Ep. #79 A Porn Director's View on the Industry, Sex and Relationships with Dave Pounder

[Angel Donovan]: Dave welcome to the show. It's so great to have you here.

[Dave Pounder]: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

[Angel Donovan]: I really like the fact that you've got a lot of experience to bring to the table and you seem to have a deep interest in reality much like I do and saying it how it is even if it's not so nice to hear.

[Dave Pounder]: Absolutely.

[Angel Donovan]: Hopefully, this is going to be a really exciting podcast for the guys because, we're going to get in their faces a bit which is also always fun. I'm sure you're kind of used to that. Are your book and your documentary seen as controversial, just to kind of start off?

[Dave Pounder]: Yes, I don't know. It kind of depends on how you look at it. I think anything in the adult film industry or just sexuality more generally unfortunately, in America is seen as controversial. We live in a society where Janet Jackson has a "wardrobe male function" at the Super Bowl and exposes a breast and it's a national news story and it's the end of the world and the end of morality, where the Europeans look at us and think how silly it is that we make such a big deal over something that's perfectly natural.

I guess you could say that it's controversial but, it should not be controversial. The book is more about evolutionary psychology as it applies to human mating and is supported by an abundance of research. The documentary is really more of public health and political documentary about the need to implement better regulation to protect the health and safety of performance like they would do in any other industry where the health and safety of workers were at risk. It is controversial but, it shouldn't be controversial.

[Angel Donovan]: It sounds like you're leading a bit of a "white knight battle" on that front. We'll get a bit more into that in a bit. First of all, let's hear a bit more about you so the guys get to know you and can see the context, where this is all coming from. How old are you today?

[Dave Pounder]: Today, I'm 38. Interestingly, I went to an all-guys Catholic high school which kind of sucked. I didn't like wearing the uniform and having to be there earlier.

I actually met my first girlfriend when I was in college at Michigan State and I really didn't know anything about girls whatsoever. I dated her for six years straight. I thought to myself, "Wow, this is great. I love this girl. Everything is going awesome. She's attractive," but, I'm feeling myself inclined towards wanting to have sex with other girls.

I thought that that was just me. I thought, "That's a Dave thing. Not all guys are like that. It's just my personality," and she wasn't really cool with that. I thought that was just her and I needed to find a girl who was more like me, more open to sexual variety, lack of commitment, things like that.

When I went to grad school, we broke up so I could basically play the field. I went out to these different bars or clubs and try and hook up with girls and when I did, I noticed they were always trying to get relationships.

I started seeing this pattern of my male friends wanting to "hook up with a girl" or, "This place is good, I got laid at this place." If it was the reverse scenario, where maybe they hooked up and it didn't lead somewhere, it didn't lead to a relationship or something more significant, then the girls had the opposite impression that, "The place was bad. There was just a bunch of losers there. Let's go to a place where there are some real guys."

So, then I started reading literature on psychology and came across evolutionary psychology which, I think offers a really powerful lens for how to view male/female interactions and why people behave the way that they do. If you understand evolutionary psychology, it makes a lot of sense in light of not just mating but, also in kin selection, mutual reciprocity, things like that.

[Angel Donovan]: Who's work do you like, Geoffrey Miller's?

[Dave Pounder]: I'm partial to people like David Buss. I think he has solid research. David Schmitt, John Townsend over at Syracuse University. David Buss is at the University of Texas and David Schmitt is at Bradley University.

Miller and those guys, they touch on the human sexuality. There are certain things that are premised often times that I don't necessarily agree with. Miller talks about in his book "Spent" how a lot of guys will go out and they'll spend all this money on a fancy car or fancy clothing and watches as a way to signal to women that they have resources and things like that which makes sense. Obviously, Buss would agree with that as would I.

He's saying, "There's really no need to do that because, what happens is once a girl actually knows you, she's going to see that you have social status and confidence and resources even though you're not displaying them."

Think of it like the "sneaky hot mentality." There's a girl who could have a perfect body and she could flaunt that body. She would wear a bikini, a thong bikini, short jeans shorts, etc. and that really is conspicuous dressing provocatively. Conversely, that same girl could wear a very baggy sweatshirt and loose-fitting jeans and you'd never know it by looking her and then once she's naked, you could think, "Wow, what a great body." That's the same thing.

