0:00

Today's guest is Cindy

0:02

Gallop, entrepreneur, advertising consultant,

0:04

and coach, renowned

0:06

for her outspoken advocacy for

0:09

authenticity in life and relationships.

0:12

As the founder of the unique adult

0:14

media platform Make Love Not Porn, she's

0:16

revolutionized how we think about sex and

0:19

relationships by challenging many of

0:21

the outdated societal norms. From

0:24

her highly successful career in advertising

0:26

to her fearless rejection of traditional

0:28

expectations, Cindy demonstrates

0:30

how embracing your own sense of individuality

0:32

can lead to a unique and fulfilling

0:35

way of life. In this episode, we

0:37

dive into Cindy's unique approach to dating

0:39

and life. I'm interviewed a lot,

0:41

okay? A lovely woman said to me, do you

0:44

have a daily self-care practice? And

0:46

I went, oh yeah, yeah, no, I absolutely have

0:48

a daily self-care practice. My daily

0:50

self-care practice is I have no husband, I have

0:52

no children. We

0:55

speak about Cindy's new adult media platform

0:57

and its positive and powerful mission. But

1:00

kind of what Facebook would be if it allowed

1:02

you to openly, healthily, sexually

1:04

self-express, which it clearly doesn't, if

1:07

Porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie,

1:10

Make Love Not Porn is the badly needed

1:12

documentary. And we touch

1:14

on Cindy's advice for parents navigating

1:16

21st century challenges. The average age

1:19

of which a child stumbles across porn for

1:21

a season is six years old. Six years

1:23

old? And that survey was done 11 years

1:25

ago. Before we get into

1:27

it, I just want to mention something interesting

1:30

that we've noticed recently. About

1:32

92% of the people watching these

1:34

videos aren't subscribed yet. Now

1:36

no pressure at all, but if you're

1:38

enjoying the content, subscribing is a super

1:40

simple way to stay connected with us.

1:43

And it also helps us out a

1:45

ton when growing the channel. It's

1:47

free, just takes a second, and

1:49

it's hugely helpful. Another

1:51

way, I appreciate you being here. So thanks

1:53

for watching and let's get into it. There

2:02

is a very famous quote that Jeffrey

2:04

Bezos uses around brands where

2:06

he says, your brand is not what you

2:08

say it is, it's what everyone else says it is when

2:10

you've left the room. But I

2:13

know that you are very self-aware. So

2:15

you know what your brand is. What

2:18

is Cyndi Gobb's brand? Do

2:21

you know, Paul, I appreciate your

2:23

thinking that, but honestly, I actually

2:27

concur with that quote. Because one

2:30

of the interview questions I've had quite ready in

2:32

the past is a very standard one where people

2:34

go, so Cyndi, what

2:36

three words would you use to sum yourself up?

2:39

And my response is always, ask

2:42

other people. Because actually,

2:44

your brand is,

2:48

in the same way, my background is obviously

2:50

marketing, advertising, brand building. You can

2:53

absolutely put a lot of work into your

2:55

brand. But at the end of the day,

2:58

it's absolutely true. Your brand is what other

3:00

people think and feel and

3:02

say it is. And that's the essence

3:04

of marketing. You

3:06

put a lot of thought and effort into

3:08

absolutely getting people to think, feel, and respond

3:10

the way you want them to. And you've

3:12

succeeded if they do. But at the end

3:14

of the day, it's absolutely about what they

3:17

think. Okay. Can I tell you what

3:19

other people think of you? By all means. So

3:23

I have done some extensive research on

3:25

this. And there are three words

3:27

I would say, sum you up. Bold,

3:32

fearless, unapologetic.

3:35

This is what comes across in

3:38

what I read, what I see, what I

3:40

decipher. Are you proud of those

3:42

three? Do

3:45

you know, I'm proud of those

3:47

three. But what I think is interesting

3:50

about that, Paul, is I would never

3:53

describe myself using any of

3:55

those words. Interesting. Because

3:57

as far as I'm concerned, all I'm doing

4:00

as being me. And

4:02

the very fact that other people

4:04

think that that is bold, fearless,

4:07

and unapologetic is more of

4:09

an indictment of how much we

4:11

are not encouraged to be any of those

4:13

things in general that I

4:15

come across as being those. Does that make

4:17

sense? It does. It does. Completely. Completely. And

4:19

here's what I would love to know

4:22

and really dig deep on is, at what

4:25

point in your background, or what

4:28

about your background, should I say, has allowed

4:30

you to live so authentically?

4:32

Because to your point, we are living

4:34

in a society where we are on

4:36

this conveyor belt, where we are replicas

4:39

of each other, where we're very scared

4:41

to talk about what our true feelings

4:43

and opinions are. So

4:45

what about your background has allowed

4:47

you to be in

4:49

this place of living your

4:51

true authenticity? Honestly,

4:54

I really think it's been

4:56

an organic process and I've been very fortunate

4:58

in that that is the case because I

5:02

didn't start out like this. It's a fact of life

5:04

that, from

5:09

the moment we're born as women, everything

5:11

around us conspires to make us feel insecure

5:13

about absolutely everything to do with ourselves. The

5:17

way we look, the way we talk,

5:19

the way we dress, nice girls do

5:21

this, nice girls don't do that. As

5:24

women, we spend our lives coming back from that and

5:26

a lot of women never do, unfortunately. In

5:29

my case, I'm half English, half Malaysian Chinese.

5:31

When I was six, I was born in

5:33

the UK when I was six, we moved

5:37

to Brunei in Borneo when my father had a

5:39

job. So I grew up in Asia, which also

5:41

has very specific

5:44

ideas of what women

5:46

should be doing and focused on. So

5:49

I absolutely, in my teens, early

5:52

20s, was a subject to insecurities

5:54

as anybody else. I honestly

5:57

think it was just a gradual

5:59

process. of living and learning that

6:02

eventually got me to the point where, you know,

6:05

and this wasn't a moment of realisation, but I

6:07

basically went, I do not give a damn what

6:09

anybody else thinks.

6:11

And I now spend my life trying

6:13

to shortcut that process for other women,

6:16

because honestly, that is the only way

6:18

to live. Fear of what

6:20

other people will think is

6:22

the single most paralysing dynamic in business

6:24

and in life. You will never own

6:27

your own future if you care what

6:29

other people think. So how do we

6:31

get to this place? Because you said

6:33

it was a gradual process. It wasn't

6:35

methodical for you. How did you get

6:37

to that place? First of all, when

6:39

you identify your personal beliefs and values,

6:42

that makes life so much simpler. Life

6:45

still throws you all the shit it always will,

6:47

but you know exactly how to respond to that

6:50

shit in any given situation in a way that

6:52

is true to you. And honestly, that is the

6:54

secret of happiness, living your life and working your

6:56

work in a way that is always true to

6:58

your values. But also, when

7:01

you know what your values are, when you

7:03

are absolutely living by them, that

7:06

is why you don't give a damn what anybody

7:08

else thinks. And honestly, that's it. It's that simple.

7:10

But that is the key to having the confidence

7:12

to go, I don't care what anyone else thinks.

7:15

It's an area where I think

7:17

this is where I'm great at

7:19

faking it. I think I'm great

7:21

at walking around presenting ultra confident

7:24

in that I don't care. But

7:26

you know, I still care.

7:34

You know what I mean? I

7:36

don't want to care, but I care. And

7:41

by the way, I think it's

7:44

very easy to be susceptible to

7:47

that in our culture and our

7:49

society. And honestly,

7:52

I cannot tell

7:54

you how liberating it is to not give a shit about

7:56

any of that. Someone

8:00

was talking to me the other day because they wanted to

8:02

film me for a documentary and they were

8:04

going, so Cindy,

8:06

maybe we could film

8:09

you taking walks around the park outside

8:11

to de-stress. And I was going, well,

8:13

I don't do that because I'm not

8:15

stressed. Well, maybe

8:17

we could film you putting on your makeup. I

8:20

don't wear makeup. I don't give a shit what

8:22

I look like. I wasn't giving

8:24

them a lot of work with there. But

8:26

you really need to just

8:30

actively remove that from

8:33

your brain and your mindset as

8:36

an influence because the

8:38

irony is when you don't give

8:40

a damn what anybody else thinks, people find

8:42

you enormously attractive and desirable and a

8:44

role model. It's what makes me wonder

8:46

why more people don't embrace

8:49

that themselves. Yes. And

8:51

I think it's these societal norms that

8:54

we're just susceptible to.

8:57

So what do you believe are some

8:59

of the more damaging societal norms that

9:01

still exist? Well,

9:04

I'm going to give you a very subjective answer

9:06

to this, Paul, because I'm interviewed a

9:09

lot. And

9:11

so some time back, I

9:13

was being interviewed for a podcast where

9:15

the host, Lovely Woman, said to me,

9:18

and it was all about the stress of

9:20

entrepreneurship. So Cindy, do

9:22

you have a daily self-care practice that enables

9:24

you to kind of deal with all of

9:26

that? And I went, oh, yeah, yeah.

9:28

No, I absolutely have a daily self-care practice. My

9:31

daily self-care practice is I have no husband. I

9:33

have no children. Oh, my God.

9:36

Oh, my God. I am

9:38

not stressed

9:40

in that sense every single

9:42

day. The pressure to live

9:45

conventionally in ways

9:47

that absolutely start with, from the moment

9:49

you are, again, born as a baby

9:51

girl, you are sold this bill of

9:53

goods, which is that your entire life

9:56

is a search for the one. And

9:59

everything tells you that. You know, your family,

10:01

your parents, popular culture, the movies

10:03

you watch, you know, the Disney

10:05

Princess cartoons, you know. And

10:09

so, you know, I absolutely was susceptible

10:11

to that as to anybody else. What that

10:13

means as a young woman, you know, in

10:15

your teens, in your 20s, every

10:18

social event you go to, will he

10:20

be there? Okay. So first

10:22

of all, that means you spend hours

10:25

on makeup, outfits, you worry about what

10:27

you look. Then

10:29

you go to the social event and

10:31

this thing of will he be there is

10:34

a dynamic that forces you to compete with other

10:36

women. And that's a dynamic that I deplore.

10:40

Then you know, he wasn't there. At the

10:42

end of the night, you trudge home going, he

10:44

wasn't there tonight, maybe next time. Okay.

10:47

So at some point in my early

10:50

30s, and I'm allowed to swear on this

10:52

show. You absolutely can. Okay. I went

10:55

fuck this for a game of soldiers. I'm not here for

10:57

the one anymore. In your early 30s. In

10:59

my early 30s. Okay. By

11:01

the way, I was having a very good time in my 20s, but in the

11:03

back of my head was vaguely. I mean, I always

11:05

knew I didn't want children, by the way, but in the back

11:08

of my head was always, you know, somewhere

11:10

out there, you know, your soulmate, whatever.

11:12

Anyway, in my early 30s, I just went sod this,

11:14

not looking for the one anymore. Oh

11:17

my God, the instant relief. I

11:20

could just go to social engagements and enjoy myself.

