Joe Rogan Experience #1638 - Dr. Shanna Swan

Joe Rogan 0:00 (drum music plays) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) Hello.

Dr. Shanna Swan 0:15 Hello.

Joe Rogan 0:15 Welcome to the show. Thanks for doing this.

Dr. Shanna Swan 0:17 Thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan 0:19 Y- y- I'm very concerned with what you're saying. Um, your book, Countdown, says that the modern world is threatening sperm counts, altering male and female reproductive development, and imperiling the future of the human race.

Dr. Shanna Swan 0:35 That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Joe Rogan 0:37 I believe you.

Dr. Shanna Swan 0:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:38 But I'm scared.

Dr. Shanna Swan 0:39 I think we should all be kinda scared.

Joe Rogan 0:41 Now, what is it specifically about the modern world that scares you?

Dr. Shanna Swan 0:48 Oh, gosh, a whole bunch. But (laughs) what I write about in this book is the problem with the decline of our reproductive health and the chemicals in the environment that we're surrounded with every day, all the time, that are playing a big part in it. Not the only part, but a big part in it.

Joe Rogan 1:07 And so they're playing a part in affecting our hormonal production? Is that what's going on?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14 Yes. That's actually what, a good part of what they do. They affect ... They interfere with our hormonal systems in various ways. So they could increase production of a hormone like, uh, pro-estrogen. They could decrease, say, an anti-androgen, decrease testosterone. They could mess with our thyroid hormone and so on and so forth. So they change levels, but they also change how they're transported, and they interfere with making them available to other parts of the body basically. Um, and you got it right. I mean, that doesn't sound so scary to people, but the consequences sound really scary, which is that we're, you know ... By every measure, our sperm count, our miscarriage rates, our fertility rates, our testosterone levels, they're all going south, if you will, at the rate of about 1% per year.

Joe Rogan 2:11 And specifically which chemicals are responsible for this alteration?

Dr. Shanna Swan 2:18 A whole bunch of them. Um, and as a group they're called endocrine disruptors 'cause they disrupt the endocrine system, right?

Joe Rogan 2:27 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 2:28 And, um, so I spent a lot of time studying one particular class of those which have the ability to lower testosterone. And the reason I did that is because I'm interested in reproductive health, and testosterone is so critical, as you know, for men and women's reproductive health. So that class is called phthalates. It's a terrible mouthful (laughs) to say.

Joe Rogan 2:55 Phthalates.

Dr. Shanna Swan 2:55 Phthalates, right. Um, and they sound weird, but they're very, very common. And if you gave a urine sample today and send it off to the Centers for Disease Control, you would see that you have a lo- you know, no- not only phthalates, but other chemicals and plastics and other chemicals in your body right now. You could do that. It would ... It costs a little bit. Quite a bit. Quite a bit.

Joe Rogan 3:19 And are we getting these from food? Are we getting these from water? Wh- wh- what are we getting these-

Dr. Shanna Swan 3:23 All of the above.

Joe Rogan 3:24 Oh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 3:24 All of the above. But the phthalates, um, are probably mostly coming from our food, and that's kind of surprising. Um, do you want me to tell you how?

Joe Rogan 3:37 Yes, please.

Dr. Shanna Swan 3:38 Yeah. Okay. So, um, let's think of a little experiment. So go into a hospital into the neonatal intensive care nursery. I'll come back to the food.

Joe Rogan 3:52 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 3:52 Um, and there's a baby lying there, and that baby has a lot of lines coming into her body. Okay? And that's, that's delivering food, nutrients, oxygen, whatever the baby needs. Okay? And th- the tubes are soft, squishy plastic. Okay. So as the food nutrients comes through the tubes, goes into the baby, the baby metabolizes them, goes into the urine 'cause they're water soluble, and then we get the urine. We measure, and we can see what's in it. And the nu- amount of phthalate that's in that urine is exactly proportional to the number of lines coming into the baby.

Joe Rogan 4:35 Hm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 4:37 So that th- if you understand that, you understand how food could be contaminated with phthalates 'cause milking machines have this. And, you know, all kinds of processing machines have this soft plastic. So this stuff is coming into the food somewhere between the time it's picked ... And by the way, phthalates could be in pesticides as well. I'll tell you why in a minute. Um, and then they're introduced not only through those tubes, but also through the packaging. They're wrapped in s- in soft plastic sometimes, and then in our homes we might c- cook in w- microwave in plastic, for example. All of that just ... It's not ... Doesn't stick to the plastic. It's not chemically bound. Hops into the food, gets into us, gets into a pregnant woman's womb, affects the offspring, and I hope to be able to tell you how that, how it does that. But it, it's ... That's what I've been studying for about 20 years.

Joe Rogan 5:37 So these plastic covers that, you know, like if you buy food and it's wrapped, you know, like if you buy, like, peppers or something like that and they're wrapped in plastic, that plastic is leaching onto your food a certain amount of these phthalates no matter what.

Dr. Shanna Swan 5:53 It, uh, different plastics are different, and I can't speak to all plastics. And some people take a lot of care to wrap their food in safe plastics. A lot-

Joe Rogan 6:01 What, what are safe plastics?

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:02 Yeah. So, um, it's a changing landscape.... as new things are introduced, but there's an old saying, which I s- think is pretty much still true, which is "Four, five, one and two, all the rest are bad for you." What does that mean? It means that if you had a plastic cup here, we could look at the bottom of it and you'd see a recycling code.

Joe Rogan 6:24 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:24 You've seen those, right?

Joe Rogan 6:25 Yes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:26 In the triangle-

Joe Rogan 6:27 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:27 ... there's a number, and that number is-

Joe Rogan 6:29 Oh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:29 ... one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So if you wanna know is it-

Narrator 6:32 It's not on there.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:33 ... is it, um-

Joe Rogan 6:34 Jamie doesn't have one on his?

Narrator 6:35 Ma- uh, maybe it's in the plastic somewhere else, sorry.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:37 You have to look at the bottom.

Narrator 6:38 Oh, there it is, yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:39 Yep.

Joe Rogan 6:39 What's it say?

Narrator 6:40 Plastic bottle. It just has the symbol, it doesn't have a number on it.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:46 Ah. Well some do and some don't.

Narrator 6:47 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:48 But, um-

Joe Rogan 6:49 Four, five, one and two, all the rest-

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:51 The rest are bad for you.

Joe Rogan 6:52 ... are bad for you.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:52 That's pretty easy, right?

Joe Rogan 6:53 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 6:53 So, um, unfortunately, the wrappings on the, you know, peppers and so on don't have a number on them, but by and large, if it's, um... By and large, I can't say. It really, it really varies. But I do know that anything that comes in plastic, you do not wanna put in the microwave. Absolutely do not wanna-

Joe Rogan 7:13 Oh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 7:14 Yeah. Do-

Joe Rogan 7:15 Really? So-

Dr. Shanna Swan 7:15 Yeah. Don't do that.

Joe Rogan 7:16 ... microwave foods that are in plastic containers-

Dr. Shanna Swan 7:20 No.

Joe Rogan 7:20 ... no bueno.

Dr. Shanna Swan 7:21 No bueno.

Joe Rogan 7:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 7:23 Take them out, put them in ceramic, put them in, um, glass is really good. Um, and in general, if you can, get plastics out of your kitchen.

Joe Rogan 7:32 When did all this come to light? When did people start understanding the, the negative consequences of plastics in your food?

Dr. Shanna Swan 7:43 Um, well, they came to understand it first in animals, um, 'cause that's the way science works. You know, first you do animal studies and then you try to replicate them in humans, right? And so, um, in around 2000, they did some experiments where they fed a rat food contaminated with phthalates, and then they looked to see how the offspring developed, right? And what they saw was that the males were born different than the females and different from unexposed males. Do you want-

Joe Rogan 8:22 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 8:22 ... me to tell you how-

Joe Rogan 8:22 Yes, please.

Dr. Shanna Swan 8:22 ... how different? Yeah?

Joe Rogan 8:23 Yes, please.

Dr. Shanna Swan 8:25 So this will really interest you, I think. What, um, what happened is... So let's go back.

Joe Rogan 8:30 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 8:30 So before the phthalates, before (laughs) the, you know, early in pregnancy, the genitals are just a single ridge, same in males and females, undifferentiated. Okay? And then, at a certain time, in an- mice and rats it's 15 to 18 days of gestation, the testicles start making testosterone. And then that gives the signal to produce the male typical genitals. So, if they don't have the testosterone, there will be ovaries, and if there is testosterone, there'll be testicles, and so on and so forth, right? And that migration requires testosterone at exactly the right time and the right amount. It's very delicately programmed, okay? So, if that happens, if everything goes well, then the penis will develop, it'll have a certain size, and then there's something w- which is very key to, to my research, which is something you might know by the name of the taint.

Joe Rogan 9:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 9:39 That taint, or we call it anogenital distance-

Joe Rogan 9:42 Yeah, it's not a real, it's not really a technical term, is it?

Dr. Shanna Swan 9:46 But anogenital distance is.

Joe Rogan 9:47 Yes, but taint, that's hilarious listening to a PhD say taint. (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 9:50 Right. Well, I'm saying that 'cause I'm talking to a lot of people who might not know. (coughs) Right?

Joe Rogan 9:56 (laughs) The area known as the t- okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 9:58 Yes. Um, known on the street as the taint, right?

Joe Rogan 10:01 Yes, the streets. (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 10:02 And, um, or the gooch or the grundle, or the-

Joe Rogan 10:05 The gooch? I've never-

Narrator 10:06 It is also, also known as the gooch.

Joe Rogan 10:07 You know about the gooch?

Narrator 10:08 Yeah. I just, I just saw some- someone the other day didn't know what a taint was, and they were like, "Oh, you mean the gooch."

Dr. Shanna Swan 10:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:12 I never, I've never heard of the gooch.

Narrator 10:14 Nah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 10:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:15 I thought the gooch was like a baseball player.

Narrator 10:17 Ah, well, it could be that also, but...

Joe Rogan 10:19 Isn't there a guy named the gooch?

Narrator 10:19 Maybe he's named after it.

Joe Rogan 10:21 Sorry.

Narrator 10:21 There you go.

Dr. Shanna Swan 10:21 And also ABC. Have you heard ABC?

Joe Rogan 10:23 ABC? No, I have not heard that. How's that one go?

Dr. Shanna Swan 10:27 Ass ball connector.

Joe Rogan 10:28 Oh, the ass ball connector.

Narrator 10:29 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:29 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 10:30 Yeah. Okay, so-

Joe Rogan 10:31 But not for a woman?

Dr. Shanna Swan 10:32 Yes, you can measu- yes, it's not called-

Joe Rogan 10:34 But you can't call it an ABC.

Dr. Shanna Swan 10:35 It's not called the ABC for women.

Joe Rogan 10:36 Okay, sorry.

Dr. Shanna Swan 10:37 Okay. So here you got this distance and, um, it's been measured in animals for like 100 years. And what they used it for was first to just sex the animals. So the litter is born, there's a lot of little pups, they wanna separate the males and the females 'cause they're gonna do different things with them, and they just hold them up by the tail and they look. And the reason you can do this is 'cause in the male, it's much longer. It's 50 to 100% longer. Now, this is... Stop and think about this. There's nothing else in the body that's that different between males and females in terms of size.