A guy could drive around in a Ferrari and wear a Rolex and dress nicely and advertise himself as the CEO of whatever corporation he happens to run and women find that appealing. He could also not do that. He could wear a Timex watch and drive around in an old car and still be the CEO of that company and have the resources but, most people wouldn't know it until they got to know them.

There is still an appeal to that kind of flaunting, if you will, like in the same way that it would be nice to see the girl in the baggy pants naked and see her great body and that's exciting. But, it's even more exciting when she actually dresses provocatively for the anticipation for that encounter. I'm more of a "resource conservative guy" myself. I don't like to unnecessarily spend money to sort of engage in conspicuous consumption to increase mating opportunities but, I can see why a lot of women respond to that.

There was a guy, I don't know if you've talked to him, Gad Saad at Cornell University where they put the exactly same guy aesthetically, same exact person, same clothing etc. in two different cars. I think he was either in a Bentley or some nice car and then, he was in some other a Pinto car. Same exact car and women's ratings of attractiveness were completely different just by changing the car, not even changing him. For men, there was no effect when viewing the attractive woman in either car.

[Angel Donovan]: You might have also seen, there was basically an experiment on YouTube where this guy made this rule that he wasn't allowed to say anything to girls but, he had to get them into his car. So, he rents a Lamborghini for the day. He just pulls up next to the girl and just beeps a horn and waves his finger as if to say, "Get in the car." The girls would say, "What? What?" He would just keep pointing at the seat and smiling and he would never say anything and you would see a bunch of the girls get in the car without the guy saying anything.

[Dave Pounder]: I've seen something similar. I saw a YouTube where the guy had a nice car like a Bugatti and he wasn't in the car but, he was outside and sitting on the hood. As girls walked by, he would say, "Hey, what's up? Do you want to hang out?" and the majority of the girls talked to him. It looks staged, the one that I saw. The way things were going down, it just looked like it was set up but, I think they're just trying to do a spoof or they're trying to extenuate what they already know.

There's another funny video called something to the extent of "Women Cat Calling Men," like guys go down the road and say, "Nice ass," and the girls say, "Wow, you look like you could make some great babies. You look like you want commitment." It's a funny YouTube video. I forget what's it's called but, if you Google or if you YouTube "Women Cat Calling Men", you might find it and of course, it's a spoof, it's a joke.

[Angel Donovan]: We'll find it and put in a link in the show notes. Is that a spoof or a real thing?

[Dave Pounder]: No, no, it's a spoof, it's just a joke created by women of "Women Cat Calling Men" and things women would say to men in the same way that men. It's saying that men basically value youth, physical attractiveness, body-type and when guys do a cat call, that's what they do. A girl walks by and they hold up a number ten or a number of one to ten and say, "Oh nice butt or nice boobs or you're hot," something physical.

For women, they don't cat call a guy and say, "Nice arms." They would say, "Wow, that's a nice car, nice outfit or that's a great job you have or you look like you want a family," something that would appeal to evolutionary interests of females. Obviously, women don't really cat call men but if they did, hypothetically, that's what the spoof is about.

[Angel Donovan]: To think this is equally women across the board respond to these kind of markers, these social signs? Me personally, I am doing okay in life but, I don't buy anything flashing. I'm not interested in buying anything. In fact, I've sold all my stuff and I'm very minimalist. I'm not interested in carrying that stuff around like lot of my friends.

In my dating life, I think women judge me based on my freedom. They assume I must be lucrative or doing well because of the margin of freedom I have in my life and what I have done. It's based on my experiences so, it's looking at it from a different angel. Here's a theory to offer up for you.

Those kind of very unsubtle markers, any woman can kind of spot those and especially those with an agenda who are more interested in that kind of thing specifically might be drawn to that kind of flashiness. Whereas the more subtle ones, you might be getting a different type of woman who takes more of an interest.

[Dave Pounder]: I think it gets back to what I was saying earlier about the girl who dresses "sneaky not" where she's wearing baggy clothing and you don't know she's attractive. She maybe wouldn't normally get approached at random at the mall or just picked up at the parking lot because, she's not really signaling anything that men value but, once a guy gets to know her and say he's friends with her and then goes to the beach and thinks, "Wow, I'm interested in her because, she has an attractive body type or is youthful and has these other things that men look for."