11:23

I realized I did not want

11:25

a husband or, you know, a

11:27

life partner. I then realized

11:29

that I'm not a relationship person. I

11:32

am that very rare person who has absolutely

11:34

no desire to be in love whatsoever. And

11:37

by the way, when you realize that you do not

11:39

want to be in love, oh

11:42

my God, that just strips a whole layer of bullshit

11:44

out of your life immediately. Wow. Okay.

11:47

Can we unpack this though? Yeah. This

11:49

is because this is definitely rejecting a

11:51

societal norm right now. Because you're right,

11:53

because society has structured itself so that

11:56

we all are looking for the nuclear

11:58

family. So you're

12:01

definitely looking for at least not just a

12:03

marriage partner, but a committed partner, but at

12:05

minimum in love. We should all be

12:07

in love. But

12:10

you threw that idea out the

12:12

window. Now, do

12:14

you believe that you have ever been in

12:16

romantic love in your life? Do

12:19

you know, Paul, I would say that

12:21

there were times when I thought I

12:23

had, but honestly, it was

12:25

infatuation or wanting

12:28

to be in love because everything around you tells

12:30

you that you should. And

12:32

the fact of the matter is that,

12:34

you know, there are people who are

12:37

just simply much happier on their own,

12:39

don't need any of that. And

12:42

I was lucky enough to realize that. But

12:45

there are a ton of people out there who would be

12:48

way happier operating the way I do who have no idea.

12:51

Because all of these

12:53

cultural dynamics mean

12:55

that people live life in oiled grooves.

12:58

You know, you live your life according to

13:01

what your parents told you should

13:03

want, what all your friends are

13:05

doing at the same time. You

13:07

know, what, as I said, every

13:10

movie, popular song, TV series tells

13:12

you should be what you strive

13:14

for. And I

13:16

just want people to, you know,

13:20

get all of that out of their heads

13:22

and just simply again look within themselves and go, what

13:25

would really make me happy? Because

13:27

if you asked yourself that question, brutally,

13:30

honestly, and you really stripped

13:32

all of those considerations out of your head, I

13:35

think that we would have many more

13:37

women and also men, all genders,

13:40

going, actually, I don't

13:43

really want what the world

13:45

is telling me I ought to want. Okay.

13:48

Does that mean that you are

13:50

no longer open to

13:53

the possibility of love entering your life? Yeah,

13:56

no, I'm not. I'm not. I actually

13:58

don't want it to. You don't want it to.

14:00

You close the door on it. But Paul,

14:03

I need to caveat this, okay, with the fact

14:05

that I have

14:08

lovely relationships in

14:10

my life, but they're not relationships of

14:13

the kind that people think about eventually. So

14:17

I date younger men, because this

14:19

is the perfect solution in my

14:21

scenario. I date them

14:23

casually and recreationally for sex. But

14:28

no matter how casual the relationship

14:30

I've won fundamental criterion, they

14:33

have to be a very nice

14:35

person. I have

14:37

fantastic rate of a very nice people. I

14:40

only date utterly lovely younger men

14:42

in an atmosphere of

14:44

mutual trust, respect, affection and liking.

14:47

And therefore my so-called casual

14:49

relationships actually ironically go on

14:52

a lot longer than most people's so-called committed

14:54

ones. Because I

14:56

have dated younger men often on

14:58

for periods of two, three, four,

15:00

five, 10, 15 years. What

15:03

I mean by that is, we may date for a

15:05

while. They may go on to

15:07

date women their own age. They may marry women their

15:09

own age. We like each other.

15:11

We stay friends. Okay, we will

15:14

meet platonically for drinks or coffee. Every

15:16

so often, those relationships end,

15:18

every so often those marriages end, they come

15:21

back. It's very nice. You

15:23

know what's interesting? Just listening to

15:25

that, you've rejected several norms within

15:28

that because A is that you

15:30

have, so you're dating casually. When

15:32

you say dating casually, there's

15:35

sex happening, but you're also, you're

15:37

doing other activities I would imagine. Yeah, one thing

15:40

that does infuriate me, and this is why I'm

15:42

very public about my dating model is that in

15:44

our society, older man, younger

15:46

woman, no one bats an eyelet, somehow older

15:50

woman, younger man, less socially

15:52

acceptable. So

15:55

I meet the younger men I date on cougar

15:57

dating sites. I applaud the rise of

15:59

the... niche dating site where everyone knows why they're there.

16:02

But even I who championed

16:04

the story model am gobsmacked by the number of younger

16:06

men on those sites who want to date older women.

16:08

And by the way I use the term date as

16:11

in they don't just want to have sex with older

16:13

women, they want to date older women. There

16:15

are many more younger men out there

16:17

who genuinely appreciate our attractor

16:20

older women than society thinks because

16:22

they are not allowed to express

16:24

that openly. So I've dated

16:26

the spectrum from, I date younger men who

16:28

are very happy to go out with me

16:30

in public, be seen in public, correct the

16:33

waiter when he thinks they're my son. But

16:35

equally I've dated younger men who are terrified. Their

16:37

friends and family will find out, they attract older

16:40

women who want to keep it very discreet. I

16:42

mean I'm cool either way. You know over the

16:44

years my friends have met and none of the

16:46

younger men I've dated, they've come to stay with

16:48

me for weekends at friends house and stuff like that. But

16:51

equally I've dated young men my friends have never met

16:53

because they don't want to be that public about it.

16:55

And I'm absolutely fine with respecting their wishes either. So

16:57

my wife and I had a matchmaking agency in the

16:59

US for about a decade. We

17:03

grew up to one of the largest matchmaking agencies in

17:05

the US. And what I've found

17:07

over the last I'd say maybe 15 years

17:10

is, to your point, is there's

17:12

this massive trend towards men

17:14

wanting to date older. But

17:17

the reason for it has changed. 15,

17:19

20 years ago it was a lot of casual, i.e. sex. Today what

17:26

you're seeing is there's more desirability around

17:29

older women are more confident, older women

17:32

are more self-aware, older women actually have

17:34

more disposable income. You know

17:36

for all of these reasons you're seeing that

17:38

men are more open to it. And I

17:41

think that society, the structure, it's prehistoric.

17:44

However there is more acceptance to

17:46

it today. I think with

17:48

people like you talking about this openly hopefully

17:51

there will even be more. What I'm curious

17:53

more so is actually none about the age

17:55

difference. And when you say younger men too

17:57

is how much younger are you today?

18:00

dating? So

18:02

the biggest age gap was 34

18:04

years. They tend

18:06

to be in their 20s, or they're obviously over

18:08

time, a number of them are now older than

18:10

that. But, you know. Okay. And you are held?

18:13

Sixty-four. So you're 64 and you still

18:15

date men in their 20s? Yeah. Okay.

18:18

Now men in their

18:20

20s, 64, you

18:22

are having physical relationship with them. You're

18:25

having emotional relationship with them? Of

18:29

our own special kind. You know, not

18:32

the standard way people think about emotional

18:34

relationships. Okay. But when you... Okay. Help

18:37

me understand that. Yeah.

18:39

Okay. So first of all, Paul,

18:41

I do want to just explain that everything

18:44

in my life and career has happened by accident,

18:47

okay? So dating younger men happened

18:49

by accident because I did not

18:51

consciously set out to date younger

18:54

men, okay? What happened was many

18:56

years ago, I was running an ad agency in New

18:58

York and we were asked

19:00

to pitch for an online dating brand that was

19:02

coming out of the UK and wanted to launch

19:05

in the US. And

19:07

in the advertising industry, you know, when you

19:09

pitch for a client's account, you have to

19:11

experience the client's product and the entire competitive

19:13

landscape. So we all had at the agency,

19:16

the pitch team, we all had to online

19:18

date. And this was, gosh,

19:20

this was 22 years ago, okay? And so none

19:22

of us ever had because 22 years ago, online

19:25

dating was

19:27

not the thing it is today. It was just emerging as

19:29

a sector. So the rest of

19:31

my pitch team at the agency, they were

19:33

all already married, living with, dating somebody. They

19:36

all went online as fake personas. You know,

19:38

they created false profiles, whatever. I was single.

