 you're not gonna be able to access
00:28:10.400 the pornographic websites,
00:28:11.320 but it's also gonna protect you from
00:28:12.720 pornographic material on your social media accounts
00:28:15.520 if you still want those.
00:28:16.740 facebook instagram etc i was gonna say yeah that's fine you're gonna get rid of all the like
00:28:21.700 porn porn.com but uh problem is you open up twitter and or you open up whatever you have
00:28:26.540 like literally any social media app and maybe it's not outright pornography but there's a lot of
00:28:31.540 scintillating content on there that makes absolutely that's a and that you know i would
00:28:36.680 say my personal advice i haven't had uh i mean i haven't had an instagram in 10 years right i
00:28:44.820 haven't had a Facebook in 10 years. I, so that's probably the best. I also, you know, say, you
00:28:50.780 know, get rid of those. That's a great way of doing it. Cause it's your point. I almost never
00:28:54.200 look at, at Facebook. I rarely use Instagram. The one that I use all the time is Twitter,
00:28:59.140 which is probably why I've gotten better on lust things, but my wrath is just going through the
00:29:03.320 roof. It's all, it's through the roof. It's through the roof. I know. Yeah. So, but again,
00:29:08.360 like I was saying, you know, that's what we're doing with relay. Um, and we're offering a really
00:29:12.380 great, you know, November initiative in November, you know, it's kind of what happened culturally,
00:29:17.340 right. Is that a lot of men take stock of their, their health, right. Like it started with the
00:29:20.800 whole prostate health, right. Movember, you grow a mustache, um, whatever. Right. So, you know,
00:29:26.100 guys are taking stock of, of their physical health in the month of November. And, you know,
00:29:31.060 we're trying to leverage off that. Right. And so, you know, we have this initiative where,
00:29:35.140 you know, for a dollar, for just literally $1, you can get relay for the, an entire month.
00:29:42.740 Right. So, and that's going to be including our accountability software blocker, as I was saying
00:29:48.320 before. So the deal's never been better. So again, if you know, for guys, it's so damn difficult to
00:29:53.900 try to get them to think about their health. So, you know, if you're thinking about your physical
00:29:57.320 health, you should think about, you know, your mental and your spiritual and your holistic health
00:30:00.980 in general and so that's why because you i mean one november is key because there's this meme
00:30:05.780 which i'm sure you're well aware of of uh guys not using porn in in november and i'm not going
00:30:10.940 to use this slogan i it's a funny slogan i've laughed at the slogan it is it's a it's not it's
00:30:16.540 a euphemism for a certain uh degrading action but it's very funny and it happens now like every
00:30:22.540 november and you're so good if everyone else is doing it then then maybe that's a good time for
00:30:27.820 you to join too. I love the point though. Not only if you're focused on your physical health,
00:30:32.880 should you also focus on your mental health? And oh, by the way, there is such a thing as
00:30:36.980 spiritual health. But furthermore, you actually can't properly work on any of those things
00:30:42.940 without. That's exactly right. You can't, you can't really work on your spiritual health if
00:30:46.860 you're totally neglecting your physical health or your mental or anything in between. So you
00:30:50.820 have to do it together. It has to be holistic and integrated because you're one guy, you're a human
00:30:55.980 being. You're your soul, you're your body, you're your spirit, you're your mind, you're all these
00:30:59.880 things. And you can't compartmentalize that we like to do that in the modern age. Uh, that's
00:31:04.820 exactly right. This is a phenomenal product. I really, really like it. Uh, I love the initiative
00:31:10.780 that you're doing. I want everybody to go out there and, uh, get the relay app. I want everybody
00:31:16.020 to start now, by the way, Michael, you can actually offer starts now. You don't have to
00:31:19.900 wait until November. So, you know, listeners today can go on, you know, and join relay today for that
00:31:24.200 dollar that is great i love the idea too of like hey you guys need to get off porn right now because
00:31:27.980 it's destroying your life and it's going to burn down your marriage and everything and we're going
00:31:31.080 to give it to you for an unbelievable price next week so get all the porn in now because next week
00:31:35.860 no no you can do it right now so do it right it's very important to do that i love the idea that you
00:31:40.940 can get this stuff off the social media apps too i'm very much looking forward to that and then
00:31:44.860 let me know you know because again once you figure out something in your spiritual life or you
00:31:48.200 basically get it under control then other stuff pops up so let me know when you get the apps for
00:31:52.620 Wrath, Pride, Gluttony, Sloth.
00:31:55.800 I could use a lot of those apps too,
00:31:58.280 but very, very important.
00:32:00.000 God bless you for what you're doing.
00:32:01.240 Go to joinrelay.app right now.
00:32:04.320 Get it.
00:32:05.700 Joe, this is the,
00:32:07.720 to run the gamut from pornography
00:32:09.880 to St. Thomas Aquinas to Dante.
00:32:13.640 This is great stuff.
00:32:15.640 Some of my favorite things to talk about.
00:32:17.980 On the good side and on the bad side of the ledger.
00:32:19.800 Joe, thank you for being here.
00:32:21.300 Thanks, Michael.
00:32:22.620 Thank you.