Joe Rogan 11:12 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 11:12 Organs, yes, but size, no. You know, our heights don't differ by 50 to 100%.

Joe Rogan 11:17 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 11:17 Our weights, nothing, nothing. It's this is it. This is the (laughs) the mark of-

Joe Rogan 11:23 Is that in all animals?

Dr. Shanna Swan 11:25 It's almost all mammals.

Joe Rogan 11:27 Really?

Dr. Shanna Swan 11:27 The hyena's a little different. We could talk about that.

Joe Rogan 11:29 Yeah, oh, I know about those.

Dr. Shanna Swan 11:30 You know about those, yeah?

Joe Rogan 11:31 I have a whole bit about them.

Dr. Shanna Swan 11:32 Yeah. Um, so, you know, they're ma- the females are masculinized, so they have a longer AGD.

Joe Rogan 11:39 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 11:40 Right? But most, for most mammals, it's this way, okay? Including humans. So here's this little pup that's born and he's, if he's unexposed, he'll have a good, you know, standard penile size and AGD and he won't have any malformations of his penis and so on. He'll, you know, he'll be normal. But if his mother was exposed to phthalates, everything can go south. And what happens is the penis is smaller.... and the AGD is smaller, and the scrotum is smaller, and the testes are maybe not descended. In other words, it didn't finish the process.

Joe Rogan 12:20 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 12:20 It was arrested, if you will. So we say that, that that pup is incompletely masculinized.

Joe Rogan 12:28 Now, the e- amount of phthalates that get into the pup's system in u- in veti- in, in utero, is that the sa- is that possible to achieve those levels in the modern world with human beings?

Dr. Shanna Swan 12:40 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 12:41 It is?

Dr. Shanna Swan 12:42 And I'm gonna tell you what I did to show that. I showed that.

Joe Rogan 12:47 Wow.

Dr. Shanna Swan 12:49 So when I heard this story, I was flying on a plane to Japan to go to a conference. I was with a friend who was a chemist for the Centers for Disease Control, and he said, "Shauna, you should study phthalates." And I'm going, "Why?" I'd never heard of them. "What, what, why phthalates?" And he said, "Well, we have been measuring them at the CDC, and they're in everybody, they're in pregnant women, and this group of scientists in the National Toxicology Program has shown that they alter the development of the male newborn." And they called that the Phthalate Syndrome. That's what it's called. That collection of changes that come about after the mother has phthalates is called the Phthalate Syndrome. So I thought, "Well, does that happen in humans?" Same question you asked, right? So how do you, how would you, how would you answer that question? Then I'll tell you what I did.

Joe Rogan 13:54 How would I... well, phew, you would hope that you're not running experiments like you're running them on animals.

Dr. Shanna Swan 14:02 Right.

Joe Rogan 14:02 Um, are you measuring the blood of the people that are having children that have issues, like th- with, with, uh, development, developmental issues in the way the children look when they're born? Is that what you're doing?

Dr. Shanna Swan 14:19 It's really close. So, phthalates have the f- property that they s- dissolve in water, water-soluble, and so they go into the urine. So for this class of chemicals, if you want to know how much is in your body and my body, we gotta measure the urine. Other chemicals, um, like flame retardants, we would look in the blood. So it depends what, what the chemical is. But, but you're... right idea, look inside the body. Okay. Then, rather than looking at kids with problems, what I did was I just took a whole population of pregnant women and I got their urine, measured their phthalates, got their kids, measured their kids. So then I had the problem of what to measure in the kids because nobody had made this translation from an animal genital (laughs) you know, e- developmental system to a human. And so that was kind of a challenge, you know, figuring out how to do that, but we did that, and we developed this system for... this exam for measuring all these things that you measure in a rat, we measured it in our children. And then we showed, and this was big news when it came out, that the mothers' phthalates did alter the genitals of the boys.

Joe Rogan 15:41 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 15:43 So that was the first evidence. That was 2005. And then we published some more in 2008, and then we... fortunately, I got money to do it all again. NIH doesn't like to pay for replication. It's very expensive. These things are five million dollars a study, by the way.

Joe Rogan 16:01 Well, it seems like it's very important though.

Dr. Shanna Swan 16:03 Yeah. So they gave it to me. They l- gave m- money to do it again. So the second time, I did it better because I really knew what I was looking for, and I got urine actually in three points in pregnancy, and I measured the kids exactly when they're born, so everything was much more precise, and I found it again.

Joe Rogan 16:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 16:24 So now there's no question, I don't think anyone questions that at least this class of chemicals, which we know lower testosterone, alter the development of these boys. And then I asked, "Well, what does that have to do with sperm count?" Because actually for a long time... we haven't talked yet about sperm count, but I've been studying tracing, you know, what's happening with sperm count, um... s- I'll tell you the history of that in a minute. But, so then I thought, "Well, is this related to sperm count?" Well, these are babies. They don't have a sperm count. But in rats, it looked like the AGD was permanent. So if you were... had a short... just like if you have a small hand, you know, your stature's certain, it's set at, at birth, right? So the AGD, if you're born small, and my friend, Earl Gray, who is a toxicologist, said AGD is forever. We don't know that for sure about humans, by the way, but, um... because we haven't had the 20 years yet. But, um, if you believe that, then the sensible thing to do was to take a group of adult men who could give you a sperm count and measure their AGD, right? And then you could see whether those with a shorter AGD had a lower sperm count, and then you would have one pretty solid piece of evidence that chemicals in the environment lower sperm count. Are you with me?

Joe Rogan 17:52 Yes, ma'am.

Dr. Shanna Swan 17:53 Okay. So I did that study too. So I got students in Rochester, New York, to volunteer for 75 bucks to participate, and they gave us a semen sample, and they gave us opportunity to measure them, also a questionnaire.

Joe Rogan 18:10 How does one measure kids' taints? Do they just bend over and you bust out a ruler?

Dr. Shanna Swan 18:15 I happened to bring it, br- bring you something to show you.

Joe Rogan 18:17 That's... I noticed, yeah, this measuring device. (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 18:21 (laughs) I thought-

Joe Rogan 18:22 Jamie's volunteered to let you measure his taint, by the way.

Dr. Shanna Swan 18:26 (laughs)

Narrator 18:26 That's why I have a sweatpants on.

Dr. Shanna Swan 18:29 So, um, this is not for a baby. This is for, this is for our Rochester Young Men Study. Um, and it's, looks kind of fierce, um, but we had the points taken down in the-

Joe Rogan 18:45 Yeah, I used one of those to measure, uh, pool cue tips.

Dr. Shanna Swan 18:48 There you go. All right, so you know all about it.

Joe Rogan 18:51 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 18:51 Let's turn it on.

Joe Rogan 18:52 You want 13 millimeters, that's what I like, but only for-

Dr. Shanna Swan 18:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:57 ... only for pool cue tips.

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:00 So, look, um, I also brought you a little diagram, so you can see where we measure.

Joe Rogan 19:06 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:07 But we can't show this to, I don't, I don't know how to show this, but I'll show it to you.

Joe Rogan 19:09 So the calipers are in, uh, they're in millimeters or in inches or both?

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:13 Y- both, you can-

Joe Rogan 19:14 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:15 ... yeah, yeah. And, and so, what you-

Joe Rogan 19:17 Oh, boy, you got a diagram of the taint.

Jamie Vernon 19:19 Is there a chart online I could look up like a...

Joe Rogan 19:21 How about I just hold this up?

Jamie Vernon 19:23 Okay, that works too.

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:24 Yeah.

Jamie Vernon 19:24 All right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:28 Can we have a selfie with you and me in that picture?

Joe Rogan 19:30 Yes, ma'am. Of course.

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:34 Okay, very good.

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:35 All right, so what I wanted to, so when I published this, the, uh, the headlines were, "Size Matters," but it's not what you think.

Joe Rogan 19:45 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:45 Right?

Joe Rogan 19:46 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 19:46 And so I got all these people asking me, "What should it be? What's good enough? What's big enough?" So I did this translation from the millimeters for you. So here it is, the two inches is av- is the median. Okay?

Joe Rogan 20:02 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 20:02 And, in this population. And, um, here's the kicker. If it was less than two, men who had less than two inches were seven times more likely to have a sperm count in the subfertile range, I can tell you what that is, as men who had an AGD longer than two inches.

Joe Rogan 20:25 Wow.

Dr. Shanna Swan 20:26 Seven times. It certainly is related to sperm count. And then another study in California showed that infertile men in an infertility clinic versus men who had come, had borne a child, had smaller taint lengths.

Joe Rogan 20:44 When did this stuff start getting into our food supply? Does that, has that been estimated?

Dr. Shanna Swan 20:52 So, the growth of these chemicals, um, tracks with the growth of the petrochemical industry, because they're made from petrochemical byproducts. Okay? So, if you look at a curve of the grow... it starts around the 50, 1950. Okay? So, back in 1950, you have people loving science, jumping on the science bandwagon. There's this better living through chemistry that everyone's talking about, and it's everybody is just wanting everything made of plastic. You know, it's the new, it's the new craze. It's the new, you know, and, and it just took off. It went faster than a straight line, you know, exponentially up. And so somewhere in there, it started having an effect, but where, we're not sure, but I did look at the decline in sperm count over time, so we could look at that as an indication that... This is not the only thing that's affecting sperm count, by the way, this, these phthalates, but that's one where I feel I can say this with confidence, because I measured those babies and I, you know, I did it.

Joe Rogan 22:06 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 22:07 I did the science and I did it again and I (laughs) you know, and other people have done it. And, and so it's, it's, I believe it's solid. And, um, that's just one example of the many chemicals that can affect our hormone system.

Joe Rogan 22:22 Well, it's very frightening, because that, I don't, I mean, that's not a reversible thing.

Dr. Shanna Swan 22:28 That's correct.

Joe Rogan 22:29 Right?

Dr. Shanna Swan 22:29 That is absolutely correct.

Joe Rogan 22:31 So the development, the stunted development of these children is permanent.

Dr. Shanna Swan 22:35 That's correct.

Joe Rogan 22:35 And it's probably incredibly widespread, when you think about the use of these plastics and the amount-

Dr. Shanna Swan 22:43 That's right.

Joe Rogan 22:43 ... (sighs) I mean, the amount of plastics that get used. People have plastic cups and plastic plates and plastic this and plastic that and Tupperware and... Is that for me?

Dr. Shanna Swan 22:51 Yep.

Joe Rogan 22:51 Mm-hmm. Calipers-

Dr. Shanna Swan 22:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:52 ... so I can measure pool cues and taints.

Dr. Shanna Swan 22:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:59 (laughs) Um, so this is, uh, is this well-known? I mean, this, it's, I've, I haven't heard this before, and I'm wondering, um, is this because I'm ignorant of this? Or is this because this is, uh, I mean, you were saying this was all discovered in the early 2000s, and your last study was 2005. Is that what you said?

Dr. Shanna Swan 23:21 No. The last, I mean, the first study was 2005.

Joe Rogan 23:24 2005.

Dr. Shanna Swan 23:25 That was the first one. The, um, animal studies were earlier, but, uh, that was the first human one, and they've been going on ever since. The problem is that we don't talk about the consequences of this. We as a society. We don't talk about sperm counts are going down, testosterone is going down. You know, we're having more and more children by assisted reproduction. I don't know about you, but I mean, do you know anybody who has had trouble having a child?