19:40

I thought, okay,

19:43

I have to do some business reasons. Why not do

19:45

it for real? You know, why not find out what

19:47

this whole online dating thing is all about? So

19:50

I posted my profile on our client's side

19:52

across a whole bunch of other sites. I

19:56

got an avalanche of responses, which was

19:58

very good for my ego. But

20:00

much to my surprise, because I had not

20:02

identified this as a dating strategy, 75% of

20:07

those responses were from younger men, and the

20:09

majority of them were from much younger men. And

20:13

I suddenly realized that I was every young guy's

20:15

fantasy. I was a tractable woman, high flying career,

20:17

didn't want to settle down, you know, did not want to get married,

20:19

not want to have kids. All I

20:22

wanted to do was have some fun, which at

20:24

the time I just started an advertising

20:26

agency in the world's toughest advertising marketplace,

20:28

Madison Avenue. I was working

20:30

24-7, fun was not present

20:32

in my life, so I went,

20:34

wow, hadn't thought about doing this, works

20:37

for me. And I've been dating younger men very

20:39

happily ever since. This is interesting. So, I mean,

20:41

it was happen sense. Yeah,

20:44

totally. You know, and you enjoyed

20:46

it and you're respectful in it,

20:49

but the place that I want

20:51

to go to that I'm having a hard time

20:53

connecting is that if you have a,

20:56

if you're physically intimate, you're

20:58

emotionally intimate, and there's

21:00

a level of trust there, which it sounds

21:02

like there must be, then

21:05

aren't those all of the ingredients

21:07

for love? No, they're not. No,

21:09

they're absolutely not. So I

21:12

have lovely, lovely relationships with young men I

21:14

date. And as I say, I

21:16

am still friends with so many of them, even

21:18

after they've gone on to, you know, get married

21:20

and, you know, have children, etc. And

21:23

actually, by the

21:25

way, it's amazing how many of

21:27

them come back. You know, just this

21:29

past year, I've been messaged by four

21:32

different younger men that I dated many years ago,

21:34

putting their hand up for another shot. And

21:36

actually, as far as I'm concerned, the moment

21:38

has passed in these cases. I

21:40

mean, they're others with whom the moment hasn't passed, but

21:43

these have. But separate

21:45

to that, you know, I think

21:47

it's last year, one of the younger men

21:49

I dated who haven't seen for a while just he messaged

21:51

me on LinkedIn. He said, I just

21:53

want you to know how

21:55

enormously helpful you've been to me in framing

21:57

the way I see the world. you

22:00

gave me so much great advice. I just want to pay

22:02

tribute to all of that that you did for me. Another

22:05

one, whom again I've known for years,

22:07

who's now in a very happy relationship

22:10

with a woman he's been seeing for the past three years, but

22:13

he messaged me to say

22:15

that he said, I consider

22:17

you one of my closest

22:19

friends. And so no, it's

22:21

not love, it's mutual respect,

22:23

it's mutual liking, it's a

22:25

very specific fondness. And absolutely

22:28

there are still younger than I'm seeing where the

22:30

sexual attraction is very much there and that happens

22:32

when we see each other. But no,

22:37

it's not love in the conventional sense. And

22:39

I really encourage people to think

22:41

much more multidimensionally

22:44

about what love can

22:46

be in the broadest sense. And

22:49

what kind of relationship we're going to

22:51

have with someone that doesn't fall into

22:54

conventional parameters. Because again, Paul, I think

22:56

the reason for unhappiness, not relationships,

22:58

is that people have expectations

23:01

of how things should go. And then

23:03

when those expectations are

23:06

not delivered against, it's traumatic

23:09

or upsetting or whatever. I

23:11

have zero expectations and

23:14

therefore everything happens is extremely pleasant. It's

23:19

like it's all up, it's all

23:21

up. Okay, exactly. Oh

23:24

my God, this is good, this is good. I'm learning,

23:27

I'm learning. All right, so that

23:30

is two norms really, I think that you're rejecting

23:32

there. But you've also mentioned in there that you

23:34

never wanted to have children. It's

23:36

not even that I don't feel, you know,

23:39

I've missed out on things. I am ecstatic,

23:41

I have made sure that. Okay. And again-

23:43

I believe this. Yeah, and I'm

23:45

really public about this because, you

23:47

know, so many people have

23:50

children who would have been a lot happier

23:52

not having them. And obviously we're

23:54

talking about the ultimate taboo. And

23:56

so it's only when surveys allow parents

23:58

to be anonymous. they will

24:00

be honest about this. But again,

24:02

that is something I would

24:05

really, really love people to stop and think

24:07

about. Versus again, as I said, the oiled

24:10

grooves of what you do is, you know,

24:12

you fall in love, then you get

24:14

married, then you have kids. And by the way, just

24:16

going back to that falling in love thing, you know,

24:19

honestly, so often that

24:21

is temporary infatuation, you know,

24:24

and several years later going,

24:26

what was I thinking? But so

24:28

many people get married in that temporary

24:30

infatuation. And then the, what was

24:33

I thinking when it arrives as it

24:35

will, has much more serious consequences. Yes.

24:37

And even on that note too, is

24:39

this whole notion of soulmate is, you

24:41

know, I've never believed in soulmates. At

24:44

least in the thought of that you find

24:46

a soulmate. I think that you create one,

24:49

but you don't find. And it's very dangerous

24:51

to think that there is the one

24:53

out there. Do you

24:55

ever think, do you think that's going to

24:57

change in society? Because it feels like so

24:59

much of society is built on these

25:02

nuclear families, which therefore is built on

25:04

finding the one. But do

25:07

you see that changing? Absolutely,

25:09

Paul. But I

25:11

see that changing when

25:14

we finally fund

25:18

support commission, enable the

25:20

female lens on everything

25:23

in popular culture, in the

25:25

workplace and in society generally. Because

25:29

we live in a world where the

25:32

default setting is always male. And by

25:34

the way, I say to men all the

25:36

time, men, you have no idea how much

25:38

happier you would be living and working in

25:40

a world that was equally designed, influenced, led

25:42

by all of us. But honestly, in

25:45

a patriarchal society, which is what we live in,

25:50

women are absolutely being sold a bill of

25:52

goods because that is what keeps us down.

25:54

I mean, look at the tradwife movement, which is

25:56

absolutely the ultimate expression of a woman belongs in

25:58

a world that is not in the

26:00

kitchen, barefoot pregnant, having as many babies

26:02

as possible and you know people like

26:05

Elon Musk are absolutely perpetuating that while

26:07

totally not parenting the vast numbers of

26:09

children that he's you know, fathered himself.

26:12

You said it. Yeah. When

26:15

women have the opportunity to

26:18

tell our stories, express

26:20

ourselves and to do so very

26:23

importantly again in popular culture,

26:25

in movies, in TV, in

26:29

souls actually, in jizik, then

26:32

we have many more different models of

26:35

being that will make as I said men happier

26:37

you know because you know then it's not all

26:39

about well your job as a man is to

26:41

be the breadwinner you know you've got

26:43

to have a good job you've got to have a certain

26:45

you know position whereby you can support it. I mean when

26:48

we change all of that because

26:50

we as women do

26:52

not want to fit neatly

26:55

into that particular happy ever after fairy

26:57

tale then we change everything for everyone.

26:59

Yeah I see it. I see

27:01

it. You know I've seen studies around you

27:04

know female led ecosystems how everyone

27:06

the satisfaction levels are always much

27:08

higher with the female led

27:10

ecosystem so you think gosh society it

27:12

makes sense. It makes

27:14

sense but will we get there? That's that's that's

27:16

going to be the question. One

27:19

last question on the one is why

27:22

is this notion of the

27:25

one so dangerous? Honestly

27:29

do you know first of all Paul

27:31

it's incredibly

27:34

time-consuming okay so

27:38

I find that deciding

27:40

that I actually don't want to

27:42

be in love is so time-efficient

27:44

okay whether it is reading Women's

27:46

Magazine oh there's this

27:48

big long feature on like relationships not interested.

27:52

You know I can skip so much

27:54

crap in public culture because I'm not

27:56

okay. This is such a good

27:58

point you're right. buying

28:00

all those books about how to find love.

28:03

So you haven't read my book clearly. No, no, I'm

28:06

afraid not but you know honestly I mean it

28:08

just frees up so much time you know and

28:10

also per my point earlier you

28:12

know not having to

28:14

spend so much time on

28:17

makeup and outfits and

28:19

looking seductive and constructing a

28:21

social media persona that may

28:23

you know honestly it just

28:25

saves so much time. Yes.

28:29

It is efficient. It's very

28:32

efficient. It is efficient. Okay

28:34

and then also too is I have

28:36

to do this because you know I think that there

28:38

are a lot of women watching listening thinking

28:41

you know I wouldn't mind getting

28:43

into a relationship with a younger man. You

28:46

know this sounds good to me right. What

28:49

advice do you have for them? How

28:51

do you go about doing it right because you

28:53

do it with a lot of bravado. I

28:56

mean but how do you have how do

28:58

you successfully have a relationship because

29:00

you're having relationships. How do you successfully have

29:02

a relationship with a younger man? First of

29:05

all the most important thing for

29:07

any older woman to know is

29:09

that younger men think we're

29:11

absolutely bloody wonderful. Okay I

29:13

have never been called beautiful as often since

29:16

I began dating younger men. Okay because

29:18

older women make the mistake of feeling

29:21

insecure about their bodies and absolutely

29:23

not. I mean you know younger men are

29:25

so grateful to be there that they just

29:27

think we're the hottest thing out. And by

29:30

the way Paul you know this

29:33

is actually a fundamental human truth that applies to

29:35

everybody and it's the one that Make Love Not

29:37

Porn showcases which is you

29:39

know what people are

29:41

attracted to is you and

29:43

then your body is hot as hell because

29:46

it's yours. It's not the other way around.

29:48

I have dated some incredibly conventionally

29:51

attractive young younger men. So I

29:53

remember years ago I was

29:56

dating a younger man here in London whenever I

29:58

came over on business. Who

30:00

was six foot three model good-looking?

30:03

Okay, half Romanian half Croatian being on the

30:05

rain in national swimming team body like yeah,

30:07

you can imagine Yeah, exactly

30:10

and he genuinely you know, he was in his 20s

30:12

at the time early

30:15

20s he genuinely

30:18

Loved appreciate was very attracted to older women So

30:20

he told me that and he was very puzzled

30:22

by this because he told me that here in

30:24

London, you know He would be in a bar

30:26

restaurant. He'd see an older woman he'd

30:29

sort of you know go up to her and

30:31

try and chatter up and she would always reject

30:33

him and I said to

30:35

him and this guy's absolutely dropped it gorgeous

30:37

and I said to him that's because she

30:39

thinks you're pranking her She

30:42

thinks someone who looks like you cannot possibly be

30:44

attracted to her And so I want to say

30:46

to older women you would be so wrong and

30:48

it's really important to understand that before you even

30:51

embark On you know dating younger

30:53

men then You

30:55

know, what's interesting poor is to be perfectly

30:58

frank I

31:00

think people who want to find a

31:03

soulmate would benefit from adopting my approach

31:05

to finding casual sex Okay.

31:07

So first of all As

31:10

I said, I meet the younger men I date on cougar dating

31:12

sites I recommend that older women go there if you just Google

31:14

by the way cougar dating site You'll find a ton of them.

31:16

You have to find the one that's right for you, you know

31:20

But like I said, my number one criteria is

31:23

must be a nice person Now

31:25

when you are looking for your soulmate You

31:28

have a dating checklist where

31:30

must be a nice person is not

31:33

usually number one on the list Okay,

31:35

usually it's some must

31:37

have a good job, you know must have

31:39

ambition and drive must have a

31:41

sense of humor Whatever if

31:43

you're looking for your soulmate and you walk into

31:45

that bar that coffee shop and you set eyes

31:47

on that person You've been talking with online for

31:49

the first time You

31:51

are not thinking Are

31:54

they attracted to me you are thinking what my friends think if

31:56

I walked into a party with this on my arm You

31:59

are looking for socially endorsed attractiveness, whether

32:01

you realize that or not. I'm

32:04

not, because when I walk into

32:06

that bar, all I'm thinking is,

32:08

you know, am I attracted to you? Because if

32:10

I am, I'm taking you home and fucking you. So,

32:16

but what that means is that I am

32:18

devoid of any, you know, gotta have, you

32:21

know, gotta be six foot two, gotta, you

32:23

know, have, you know, clean cut draw, look

32:25

like this, classical good looks or whatever. I

32:27

don't give a shit what anybody else thinks

32:29

of what he looks like. All

32:31

that matters genuinely is, is

32:33

this person attracted to me. Cindy

32:36

flips the typical dating checklist on its

32:38

head. While most people look for things

32:40

like status, ambition, or how someone will

32:42

be perceived by others, she

32:44

focuses on one thing. Am

32:46

I genuinely attracted to this person? That's

32:48

it. She doesn't care about societal standards

32:50

or what anyone else might think. And

32:52

honestly, I think there's a big lesson

32:55

in that. When we stop

32:57

prioritizing external validation and focus on

32:59

what truly matters to us, we

33:01

open ourselves up to real authentic

33:03

connections. It's a game changer. So

33:06

if it'll be for a soulmate, one

33:09

consideration I have first, IRL Dave, and this is especially

33:12

the case of women, is did

33:14

we both get equal air time?

33:16

Okay. You know, did he

33:19

ask me as many questions about me as

33:21

I asked about him? You know, did I get

33:23

to talk about myself as much as he

33:25

got to talk about himself? When

33:28

I am meeting my younger men for that first

33:30

IRL date at the end of the day, I've

33:33

spent all day pitching make love not porn. I

33:35

am sick to death of the sound of my

33:37

own voice. I don't want air

33:39

time. The last thing I want to do is talk

33:41

about myself. I want to hear

33:44

all about him. And,

33:47

you know, with men in their twenties, he's

33:50

probably never encountered anybody as interested in him

33:52

as I am. Okay.