When women see a nice car or they see a man nicely dressed, it's not that they're saying, "Oh, this guy has a Ferrari. I want to be with him." They're using the nice car as a proxy or as a signal that this guy does have intelligence or education or social status or these things that women really want.

We can look at a girl and we instantly know her mate value just by looking at her from a male's perspective. Women don't know. They're kind of like detectives. They have to kind of fish out clues, "What do you do for work? What kind of car do you drive?" trying to find out, "What is this guy's resource potential? What is his ability to father children, be a good father, etc.?"

When someone speaks to you, for example, as the minimalist, maybe you're not driving down the road and a bunch of girls check you out; much like when I'm sitting down the road, I'm not checking out the girl with the baggy pants on. I'm checking out the girl with the shorts and the camisole top. But, once I've gotten to know the girl with the baggy pants and I become friends with her because I like her as a person. Then, I realize, "Wow, we hung out once at the beach and she really does have a nice body. I didn't know that until now." Then, all of a sudden, you become attractive.

In your case, I don't think the girl sees you instantly and says, "Oh, I'm attracted to Angel." But, what happens is, she hangs out with you and she says, "Wow, this Angel guy is really thought. He seems caring. He seems kind. I think he'd be a good father. He's able to lead this casual free lifestyle. What resources does he have that allows him to do that?" and then she likes you that way.

So, think of the girls who dress provocatively or the guys who do conspicuous consumption as advertising. They are the movie that's being advertised, "Go see Movie A or Movie B on Friday," and people hear about it from the advertising and then they're inclined to go and see it.

There's another group of people who go to the theatre and they say, "Okay, we want to see a movie, we go to the theatre and here's another movie. We haven't seen it being advertised but, it looks like a movie we want to see. Let's go see that movie." That's really the group that you are in and myself as well.

I know sort of the psychology behind dating really well and I'm the same way. I don't really see the advantage in depleting resources through conspicuous consumption just to increase mating opportunities because, like you who understands the process as well, we can be just as successful in the mating market by conveying the things that women look for, commitment, resources, social status, etc. without having to do the costly method of signaling.

I talk about it in the book. I think one of the worst places to pick up a girl, if you are just a regular guy, is the bar because, when you go to the bar, all these guys are buying girls drinks. They're all trying to be flashy and dress nice and pull up in their cars as a way to outcompete the other person. It's really a bad ratio for guys trying to meet girls because , you walk into the bar, everyone knows who the attractive girl is. All the guys are going to focus on that girl and they're all basically signaling through status signaling to gain the girl's attention.

A better way would be to go to say, a library or the grocery store, the beach, your neighborhood pool if you live in a condo association for example and you just start having a regular conversation with the girl. Then, when she realizes, "Wow, this guy's thoughtful. He's kind, he's intelligent. He seems employed. He seems like he has his head on his shoulders."

Now, you become isolated. There aren’t 50 other guys at the pool or at the local grocery store or at whatever else, where they're all trying to go. So, it's really a 1-1 ratio as opposed to a 30-1 ratio and you're at the grocery store. You're not expected to be buying the girl's groceries.

Where at the bar, you're expected to buy the girl a drink and if you don't, then you're looked at as somebody who isn't willing to generous or share resources. At this bar, where a drink is $20 where, if you went to the local wine store, it would be $5.

[Angel Donovan]: I think the interesting thing about that is, we always talked about different skill sets, like you can learn how to approach women in a bar. You can learn how to do it in the day time and guys tend to not do it during the day time in cafes, in the street or in a swimming pool or whatever because, it's just something a bit more out of their social world and what they used to with social norms.

As you say, there's a lot less competition. So, it makes it a lot easier if you do get over that and you learn that skill set and you can approach in unusual situations and make it smooth and make it work for you. In fact, the more unusual the situation, the better you are off because, you're less likely to have any other guys competing with you at that immediate time.

Of course, she's going to have other guys around like in her life. So, it depends on kind of when you met her in her life, what else she has going on but, right then when you meet her, it does give you a better chance to start to get to know her, meet her and so on.