Joe Rogan 23:56 Yes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 23:57 E- every, everybody says yes.

Joe Rogan 23:58 But i- it's quite a few people, but it's gen- in general, w- I, I notice it's usually older people that have had a long caree- that have had a career and then when they get into their late 30s or their 40s, then they decide to have children, it's very difficult.

Dr. Shanna Swan 24:11 Yes. Aging is a definitely a problem. But it's not the only problem, and there are many young... If you talk to your nice nurse that I, I forgot her name.

Joe Rogan 24:20 Mercy.

Dr. Shanna Swan 24:21 Mercy. She told me about two of her young friends who've had trouble having... It's not just the-

Joe Rogan 24:25 Mm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 24:25 It's the, it's the older ones, you know, that are more prevalent, so you hear more of them, but young people too are having problems. And it's-... it's everywhere and it's increasing. So, um, I think now we're gonna start paying attention because we're feeling the impact, you know?

Joe Rogan 24:43 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 24:44 Until it comes home to roost, as you say, it's not gonna make us change anything, but I think this might.

Joe Rogan 24:51 Yeah, I was reading something about l- lowered testosterone counts and that lowered sperm counts is, is happening with people and they were trying to figure out why, but they had not made the connection to your work. It was just an article-

Dr. Shanna Swan 25:03 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:03 ... about trying to recognize what's causing this trend. So listening to what you're saying, it really hits home. It's a, this is, that's terrifying because I'm thinking about how many people this affects and how many people, uh, consume things that are either wrapped in plastic or they microwave things in plastic or they drink bottled water... We stopped drinking bottled water here a while back 'cause, just 'cause it was wasteful.

Dr. Shanna Swan 25:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 25:30 And I'd heard about plastic leaching into waters and how, uh, you know, that some- it could do something with, uh, add estrogen to your body or something like that. I'm like, "Well, it just seems like a bad idea to just-"

Dr. Shanna Swan 25:40 (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 25:40 "... drink out of plastic all the time." And then, then they had said it was a bad idea when you leave, like we lived in California, it was hot, and if you had a water bottle in your car, you should never drink it after it's been sitting in there.

Dr. Shanna Swan 25:51 The same thing.

Joe Rogan 25:52 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 25:52 Yeah, warm-

Joe Rogan 25:52 But I di- I never made the connection to the developmental cycle of a child.

Dr. Shanna Swan 25:59 That child is the most sensitive organism. It affects adults too, but because it's, there's just so-

Joe Rogan 26:06 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 26:06 ... much going on there, right?

Joe Rogan 26:08 Sure.

Dr. Shanna Swan 26:08 Everything is developing then. That's the most critical period. And like you say, it's forever.

Joe Rogan 26:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 26:14 So let me give you a good example of this, smoking. Smoking is not a good thing for reproduction, it's not a good thing for sperm count, okay? If the mother smokes, then on the average her son can lose 40% of his sperm count.

Joe Rogan 26:30 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 26:30 If the f- father smokes in that period before he conceives the child, there's 60 to 70 days that the sperm is being created. In that period, he's vuln- that sperm is vulnerable to what he's exposed to, like smoking, so then that child has also about a 40% lower sperm. And that's not fixable. However, if the man smokes himself, his parents didn't, he did, he might have a 20% reduction, and then he's, goes off, and then he's good to go. So it's very different if the exposure occurs in utero or postnatally or in childhood-

Joe Rogan 27:14 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 27:14 ... or in adulthood. Yeah. So it's the unborn child that we really need to protect the most. Um, yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:25 This is really scary information and I'm wondering why this not, this is not more popular. Like, why, why isn't this not on the news, first story? Like, this is, this is affecting the development cycle of how many children? I mean, d- is it, where, are we even-

Dr. Shanna Swan 27:42 Everyone.

Joe Rogan 27:44 That's crazy.

Dr. Shanna Swan 27:45 It is crazy. And, um, it takes a long time to get these, this word out and I wrote Countdown for this reason. I've been talking about this to my peers at meetings, conferences, writing papers. I've written over 200 papers that say this. But it's a very small circle of people that's-

Joe Rogan 28:05 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 28:05 ... know each other and know the facts and that, that's where it stays. In order to get it out, I have to talk to you, I have to talk to your listeners, I have to... I've given well over a hundred interviews in the last two months. I mean, I'm just saying this to everybody I can because it's, it's gotta get out there and-

Joe Rogan 28:22 I just can't believe I haven't heard it before. That's what's so terrifying to me. When the pitch re- w- when I received the pitch, I read the breakdown of what your work was and w- what you discovered and I was thinking, "Why don't I know this? How come I don't know this? This is crazy." Like, this is, what it, what it's called... Okay, let's just talk, maybe I'm, maybe this is grossly exaggerated, maybe, but no, it's under-exaggerated. I mean, or, or it's, it's under-reported, rather.

Dr. Shanna Swan 28:50 It's definitely under-reported.

Joe Rogan 28:51 I just don't understand how it could be. This seems like a significant issue.

Dr. Shanna Swan 28:56 It is a significant issue and hopefully more people are recognizing. But look, people don't... If, if you have a problem with your cholesterol, I'm sure you don't, but suppose you had a chole- you know, had your cholesterol checked, you go to a cocktail party, you say, "I went to the doctor, I had a high cholesterol. I've got to not eat this and this." You wouldn't say, "I went to my doctor and have a low sperm count."

Joe Rogan 29:18 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 29:19 Right? People don't talk about this. They don't talk about their reproductive health. And here's one of the surprising things is that low sperm count that's related to phthalates, that man is going to die younger.

Joe Rogan 29:35 Hmm. Nature doesn't want him around.

Dr. Shanna Swan 29:40 It's, it affects the whole body. He's gonna have, likely to have more heart disease.

Joe Rogan 29:45 And m- most likely, that is what's going on, right? Like, the body, uh, has, with, with a low sperm count body, the body is obviously damaged by this process in the womb.

Dr. Shanna Swan 29:55 Right.

Joe Rogan 29:56 And longevity, vitality, just everything has to suffer. I mean, it... Have you made a connection with this and depression or with anxiety or any other things that are affecting people at a disproportionate amount?

Dr. Shanna Swan 30:11 I haven't looked at that, but I, I can tell you it affects libido.

Joe Rogan 30:15 Yes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 30:16 ... right?

Joe Rogan 30:16 But that is why, why I asked because there's a gentleman that's a friend of mine named Dr. Mark Gordon and he's worked with a lot of people with traumatic brain injuries, and one of the things that happens with damage to the pituitary gland is, uh, a decrease in the amount of testosterone that's produced by the brain and the testes. And then what happens after that is severe depression. And this connection between-

Dr. Shanna Swan 30:36 Hmm. Hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:36 ... severe depression and lower testosterone-

Dr. Shanna Swan 30:39 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:39 ... is pretty significant. Uh, he's done a lot of work with, uh, this g- group called the Warrior Angel Foundation with, uh, another friend of mine, Andrew Marr, and they have worked with these soldiers and now he's also done some work with football players and fighters and a lot of other people with head injuries. And he's shown this direct correlation between severe depression and lower testosterone. Anxiety, a lot of, like, mental health issues. I would imagine that these kids that are born, uh, w- with this disruption in their developmental cycle and they have lowered sperm count, like, I bet everything is-

Dr. Shanna Swan 31:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:15 ... everything's decreased. Everything's a mess.

Dr. Shanna Swan 31:17 Yeah. I, I would- I'm definitely going to follow up on that and look at that. I can- what we've- just, you know, we followed our kids. Our kids are now, in our latest study, um, nine years, eight, nine years old, so they're not, they're not there yet.

Joe Rogan 31:31 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 31:32 So I, I don't have those endpoints, but we do know, um, that when we asked, um, for example, by the way, women need testosterone too.

Joe Rogan 31:41 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 31:42 Um, and it's f- related to a woman's libido. So in our study, we did ask the woman about her sexual satisfaction, frequency, and so on, and higher levels of phthalates were associated with lower sexual satisfaction.

Joe Rogan 31:57 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 31:58 And, um, you know, and it's- of course it's related to erectile dysfunction, which by the way is now th- you know, f- rapidly rising and, and testosterone re- replacement is being used by younger and younger men. Um, so it's, it's a big thing. (laughs) It's affecting-

Joe Rogan 32:16 It's a huge thing.

Dr. Shanna Swan 32:16 ... it's affecting all of our, you know, um, reproductive health. (laughs) You know?

Joe Rogan 32:23 Is this in other countries as well?

Dr. Shanna Swan 32:25 Yes.

Joe Rogan 32:26 Have they measured this in, uh, different countries, like countries in the developmental world and the countries where they use less plastic versus countries where they use more plastics?

Dr. Shanna Swan 32:37 Um, no. I don't know of a study like ours in a developing country, but we have studies in other countries for sure, in Europe. Um, but if you- one measure of where it's a problem, I would say, is where is sperm count declining?

Joe Rogan 32:55 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 32:56 And, I mean, the kickoff for this book, Countdown, was a paper that we wrote in 2017 in which we showed that sperm count in Western countries had declined kind of catastrophically. So let me just tell you the numbers.

Joe Rogan 33:14 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 33:16 Think back to 1973. That was the first- that's the start of our trend, and at that point, the median, that's the middle of the distribution, was 99 million sperm per milliliter. That's a good, healthy sperm count. '73. At the end of our study period was 2011. In those 39 years, it had dropped from 99 to 47.

Joe Rogan 33:46 Yikes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 33:48 Over all Western countries.

Joe Rogan 33:50 All Western countries?

Dr. Shanna Swan 33:51 Yes. Averaged o- over all Western countries. Yes.

Joe Rogan 33:55 Wow.

Dr. Shanna Swan 33:56 That's a fif- more than a 50% decline in under 40 years.

Joe Rogan 34:03 That's crazy.

Dr. Shanna Swan 34:04 Yeah. Thank you. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:06 But it's- that- I would ima- th- this is just a- I keep repeating myself, but I'm sorry. I would imagine this would be a, a big news story. I d- I don't understand why you have to come to some meathead's podcast to explain this to people. That, that's- when I'm getting the word out on things like that, it really scares the shit out of me, 'cause I'm like, "How is this not being picked up by major news organizations and 60 Minutes and all these different programs? Why are they not sounding the alarms? We, we need to figure this out, and we need to figure it out now."

Dr. Shanna Swan 34:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 34:39 Because it-

Dr. Shanna Swan 34:40 Right. It's continuing.

Joe Rogan 34:40 What if it keeps trending down this way?

Dr. Shanna Swan 34:42 It is. It is.

Joe Rogan 34:43 It is.

Dr. Shanna Swan 34:43 So what we did in our curve, we said, "Okay, that's 40 years. What about if we go 30 years? Maybe it's slowing down." Nope. "20 years, slowing down?" Nope. "10 years?" Nope. We saw no indication that the trend was slowing down. It's gonna have to-

Joe Rogan 35:00 (sighs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 35:00 Let me just point out, because if you bring it down to zero, just think what that means. Median of zero means half the sperm would be negative, counts would be negative. Not possible. Can't have a negative. Right?

Joe Rogan 35:15 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 35:15 So it's gonna have to- just think about the curve. Coming down, coming down towards- it's gonna have to flatten out.