33:54

And what then happens, Paul, is

33:57

that I hear amazing stories Because

34:00

what I love about online dating is that you

34:02

get to meet people you would never meet in

34:05

your usual walk of life. So

34:07

I've dated, I've met with, because I don't date

34:09

all of the men I meet, because not all

34:11

of them make the cut, you know. But

34:14

you know, I've met younger men who

34:16

are the very first person in their family ever to

34:18

go to college, you know, there's a whole story behind

34:20

that. Younger men

34:22

who are in their first

34:24

jobs are supporting entire families. I've

34:27

met younger men doing really

34:29

dangerous jobs in the army,

34:32

military intelligence, in Afghanistan,

34:34

doing things that, you know, for someone

34:36

in the early 20s, I'm going bloody

34:38

hell, you know, what you were doing

34:40

there. You know, I just hear incredible

34:42

stories, because I just want to hear

34:44

their story, I'm not focused on telling mine, you

34:46

know. And

34:49

those stories make them even more

34:51

attractive to me, because, you know,

34:54

I'm getting the whole person. And

34:57

so, you know, those are just a few

34:59

of the principles whereby I may

35:01

use this to find the younger men

35:03

I want to date casually, but actually

35:06

think about adopting my approach to find

35:08

your life partner. You know it, it

35:11

makes sense. Because in essence

35:13

what you're saying is that when you

35:15

use this approach, you're not seeking any

35:17

type of external validation. Exactly, exactly. And

35:20

that makes it a win. Yeah.

35:22

I like that. This is the Cindy

35:24

method. Absolutely. This Cindy

35:26

method. All right,

35:28

so we've talked about in terms of rejecting social

35:30

norms, so we've talked about the one, children,

35:35

about nuclear families. Because I

35:37

keep going back to this concept, because

35:39

this is a concept that, according to all

35:42

of my research, this is the Western church

35:44

that really made this

35:46

in vogue, right? But it

35:48

feels like townships were created as a

35:51

result of nuclear families. So society now

35:53

moves off of this concept of the

35:55

nuclear family. So what's your

35:57

opinion on that? Is that a norm that

35:59

is... damaging today? You

36:03

know, I think it is. I talk very

36:05

publicly about my approach because we

36:07

need many more role models that demonstrate you can

36:09

live life very differently to the way expected to.

36:12

I cannot wait to die alone and I date

36:14

younger men casually recreated of sex. Now,

36:17

you know, when I say I cannot

36:19

wait to die alone, okay, I'm doing

36:22

that lightheartedly to land a point, but also

36:24

because actually I'm not going to die alone.

36:27

And what I mean by that, and so this is a long winded answer

36:29

to your question is, you know, I'm very,

36:31

very lucky in that I have a wonderful family.

36:33

You know, I'm the oldest of four sisters. We

36:35

are all incredibly close. My mother's still alive at

36:37

the age of 91. And

36:40

we have family all, you know, my cousins,

36:42

my nephews, my nieces. I'm

36:45

never going to die alone because I have a wonderful

36:47

family around me. I

36:49

have amazing friends and

36:51

that chosen family is

36:55

absolutely as valid, as loving,

36:57

as wonderful, as

36:59

life affirming, as any

37:01

kind of nuclear family that you

37:04

create according to the cultural narrative.

37:07

You do have the family you didn't choose. And unfortunately

37:09

for some people that does not work out well. But

37:12

you can also have the family that you choose. And

37:15

I'd love people to expand the concept of family,

37:17

to bring in the people that

37:19

you will meet along the way who absolutely

37:21

are your family. Yeah, I agree with that.

37:23

You know, I often say not all family

37:26

is family. And that's exactly

37:28

what I'm deferring to you is that I

37:30

found that some of my closest friends are

37:33

family. So then what does that mean of my

37:35

relationship? It means that they're, you know,

37:38

I love them. Yeah, absolutely. So to

37:40

your point, well said, well said. All

37:42

right. Any other, because I feel

37:44

like you are rebels in this world, right? So

37:46

you're rejecting all these norms. Any other norms that

37:49

you reject? Because I feel like

37:51

those are the big ones. I will

37:53

tell you one that I feel particularly strongly about.

37:56

Marketers believe that older

37:58

people aspire to be young. We

38:00

don't. Young people aspire to be us. I

38:03

coach people in their 50s who

38:07

believe that life

38:09

is now for them a trajectory downwards. And

38:12

it is so not. And

38:17

I always remember many years

38:19

ago I was consulting on

38:21

Retainer for the Japanese ad agency Hakahodo.

38:23

And so I used

38:26

to go to Tokyo and spend weeks there

38:28

of time working with Hakahodo. And so one

38:31

week I was there and I went out to

38:33

dinner with my Japanese colleagues. We went to a

38:35

sushi restaurant. We all got tanked on sake. It

38:37

was very jolly. And one

38:39

of the Japanese colleagues, a

38:41

woman, revealed that in her youth she

38:44

had been apprenticed to a very famous

38:46

Japanese fortune teller, Sudse, a kind of

38:48

figure. And he

38:50

had taught her to read poems. And

38:52

it was quite a short apprentice, six months or

38:55

so apprenticeship. And so she only learned to read

38:57

poems in a very limited way. She would tell

38:59

you your love life, your career, your health. I

39:01

think that was about it. So we're all drunk

39:03

and soggy. We're all going round to

39:06

her. So she read all her poems. And

39:09

obviously with everyone else she read them in Japanese, but

39:11

she had to read mine in English. And English wasn't

39:13

very good, which is part of the charm of this.

39:15

And she looked at my poem and she said to

39:17

me, you are only

39:19

halfway. And I was 49

39:21

at the time. And that was exactly how I felt.

39:23

I was only halfway. And

39:25

so I say to the people I coach, you

39:28

have as long to live again, especially given

39:30

the miracles of modern science and medicine, as

39:32

you've lived to date, what are you going to do with

39:34

that? And equally

39:37

to marketers, I

39:39

go, you know, our core target is young

39:41

people and the older people will follow.

39:43

No, no, no, no, no. Start

39:45

with older people, lead

39:48

with older people the younger people. Because

39:50

at this age, as we've been discussing,

39:52

at this age, we don't give a

39:54

shit about anything. Okay. We have our

39:56

own sense of personal style, home style.

39:58

We know what really matters. in life,

40:00

relationships, friendships, we have freedom to travel,

40:02

we have more disposable income, all

40:05

of that is enormously aspirational for

40:07

younger people. When

40:09

I asked Cindy about norm she rejects,

40:12

she dropped a powerful truth. Society

40:14

has it all wrong about aging. Older

40:17

people aren't trying to be young. If

40:19

anything, young people should be looking up

40:21

to the wisdom, freedom, and confidence that

40:23

comes with age. She calls

40:25

for a shift in mindset, especially

40:27

in marketing, to make older people

40:29

the aspiration. Her point, life

40:32

at 50 isn't the end. It's

40:34

often just the halfway mark. What

40:37

society is failing to do is flip

40:40

that equation and understand that

40:42

older people are aspirational and

40:45

that we should be telling

40:47

these stories, holding them up as

40:50

aspirational, leading with them in every

40:52

possible sense. I mean, for commercial

40:55

value as well as for cultural

40:57

entertainment value. I

41:00

just, slow, that's

41:02

how you know a clap is good, it starts

41:04

slow. And then it just, you

41:06

know, there's so much I can say

41:08

on that. But I'll just say

41:10

this is that, so being in television for over

41:13

a decade, what I've noticed is

41:15

this exact argument, the counter

41:17

argument, right? Which is, well,

41:19

we advertise, the advertisers want the

41:21

millennials or they want the, now

41:24

it's Gen Z's. It's

41:26

18 to 25 because they

41:28

have large disposable income and therefore all

41:30

of our programming begins to target them,

41:32

which means that when you're casting, for

41:34

example, you have contributors on these shows,

41:37

the contributors are all Gen Z so

41:39

that they can better relate to the,

41:41

I think this is ridiculous.

41:44

Yeah, no, exactly. And

41:47

especially because, so I

41:50

was interviewed a couple of years

41:52

ago for Style.I. Use What's Underneath

41:54

interview series. Lovely mother

41:56

and daughter duo, Elisa and Lily, they have this

41:59

interview series where. They asked the

42:01

interviewee to sit on a stool. They asked

42:03

a question from behind the camera. As

42:05

you answer each question, you remove an item

42:07

of clothing. The idea being that you metaphorically

42:10

and literally stripped down to

42:12

what's underneath. So they

42:14

asked me to do this for a series with

42:16

older people, which I happily did. So I sat

42:19

in the stool at the age of 62,

42:21

two years ago. I took all

42:23

my clothes off down to my underwear while I talked

42:26

about how I like to live my life. I

42:29

was blown away by the response to that. I

42:32

went viral on TikTok. Okay, I wasn't even on

42:34

TikTok at the time, by the way. The clips

42:36

that interview have millions of views, thousands of comments.

42:39

Same thing on YouTube, on Instagram. And

42:42

there are so many young people and a lot

42:44

of young women, also young men going, all

42:47

my life, I've been looking for an older female role

42:49

model like this. You know, phenomenal

42:51

comments. And in fact, I was especially moved by

42:53

one under the Instagram clip, which said, it was

42:56

from a woman. It said, imagine if we had grown

42:58

up seeing and hearing women live and talk

43:00

like this. Imagine how different our lives will be now. Like

43:03

I said, we are aspirational to

43:05

younger people. Oh my God, tap into that.

43:07

And you unlock a whole world of, as

43:10

I said, commercial value,

43:12

let alone enormous cultural

43:14

and entertainment value. And

43:17

very importantly, Paul,

43:19

so I coined the hashtag live older

43:22

because that was a direct response to the

43:24

Evian tap tagline of live young,

43:26

you know, saw that, but

43:29

also I caught another hashtag. And this is another

43:31

message I've been putting out for years. So

43:34

I believe the opposite of what most people

43:36

tend to say when they think they are

43:38

countering ageism, which is age is just

43:40

a number. It's not. Your

43:44

age is a very special number because your

43:46

age is a sum total of you.

43:49

Your age is the sum total of

43:51

all of your lived experience to date, all

43:54

of your expertise, everything

43:56

you've grown up absorbing and learning

43:59

and doing. doing, your

44:01

age is what makes you valuable. Your

44:04

age is the sum total of the value that

44:06

you bring. And so I coined the hashtag, Say

44:08

Your Age, because I say my

44:10

age as often as possible. I shout it from the

44:13

rooftops and I want to encourage everybody else to do

44:15

the same. Yes, yes.

44:17

I wish I had a collection plate. I

44:19

could just pass it around the studio because

44:22

everything you're saying, this is gospel. This is

44:24

gospel. It's

44:26

the eternal struggle most of us face,

44:29

building a fulfilling, successful career, but also

44:31

being an available partner, parent and friend.

44:33

It never lets up and sometimes compounds

44:36

to an overwhelming feeling of being stretched

44:38

too thin. But there are ways to

44:40

ease the load. And today I want

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to introduce you to one of them

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45:34

it comes to love, we're all

45:36

on our own journey. And that

45:39

means any advice we're given should

45:41

be tailored to our love goals,

45:43

not someone else's. This is where

45:45

my show and Tinder, who sponsor

45:47

this podcast, have teamed up to

45:49

help you. Each week when we

45:51

need to talk, I'll explore love

45:53

and relationships through a different lens

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so you can get the advice

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that relates to your romantic situation.