[Dave Pounder]: Yes, and another thing I tell guys too is, when you go to the bar, often times, it's a very meat-market environment where it is, "Hey Baby. You look attractive. What are you doing? Are you single?" It's kind of a pick-up environment and I tell guys, approach girls the same way you would approach a guy for a regular conversation.

If you see a girl at the park, don't walk up to her and say, "Oh, you're beautiful. Are you dating anyone?" because, that's going turn her off instantly. She's going to think that you're only interested in her for the physical attributes that she happens to have. You have to think, if there was a guy there, you wouldn't say, "Hey Man, you're really attractive. Nice pecks. Do you work out?" It would be awkward for you to say that but, what would be a normal conversation to a guy?

You would say, "Excuse me. I just moved to the neighborhood. Do you know, where's the local grocery store around here? How far is the beach? Where's the freeway?" Just something really general, nonthreatening, whatever you say to a guy, you say that to a girl.

You go up to the girl who may be attractive and say, "Excuse me. I just moved to the area. Do you know are there any restaurants around here? Do you know where the local post office is? I don't know where I'm going." If she's interested, she's going to respond back particularly if she's single and say, "Where did you move here from?" and you're going see that there's follow up questions that are leading to a regular conversation.

If you're talking to the girl for ten minutes then, you can say, "Listen. I really liked talking to you. I don't really know a lot of people here. Would you mind if I gave you my number?" because, it's less threatening. "Maybe we could hang out sometime or if you're more comfortable, give me your number."

Then, you text and then eventually set up a date which seems very nonthreatening to her because, you didn't comment on her body type. You didn't try to ask her out. You were just asking about the area. She was trying to be helpful and the fact that she asked more questions in return shows that she was interested in the guy.

If the woman's married and has no interest in the guy, she isn't going to say, "Where did you move here from?" She is going to say, "The freeway is two miles west and there's a grocery store on the corner." Then you say, "Thanks, have a nice day. I appreciate it" and then you leave and that's the end of it.

hat approach is much, much better than going to a bar where you have a handful of attractive women and you have 20 guys trying to get her number and the one who does is the one who buys her the most drinks and is able to signal resources and social status better than the other guys.

[Angel Donovan]: Here's something else that I think that's interesting about that dynamic is that, when you go into the bar, the women have made a very big effort in terms of makeup and in terms of how they're dressing and they can look very, very different. To most men who aren't able to look past that because, they haven't had enough experience seeing perhaps a pretty girl in the club when she's dolled and then seeing her in the day-to-day and having that comparison. So, to go to the club, I feel like they have this inflated idea of what they're getting in terms of beauty especially, if they've had a few drinks.

They're expectations are going to be very high but, if they meet them out during the day in more normal situations, the sexual nature of the dress, the skin revealing, everything is turned down a bit. So, I feel like the guys will be less biased in their opinion of what the girl is really like. I think that has two advantages.

First of all, if you meet her during the week, you're probably going to get something the same as you would have expected and you're not going to have any surprise based on the difference between what you saw and what you're seeing now.

I'm wondering what you think of this is guys also watch a lot of porn. They're watching a lot of media and stuff where we have these perfectionist images of women and perhaps, when they're going into bars, they're thinking, "These are the types of girls I am more interested in." Maybe they're thinking that they don't really see that many hot women out during the day because, they're not all dolled up. They have not made all this extra effort which they're used to seeing in the press and stuff so, their standards are being pushed up a little bit higher whereas the actress obviously, have a ton of makeup when they're performing on set.

So, it kind of makes it into this situation where they're getting this higher value in clubs but really, the reality is, if they're out during the day, they're probably able to meet hotter women. Maybe they don't look as hot but, the reality is that they're hotter and probably higher quality in many areas or at least equal but, the guys don't realize it because, they have this bias working in terms of what they see in the club environment versus the daytime.

Daytime is also a little bit of less of a stimulated environment and also, what I find from experience is that when people are more stimulated, more excited, they tend to have this rosier view on everything's going on around them. It's a bit more excitement about everything that's going around so, they also value things is a bit higher as well.

[Dave Pounder]: Yes, everything you're saying can be said from the counter-example of women and men and social status and resources. You have a girl and you're out at a bar in that environment, you have the guy in his flashy car, dressed really nicely, buying you expensive drinks and food all night long. Where, if you meet the guy out and about at the park or the grocery store, he's not buying you anything.