Joe Rogan 35:22 There'll be none. There'll be no sperm. You'll have a zero sperm count. I mean, if you're- if you're- if it's really dropping down by- i- it's basically 50% in the time period from 1973 to 2011, is that what you said?

Dr. Shanna Swan 35:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:36 That's bananas. I mean-

Dr. Shanna Swan 35:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:38 ... the fact that that can- it can even happen and not- there's no alarms being sounded.

Dr. Shanna Swan 35:44 I know.

Joe Rogan 35:45 We're changing human beings.

Dr. Shanna Swan 35:47 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 35:48 Like, what it means to be a human being.

Dr. Shanna Swan 35:49 That's right.

Joe Rogan 35:49 A developing human being is a different thing now-

Dr. Shanna Swan 35:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:52 ... because of poisons.

Dr. Shanna Swan 35:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 35:54 Wow. That's really scary.

Dr. Shanna Swan 36:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:02 It's really scary when you think about th- what you're saying about people having a hard time reproducing and where this could lead to, a dramatic drop-off in the population. Like, we're worried about overpopulation.

Dr. Shanna Swan 36:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:16 But if this is real...... the children that are being born today, if they have this issue and then we're looking at them 20 years from now, the reproductive, you know, sort of cycle starts kicking in, in terms of like them having babies and raising families, like, what's the numbers gonna be? What are they gonna be for their children?

Dr. Shanna Swan 36:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:40 Wow.

Dr. Shanna Swan 36:41 And here, so another thing to think about. So a mother is exposed to some phthalates, other chemicals, the phenols, that line tin cans and the flame retardants and the pesticides. They all, they're all bad. They all (laughs) can do this one, diff- in different ways. But let's just talk about this, uh, phthalates. So the mother's exposed to the phthalates, and she's carrying, let's just say, a, a son in the womb. And then he has within him what's called the germ cells of his sperm. Right? So that, that im- that he's, she's exposed, the child is exposed, and the next generation is exposed. So from one person being exposed, you're exposing three generations.

Joe Rogan 37:32 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 37:33 So you're right to say think about the later, you know, the kids coming and the kids coming after that. C- But here's the good news. Should be some good news, right?

Joe Rogan 37:44 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 37:44 The good news is that in a very elegant study (clears throat) in the University of Washington, Pat Hunt showed that if you have a guy mouse (laughs) who was exposed and had impaired fertility and sperm count, and then you cleaned up everything about his environment, and that ... and for his child's environment, and his child's child's environment, in three generations, we can recover reproductive health.

Joe Rogan 38:16 But what happens in three generations if we don't clean everything up? Then the trend continues downward.

Dr. Shanna Swan 38:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:23 And how do we clean things up? That's the real question. If you, if this, all this stuff comes from petrochemicals and, and plastics, that's a significant part of our world.

Dr. Shanna Swan 38:33 That's right.

Joe Rogan 38:34 And also a part of the world that has a very strong lobby-

Dr. Shanna Swan 38:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:37 ... that does not want a decrease in sales.

Dr. Shanna Swan 38:40 Absolutely right.

Joe Rogan 38:42 And there prob- uh, has, has, has anybody fought this?

Dr. Shanna Swan 38:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:45 Has anybody debated you on this? Or does anyone deny the, the data?

Dr. Shanna Swan 38:50 No.

Joe Rogan 38:52 Not yet. Wait till after this podcast.

Dr. Shanna Swan 38:54 Well ... (laughs) Right? I mean, I'm sure there'll be a lot of pushback from your listeners, but, but, um, there's ... Okay, first of all, we can do better. One place ... L- Let me just say, we used to do terribly with drugs.

Joe Rogan 39:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 39:11 The regulation of drugs was terrible. That's why we had thalidomide babies, you know-

Joe Rogan 39:14 Yes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 39:15 ... and, and, and other terrible breakthroughs. And, and then the FDA got it together and learned how to regulate drugs. And we're, we're pretty safe now, and we know, for example, how to test vaccines and so on and so forth. So we can work toward a viable regulatory system if we want to. So I, I believe that. In Europe, they're many steps ahead of us, because they have instituted something called REACH. Now, under REACH, if a guy, manufacturer, wants to put a chemical into commerce, into a plastic bottle, into a personal care product, where they are also, by the way, um, he has to show that it's not harmful before he does that. There, so there has to pass a series of tests. In this country, we don't have that regulation. In this country, it's put it in and we'll see if it's harmful. No prior regulation required.

Joe Rogan 40:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 40:17 You see?

Joe Rogan 40:17 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 40:17 So it's really, really different. The bottom line is like we have only like 11 chemicals that are not allowed in our personal care products. In Europe, they have 1100.

Joe Rogan 40:32 They also don't allow, they don't allow commercials for drugs.

Dr. Shanna Swan 40:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:38 Um, there's, we have a lot of screwed up stuff over here.

Dr. Shanna Swan 40:40 Right. So, so, you know, what we have to think about is how do we get angry enough and concerned enough to change the regulations-

Joe Rogan 40:52 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 40:52 ... so that we're protected?

Joe Rogan 40:55 Now, what, what can be done? Is there ... have ... Has that been looked at? And one, well, two questions. First, what is happening to women?

Dr. Shanna Swan 41:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 41:02 And what is happening to female babies? We're talking about lowered sperm count. What's the effect on, on female children?

Dr. Shanna Swan 41:08 So this delicate testosterone balance that I talked about can go the other way for females, but that's not through something like phthalates. It's through other chemicals possibly. Um, we just published a paper that ... And this is early. I'm not gonna ... You know, this ... Not the same weight of evidence at all as I have for the phthalates, but we just published two papers in which we showed that when mothers were exposed to higher levels of a certain pesticide, which is, um, in Roundup, which is ... Have you heard of Roundup?

Joe Rogan 41:43 Glyphosate.

Dr. Shanna Swan 41:44 Glyphosate.

Joe Rogan 41:44 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 41:45 So that, that, uh, that anogenital distance in the girls was long, was more masculine.

Joe Rogan 41:53 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 41:54 And that was shown in rats as well. So I ... That may go away. This was the first study. It was a small study. I don't know that that's gonna stick, but that's the kind of thing that could be going on, that there are chemicals out there that alter, increase testosterone. They're called pro-androgens. And, and they can mess up females in sort of in the opposite direction.

Joe Rogan 42:20 But it doesn't have that same effect on males, correct? Like gly- uh, glyphosate?

Dr. Shanna Swan 42:24 No, glyphosate doesn't. N- No. I don't think so.... not, not in our, you know, or in our kids. So, um, the animal data is a little not clear but, but in our kids we didn't see anything in the males. But, um, the point is that there's lots of stuff out there.

Joe Rogan 42:39 That's messing with the-

Dr. Shanna Swan 42:40 It's messing with our hormone systems.

Joe Rogan 42:42 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 42:42 And so, that's where we should be looking. We should be looking at, you know, what's going on out there that we're taking in all the time, by the way.

Joe Rogan 42:51 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 42:52 We call them everywhere, all the time chemicals, you know, because, uh, they're, they're, they're just coming in. We can't, we can't stop them. We don't know, we don't know what's in our bodies. There's no... And you know what? It's, it's not fair, you know, that we as consumers should have to worry about this, I don't think.

Joe Rogan 43:09 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 43:10 I mean, why do I have to-

Joe Rogan 43:11 Well, it's a complete failure on the part of the regulators.

Dr. Shanna Swan 43:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:15 The people that are supposed to be watching out for the general public, and not allowing these things to get into our bodies and not... Uh, just the fact that Roundup is still available, Monsanto continues to sell it, and also the fact that it clearly is terrible for people when it gets into your body. It's not, it's not a benign thing whatsoever.

Dr. Shanna Swan 43:36 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:37 And that's just one.

Dr. Shanna Swan 43:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:39 What other things about, what are affecting the development, developmental cycle?

Dr. Shanna Swan 43:44 Oh my gosh. Um, so there are, you know, there's, there's the chemicals that are in, uh, coatings, just to say, you know, coatings of can, uh, Teflon frying pans.

Joe Rogan 44:06 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 44:06 Uh, coatings of, um, your jacket that you wear in the rain, you know, repellent. Those coatings, they're also on paper, you know, keeps the grease from going through-

Joe Rogan 44:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 44:16 ... to the box when you buy a pizza. Those coatings are also hormonally active and very, very prevalent. I haven't studied those myself, so I don't wanna talk a lot about their effects, but I know they have reproductive effects, I know they affect, um, for example, um, fetal growth. Um, so-

Joe Rogan 44:37 So rainwear, like that kind of stuff?

Dr. Shanna Swan 44:39 Yeah. Yeah. The rain-

Joe Rogan 44:43 Makes sense.

Dr. Shanna Swan 44:43 The repellent, the repellent.

Joe Rogan 44:45 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 44:45 You know, anything that puts a barrier.

Joe Rogan 44:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 44:48 Any barrier, a chemical barrier, they're called, um, the PFAS, um, sometimes they're called PFOS and PFOAs, they're different classes of chemicals, but perfluorinated compounds. Um, then there are the phenols, the bisphenols, um, which by the way, um, you probably... Did you ever try to buy a BPA-free bottle? I don't know if you ever tried that.

Joe Rogan 45:09 Yes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 45:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:09 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 45:09 Right? So the label BPA-free.

Joe Rogan 45:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 45:11 So what happened was people got really upset about BPA, it had a lot of reproductive effects, and, um, it, um... So they took it out, and that's good. But what happened was, and this is, happens over and over and over again in chemical cycles, they put something else in. They put in BPF, like Frank, and BPS, like Sam. And BPF and BPS are ox- eh, particularly BPF, is, um, equally, if not more, um, risky, uh, than BPA. And the bottle says BPA-free-

Joe Rogan 45:49 Oh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 45:49 ... that's true, but it doesn't say-

Joe Rogan 45:52 BPF-free.

Dr. Shanna Swan 45:52 ... bisphenol-free.

Joe Rogan 45:54 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 45:54 Right? So I think that's a dirty trick.

Joe Rogan 45:57 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 45:57 And, and we call it, um, whack-a-mole.

Joe Rogan 46:00 Yeah. What can the general public do to eliminate as much of these harmful chemicals as possible?

Dr. Shanna Swan 46:12 Huh, it's a big job. Um, for one thing, I'd say buy Countdown and look at the several chapters where we go into detail on things to avoid. Um, but, um, uh, I could say, you could think about (laughs) ... Thank you (laughs) ... thi- uh, think about, um, um, walking through your kitchen and looking for plastics and trying to swap out ceramic and glass or metal, not from the microwave, of course, but, um, and, um, in your bathroom to look at your personal care products. They won't say phthalates by and large, um-

Joe Rogan 46:51 Because you're not consuming them?

Dr. Shanna Swan 46:54 I don't know why they're not required. No, I don't... It doesn't say phthalates on our spaghetti sauce that has phthalates in them either. Um, we can come back to that. Um, but, uh, I don't actually know what the regulation is. I know for sure they don't have to be labeled in fragrance products, because those are, um, trade secrets.

Joe Rogan 47:16 S- if you bu- buy a jar of spaghetti sauce that's in a glass jar, you're still getting phthalates?

Dr. Shanna Swan 47:21 Probably, yes. You'd have to-

Joe Rogan 47:22 From the tomatoes, the packaging of the tomatoes?