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Tinder is for all types of

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46:31

Cindy, I see, even though I know how

46:33

you feel about children, I see that you do have a baby. Did

46:38

you know about this baby? This

46:40

is news, Paul. Where's this baby? No, no,

46:42

no. Your baby is clearly... Oh,

46:45

my... Make love not pour it. Absolutely.

46:47

Yes. No, no, you're right,

46:49

Paul, because that is my child. That is my legacy,

46:51

actually. That is what I want to leave to the

46:54

world. See, you're absolutely right. I'll see you right. So,

46:56

can we begin with the story

46:59

of how do you create a

47:01

company called Make Love

47:04

Not Pour It? And

47:06

the answer is by complete and total accident. This

47:09

is your life. You need to write a book by

47:11

complete and total accident. It absolutely is, you

47:13

know, because my

47:16

ex-boss in the advertising world, the wonderful Sir

47:18

John Hegarty of BBH, has this great mantra.

47:20

John says, do interesting things and interesting things

47:22

will happen to you. And that's very

47:24

much how I've lived my life. So, you know,

47:27

I began accidentally dating younger men, and

47:30

dating younger men is what led me to accidentally start

47:33

Make Love Not Pour, because,

47:35

you know, 16, 17

47:37

years ago, I began realizing through

47:39

dating younger men that I was

47:41

encountering an issue that would

47:44

never have crossed my mind if I had

47:46

not encountered it very intimately and personally. Okay.

47:49

I realized that I was experiencing

47:51

what happens when two things converge,

47:54

and I stress the dual convergence because most

47:56

people think it's only one thing. I

47:59

was experiencing it. experiencing what happens

48:01

when today's total freedom

48:03

of access to hardcore porn online

48:06

meets our society's equally

48:08

total reluctance to talk openly and

48:10

honestly about sex. It's

48:13

when those two factors converge that

48:15

porn becomes sex education by default

48:17

in not a good way. So

48:20

I found myself encountering a number of

48:22

sexual behavioural means in bed, and went,

48:25

I know where that behaviour's coming from. I

48:27

thought, gosh, if I'm experiencing this, other

48:30

people must be as well. I didn't

48:32

know that, because 16 years ago, no

48:34

one was talking about this. No

48:36

one's writing about it. This was me

48:38

in isolation, as a naturally

48:40

action-oriented person going, I'm going to

48:43

do something about this. And

48:45

I'm curious, what were you seeing in

48:47

the bedroom that was alarming to you?

48:49

So this was, I put

48:52

all of this into Make Love

48:54

Not Porn's original incarnation, because what

48:56

I did, and I'll tell you, so

48:59

15 years ago, I put

49:01

up this tiny, clunky website at makelovenotporn.com,

49:03

or No Money, that was kind of

49:05

a public service announcement. Porn

49:07

world versus real world. Here's what

49:10

happens in the porn world, here's what really happens

49:12

in the real world. And every one of those

49:14

porn world versus real world incidents

49:16

happened to me. So porn world,

49:19

women have no hair down there. Real

49:21

world, actually, some women

49:24

like to shave and wax everything, some

49:26

women don't. Equally, some men,

49:28

like women who know natural, some don't, it's very

49:30

much a matter of personal taste. That is not

49:32

the way it has to be. Porn

49:35

world, all men love coming

49:37

women's faces, all men love having their faces come. Real

49:41

world, some people like this, some people don't. Good idea

49:43

to find out before you spring it on them suddenly.

49:46

Very much in that vein. Things

49:49

like porn world, it's all

49:51

about the camera angles. And

49:54

so the bodies are adapting to that. Real

49:56

world, skin on skin. Get

49:59

really close, it's amazing. feeling, you're

50:01

not going to see that in porn because

50:03

it's all about get the camera in really

50:06

close, you know, etc. So I

50:08

launched Make Love Not Porn at the

50:10

TED conference in 2009. I

50:13

became the only TED speaker to say the

50:15

words come on my face on the TED

50:17

stage, six times in succession. The

50:20

talk went viral as a result of that and

50:23

it drove this extraordinary global

50:25

response to my tiny website

50:27

that I had never anticipated.

50:30

Thousands of people wrote to me from all around the

50:32

world, young and old, male

50:34

and female, straight and queer, pouring

50:36

their hearts out, telling me

50:38

things about their sex lives and their porn

50:41

watching habits, they'd never told anyone before and

50:43

I realized I'd uncovered a huge global

50:46

social issue. And so that

50:48

was when I went, oh my god, I now have

50:50

a personal responsibility. I have to

50:52

take Make Love Not Porn forwards in

50:54

a way that will make it much more

50:56

far-reaching, helpful and effective. And

50:59

so I turned it into a business designed to

51:01

do good and make money simultaneously, which is what

51:03

I want the future of all business to be

51:05

ultimately. And what I decided to

51:07

do was, I've said

51:10

for 15 years, the

51:12

issue isn't porn, the issue is that we don't

51:14

talk about sex in the real world. Because

51:17

if we did, people could then

51:19

bring a real world mindset to

51:21

the viewing of what is simply

51:23

performative, produced, manufactured entertainment.

51:27

And so I went, okay, you know, I need to

51:29

take this forward in a way that will make it

51:31

easier for everybody in the world to talk openly and

51:33

honestly about sex. And so

51:35

I decided very simply to take every

51:37

dynamic in social media and

51:39

apply them to this one area

51:42

of universal human experience that no

51:44

other social network platform allows. And

51:47

so I turned Make Love Not Porn

51:49

into what we are today, which is

51:51

the world's first and only user-generated and

51:54

importantly 100%

51:56

human-curated social sex

51:58

video sharing platform. So

52:00

we're kind of what Facebook would be if it

52:02

allowed you to openly, healthily,

52:04

sexually self express, which it clearly

52:06

doesn't. The way to think about

52:08

us is, if Porn is

52:11

the Hollywood blockbuster movie, Make

52:13

Love Not Porn is the badly needed documentary.

52:16

We are a unique window onto the funny,

52:20

messy, loving, wonderful sex we all have in the

52:22

real world. We are socializing,

52:25

normalizing and de-stigmatizing

52:27

sex, bringing it

52:30

out of the shadows into the

52:32

sunlight to promote consent, communication, good

52:35

sexual values and behavior. We are

52:37

literally sex education through real world

52:39

demonstration. Now, you would also be

52:42

David versus Goliath here,

52:44

because when I look at

52:47

some of these stats around the pornography

52:49

as an industry, they're mind-blowing.

52:54

58% of adults have watched porn at least once

52:56

in their life. 11%

52:58

watch porn daily. 30,000

53:00

people watch porn every second.

53:04

The global porn industry is worth over $97 billion

53:06

annually. That

53:09

is larger than the economy of

53:11

Portugal. And

53:13

it seems to me that what you're doing is you're

53:16

combating the industry in essence. Do

53:19

you know? Not really, porn,

53:21

actually. So, the

53:23

reason I use the

53:25

movie versus documentary analogy

53:27

is because Make

53:29

Love Not Porn is not a competitor

53:31

to porn. We are the only real

53:33

world counterpoint and complement. People

53:36

like watching movies, people like watching documentaries. Sometimes

53:38

the movie's a movie, sometimes it's a movie documentary. But

53:41

it's really important to have the documentary so

53:43

that people know the movie is

53:45

not real. And that's the role

53:47

that we fulfill that nobody else ever

53:49

had. What I'm doing

53:52

is something actually to be frank,

53:55

even bigger than porn, which is,

53:57

you know, I'm

53:59

not doing porn. I'm pioneering what

54:02

I call the social sex revolution.

54:05

The refugee part is not the sex, it's the

54:07

fact we're finally making it social. Do

54:09

you know those stats you just

54:11

quoted are understating the value of

54:13

what we currently call porn and

54:16

what I'm broadening into,

54:19

mainstreaming adult content, okay? Because it's

54:22

not all porn. The

54:24

first area obviously is, oh my God, the money's made out of sex.

54:27

We all have it, we all enjoy

54:29

it, recession-proof. Market never goes away. But

54:32

the second area is, oh my

54:34

God, the money's made out of

54:36

socially acceptable sex. Because

54:39

when you do what we're doing, take

54:42

the shame, guilt and embarrassment out

54:44

of sex, socialize it, de-stigmatize it,

54:47

you then normalize

54:51

people being really willing to

54:54

openly, publicly buy

54:56

your product's goods services, then

55:00

publicly do what they do with everything else.

55:03

Recommend, share, advocate,

55:06

badge themselves as brand ambassadors.

55:09

And that's the trillion-dollar financial future

55:12

I'm going after when you bring

55:14

sex out of the shadows and

55:16

into the sunlight. And that's a

55:18

much bigger vision than relates to

55:20

porn. So where

55:22

is the social sexual revolution that

55:25

comes from Make Love, not porn?

55:28

So as a unique business,

55:31

Make Love, Not Porn has a unique capability. We

55:34

have the power to change people's sexual

55:36

attitudes and behavior for the better in

55:39

a way that very few other things can.

55:41

So for example, in the 11 years that

55:43

we've been operating, we've discovered that we

55:46

have been able to

55:49

teach countless young people that porn is not

55:51

sex in the real world. Gen Z loves

55:53

us. We have saved

55:55

numerous marriages and relationships and that is

55:58

literally how people write to us. You

56:00

saved my life. marriage, hadn't had sex

56:02

in years, watched our videos together, you

56:04

know, we inspired communications breakthroughs, kaboom. Parents,

56:08

increasingly are buying their teeny-twenty-something children

56:10

subscriptions to make love not porn,

56:12

they tell us, I want my

56:14

kids to see what happy, healthy,

56:16

loving sexual relationships actually look like.

56:20

As with any disruptive technology, use cases emerge

56:22

the founder never dreamt of. So

56:25

I was blown away when we began hearing

56:27

from survivors of rape, sexual assault,

56:29

sexual abuse, we hear from female

56:31

survivors, male trans non-binary survivors, they

56:34

tell us that make love not porn help them

56:36

reclaim their bodies. We help

56:38

them feel able to be sexual again post

56:40

trauma in a situation where porn is

56:42

too triggering and it's not just people who watch our

56:45

videos, we have a number of our contributors, make love

56:47

not porn stars as we call them, who

56:49

tell us being able to share themselves sexually in a

56:52

completely safe and trustworthy space has

56:55

enabled them to process and heal from

56:57

sexual trauma. I never thought of

56:59

that as a use case when I came up with this, I'm so happy

57:01

it is. But here's something

57:03

especially interesting Paul, because I designed

57:07

make love not porn to be fully diverse

57:09

and inclusive and we are. We're

57:12

a global platform so all racist, ethnicities,

57:14

our members are make love not porn

57:16

stars, range in age from 18 to

57:18

80, you know, male, female, trans, non-binary,

57:20

straight LGBTQ, asexual. But

57:22

in the 11 years we've operated we've

57:24

discovered make love not porn is especially

57:26

a revelation to men. More

57:29

men send us grateful emails, even

57:31

pretty sure comments to anybody else, by the

57:34

way, women love us too, this is especially

57:36

noteworthy. It's interesting. Because we

57:38

are something utterly neat that men will find nowhere else

57:40

on the internet, which is a safe

57:43

space where men can be and

57:45

watch other men being open,

57:47

emotional and vulnerable around sex.