So, you could use that same argument to say that the girl's going to be let down because, she's at the bar and a guy just spent $300 on her and the next day and they're hanging out and he didn't spend anything. He didn't show up with, conceptually speaking, a check for $300 or some gifts when he showed up and now, he's just a regular guy that not's doling out resources.

To what you say about the point that's interesting is first of all, I don't think pornography creates an image that guys then desire. In other words, if pornography, were only older overweight women, I don't think guys would all of a sudden say, "Okay, I'm into older overweight women because that's what's in porn."

I think porn basically produces the ideal image of what guys want which is youth and .70 waist-hip ratios and other cues of fertility and facial symmetry, sexual willingness with low investment, things that men respond to. Guys know that men respond to that so, the porn industry makes those movies and guys flock to that.

The opposite of that is so of the romance industry. Who primarily reads romance novels? It's almost always women. There isn't a variety of different guys she's having sex with. It's usually one guy that overcomes a bunch of different obstacles to win her love and the climax, so to speak, of the romance novels is when they profess love for each other and they go off and they get married.

What happens is, women see these soap operas and these "chick flicks" that sort of depict that and then, you can back to your earlier argument about when they go out to the bars. The go out the bar, here's this guy, he's handsome, he's dressed nice, he's successful, he's spending money on her, it's everything that she reads about in the romance novels. Then, she's let down the next day when he's not waiting at her doorstop.

What you'll find all through evolutionary psychology is that men and women faced different adaptive problems over evolutionary time. There's a reason why women and men are anatomically different. Women have breast and men don't. Why is that? Women nurse. The point of the breast is to be able to feed nutrition to newly born babies to help them to get what they need to prevent disease and grow up healthy but, since men don't nurse, we don't have boobs. So, the idea that we are physically different also logically follows that our emotions or that our minds would be very different and that's because, we have faced different evolutionary adaptive problems over time.

For men, we have unlimited sperm. Each ejaculate has millions of sperm. We produce active sperm from as low as say age 16 in puberty all the way up until our 70s we can still theoretically get girls pregnant and sperm is cheap. We can have unlimited kids. I could have sex with 10 girls a day for the rest of my life and have a million kids.

Women conversely have a fixed number of eggs and once they hit menopause, that's it. Women also have what's called minimal obligatory parental investment which means that if I meet a girl walking down the road and we just happen to have low investment indiscriminate sex with each other, that's the extent of my investment.

I could climax in five seconds and be on my way and never see her again but, if she were to get pregnant, she has a minimal obligatory parental of 9 months and she has to basically raise the kid and she's not going to know the genetic quality. She doesn't know that I didn't have mental problems or health issues. She doesn't know my ability to provide protection and resources to maximize the likelihood of that child surviving.

So, a poor mate choice for a woman is very, very costly. A poor mate choice for a man is insignificant. This is why guys go around and wants a variety of different partners and women typically want to get to know the guy. It's not bad that women are "gold-diggers" so to speak. It's not bad, it's just natural much in the same way that men are "dogs" and want to have sex with everything.

It's just that we're wired that way and once people understand the differences, if I were a woman, I do the same thing. Why would I date a janitor making $10 an hour when I can date a physician making a half million dollars a year if I want my kids to get the best education and to live in the safest area and to do other things that will maximize their probability of survival and reproduction?

[Angel Donovan]: Thanks for providing that counter-example of the man. It's kind of like when you go into bars and these club environments, it's inflated in general. So, it's getting a bit away from the expectations of what the reality is going to be afterwards and people should keep that in mind if they're a woman or if they're a man when they're going into these kind of area and they're meeting people, it's not going to live up to their dream most likely.

Let's take a step back and talk a little bit more about your lifestyle. Where are you living today and what is your lifestyle like?

[Dave Pounder]: I live in Boca Raton, Florida. It's kind of a like a country-club community in the Greater Miami area between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. I sort of engineered a life, kind of like you. I'm kind of a minimalist. I've never liked waking up in the morning.

So, I engineered a life through producing adult movies back in the day or through this education company that I have now where basically, I can wake up every day at eleven, I can wear shorts and sandals, I can make my own schedule. I don't make nearly as much money as I could have made had I made more movies or hired more directors back in the day or had I expanded this current business to other cities and states but, it's never been about amassing wealth. It's been about engineering a lifestyle.

