Joe Rogan - William von Hippel: Viagra Could Save Endangered Species

But I guess when we're talking about people that don't want to admit, like when it comes to Pinker's data, about the world being a better place because they have almost a vested interest in stirring up fear, that they're committed in their mind, they're committed to constantly studying the wrongs of the world and the evil of the world, and that any sort of diminishing of that is actually going to cause harm to the people that are suffering. I think they have a good, in their mind, there's good intention. I totally agree. And the data are consistent with their strategies because on average fear appeals and anger appeals work a whole lot better than, hey man, things are great, donate to this cause and we'll keep them great. That doesn't work at all. That doesn't work at all. And so when Viagra was invented in 1989, my little brother and I were chatting about it and we thought, you know, this will save some animals because there's a lot of animals that are consumed for their presumed potency effects by like traditional Chinese medicine consumers and things like that. And so we thought, boy, Viagra actually works. Prior to Viagra, nothing is out there that works. I bet this will have an impact. And so we wrote this little letter off, sent it to a journal and said, you know, that this is going to save certain animals like seals, which they could be harvested to eat their penises, Canadian seals. I know. Wait a minute. What? I know. People that you're allowed to kill a certain number. You can't kill the seals in America. They're protected. But in Canada, US, but in Canada you can. There's a hood seal allotment and a harp seal allotment. And so people were killing up to their allotments and selling. You could do it solely for the penis and sell the penis for enough money to make your money back. Now, what purpose does the seals penis have beyond the seals original purpose? The zilch, right? But they eat it because it's supposed to make you more potent. Well, the saddest one is a rhino horn, right? Rhino horn is an example that's used for lots of different things. So it's less likely to be helped. But the seal penis is only, you know, people basically only using it for its potency. And then when Viagra comes along, like literally you're shopping in the supermarket. What are you going to buy? You're going to get, I'll have some seal penis or I'll take a Viagra. Well, we just said people are going to switch. We were greedy. You throw both of them together. Try them both. And people did actually. But but we we made this argument and we literally were attacked by the World Wildlife Fund. Government looking at plan to revive seal penis sales. What? Hold the fuck on. Is this recent? It was updated, it was published in 2015, but it was updated this May. What? Government is looking at a plan. Go back up to revive seal penis sales. Okay. This must be a plan was brought to the government. This must not be the worst way of like looking at that headline is that the government's thinking man, we got to fucking revive these penis sales. No one's buying seal. Well, they may because they actually may be thinking that because you've got some relatively impoverished people who are hunting for them and no one's buying them anymore. So if you're not going to will that if you're not going to real. The report drafted by the Fur Institute is aimed at creating new markets to support an earlier proposal to kill 140,000 gray seals over five years in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. 70% of gray seals that frequent the area. So what they want to do is they want to diminish that. Okay, so here's what it is. They have long complained that the growing population of gray seals is to blame for eating too many commercially viable fish, which has resulted in repeated calls for a call. Okay, so they want to kill the seals to save the fish market. So they're going to get people to buy dicks. Right. So they make it financially viable. Look at this. This is racist. The penises of juvenile adult animals may be dried and sold as sexual enhancement products, particularly to Asian buyers. Well, that's because it's not meant to be racist. It's because in traditional Chinese medicine, the seal penis was used as a potency product. I understand. But the target those Asians, those poor fools. Well, they're not poor fools anymore because you know what? They switched. So we write this paper and literally the World Wildlife Fund attacks us. And I did not see that coming, right? I thought, boy, the World Wildlife Fund is going to be psyched because here's some good news for a change. But they don't want good news. They only want bad news because people pay and they do what they can to fix things when it's bad news. And they forget that you got to have some good news along the way or people give up. Look at this. This is what it says here. Asian consumers, particularly athletes, also consume a beverage called, how do you say it, alichen, oral liquid that is made from seal penis and testicles, which they believe to be energizing and performance enhancing. How about some studies, motherfucker, before you start eating sealed dicks? Well, you want to get it in and try it? No, I'm good, bro. I don't need that. Why would you take that when you can get fucking Viagra? Exactly. I guarantee you Viagra is better. It is. I mean, if it's not better, it's good enough. Like what are you trying to do? So we actually, because we got attacked by the World Wildlife Fund, we sent one of my IADA graduate student from Hong Kong. We just sent him to go back to Hong Kong for the holidays to go- They attacked you? Well, the World Wildlife Fund, because they said that we're wrong. People won't switch. Well, how did they phrase it? Well, they wrote an article. They rebutted us and they said, no, no, no, our data show, when we tried to get people to switch from rhino and tiger horn to aspirin, they wouldn't. And so they won't- Aspirin? Yeah. So they won't switch to Viagra. And I'm like, look, I think Viagra is different from aspirin. I got a headache. And I'm like, well, I think my headache got better faster than it would have otherwise. A little bit fake. You need a Viagra. You take it. You're like, yep, that sucker worked, right? There's visual evidence. And so we argued that it's different. And so we actually went into these clinics and we asked people in traditional Chinese clinics in Hong Kong, what do you take for headache? What do you take for gout? What do you take for rectile dysfunction? And that was the one case where they had switched. So consumers all over the world, they know when a better product comes along. They know when they've got no options. Like, well, you might as well eat a seal's penis because that's as good as anything. Or because nothing works. Maybe you'll get a little bit of a placebo effect. Or you know, oh, hey, look, there's something that actually works. That's what I'm going to buy. What I read about one of the issues with rhino horn with some Asian buyers is that also it's a signal of affluence. That's exactly right. Yeah. It's prestige purchase. That's so sad. It is super sad. That is the saddest shit ever because that is such a crazy animal. But bizarre creature that almost seems like a living dinosaur. It looks and we're losing them left and right because people are killing them for their fucking horn, which is basically just collagen, right? No, it's fingernail. Yeah, it's it's bananas. It just doesn't make any sense to me that that is still that they haven't realized that there's no value in it. There's no physical value. It doesn't really give you erections and what else is it supposed to do? Fever. It's got a long list, unfortunately. And they're still buying it and they're buying it again for affluence. They get a kick. Exactly. It's like buying a Maserati. Wow. That's so crazy. That's so sad. Oh, my daughter's outside the door. Hi. Get out of here. You bother me. Yeah. It's so strange to me that there are these specific cases, right? Like, it's not like people are looking for giraffe horns. Yeah, it is funny, isn't it? They're looking for rhino horn. Do you think that they made an association like, damn, if I was a jack, like a rhino, those chicks would like me. I need to get that horn and eat it and my dick would get hard. I do think so because if you look at the long list of products, they look pretty phallic. And mostly people eat phallic things in order to gain potency. Is there something crazy about seal dicks? What's going on with this? They're decently sized. Decent is a good word for that. I like that. And so, you know, you think, oh, I eat that sucker. I'll get big too. Right. We're so weird. But it's so.