57:51

You would not be the number of men who write to us regularly and

57:53

say, I just watched my

57:55

first video make love not porn and afterwards I

57:57

cried. I've said for

57:59

years, I wish society understood the opposite of what

58:01

it thinks is true. Women enjoy

58:03

sex just as much as men, and

58:06

men are just as romantic as

58:08

women. Yet neither Jen is

58:10

allowed to openly celebrate either fact. We would

58:12

all be so much better off if they

58:14

were. All right,

58:16

whether you agree with Cindy or not,

58:19

her platform Make Love Not Porn is

58:21

undeniably provocative. Cindy explains that

58:23

it's shown Gen Z that porn is not

58:25

real life sex. It saved

58:27

marriages and even helped survivors of

58:30

sexual trauma reclaim intimacy in a

58:32

safe space. Now most

58:34

strikingly, she says it's been a revelation

58:36

for men, offering something

58:39

they can't find anywhere else online, a

58:41

place to be vulnerable, emotional, and open

58:43

about sex. Cindy's vision

58:45

challenges us to rethink intimacy and

58:48

proves that when we remove shame,

58:50

we open the door to deeper

58:52

love and connection. This

58:55

is not at all what you

58:57

hear when you hear people talk about

58:59

pornography, right? You hear these,

59:01

I mean, I've read studies where

59:03

pornography literally rewires the brain, and

59:05

I don't know what your opinion

59:07

is on that. But you

59:11

hear this movement towards how damaging pornography

59:13

could be. We had a guest on

59:16

who I specifically asked about pornography, and she

59:18

said, it's much better to have many casual

59:20

relationships than it is to watch

59:22

pornography. So what is your

59:24

opinion on the rewiring of

59:27

the brain and how your platform

59:29

is different? Sure. So first of

59:31

all, Paul, I don't subscribe to

59:33

the theory of porn addiction, which

59:35

by the way is not a

59:37

recognized WHO thing. And

59:41

I say that because for

59:45

the past 15 years, I've had a front row

59:47

seat to the enormous

59:49

human misery and unhappiness caused by the

59:51

shame, guilt and embarrassment that we imbue

59:54

sex with. Half the problem

59:56

is the guilt. I remember years ago, a

59:59

journalist, was interviewing me about porn. And

1:00:02

he said to me very earnestly, and this

1:00:04

is an indication of how ridiculous we are as a

1:00:06

society about this, he went, so Cindy,

1:00:09

why do you think we like

1:00:11

to watch people having sex? And I just

1:00:14

burst out laughing. I row around the floor

1:00:16

and I went, oh my God, we are

1:00:18

all sexual beings. Of course we like to

1:00:20

watch people having sex. You know, my work

1:00:22

absolutely sits at the intersection of sexual health

1:00:24

and mental health. And mental

1:00:27

health has been destigmatised a lot

1:00:29

these days, still not fully. But

1:00:31

people are not willing to look at

1:00:33

how much, how fucked up

1:00:35

we are about sex impacts people's mental

1:00:37

health in that scenario as well. Now,

1:00:42

very importantly, as our

1:00:44

name suggests, make love not porn is not porn.

1:00:47

As our tagline says, we are

1:00:49

pro sex, pro porn, pro knowing

1:00:51

the difference. And

1:00:54

so the revelation we bring is that we

1:00:56

answer the question everyone has asked since the

1:00:58

dawn of time, which is what is everybody

1:01:00

else really doing in bed? And

1:01:03

now we show you. And that

1:01:05

is the revelation. I picked up a wonderful

1:01:07

Twitter exchange sometime back between two men. The

1:01:10

first man I tweeted as a joke, obviously, hey

1:01:12

guys, got this really word fetish. I've got this

1:01:14

kink, what I want to watch porn, where people

1:01:16

are honest, loving, loyal, decent, and really like each

1:01:18

other. Hit me up with the honest things, please.

1:01:21

And another man replied and said, there's

1:01:23

this website called make love not porn, we

1:01:25

can watch real couples making love. He

1:01:28

said, I watched a video where the woman

1:01:30

said to her man, I love you while

1:01:32

they're making love. He said, sincerely, I cried

1:01:34

when I heard that. We

1:01:37

are one of the solutions to toxic masculinity.

1:01:40

And that's really important, Paul,

1:01:42

because our

1:01:45

mission is what nobody else's mission is. Our

1:01:48

mission at Make Love Not Porn is to

1:01:50

help end rape culture globally. And

1:01:53

that may sound like a very big mission, but we have 11

1:01:55

years of proof of concept at a micro level.

1:01:58

We end rape culture by showing

1:02:00

you how wonderful. Great

1:02:03

consensual communicative sex is in the real

1:02:05

world. We eroticize consent. One man left

1:02:07

a comment saying, this video makes me

1:02:10

want to be a better man in

1:02:12

the bedroom and in life. We

1:02:15

can do that. This is where

1:02:17

your platform is substantially different than

1:02:19

everything that I've seen that exists.

1:02:22

Consent is a major issue as it

1:02:24

relates to not just dating and relationships,

1:02:26

but to your point, rape and sexual

1:02:28

violence. So when you think

1:02:30

about consent, first is how do you

1:02:32

even define it? Because I hear

1:02:35

it define like 16 different ways now.

1:02:38

How do you define consent? And then how

1:02:40

is the platform in particular, how's the platform

1:02:42

helping to illustrate what

1:02:45

consent looks like? So

1:02:48

I define consent, Paul, as starting way

1:02:50

further back than the bedroom. So I

1:02:52

regularly ask people this question, what

1:02:54

are your sexual values? And

1:02:57

nobody can ever answer me because we're not taught to

1:02:59

think like that. Our

1:03:01

parents bring us up to have good

1:03:03

manners, a work ethic, sense

1:03:05

of responsibility, accountability. Nobody

1:03:08

ever brings us up to behave

1:03:10

well in bed, but

1:03:12

they should because in bed

1:03:14

values like empathy, sensitivity,

1:03:19

generosity, kindness, honesty,

1:03:23

trust, respect are as important as those

1:03:25

values are in every other area of

1:03:27

our lives where we're actually taught to

1:03:29

exercise them. So for

1:03:31

me, consent starts

1:03:33

with inculcating, educating

1:03:36

on good sexual

1:03:38

values and good sexual behavior. And

1:03:40

what's important about this is people say to me

1:03:43

when I make this point, oh, but Cindy, if

1:03:45

you have good values in life and those translate into the bedroom,

1:03:48

no, they don't. Again, as

1:03:50

you heard me say earlier, I'm

1:03:52

very slept about whom I date. I

1:03:55

only date utterly lovely younger men with great

1:03:57

values. And nevertheless, When

1:04:00

we get into bed, I see

1:04:02

them modelling the body language that says my dick is the

1:04:04

centre of the universe and it's all about them. And

1:04:07

that's because they have unconsciously internalised what

1:04:09

male lens porn has taught them as

1:04:11

sex education by default. So

1:04:15

at Make Love Not Porn we are building

1:04:17

a community around shared good sexual values and

1:04:19

good sexual behaviour and we are very clear

1:04:21

that that is what we stand for, that's

1:04:23

what our content is all about, we attract

1:04:25

people who want that. And

1:04:28

so when you are operating good sexual values

1:04:30

and good sexual behaviour, consent

1:04:32

starts there because you know

1:04:35

when someone's not feeling it and

1:04:38

you don't push it any further. So many

1:04:40

people think consent means get into the bedroom and

1:04:42

go is it care if I do this? Is

1:04:44

it care if I do that? No wonder people

1:04:46

say it kills the mood, of course that would

1:04:48

bloody kill the mood, but when you have good

1:04:50

sexual values and you're living them

1:04:52

you don't have to do any of that because you're

1:04:54

not even in the bedroom unless both of you want

1:04:56

to be there equally. Then you

1:04:58

know to your point, everybody

1:05:01

right now quite rightly is talking about

1:05:03

consent, everyone's writing about consent, lots of

1:05:05

thoughtful, nuanced, insightful think piece about consent

1:05:07

out there. Here's the problem,

1:05:09

nobody knows what consent actually looks like in

1:05:12

bed because the only

1:05:14

way you educate people fully

1:05:16

as to what is great

1:05:19

consensual communicative sex is

1:05:21

by watching people actually having that kind

1:05:23

of sex. And make

1:05:25

Love Not Porn is the only place

1:05:27

on the internet where you can do

1:05:29

that, show people what consent actually looks

1:05:32

like and how bloody hot, arousing

1:05:34

and sensational it is. Yes,

1:05:36

yes. So on that note

1:05:38

too of demonstration, what is

1:05:40

it about the demonstration that

1:05:43

would say help a couple and not

1:05:45

just the couple viewing? You are simply

1:05:47

sharing a privileged glimpse into

1:05:49

your real world sex life. Okay, okay.

1:05:52

The young white male founders of the

1:05:54

giant tech platforms that dominate all our

1:05:56

lives today, they are not online

1:06:00

or offline of harassment, abuse,

1:06:03

sexual assault, racism, violence,

1:06:05

rape, intimate image abuse,

1:06:08

therefore they did not and they do not proactively

1:06:10

design for the prevention of any of those things

1:06:12

on their platforms. And we see

1:06:14

the results of that around us every day. Those

1:06:17

of us who are most at risk

1:06:19

every day, women, black people, people of

1:06:21

colour, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, we design

1:06:23

safe spaces and safe experiences but we

1:06:25

don't get funded. Only 1.7%

1:06:27

of all venture capital last year went

1:06:29

to female founders and that is

1:06:31

why we have still not seen what the future of

1:06:33

the internet could be when it's designed and built through

1:06:36

the female lens at scale. And I

1:06:38

say that because I designed Make Love Not Porn

1:06:40

through the female lens to be the safest place

1:06:42

on the internet and that's our power. There

1:06:45

is no self-publishing of anything on

1:06:47

Make Love Not Porn because I

1:06:49

designed it around 100% human curation.

1:06:52

Our curators watch every frame of every video

1:06:54

submitted from beginning to end before we approve

1:06:56

or reject and we publish it. No one

1:06:58

else does that. We review every

1:07:01

post on every member profile, every comment on every

1:07:03

video before we approve or reject and we publish

1:07:05

that. No one else does that either. We can

1:07:07

vouch for every single piece of content on our

1:07:09

platform in a way that nobody else can. And

1:07:11

by the way, we're tiny bootstrapping, have no money,

1:07:13

we've human created everything for 11 years. Imagine what

1:07:17

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok do their billions of they chose to.

1:07:19

Safe in the internet is not a matter

1:07:21

of viability, it's a matter of will. We exist to

1:07:23

celebrate the full drawer spectrum of human sexuality. But

1:07:25

that is why the vast majority of our

1:07:27

Make Love Not Porn stars have never filmed

1:07:30

themselves doing anything sexual before ever. They

1:07:32

are sharing their real world sex

1:07:34

lives with us for the first

1:07:36

time anywhere because they trust us

1:07:39

and they too want to create a more

1:07:41

open, healthy, attuned dialogue around sex. And

1:07:44

then that is also why we

1:07:46

are transformative for the people watching our

1:07:48

videos because we are

1:07:50

not socialising all this normalising it.