In terms of dating, I don't believe for men, that monogamy is natural which gets back to the evolutionary explanations for that. I think most relationships, guys and girls are together and the guys are secretly cheating and the girls don't know and the girls could be too if the guys aren't investing physically, emotionally, or financially in the relationship.

I've noticed that a lot of people who tend to know a lot about dating are single and I think the reason for that, and I sort of gaged this from you too from talking to you is that there's this ethically dilemma. I call it the ethical considerations of sexual conflict theory. So, I don't want to sit there and sneak around on a girlfriend and have her say, "Where were you?" "I was working late." I don't want to have to cover my tracks or what I'm doing. I would like to have a loving, caring relationship because, I think that that's important but, I also want to be able to have variety unencumbered by having to lie.

So, I find personally for me, it's never been hard for me to meet girls because, I'm tall, I'm personable, I'm outgoing, I have a lot of the traits that women desire in men in general. So, I know that if I upset one girl, there'll be another one down the road that I can easily just meet.

So, for me, I have sort of chosen to be single because, then I can have these low-investment sex that I desire and then, as I come across women that I like more and I want to have more with then, I enter into a relationship with them being completely honest. "Listen, I'm not going to be monogamous. I just don't want to lie." Usually, the girl gets very attached and then, she can't handle the fact that it's really an open relationship and then, she leaves me.

It's a problem because, I think deception is inherent in any successful relationship which sounds bad but, it's true. I think, I need to do what most guys do. I just don't have the ethics to do it which is to basically have a girlfriend that I love and she loves me and we do things together. We take walks, we go to dinner and then, to secretly when I'm at work or traveling or if I have the opportunity as it arises hook up with another girl and then, just not tell her but, it's just not my personality. I can't do it.

I would rather be single, enjoy the variety and have sort of these interim shorter-term relationships that are intimate as opposed to being in a longer term relationship where I have to forgo the variety which would just make me unhappy and resentful or cheat like most guys do but then, I just don't want to deal with the ethical implications of that.

[Angel Donovan]: So, how long do relationship last where you see a girl more than once or twice? Do you see a lot of girls just as a casual one night thing?

[Dave Pounder]: It all depends. Before, I knew all of this stuff and I was just a regular guy and my first girlfriend in college, I was with her for six years and the only reason we broke up is because, I wanted to know what it was like to have sex with other girls and I didn't want to cheat on her. So again, the ethical thing came in.

Then, I was engaged to a girl who was amazing and I still love her to this day but, she wanted to have kids. I never wanted to have kids ever. I realize most guys want to have kids but, it's always been an assault on my freedom, so to speak. I just feel like kids are an indefinite liability long-term, it's always going to cost money and there's always going to be something. Actually, the social-science research surrounding kids actually shows that having kids is negatively correlated with happiness.

[Angel Donovan]: Seriously? I haven't read that. That's terrible.

[Dave Pounder]: I know. Talk to Dan Gilbert at Harvard but, if you talk to any social psychologist they'll tell you that the actual self-reported data on happiness because, everybody rationalizes their experience.

[Angel Donovan]: Is that for the guys or is that for both because, my sister recently had a kid and she's the happiest she's ever been, she's calm, she's doting on the kid every day and she's laughing all the time because, the kid is hilarious. Anecdotally, that doesn't make complete sense to me unless you're counting the teenage years. The first three years are probably really nice and then, steadily, it gets more conflictual in terms of relationship and their independence and stuff. Maybe that provides the downside?

[Dave Pounder]: Right, I'll give the downside, and this is actually in my book as well, I sited the research, there's basically four different groups of parental happiness or relationship happiness. So, you and you're girlfriend are together and you say that you are newlyweds and you're married and things are great, you are in the second level of happiness, second of hour.

If you decide to have a child, what happens is, you make an investment of happiness. So, now you're up at three in the morning because, the baby's crying. You've got to get home from work and take him to preschool. There's this investment of worry. Is the kid going to be healthy? Is he going to get kidnapped? Whatever it is, it makes you less happy than before you had the kid. Now, here's where it gets interesting.