Dr. Shanna Swan 47:24 Probably from the processing.

Joe Rogan 47:27 Oh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 47:27 So when you go from a tomato to a sauce, you have to process it. And so that processing introduces phthalates. If you go, think about a cow, this is different, but it's the same principle. So the cow is being milked. Maybe this cow is on a wonderful farm with, you know, the picture of the farmer and the grass and it's an organic farm and, and, and everybody's happy. And then he milks the cow, or she milks the cow, through a milking machine that has tubes.

Joe Rogan 47:58 Mm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 47:58 What are those tubes made of?

Joe Rogan 48:00 Plastic.

Dr. Shanna Swan 48:00 Plastic.

Joe Rogan 48:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 48:01 And so, they go into the milk.

Joe Rogan 48:03 Phthalates.

Dr. Shanna Swan 48:04 So, um, I actually am hoping to do a systematic study, which I'm calling f- farm to fork, where we take a bunch of products, see what's in them at the farm, see what's in them at the table, and see where it's introduced along the way.

Joe Rogan 48:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 48:22 Because nobody's done that. We don't really know where they come in, so we don't really know how to keep them out.

Joe Rogan 48:29 Yeah. And that would be if you're trying to eat organic. That would, even in that sense, if you're having milk and it's coming through tubes, if you're having anything that's wrapped in plastic, even if it's, uh, grass fed, organic, there's still, you're, you're wrapping it in a plastic.

Dr. Shanna Swan 48:49 Yeah. But I would say the number one thing is do not microwave in plastic. And I-

Joe Rogan 48:55 Does, does that accelerate it or is that just like a, a way that it gets into the food much quicker?

Dr. Shanna Swan 49:00 Yes.

Joe Rogan 49:00 Or much higher doses?

Dr. Shanna Swan 49:01 Yes, because it's so warm.

Joe Rogan 49:03 Mm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 49:03 Yeah, and it's, you know, it, it's, um... And, and those little packets that it's sealed in-

Joe Rogan 49:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 49:10 ... are not good.

Joe Rogan 49:11 Mm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 49:11 Yeah. So, we have a lot to do to keep these out of our bodies, um, and like I said, it's not, it's not really our job to do that.

Joe Rogan 49:26 Well, it's, I don't think most people have any idea that this is that big of an issue. And when you're saying all this stuff, and I'm, I'm terrified of this, because I, I feel like, and I'm glad you wrote this book, and I'm glad you this- did these studies, but I feel like this has caught people completely off guard. And then, I'm picturing a supermarket and just going down the row, looking at like packages of lettuce and, and things wrapped in plastic, and thing- meat wrapped in plastic, and chicken, and like, wow.

Dr. Shanna Swan 49:58 You know, probably those single layer wrappers that those things are coming in, I don't know, I haven't tested those, and that's one of the things I want to do with this project, but probably those are not so bad. I think the, the ones that have been sealed in are worse, um, and ideally, I would say, if you can go to, like I go to the farmer's market, I live in New York, I go to the farmer's market down in Union Square, I buy stuff, you know, I take a bunch of carrots, I take it home, I put it in the fridge, I eat it. That is, that will definitely not introduce anything (laughs) into, into the product.

Joe Rogan 50:33 What, what happens to fully developed people that encounter phthalates, if they encounter them in large doses? Like say, like someone like yourself. Like, if you start- started eating microwaved food and you got a large dose of phthalates in your diet, what would happen?

Dr. Shanna Swan 50:49 I don't think we know. Uh, we haven't studied the effect of adult exposures, uh, of somebody my age, but if it's a, a couple who's grown up, but wants to go to, uh, say, assisted reproduction, um, beautiful series of studies at Harvard, uh, showed that the amount of chemicals in their urine and blood when they come in for their assisted reproductive procedure influences how that procedure comes out. So, how many eggs can be retrieved, how many are implanted, how many actually progress to a live birth is related to the chemicals in their body at the time they start the procedure. So, that's an effect of, of an adult, to an adult, of an adult exposure, you know, that I know of for sure. Um, I don't... Uh, it's very possible that these are related to aging and diseases of aging. They certainly affect the brain. We know that from our studies. Um, so, but, you know, every one of these questions requires, like I said, $5 million.

Joe Rogan 51:57 Mm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 51:57 And you got a lot of chemicals and you got a lot of questions. So, we really gotta get busy.

Joe Rogan 52:02 Whew. And you also have a lot of companies that have a vested interest in continuing business as usual, and they want to deny as much responsibility for having these chemicals in our bodies as they can.

Dr. Shanna Swan 52:17 Yes, and not to swap out ones we-

Joe Rogan 52:20 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 52:20 ... put the finger on with other ones that we haven't tested yet.

Joe Rogan 52:23 And what you're talking about too, is that to turn this around, you, you, in general, you're talking about multiple generations in order to bring the, the developmental cycle back to normal.

Dr. Shanna Swan 52:35 That's right.

Joe Rogan 52:36 That's crazy. I wonder if there's a trend in terms of like, uh, looking at young male athletes. Like if-

Dr. Shanna Swan 52:46 Wow.

Joe Rogan 52:47 ... you're looking at male athletes and phthalate in the, the, the development and what, what's possible.

Dr. Shanna Swan 52:57 I think that would be a fabulous study. A fabulous study.

Joe Rogan 53:02 What, in general, what has the response been when people find out about this and when, when people read the data and see your book and, and, and read the information in it?

Dr. Shanna Swan 53:14 Many people have a reaction like yours. "This is really serious. We have to take this seriously. We have to do something about it." And there are people, I'm sure, that don't believe it.

Joe Rogan 53:24 Are there people that have been dismissive?

Dr. Shanna Swan 53:28 Um, there have been some people that have been dismissive, um, of the kind that say, "There's too many people in the world anyway."

Joe Rogan 53:37 Who says that?

Dr. Shanna Swan 53:39 I can show you. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:40 Those people.

Dr. Shanna Swan 53:42 Too people, too many people in the world anyway.

Joe Rogan 53:44 But imagine that that's your solution. "There's too many people in the world, and so let's ruin babies so that they can't reproduce."

Dr. Shanna Swan 53:50 (laughs) Right.

Joe Rogan 53:50 And they're depressed.

Dr. Shanna Swan 53:51 Right. (laughs) Right.

Joe Rogan 53:52 And have small taints.

Dr. Shanna Swan 53:55 And penises, by the way. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:56 Yeah, whoops. It's just, all this sounds really horrific. I mean, but really, that has been the response that some people have? That, uh, that, that this is probably... Well, maybe they look at it in terms of like, nature has a way of working itself out, whether or not it's voluntary or whether or not it's just-

Dr. Shanna Swan 54:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 54:13 ... uh, an-

Dr. Shanna Swan 54:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 54:14 ... incidental part of the system.

Dr. Shanna Swan 54:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 54:17 And that's just, uh, essentially what's going on here. This is an incidental, it's in-

Dr. Shanna Swan 54:21 This is nature's way of dealing with an overpopulation problem.

Joe Rogan 54:24 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 54:24 Some people say, yes.

Joe Rogan 54:25 Well, it kind of makes sense that this does sort of balance itself out in some very bizarre way.

Dr. Shanna Swan 54:32 But you know what? It's not just humans.... do you know that m- many, many species on the planet have the same problem and, and we can cause these problems in animals with these chemicals in the laboratory. So, when you say, "It's nature's way of working things out," well, is that working its way out for the species that are becoming endangered and-

Joe Rogan 54:54 Well, I think they're just a side effect of nature working its things out with us.

Dr. Shanna Swan 54:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:59 You know? If our production of food and packaging of foods somehow or another gets to these other animals, that's just, uh, an accidental-

Dr. Shanna Swan 55:10 And it's not-

Joe Rogan 55:10 ... process.

Dr. Shanna Swan 55:10 ... our responsibility.

Joe Rogan 55:11 Oh, it's certainly our responsibility. It's all of our responsibility.

Dr. Shanna Swan 55:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:14 But it's really the responsibility of the people that are packaging food. It's really the responsibility of the people that are involved in getting the stuff to us and how are they getting it to us and how are the phthalates getting to us? If there was any other thing that someone was doing that it turned out was affecting the entire human race because of their business, just fill in the blank. Like, if we found out that, you know, whatever it is, cell phone use or driving a car si- is looking through a da- uh, looking at your dashboard was somehow or another affecting the reproductive cycle of the human race, there would be d- drastic consequences. People would be talking about this.

Dr. Shanna Swan 55:51 Maybe.

Joe Rogan 55:52 I would imagine.

Dr. Shanna Swan 55:53 Maybe. Maybe. Um-

Joe Rogan 55:56 Yeah. But again-

Dr. Shanna Swan 55:56 You know, we... This is not everybody's favorite topic, as I mentioned. And, and it's... By the way, it's painful for women especially, let me just... We haven't talked about that, but-

Joe Rogan 56:07 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 56:07 ... um, you know that f- for centuries, women have been blamed for the fact that a couple can't get pregnant. The guy assumes he's good to go until he needs the, you know, to prove himself, and then if he can't, it's gotta be on her. Most men don't have a clue about their sperm count. I don't know about you, but, um, I can tell you, I think that every man should know his sperm count.

Joe Rogan 56:40 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 56:41 Um, not only because he might wanna have a child, but because m- we... Might tell him something about his overall health, by the way. But, so here's this woman that's being blamed. She's also being... And by the way, infertility, we now know, is about 50-50 in terms of blame. I don't think blame is the right word.

Joe Rogan 56:59 Yeah, it's a weird word, right?

Dr. Shanna Swan 57:00 Weird word, right? But, you know, you can find a female cause about a third of the time, a male cause about a third of the time, and a third of the time, it could be both or you don't know. So that's kind of 50-50. And, and then you go f- if they managed to conceive, then a high percent of pregnancies are... Mis-carraged. You... The miscarriage rate is probably over 50%.

Joe Rogan 57:21 And that is also attributable to phthalates, you think?

Dr. Shanna Swan 57:25 No, I don't. I think it's, um, it's going up. It's going up. It's the same rate as sperm count is going down, by the way.

Joe Rogan 57:32 What do you think is causing that then?

Dr. Shanna Swan 57:34 I think it's a lot of chemicals that are causing that.

Joe Rogan 57:36 Different chemicals?

Dr. Shanna Swan 57:36 Different chemicals. And, um, I studied some of them. I studied chemicals in water at one point, I studied, um, solvents in water and showed they were related to miscarriages. Chemic- manmade chemicals are not great for our reproductive health.

Joe Rogan 57:53 What chemicals are associated with miscarriages?

Dr. Shanna Swan 57:56 Um, the... Well, the... I can't say that off the top of my head, all of them, but the ones that I've studied when I studied that, those were the, um, chlorination byproducts, so when you chlorinate water, the high levels of certain chlorination byproducts, and also solvents that are used to clean chips and other, you know, certain high-

Joe Rogan 58:14 So chlorination, meaning tap water?

Dr. Shanna Swan 58:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:17 Or also meaning swimming in pools that are chlorinated and getting it through your skin?

Dr. Shanna Swan 58:22 Tap... My study was on homes, tap water in homes.

Joe Rogan 58:26 But-

Dr. Shanna Swan 58:27 But probably there's some risk from, from pool chlorination, too.