1:07:52

Couples say to us, you

1:07:55

know, watching your videos we

1:07:57

found it so easy to talk about what was happening

1:08:00

in them. watching Netflix or TV. And

1:08:02

then it was a short step

1:08:04

from talking about what we just watched to

1:08:06

talking about our own sex life and making

1:08:08

that break through accordingly. Yes, so

1:08:10

I went on to make Love Not Porn. Oh,

1:08:13

excellent. Yes. Oh my God, tell me,

1:08:15

tell me. By the way, feel free to be honest. I

1:08:18

had to do my research. Excellent. I

1:08:20

had to do my research. And something that I've heard

1:08:22

you talk about and it was, I thought

1:08:24

it was so refreshing

1:08:27

that it was beautiful and

1:08:29

is that, you saw real

1:08:32

breast sizes. Yes.

1:08:34

Real penis sizes. Yes, yes. And

1:08:38

I think that's to your point of

1:08:40

normalizing, this is so incredibly important. Oh

1:08:44

my God, it is because we exist, Paul, to

1:08:49

show something that, I

1:08:53

can't believe people don't understand for themselves when it's all

1:08:55

around them. And what I mean by that is, we

1:08:58

celebrate real world everything in a

1:09:01

world where every message popular culture

1:09:03

sends us, tells us, you are

1:09:05

not hot, attractants are, unless you are this skinny,

1:09:07

six pack abs, look like this. Our

1:09:10

members write to us and say, you made

1:09:12

me feel better about my own body. Years

1:09:14

ago, Love Island announced its newest season. You

1:09:16

may remember this particular episode because they

1:09:19

announced the casting and the

1:09:22

internet came down on their heads because

1:09:24

everybody was gorgeous and non-body diverse and

1:09:28

non-racially diverse. And the

1:09:30

producer made the big mistake of being

1:09:32

publicly interviewed and going, well, we have to

1:09:35

call something vitatractive. And

1:09:37

I was one of the many people who responded

1:09:39

to that, with a tweet

1:09:41

that actually the Daily Mail published, in fact, in an

1:09:43

article about this, because I tweeted back

1:09:45

at him and I went, walk

1:09:48

through any park

1:09:50

in any big city in the summertime, look

1:09:53

at the couples holding hands, sitting

1:09:55

on the grass cuddling kissing, and

1:09:58

you will see what people, people really find attractive

1:10:00

in the real world. And

1:10:03

Paul, it's all around us, okay? On

1:10:05

the tube, you know, on the street,

1:10:08

look at couples who are

1:10:10

mad in love with each other in the real world. One

1:10:12

woman left a comment in a video where we have larger

1:10:15

mate love that Paul started saying, you

1:10:17

know, it was so empowering to see a

1:10:19

woman of my body size being sexual. Thank

1:10:21

you so much. She said, all

1:10:23

my life, I've been told

1:10:25

my vulva's ugly. It's too

1:10:27

flappy, it's too meaty, it's too, which I

1:10:31

don't agree. And so I thought, what the hell? I'm

1:10:34

gonna video myself, I'm gonna share it on here, I'm

1:10:36

gonna see what you think. Our

1:10:38

community is amazing. Video goes

1:10:40

up in less than an hour, there's a student

1:10:42

comments going, oh my God, you're gorgeous, what are

1:10:44

they talking about? You're so beautiful, we wanna see

1:10:46

more. You know, and so it is tremendously affirming

1:10:49

for our mate love not Paul and stars. Couples,

1:10:51

by the way, tell us it transformed their

1:10:53

relationship because when you decide to film yourselves

1:10:56

having sex, you have to talk about it.

1:10:58

When you talk about, it doesn't matter how

1:11:00

long you've been together, the conversation goes places

1:11:02

it's never ever gone before. You know, couples

1:11:04

write and say, we thought we were open,

1:11:06

but doing this just took our relationship to

1:11:08

a whole new level. Yes, yes, absolutely. And

1:11:10

you know, I tell you what, there's a

1:11:12

million different places I can go, but I

1:11:14

know we have limited time, so the last

1:11:16

place I'd like to go to is

1:11:19

a continuum from this conversation,

1:11:22

and I believe this is truly the legacy, and

1:11:25

this is around the education piece,

1:11:28

and what you're building for the under 18s. What

1:11:30

I love so much about these interviews is I

1:11:34

have open dialogue with my wife and

1:11:36

my two boys about

1:11:38

the topics and the guests that

1:11:40

are coming in, and there was one particular stat,

1:11:42

let me see if I can find it, where

1:11:44

this is around, oh yeah, here it is. I

1:11:46

saw it, I read these stats out loud, and

1:11:48

then it then initiated a conversation in my household.

1:11:51

So this stat was at the average

1:11:53

age of the first exposure to porn

1:11:55

is 12 years old. and

1:12:00

100% of boys have viewed porn by

1:12:02

the age of 15. By

1:12:05

the age of 13, 50%

1:12:07

of kids have been exposed to porn. So

1:12:09

my son just turned 14. So

1:12:12

I turned to him. I say, okay,

1:12:14

you know, have you seen pornography

1:12:17

before? And what was interesting

1:12:19

is he wasn't trying to be coy. He

1:12:21

didn't know what it was.

1:12:23

He didn't know how to define it. So

1:12:26

I had to then start to define it for him. And

1:12:29

what I realized is, A,

1:12:31

not only had he seen

1:12:33

pornography, but my 10-year-old had

1:12:35

seen pornography. And I

1:12:37

thought, okay, if I had the option between

1:12:41

them being exposed to make love not porn,

1:12:44

or them being exposed to this video floating

1:12:46

in WhatsApp, that

1:12:48

their friends sent them, which would I rather?

1:12:50

Without question, I would want them to see

1:12:52

make love not porn. So talk

1:12:54

to me about the education piece, because I think

1:12:56

this is critically important. No, it absolutely is. And

1:12:58

actually, Paul, I will tell you that I

1:13:01

quote a Bitdefender survey of 19,000

1:13:03

parents done worldwide, which

1:13:07

identified that the average age of which a

1:13:09

child stumbles across porn for a season is

1:13:11

six years old. Six years old. Six years

1:13:13

old. And that survey was done 11 years

1:13:16

ago, okay? So honestly, those ages are higher

1:13:18

than, you know, when I first launched Make

1:13:20

Love Not Porn, I got an email from

1:13:22

a woman who said, my

1:13:25

first exposure to porn was eight years old and it was

1:13:27

a gangbang. So

1:13:30

children are stumbling across horrific

1:13:32

things. And so that's why literally

1:13:34

from day one of Make Love Not Porn, parents

1:13:36

and teachers began writing to me, as they have

1:13:38

for 15 years, begging

1:13:41

me for the zero

1:13:43

to 18 and beyond

1:13:45

sex education expansion. There

1:13:48

are two piece of advice I've had to give to

1:13:50

parents over the years. And

1:13:53

I'm going to put these on Make Love Not Porn

1:13:55

Academy so that everyone has access to them. The first

1:13:57

one is, I say to parents today. you

1:14:00

cannot begin talking to your child about sex too

1:14:02

early. When I say that I don't mean literally

1:14:04

talk about sex. What I mean is the

1:14:06

very first time your child asks where babies

1:14:09

come from, plays with their

1:14:11

genitals, the most important thing isn't even what

1:14:13

you say as much as how you say

1:14:15

it. Never ever

1:14:17

get flustered, you know, never get

1:14:19

visibly embarrassed, never shot them up,

1:14:22

you know, change the topic, leave

1:14:24

the room. Instead answer

1:14:26

your child calmly, straightforwardly,

1:14:28

honestly, because by doing that

1:14:31

you will open up a channel of communication between the

1:14:33

two of you that will be there for them for

1:14:35

the rest of their lives. The

1:14:37

one thing every parent wants is for their child to

1:14:39

be happy. This area will

1:14:41

impact your child's happiness more than almost

1:14:44

anything else, and so you

1:14:46

want to open up that channel where they can talk

1:14:48

about sex to you at any point in lives going

1:14:50

forwards. Then the second thing I say

1:14:52

to parents is, now again today

1:14:54

sadly when you talk to

1:14:57

your child about sex you must also at

1:14:59

the same time talk to your child about

1:15:01

porn. This is much easier to do than

1:15:03

most parents think because all you have to do is say

1:15:05

a version or about to share with you, then you dial

1:15:07

it up or down depending on the age of the child.

1:15:10

So you go, so darling, we've just

1:15:12

talked about sex. And you

1:15:15

know how together we watch movies

1:15:17

and videos and cartoons where things

1:15:19

happen that aren't real. Well

1:15:22

there are also movies and videos about sex

1:15:24

and they're not real either. And

1:15:27

because of that they can be quite confusing so

1:15:30

you'd rather watch until you're older but

1:15:33

if you ever come across anything like

1:15:35

that or somebody shows something like that

1:15:37

to you, come and talk

1:15:39

to us, come and talk to me, we, I can

1:15:41

explain it. That's all you have

1:15:43

to say. You can end the conversation right

1:15:45

there because just by saying that you've done

1:15:47

two very important things. The first is that

1:15:49

you've set them in their minds when they

1:15:52

stumble across porn as they will, it's not

1:15:54

real. And the second thing you've

1:15:56

said is come and talk to me about

1:15:58

it because what they stumble across may be utterly

1:16:00

traumatizing. Yes. Very, very helpful. That's

1:16:02

it. So yeah,

1:16:04

we are building Make Love Not Porn

1:16:06

dot Academy. So our vision is

1:16:08

laid out like URL. And this is what I characterize

1:16:11

as the Khan Academy of

1:16:13

Sex Education, because Khan Academy,

1:16:15

the online tutoring platform, tutors

1:16:17

on every other top and some except

1:16:20

this one. Yes. Educational technology ed tech

1:16:22

as a category exploding, not

1:16:24

in this area. So we're

1:16:27

building Make Love Not Porn Academy on

1:16:29

the same principles as Make Love Not

1:16:31

Porn. We're inviting sex educators from all

1:16:34

around the world to share with us

1:16:36

their own content, you know, course, materials,

1:16:38

books, videos, comic strips, whatever it may

1:16:40

be. And I use the term educator

1:16:43

very broadly, sector health and wellness experts,

1:16:45

therapists, health professionals, podcasters, human eyes will

1:16:47

vet every educator, every piece

1:16:50

of content to make sure

1:16:52

it's safe. We endorse it. We have

1:16:54

a very broad filter. You know, on

1:16:56

Make Love Not Porn, our curatorial filter

1:16:58

is simply, it's got to be legal,

1:17:00

consensual, and real, then everything goes. For

1:17:03

the Academy, it is it's got to

1:17:05

be educational, fact based, and non judgmental.

1:17:07

Interesting. And then and then everything goes.

1:17:10

And we are then going to make all of

1:17:13

this content searchable by

1:17:15

age appropriateness. So

1:17:17

if you're a parent freaking out going, Oh, my God, my

1:17:19

six or just says, what do I say, we're going to

1:17:21

give you the tools and content to be able to have

1:17:24

that conversation with a six year old. If

1:17:26

you're a teacher, the class of 14 year

1:17:28

olds, you're age appropriate teaching materials. If you're

1:17:30

an adult, access all areas, adults are just

1:17:32

as desperate for this. But

1:17:35

importantly, Paul, we are designing the

1:17:37

Academy to be accessible

1:17:39

by children, young people without parental teacher gatekeeping.