Joe Rogan 58:31 Has anybody studied the fr- m- miscarriage rate of l- like active swimmers?

Dr. Shanna Swan 58:39 Not that I know of.

Joe Rogan 58:40 It seems like that would be a big one, right?

Dr. Shanna Swan 58:42 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:42 Because you're, you're... Most certainly, if you're training in a swimming pool or swimming in a, on a daily basis, you're, you're getting-

Dr. Shanna Swan 58:48 Getting a lot.

Joe Rogan 58:49 ... dosed-

Dr. Shanna Swan 58:49 Right.

Joe Rogan 58:49 ... with chlorine every day.

Dr. Shanna Swan 58:51 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 58:51 Especially if it's a public pool.

Dr. Shanna Swan 58:53 Yep. So here... The s- the big picture is that we have these thousands of chemicals that we can't get a handle on. There was a law, it was called the Toxic Substances Control Act, and it was published in '76. And at that point, when they put that in, they said, "Okay, here are thousands of chemicals. They've been out there for a long time. Nobody seems to worry about them. They're all okay." They were called grandfathered in. They were not regulated.

Joe Rogan 59:25 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 59:25 We have that legacy on top of the lack of testing of new chemicals. So there's very little regulation of all of these chemicals that are circling in our environment and entering our bodies. And I, m- I and my colleagues, you know, are few, uh, compared to the problem and we need more resources and we need more people worrying about this, and, um, I think the first step is to just have people like you and your listeners and people I talk to on all these shows I've gone on, you know, recognizing, thinking about it, just thinking about it, you know? "Uh, wow, this seems to be a problem. Maybe I should worry about bringing this and this and this into my house. Maybe I should read these labels. Maybe I should..." (laughs) You know? Because it hasn't been in our consciousness.

Joe Rogan 1:00:13 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:00:13 It's another way of thinking.

Joe Rogan 1:00:16 There's a decrease in lifespan that's associated with large population centers, whether it's, uh, you know, you know, Los Angeles or New York or living... But living in urban areas, there's a decrease in lifespan. Uh, they think it's, uh, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 years and they don't know if it's because of brake dust or pollutants or particulates in the atmosphere. They don't know what it is. Um, but-... has there been a study on, well, I'm sure there probably hasn't, on sperm counts in rural areas as opposed to sperm counts in, in high population areas?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:00:49 I actually did that study.

Joe Rogan 1:00:51 Oh, okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:00:51 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:00:51 Well, I shouldn't have been sure. (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:00:53 But, but (laughs) but the answer is not what you'd expect.

Joe Rogan 1:00:55 Oh, really?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:00:56 Yeah. So in this study, um, we got four groups of people, and that turned out to be men and women, and I can tell you why. Um, and they were, um, one of the centers was Columbia, Missouri, where I was living, and that's rural. It's agricultural. They grow a lot of corn and soy there. And one of them was Minneapolis, urban.

Joe Rogan 1:01:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:01:23 And then there were some, I'm just gonna talk about those two. And in those two centers, we saw that men in Missouri had half as many moving sperm as men in Minneapolis.

Joe Rogan 1:01:38 Did they associate that with farm chemicals?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:01:41 Yes. That's the next study I did. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:44 Oh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:01:44 So then, I took men with good semen quality and bad semen quality and measured how much of the pesticides were in their bodies, and there were significantly more pesticides in the sample of men who had poor semen quality as compared to good semen quality.

Joe Rogan 1:02:04 Now, is this because of, is it airborne? Is it like, where you're talking about enormous cornfields and glyphosate and all these other different chemicals are, they, they work their way into the air itself 'cause they spray?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:02:17 Or water.

Joe Rogan 1:02:18 Water.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:02:19 Runoff from the fields-

Joe Rogan 1:02:20 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:02:20 ... into the water, into the groundwater.

Joe Rogan 1:02:21 And then it pollutes the water supply.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:02:22 Right. Or air. I, I couldn't, I didn't study w- how they were getting this. But they weren't workers, they weren't agricultural workers, and they weren't living on farms.

Joe Rogan 1:02:31 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:02:31 They weren't farmers or-

Joe Rogan 1:02:32 Just regular folks.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:02:33 They're just regular folks living in that area.

Joe Rogan 1:02:35 Wow.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:02:35 Including me. Um, so that was pretty dramatic. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:02:40 That is very dramatic.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:02:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:42 I would, uh, I've driven past corn. I have a buddy of mine who lives in Iowa, and, uh, you know, you, you drive down there and you see these enormous fields, like huge, huge fields of corn. And, and I've always wondered, like, "Where's all that going?" Like, for sure they're spraying the stuff.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:02:59 And the workers who are spraying it and getting it on them-

Joe Rogan 1:03:01 Oh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:03:01 ... you know, they're, they're even more highly exposed. And that, those, those studies of high exposure, you know, here's an example. There was a, a pesticide that was used, um, to grow pineapples. It was, um, a nema- nematicide, it killed nematodes, and, um, dibromochloropropane. And so there was a picnic and the wives were talking and the, "I, we haven't gotten pregnant." "We haven't either." "Really?" And gradually, they did a study of these men who had zero sperm.

Joe Rogan 1:03:36 Zero.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:03:36 Zero.

Joe Rogan 1:03:37 (exhales)

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:03:39 And then they banned DBCP and in about, I think, four to five months, the men's sperm returned.

Joe Rogan 1:03:48 Wow.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:03:48 So that's, that's the thing about adult exposure. You can reverse it. So that's, that's kind of the good news, that, that you can reverse it.

Joe Rogan 1:03:56 The only good news all day. (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:03:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:00 Wow. E- but, I, I don't understand. I mean, I wanna know, when you talk about monocrop agriculture on a large scale, like these enormous cornfields, I don't know how they do that without pesticides.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:04:13 Yeah. I honestly don't know, but I hope there's a way. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:18 'Cause that's not-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:04:18 And I think there are people that are working on that, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:04:21 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:04:21 Regenerative farming and so on. I don't know. I honestly don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:04:23 The thing about regenerative farming, though, they don't, they don't do monocrop agriculture.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:04:27 That's true. That's true.

Joe Rogan 1:04:28 The whole idea of regenerative farming is that you try to mimic nature.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:04:32 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:33 The cows eat the grass.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:04:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:34 They poop. The poop becomes the fertilizer.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:04:36 Right. Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:37 The fertilizer helps the plants. This is not what you see when you have these en- enormous cornfields.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:04:43 So maybe those enormous cornfields are not good for us.

Joe Rogan 1:04:45 They're not good for us.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:04:46 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:46 Yeah, I think that's pretty safe to say. They're not good for us. It's just not, it's not a natural scene. Like, when you see the amount of manipulation that's required to grow 1,000 acres of corn or whatever in one spot, like, that's not, you don't see that anywhere in nature.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:05:03 Right. Or 1,000 cows in a-

Joe Rogan 1:05:06 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:05:07 ... yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:07 A small enclosure. Yeah, it's, oof. We're so strange. Human beings are so strange. Like, what we've done to an- the, the, to the environment in such a short time. That, what's crazy to me is if you go back to, you know, 1820, 200 years ago, there's none of this.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:05:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:24 There's none.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:05:25 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:26 Zero. So in 200 years, we've completely ruined the ground, we've com- completely changed the way we cultivate food. We've added all these chemicals to our environment, to our water, to our air, changed sperm counts, changed reproductive, reproductive cycles and reproductive quantity. It's very strange.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:05:52 And I, and I would say postwar is where it really took off.

Joe Rogan 1:05:55 Post World War II?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:05:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:57 When the use of plastics increased.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:05:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:59 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:05:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 Well, the, what's terrifying to me is, like, if we can have that significant a change in 200 years, what's possible in another 200 years? And is all this happening exponentially, which it probably is?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:12 The declines that we see in miscarriage, infertility, and sperm count and so on are not exponential. They're linear, um, but the growth of the plastics industry is exponential.

Joe Rogan 1:06:25 How come the exposure isn't exponential if the growth-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:28 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:06:29 Huh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:29 I don't know. I don't know. I, I don't, maybe it isn't exponential. Maybe I misspoke. It, it seems to be faster than linear, though.

Joe Rogan 1:06:39 Mm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:39 Yeah. It's, it's expe-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:41 So, would you like to take a quiz?

Joe Rogan 1:06:44 Sure.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:45 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:06:45 I love quizzes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:46 Oh, good. So we have something called the Jizz Quiz.

Joe Rogan 1:06:50 (laughs) Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:53 But you, you have to go... You have your phone?

Joe Rogan 1:06:55 Uh, yes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:56 Okay. So, and your f- listeners can take it too.

Joe Rogan 1:06:59 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:06:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 What do I have to do?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:01 So you go onto Dr. Shauna Swan.

Joe Rogan 1:07:04 All right. This is your website?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:05 This is my Instagram log in.

Joe Rogan 1:07:07 Oh, okay. I'll go to your In- Instagram.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:09 Dr. Shauna Swan.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 Hold on, please.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:16 And you should see... Under the highlights on the left, you should see the Jizz Quiz.

Joe Rogan 1:07:22 Oh, wow.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:22 Oh, it tells me I have no internet connection. Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:25 There's no internet in here?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:26 Well, you might have it. I might not be logged in. So, maybe you can do it.

Joe Rogan 1:07:31 All right, gotcha.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:32 Do you see a page that looks like this?

Joe Rogan 1:07:34 Uh, yeah, I have the night mode on.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:36 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:36 But I gotcha.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:37 Yeah. So you see the Jizz Quiz? Oh, perfect.

Joe Rogan 1:07:40 Jamie's got it there.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:41 You're right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:41 The Jizz Quiz. Click on the Jizz Quiz-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:43 Great.

Joe Rogan 1:07:43 ... young Jamie. Here we go.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:44 All right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:44 Come one, come all. You're hilarious.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:07:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:47 Okay. "What is your ferti- what's your fertility IQ? Many men and women feel fairly confident about their fertility intel, but research shows a surprisingly high percentage of people don't know as much as they think they do. Are you one of them? Answer these six questions and find out." Well, I've reproduced, so I'm pretty sure my sperm works, but I could be wrong. "As far as sperm go, which of the following can contribute to whether a man is likely to be considered infertile? One, his sperm concentration, uh, A, excuse me. B, the size/shape of his sperm. C, the way his sperm move/swim. D, all of the above." Um, I would say D. Is that correct?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:08:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:33 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:08:33 Click that. Click that. You have to click D, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:36 D. Uh, I can't. Can you do that? This is your Instagram. You can't really click on that. That's a, like, an Instagram story.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:08:43 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:08:43 Okay. Answer D, "Aside from a total absence of sperm," total bummer, we know, "no single sperm parameter can c- uh, predict that a man will be completely infertile. Turns out, when the sperm concentration/motility, the sperm's movement or swimming ability, and morphology, the size and shape of the sperm, are measured, each one matters in identifying infertile men. But there is an a- an addi- additive effect. When one of these measures is in the infertile range, a man is two times more likely to be infertile as a man with none of these measures in the infertile range. When two measures are in the infertile range, a man is five to seven times more likely to be infertile, and when all three fall... Are subpar, his odds of being infertile are 16 times higher."

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:09:35 So you're really messed up.

Joe Rogan 1:09:37 Whoa.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:09:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:38 That's not good.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:09:39 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:09:39 What's next? Okay. Question number two, "Does the size of my taint matter?" Well, we already know that.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:09:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:09:46 Totally. Yes. Oh. Wow, a lot of people- Good to know. ... don't get it. That's people with little taints. They're in denial. Okay. (laughs) The answer is yes, "While the official term for taint..." Uh, oh, the people that are listening, it was like 40% said no. Or 40% said yes, 60% said it didn't matter.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:10:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:04 But it does matter. "While the official term for taint, or gooch, is anogenital distance, ACD, size really does matter. The length of the guy's ACD will reflect his exposure." We talked about this. Okay. We already know this one. Let's go next. Number three, "What proportion of infertility cases can be attributable- at- attributed solely to the man? A, less than 10%. B, about 11 to 24%. C, 25 to 33%. D, 34 to 45%." I'm saying D. We can't click on it? It won't let you? Let's go. Answer's C. C. Interesting. Less than I thought. "Infertility used to be considered mostly a woman's problem." That seems so sexist.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:10:50 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:51 Um, "In recent decades, it has become increasingly recognized that male reproductive issues can cause approximately one-half to one-third of infert- infertility cases." I would assume it was more than that. "Same proportion as female reproductive challenges do, the rest are believed to stem from a combo of male and female factors. It takes two to make things go right." Oh. It takes two to make things go right?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:11:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:11:14 Here we go. "Testosterone replacement therapy can increase sperm count in men with low testosterone levels." That's false.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:11:23 Good.

Joe Rogan 1:11:23 Only 47% think that.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:11:25 Oh, they better (laughs) check it out, right?

Joe Rogan 1:11:27 Yeah. They don't, they don't understand that your body produces less when you exogenously introduce, uh, p- go up so I can read that. Uh, "It's true that a connection between testosterone level and sperm count, but testosterone replacement therapy doesn't help sperm. Here's why. When a man wears a testosterone patch or applies testosterone gel to his skin, the hormone enters his bloodstream and his testosterone levels go up." So far that's good, right? "Problem is, his brain interprets this rise as a sign that plenty of testosterone is available and sends signals to the testicles to stop making more. This may cause a decline in sperm production." Not what a guy wants. Okay. Next. Question number five, "Besides a lack of exercise, which of the following lifestyle-related factors is associated with male infertility? A, smoking cigarettes. B, alcohol/sugar sweetened beverages. C, lots of TV. D, all of the above." Most certainly D.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:12:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:12:23 Okay. D, "This may seem like a whole lotta bad news but, the upside is..." Oh. Oops. And...

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:12:31 Oop. Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:12:31 Brought on us, right? No, it's okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:12:32 Yeah. Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:12:33 That's all right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:12:34 Get rid. Uh, "This means that if a man cleans up his lifestyle, gives up cigarettes, heavy alcohol use, sugar sweetened drinks, and couch potato habits and takes steps," literally, "to slim down and be physically active, his sperm count and his sperm integrity may increase significantly." Next. "A man's age can affect his female partner's miscarriage risk." True.

Joe Rogan 1:12:57 ... 82% agree. True. Research suggests that for men ages 40 and older, their sp- female partners have a 60% increased risk of miscarriage compared to the aspiring dads under 30. This may be largely because with advancing age, there's an increase in the presence of abnormal genetic material within the sperm at any age. A pregnant woman is more likely to miscarry when sperm is faulty, but neither partner may realize this. That's a miscarriage of reproductive justice. That's a big thing with men who drink heavily, correct?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:30 Yeah. Okay. Number seven.

Jamie Vernon 1:13:33 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:13:33 Oh, that's it.

Jamie Vernon 1:13:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:33 The Jizz Quiz. How'd you do? Uh, I got them all. I'm a jizz wiz.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:37 Whoo! (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:38 I think I cheated, though. I cheated because I knew-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:41 Because we talked, right?

Joe Rogan 1:13:41 ... because of you. We talked. Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:44 So...

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:44 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:45 I aced the Jizz Quiz.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:46 Yay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:47 Yeah. It's cute.

Joe Rogan 1:13:48 I don't know if I should say that.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:48 Yeah. (laughs)

Jamie Vernon 1:13:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:50 (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:50 It's very funny, though. It's very catchy.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:54 So people can take that and, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:13:55 Oh, let me make sure I follow you on Instagram.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:57 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:13:57 I definitely need to do that.

Jamie Vernon 1:13:58 There you go. Thanks for playing.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:13:59 Great. Great.

Joe Rogan 1:13:59 Bam. Thanks for playing.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:00 And then there's the book. So, um, all those factors, uh, I mean, all that stuff's very interesting. Um, but what, like now that we know this, how do we get this word out other than this podcast? What can we do? Um, how can, how can we let people know how big this issue is? Any ideas?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:26 Well, this isn't... This is just a little piece, but I'll tell you that I have... We're gonna make a film. I have several producers.

Joe Rogan 1:14:33 You're gonna make a documentary?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:34 Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

Joe Rogan 1:14:36 Hmm, that's good. Get that on Netflix or something.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:38 Freak people out.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:39 Scare the shit out of them.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:14:40 Maybe even lie a little bit. Get em, actually I'm just kidding.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:44 What, what else you got there? You got-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:45 Um...

Joe Rogan 1:14:45 ... more quiz notes?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:47 Oh, yeah. I actually have another quiz here. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:52 (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:52 But the, these are what we call revelations.

Joe Rogan 1:14:54 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:55 And these are things that you might not know.

Joe Rogan 1:14:57 Try to talk into the microphone. Just pull that sucker up.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:14:59 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:59 There you go.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:00 These are, these are things you might not know. Um, and you can just turn them over. The, um, some of them are about the man, some are about the woman, some are about both. Um, so there's a, they're in the book.

Joe Rogan 1:15:12 Okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:13 But, um, try it. Just turn them over and see.

Joe Rogan 1:15:15 Oh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:16 You just turn-

Joe Rogan 1:15:16 So what do I do?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:17 Turn them over and read the revelation. Well, start... It doesn't matter.

Joe Rogan 1:15:21 Doesn't matter?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:22 The-

Joe Rogan 1:15:22 Should I do it this way?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:23 Th- those are the men, the male ones on top.

Joe Rogan 1:15:25 Oh.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:25 On top. Okay. The bottom ones are the female ones?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:28 Okay. It was once believed that each sperm contained a miniature preformed human being called an... How do, how do I say that word?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:38 Homunculus.

Joe Rogan 1:15:39 Homunculus. Really?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:41 That's how you say that? It's spelled animacucule? That's an-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:46 Oh, oh, animacule. Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:15:47 Oh, animacule.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:48 That's another name. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:15:50 (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:50 It's an alternate name. (laughs) Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:51 I was like, "Wow, why is it spelled so weird?" (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:15:55 Okay. It was once believed that, um... I would say that's true.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:15:59 Well, these are all true.

Joe Rogan 1:16:00 Okay. They're all true.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:00 This is not a true/false. This is just fun facts.

Joe Rogan 1:16:03 Oh, okay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:04 More fun facts.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:05 So, so just to go, go on that one for a minute, so this guy who developed the microscope was the first person to see this and he, he saw sperm. He was the first person to see his own sperm.

Joe Rogan 1:16:15 He thought it was a little person swimming around?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:16 No, but he imagined that.

Joe Rogan 1:16:18 Of course.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:19 Well, look at that guy.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:16:21 That's hilarious.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:22 Great.

Joe Rogan 1:16:22 A-ha.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:22 There, there he is.

Joe Rogan 1:16:23 He dads.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:23 There he is.

Joe Rogan 1:16:25 And he probably thought it did look just like him.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:27 Van Leeuwenhoek.

Joe Rogan 1:16:27 It's a little tiny me-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:29 ... trying to reproduce.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:16:32 Yeah. Um, that... Do, do... I'm sure you're, you're aware of that Sperm Wars controversy. You're va- wa- aware of that book, Sperm Wars?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:16:43 Yes, remind me.

Joe Rogan 1:16:44 There was a guy that theorized, and I don't think it was supported by, um, facts or further research, but people started repeating it. It was one of those things that people would repeat at cocktail parties or whatever. And you'd be like, "Wait a minute. What?" And I remember, this is pre-podcast, I remember being super skeptical. But the idea was that there was more than one kind of sperm. There was a sperm that was attacking the other sperm and killing sperm of other men.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:17:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:17:10 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:17:11 I've heard that, too. And, um, it... That, that actually there are... Physiologically, the way the woman is shaped and, um, her vagina's shape and, uh, is to make it easier for the earlier sperm to kill off the later ones that are coming in after them.

Joe Rogan 1:17:29 Hm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:17:29 Um, so I think there is something to that, but I, like I said-

Joe Rogan 1:17:32 The sperm do kill? 'Cause what, what I've heard is that-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:17:35 Yeah, I don't-

Joe Rogan 1:17:35 ... there's only one real kind of sperm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:17:38 Oh, I don't know about the two kinds, but it may be that the- there's some battle. There definitely is a battle to get, you know, to the target-

Joe Rogan 1:17:46 Right, there's a race.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:17:47 ... first. There's a race.

Joe Rogan 1:17:48 But I don't think they're killing each other. I don't think there's a war going on in there.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:17:50 You know, I don't know. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:17:52 Let's Google.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:17:52 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:17:53 Sperm wars. Just Google "Sperm wars."

Jamie Vernon 1:17:56 I'm looking up the book right now.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:17:56 Ah.

Jamie Vernon 1:17:57 The one, one claim that already sounds a little-

Joe Rogan 1:18:01 Skeptical?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:18:02 Yeah.

Jamie Vernon 1:18:02 ... yes. Uh, male masturbation is said to discard old dying sperm so that ejaculate contains younger sperm so that it will stay active inside the cervix longer.

Joe Rogan 1:18:11 That sounds-

Jamie Vernon 1:18:11 With more of a chance of being present during the window of ovulation.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:18:14 That could be. That could be.

Joe Rogan 1:18:15 Really?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:18:15 Yeah. Because, you know, you're producing sperm all the time, right?

Joe Rogan 1:18:19 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:18:19 Right. So, and certainly the ones that are ejaculated are going to be the, the ones that are already ready and get rid of those-

Joe Rogan 1:18:26 So...

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:18:26 ... and have, make room for the new ones. I, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:18:28 With that logic, should a man masturbate before he tries to impregnate his partner?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:18:34 I'm not going to give any advice on that. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:18:36 But you already gave a jizz quiz. You, you can do whatever you want now. (laughs)

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:18:42 (laughs)

Jamie Vernon 1:18:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:18:42 I'm pretty sure I read that it was debunked, that this, that they never found...

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:18:47 Yeah, it might be. Yeah.

Jamie Vernon 1:18:47 Studies...

Joe Rogan 1:18:48 I think what they were saying, they've never found any real physiological differences in, in sperm. Like, there's not, like, a different kind of sperm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:18:56 Right. I, yeah, I, I don't know that...... I've heard there's been a different kind, but I've heard that maybe the timing of the sperm and the, you know, the wher- the place in the-

Joe Rogan 1:19:07 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:19:07 ... you know, in the race-

Joe Rogan 1:19:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:19:10 ... so to speak, might affect, you know, might affect the survival of the later ones.