1:17:42

And I'll tell you why that's important. I

1:17:44

have a friend who's a mother. And as

1:17:46

you have to these days, she monitors her

1:17:49

kids browsing history. This happened a

1:17:51

few years ago, her son was eight years

1:17:53

old, and she saw to a horror that

1:17:55

on the family computer he had googled sex

1:17:57

for children. So she freaked out

1:17:59

between did the right thing, you know, stayed calm, sat him

1:18:01

down, darling, you know, I happened to see that you had

1:18:04

told me through why. And Paul,

1:18:06

this anecdote is adorable and horrifying in

1:18:08

equal measure because her

1:18:10

son won't learn about sex. He was

1:18:12

a child. He knew he was a

1:18:14

child. He won't learn about sex in

1:18:16

a child appropriate way. He sweetly, innocently

1:18:18

googled sex for children. You can imagine

1:18:20

what came back utterly traumatized. So

1:18:22

the Academy would be where an eight year old boy can enter his

1:18:24

age. We would only serve

1:18:27

him age appropriate sex education. And

1:18:30

importantly, we'll also,

1:18:32

you may be able to search by cultural

1:18:34

sensibility. We have Christian sex

1:18:36

education, Jewish sex education, Muslim sex education.

1:18:39

And equally importantly, because we are bringing all this

1:18:41

together in one place, you pick

1:18:43

and choose according to your comfort level.

1:18:46

We are going backwards as a society

1:18:48

because open, healthy sex is being censored,

1:18:50

blocked and deplatformed everywhere. My

1:18:52

friends get their content blocked on Facebook,

1:18:54

Instagram, TikTok. Their accounts are suspended. They're

1:18:56

banned from advertising. They can't even make

1:18:59

a living doing this or to promote

1:19:01

their work, help them sell their books

1:19:03

on their courses and whatever, because this

1:19:05

is enormously valuable work. And

1:19:07

so I've said to my team, our

1:19:09

aim with the Academy is to help

1:19:12

organize the world's sex education information. That

1:19:14

is a deliberate paraphrase of Google's original

1:19:16

mission statement, which was organize the world's

1:19:18

information because they're not. The algorithm is

1:19:21

biased. And I want to bring all

1:19:23

this together to be the Google of

1:19:25

sex education, to make

1:19:27

the algorithm change when people

1:19:29

see at a glance how

1:19:32

brilliant, informative, educational, healthy and

1:19:34

non-threatening all this is. Now,

1:19:36

in order to do all of this, you need funding. Absolutely.

1:19:40

Back in the day, my first career was investment banking.

1:19:43

So I understand how

1:19:46

imperative funding is, but what

1:19:49

I find to be just, it just

1:19:51

blows my mind is the challenges that

1:19:53

you personally have around this.

1:19:55

I mean, given your background, given what

1:19:58

you've achieved thus far, given how large

1:20:00

the market size is. So

1:20:03

why do you believe it is so hard

1:20:05

to raise money in the space for you?

1:20:07

Sure. So this

1:20:09

is and always has been my challenge, Paul.

1:20:12

I know that my investors are out there and there are a ton of them,

1:20:15

okay? And there are a ton of them in every country in the world, by

1:20:17

the way. They are impossible

1:20:19

to find by conventional means because

1:20:21

they all have one thing in

1:20:23

common. Your willingness

1:20:25

to fund Make Love Not Porn

1:20:28

is entirely a function of your

1:20:30

personal sexual journey. It's

1:20:32

a function of your personal lens on sex

1:20:34

and sexuality that's been shaped by your own

1:20:36

experience of it. And obviously

1:20:39

I have no way to research

1:20:41

and target for that. Especially

1:20:44

as sex is the one area where you

1:20:46

cannot tell from the outside what anybody thinks

1:20:48

on the inside. The people

1:20:50

who look like they would totally get it,

1:20:52

don't. The people who look like pre-proods do.

1:20:55

And so my strategy has to be,

1:20:58

I put what I'm doing out there all the time,

1:21:00

you know, across all my socials, you

1:21:03

know, do all the media interviews I ask

1:21:05

to, because I have to make synaptic connections

1:21:07

happen that will attract those investors to me.

1:21:10

This is a long, slow, painful and highly

1:21:12

inefficient process. It does regularly

1:21:14

work, but it's very slow going. Because,

1:21:16

you know, what I find astonishing is

1:21:18

I've been a tech entrepreneur for many

1:21:20

years. I have a lot of friends

1:21:22

in Silicon Valley and yet

1:21:25

the VCs and ancient investors

1:21:27

whom I know are

1:21:30

hosting and participating in sex parties, hitting

1:21:33

the orgy tent at Burning Man, you

1:21:35

know, prior to Precense as polyamorous, they

1:21:38

will not invest in anything to do with sex.

1:21:41

You know, sex more than any other area proves the

1:21:43

truth about saying we do not see things as they

1:21:45

are, we see things as we are. And

1:21:48

so I have to find my kind of

1:21:50

investor and my kind of investor

1:21:52

is very hard to find when, as I

1:21:54

say, you can't research and target in the

1:21:57

usual way. But why would that investor not

1:21:59

invest? Someone who seems to

1:22:01

be so liberal in their,

1:22:03

you know, with the sex that

1:22:05

they have, why would they not invest?

1:22:08

Do you know, that takes us right back to

1:22:10

the beginning of this conversation, which

1:22:12

is the social dynamic that

1:22:15

I call fear of what other people

1:22:17

think. And again, that

1:22:19

operates around sex unlike any

1:22:21

other area. That's a battle I fought for the past 15 years.

1:22:24

Yeah, I see it. I see you

1:22:26

fighting that, you know, and I think that's why I think

1:22:28

it is brilliant that you win the crowdfunding source, and

1:22:30

hopefully you continuing to be on

1:22:34

these platforms will definitely help the

1:22:36

cause. So I tell you what,

1:22:39

one question that I ask everyone, and

1:22:42

I cannot wait to hear your answer to this, is

1:22:45

that you've had some incredible conversations

1:22:47

clearly all throughout your life. Right.

1:22:50

When you think back to the

1:22:52

most profound conversation, who

1:22:55

was it with, and

1:22:57

what did you talk about? Oh

1:22:59

my God, that's a real toughie. Yes.

1:23:04

Gosh, you know,

1:23:07

honestly, I

1:23:11

would really say, you know, I can't

1:23:13

home in on just one, but

1:23:16

I will honestly say that they

1:23:19

are the conversations that I've had to

1:23:22

do with make love, not porn and people's response to

1:23:25

it. And I say that, by

1:23:27

the way, Paul, because as I said earlier, you

1:23:29

know, all of this happened by accident.

1:23:31

As the saying goes, the path appeared. I

1:23:33

did not choose this path. It's a bloody

1:23:35

challenging one to be on. It shows me, but now it

1:23:37

is my path. But I say

1:23:40

that because, first of all, people

1:23:42

have opened up to me around

1:23:45

make love, not porn in a way that they

1:23:47

have never ever spoken to anybody else

1:23:51

about how profound

1:23:56

what they've dealt with around their

1:23:58

sexuality has been. When people find

1:24:01

that I'm somebody who is just completely normally

1:24:03

going, I know this is going on, I'm

1:24:05

changing it, the

1:24:07

floodgates open, you know, and I hear things

1:24:09

people have never told anybody in their entire

1:24:11

lives before and I feel very privileged.

1:24:13

I always say like hardly but I mean it that

1:24:16

when we achieve our mission to make love not porn,

1:24:18

one side benefit will be that we will see productivity

1:24:20

shoot up in offices worldwide. You

1:24:22

know and and and so I'm sorry I can't pin

1:24:24

that down to just one conversation, but the

1:24:27

conversations I've had where people have

1:24:29

shared with me exactly

1:24:31

what make love not porn is helping them

1:24:33

with what I'm tackling have been the

1:24:36

most profound of my entire life. Yeah, I believe

1:24:38

it. You know Cindy what I

1:24:40

truly appreciate about you is that I do

1:24:42

think that you're bold, fearless, unapologetic. I do

1:24:44

think that you're brand, you are your brand,

1:24:46

right? I think I do think that is

1:24:49

your brand but you

1:24:51

are you are for me personally you're

1:24:53

very aspirational. Oh, thank you. Very

1:24:56

much so and I believe that what

1:24:59

you are building is not

1:25:01

only helping the world but will help to

1:25:03

change the world. So continue to

1:25:05

do what you do. Thank you so much. I

1:25:08

enormously appreciate that Paul and I've really really enjoyed

1:25:10

this conversation. So thank you very much for giving

1:25:12

me the opportunity to talk to you. Yeah, thank

1:25:14

you. Thank you. Wow, what

1:25:16

a unique and inspiring episode and

1:25:18

as always here are my top

1:25:21

takeaways. Number one authenticity and independence

1:25:23

are the keys to owning your

1:25:25

future and finding true happiness. Now

1:25:28

Cindy emphasizes that fear of what others

1:25:31

think is the most paralyzing force in

1:25:33

life and work. By rejecting

1:25:35

societal pressures, staying self-aware and living

1:25:37

in alignment with your values, you

1:25:40

unlock the freedom to live and

1:25:42

work authentically, which she calls the

1:25:44

true secret to happiness. The next

1:25:47

takeaway, the value of self-defined happiness

1:25:49

lies in living a life aligned

1:25:51

with your own values, not

1:25:54

societal expectations. Now Cindy

1:25:56

challenges us to ask this question. What

1:25:59

would really? make me happy, brutally

1:26:01

and honestly. She believes

1:26:04

that if more people did this,

1:26:06

they'd realize that they don't truly

1:26:08

want what the world tells them

1:26:10

to want and instead pursue what

1:26:12

genuinely fulfills them. And the

1:26:14

next one, and I love this, is

1:26:16

expanding the concept of what family

1:26:19

means by embracing the idea of

1:26:21

a chosen family. These are relationships

1:26:23

built outside the traditional structures that

1:26:25

are just as valid and meaningful.

1:26:28

It was moving to hear Cindy say the following, I

1:26:31

cannot wait to die alone, but also

1:26:34

because actually I'm not going to die

1:26:36

alone. I have amazing friends and a

1:26:38

chosen family that is absolutely as valid,

1:26:41

as loving, as wonderful, as

1:26:43

life-affirming as any nuclear family.

1:26:46

So what's the lesson? The lesson

1:26:48

is that family isn't defined

1:26:50

by bloodlines, but by the

1:26:52

love and support and connection

1:26:54

we intentionally cultivate with those

1:26:56

who truly enrich our lives.

1:27:00

I need to come clean and tell

1:27:02

you about the love affair I've been

1:27:05

having these last two years. But before

1:27:07

you start thinking that I'm disloyal, don't

1:27:09

worry, my wife knows everything. Because even

1:27:11

Jill can't ignore how truly, madly, deeply

1:27:14

in love I am with the new

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