Joe Rogan 1:19:14 Here's one. These days, 26% of men who present to doctors with erectile dysfunction are under age 40. Wow. That's crazy.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:19:25 That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:19:26 And you think that has probably something to do with-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:19:28 Oh, absolutely. I mean, testosterone is going down worldwide at the same rate as sperm count.

Joe Rogan 1:19:33 Psh. All right, here goes another one.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:19:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:19:38 Um, each time a man ejaculates, he releases as many as 100 million sperm. That's true unless you're Tom Segura, and then it's probably 1100 million sperm. Did you know that?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:19:51 No. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:19:52 Now you do.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:19:53 (laughs) Did he have his sperm counted?

Joe Rogan 1:19:55 It's an inside joke.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:19:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:19:57 Tom Segura apparently has, uh, an enormous quantity to his ejaculate.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:02 I see.

Joe Rogan 1:20:02 And he was alerting us to this.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:04 But quantity-

Joe Rogan 1:20:04 And he is not a liar.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:06 But-

Joe Rogan 1:20:06 He's an honest man.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:07 That's volume.

Joe Rogan 1:20:08 Yes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:09 The volume and the count are not the... And the concentration are not the same thing.

Joe Rogan 1:20:14 Maybe with other men.

Jamie Vernon 1:20:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:20:16 Not with Tom Segura.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:18 (laughs) Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:20:20 You got a good sense of humor.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:20:22 She can hang, right? You're great.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:20:26 The testicles of a healthy fertile man produce 200 million to 300 million sperm cells each day. Again, see Tom Segura.

Jamie Vernon 1:20:36 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:20:37 'Cause it's quite a bit more than that. That's a lot, though.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:39 Talk about overkill, though, huh?

Joe Rogan 1:20:40 T- yeah, Tom's all about overkill.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:20:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:20:43 Um, men with low sperm counts and infertile men have a shorter life expectancy. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. It, it just means... It makes sense that you're less... The- there's less vitality. There's, um, there's also, uh, there was, uh, something about, um... (sighs) Something I read recently about the immune system and muscle quality. Like, the amount of muscle mass a man carries on his body is a direct correlation to his, uh, the, the health of his immune system.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:14 Really?

Joe Rogan 1:21:15 Yeah.

Jamie Vernon 1:21:15 Uh, I'm looking up, uh, the... Here's an article from Science magazine on, on sperm wars.

Joe Rogan 1:21:20 No evidence for sperm wars. Yeah, that's an-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:22 Oh. (laughs)

Jamie Vernon 1:21:23 It's from 1999.

Joe Rogan 1:21:23 There we go.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:24 (laughs) Great.

Jamie Vernon 1:21:25 Uh, looking through here, though, to, to test the idea-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:27 Yeah.

Jamie Vernon 1:21:28 ... uh, an ecologist took sperm samples from 15 men and combined them in various ways to see-

Joe Rogan 1:21:34 An ecologist? What a weird (laughs) ...

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:21:36 Evolutionary ecologist. He took a bunch of jizz and just-

Jamie Vernon 1:21:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:21:39 ... combined it in a soup.

Jamie Vernon 1:21:40 And nothing happened, is basically what they found out.

Joe Rogan 1:21:42 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:21:43 Well-

Jamie Vernon 1:21:43 But obviously.

Joe Rogan 1:21:43 ... they probably... Maybe the sperm were smart and they realized, like, "Hey." Or maybe they were dead by the time they got out.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:49 Or maybe they only do it in-

Joe Rogan 1:21:51 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:51 ... in place.

Joe Rogan 1:21:53 In, in the womb.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:53 In, in, in the critical place. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:21:54 Right, in that-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:54 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:21:54 ... warm environment.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:21:55 Yeah. Who knows?

Joe Rogan 1:21:56 I don't know. Maybe. Okay, here we go again. Uh, after sexual intercourse, sperm can stay alive in a woman's reproductive tract for five days. I've heard that. That's crazy. That's a lot.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:22:07 And you know what it means, is that there, the, what people think of as, you know, that you have to get it all in one day-

Joe Rogan 1:22:12 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:22:13 ... is not correct. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:22:14 That also makes sense, that if a woman is not ovulating, but a man has sex with her before she's ovulating, and then all of a sudden she gets pregnant, that's what it is.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:22:24 That's what it-

Joe Rogan 1:22:24 The sperm's-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:22:25 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:22:25 ... the sperm stuck around.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:22:27 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:22:27 The sperm was like, "Look, I'm not giving up yet. I'm telling you, this door's gonna open." Men who take testosterone supplements can suffer from reduced sperm counts. We already went over that one. Um, the riskiest period for a man's reproductive development is while he's in the womb.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:22:47 Well, you know that now.

Joe Rogan 1:22:48 Yeah, we know that now. That's, that's very...

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:22:52 Kind of shocking, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:22:52 This is all shocking. That, uh... Everything you've said is shocking today. A man who ha-... A, a man today has only half the number of sperm his grandfather had. Yeah. You never met my grandfather, I'll tell you that.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:23:06 I don't know what that means. I was trying to be funny. It didn't work out.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:23:09 Uh, a female (laughs) is born with all the eggs she will ever have, approximately one million to two million eggs. I've heard that.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:16 But see how, what the imbalance is there.

Joe Rogan 1:23:17 Mm-hmm. That's a big imbalance.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:23:19 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:20 Here's this guy mating 100 million every day, and you know...

Joe Rogan 1:23:23 Girl has two million for life.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:23:25 If she's lucky.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:26 And they die off for her-

Joe Rogan 1:23:27 Yes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:27 ... pretty quick. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:23:29 In some parts of the world, 20 s- a s- a 20-something woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35. Wow.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:40 So it's not just delaying your first child until you're older that's making fertility decline.

Joe Rogan 1:23:48 This is something that has to do with chemicals.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:23:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:23:52 Ugh. All right. Mm-hmm. S- 50 to 60% of pregnancies that ended in miscarriage are chromosomally abnormal. Wow. That's high. 50 to 60%.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:24:06 Yeah. A lot of those are very early. Maybe the woman didn't even know she was pregnant.

Joe Rogan 1:24:13 Hmm.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:24:14 Right? She might've just had some spotting, and then-

Joe Rogan 1:24:17 And there's just some error.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:24:18 ... that was all it was. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:24:18 Right.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:24:18 Yeah. And that, because, you know, you don't wanna put all those resources into a chromosomally abnormal fetus.

Joe Rogan 1:24:25 This is bananas. Worldwide fertility has dropped more than 50% over the past 50 years.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:24:32 Well, I told you it was the same rate as sperm decline.

Joe Rogan 1:24:35 I know. That's... It's just weird, worldwide, to read that.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:24:38 Worldwide. Yeah. So, back in 1960, the world, the number fer- fertility is the number of children that a woman has.

Joe Rogan 1:24:47 Yes.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:24:47 Or a couple has. So, back in 1960, it was five over the course of the whole world. So, on average, people had five children, right? And now they have less than two and a half.

Joe Rogan 1:25:00 Now, is that from choice, or is that from being fertile?We don't know.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:25:05 We don't know. That's-

Joe Rogan 1:25:06 But it does directly correlate with all the chemicals that you're talking about.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:25:09 Right, and when, with sperm count. So it's when, when ... And here's ... What's happening in some countries, it's a lot worse. So like in Singapore ... into the microphone. So like Singapore and, um, Korea, they're down to one.

Joe Rogan 1:25:27 But is that by choice?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:25:29 No.

Joe Rogan 1:25:29 No?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:25:30 They ... And they can't ... The government is like subsidizing them having children, paying them to have children, building apartments for them to go into if they have children. They can't get the number up.

Joe Rogan 1:25:42 Whoa. Uh, do they have a higher use of plastics over there?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:25:48 Um, I don't know why it's more difficult there. Um, I know that, um ... Yeah, I don't know. I don't, we don't no- have a lot of information about the distribution of these things across the globe, except to know that they go everywhere. Um, so I, I don't know what the explanation is for that very low fertility rate in Asia, but I know they are extremely concerned.

Joe Rogan 1:26:13 Once a child is born, is there any potential way to mitigate some of the effects of these chemicals that, in utero?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:26:22 None that we know of.

Joe Rogan 1:26:24 So it doesn't close the door to some invention or some-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:26:27 It doesn't.

Joe Rogan 1:26:27 ... innovation in the future, but-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:26:28 No, no. It's-

Joe Rogan 1:26:29 But right now-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:26:29 Yeah, r- right now, we-

Joe Rogan 1:26:30 ... nothing.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:26:31 ... we don't know. Anyway.

Joe Rogan 1:26:34 Ugh. All right, I'm gonna keep going. The riskiest rooms for your fertility are your kitchen and your bathrooms, not your bedroom. That makes sense, the products we're talking about. This is all stuff we already know. Damage from a man's or pregnant woman's exposure to problematic chemicals are, uh, and lifestyl- and lifestyle influences can harm the reproductive health of multiple future generations. That makes sense.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:27:09 We talked about that.

Joe Rogan 1:27:09 Yeah, we talked about that.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:27:10 See, now we're getting it. It's all you know it all. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:27:13 No, I'm learning things from you. Some experts are now considering reproductive function as a sixth vital sign for help, for health. That makes sense.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:27:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:27:23 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:27:23 And that's why I'm saying everybody should know theirs.

Joe Rogan 1:27:26 It's a th- It's the thing though that people ... You, I think you're correct in that men don't want to admit that they have, uh, low testosterone or low sperm count or low vitality. It's a pride thing.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:27:39 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:27:39 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:27:41 They're less men. They're, they feel themselves to be less of a man, right?

Joe Rogan 1:27:46 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:27:46 Yeah. But on the flip side, a woman feels something like that also-

Joe Rogan 1:27:50 Sure.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:27:51 ... when she feels like she can't produce. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:27:54 Well, then you have the added effect of the man blaming her.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:27:56 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:27:57 Right? 'Cause I, I get, I get ... Like, if the guy has sex, if he mana- ma- manages to get erect and ejaculate, he's like, "I did my part."

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:06 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:28:07 Like guys aren't really checking to make sure that they-

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:09 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:28:10 ... got good stuff. Uh, increasing numbers of fish, frogs, and reptiles are being born with ambiguous genitalia, including both ovaries and testes. Alex Jones covered this. Remember? He said the frogs are going, turning gay.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:28:25 That's literally because of pesticides, right?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:27 I wouldn't say they're turning gay. I'm saying-

Joe Rogan 1:28:28 But they are ambiguously sexual.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:31 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:28:31 Yeah.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:31 Yes. Th- that's correct.

Joe Rogan 1:28:33 He wasn't really saying they were gay. He was just saying ...

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:28:36 Um, homo sapiens are, already fit in the US Fish and Wildlife Service standard to be considered an endangered species. Really?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:28:46 But there's so many of us.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:48 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:28:49 There's almost eight billion of us. Even though like we're declining in fertility, we're incr- increasing in numbers.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:28:57 Isn't that bizarre?

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:28:57 But that, the criteria, if you ... I, I opened the book 'cause I thought this might come up, the place where I have that ... Oh, okay. You want me to read it?

Joe Rogan 1:29:04 Sure.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:29:05 Okay. All right. So, um-

Joe Rogan 1:29:09 Oh, you have the bookmark.

Dr. Shanna Swan 1:29:10 That's right (laughs) I took it to this place-

Joe Rogan 1:29:13 (laughs)