Once the kid is actually grown and out of the house and on their own being productive in society then, something happens. If your kid goes off and becomes a lawyer or a doctor or a politician or does something beneficial for society, then, what happens is you catapult from the third group to the happiest group. So, the happiest group is actually people who have had children that are no longer in the house, they're no longer with them and that have gone on and are successful.

Here's the other thing, if you have an adult child living at home that is the least happy group. So, what happens is, by having a child, you're making an investment of happiness from the first group to the third group. The question is what is the probability of your kid being successful and jumping in and driving you into first group or living at home and driving you into the fourth group?

When you look at all of the demographic data on adult children living at home, the trend-line in the United States is that that trend-line is increasing. So, you have a much higher probability of actually going into group four than you do of going into group one.

The other thing too, remember everybody rationalizes their experience. So, people who had kids say, "Oh, I'm glad I had kids." People who had a cancer say, "Oh, I'm so glad I had cancer because, I wouldn't have gone to the oncology ward and I wouldn't have met my wife who I met at the oncology ward." What they don't realize is that if they didn't have cancer and they didn't go to the oncology ward they would have met their wife at the tennis club or at the beach of somewhere else. So, people underestimate.

It's like terrorism. People say, "Why didn't the FBI prevent this terrorist attack?" You hear about what happened not about the 50 others that were actually prevented. In statistical terms, there's a beta color fish associated with each bowl and the beta color fish that's associated with having children is slightly negative.

So, the idea is the subjective experience of people. I mean, you take a guy like you. I don't know you but you sound like a happy guy. If I say, "Hey, Angel are you happy?" You might but, I don't think you'd say, "Oh, I'm miserable. I'm suicidal." Meanwhile, I don't think that people with kids are miserable either but, when you take these objective criteria and ask people to subjectively evaluate their happiness, the people without kids are actually happier than the people with kids but, we need to have kids.

We live in a society where the social norm surrounding things (and Dan Gilbert talks about this as well) have to be in line with the continuance of society. So, we could argue, "Everybody should do what we do. We should all be minimalists, have more free time." Work is hard but, we can't have that as a social norm because then the GDP would collapse.

So, we need everybody else to basically want to work really hard while you and I figure it out and be minimalists.

[Angel Donovan]: So, for the audience out there, please don't do what we're doing.

[Dave Pounder]: Exactly right and the same thing is that people should get married and they should have kids because, we need people to support the elderly population as they move into their retirement. We need all these things to happen but, I think once you really understand that how it works, social norms are geared more toward the betterment of society in a utilitarian sense and not so much the betterment of the individual. If you really look at the social psychologist research around happiness and even human mating, it's very different than what this sort of prevailing social norm is.

[Angel Donovan]: I think the thing that comes back on this pod cast time and time again, show after show is that people don't ask questions about this stuff. We have the social norms: get married, have kids, get a job. The first step is, take a step back and do some thinking about this, do some reading about this and find out what you actually think instead of just going straight diving into it with social norms and not thinking about and potentially waking up ten years later thinking, "Oh, that was a huge waste of my time and it was the wrong thing for me."

Let's go back again to your lifestyle a little bit. So, how long do you typically see girls for? The whole point of this is I want to expose guys to different ways of living, different dating lifestyles, relationship lifestyles because, there is a relatively narrow social norm and they don't have ideas about what kind of design they can introduce into this kind of lifestyle. So, you're probably a bit more of an outlier. You have a slightly different one so, I would like them to learn what that is.

[Dave Pounder]: Let me preface that with an employment analogy which is there are certain jobs that pay salary only and then, there's certain jobs are commission-based like often times in sales. When you look at the people who make a lot of money, often times your top sales people in organizations make more than the CEO because, they're on a commission.

If you're not a good salesman, if you can't go out there and sell the product one, you won't be in sales and if you are, you're not going to make a lot of money. So, in order to make those crazy sales salaries, you have to be successful in the sales environment.

So, I see getting married or being in a relationship kind of like the salary job. It attracts a certain type of person that maybe, if you're a short guy, you don't have a lot of personality, you don't have a lot of resources or social status, and you’re better off being in the relationship. It's kind of like having the salary.

Now, if you're tall, outgoing, confident, personable, have some social status and resources and you're interested in "money" or in this case "variety" or being able to entertain having sex with different women then, you're likely to be successful in that sales environment. If you want to make $800,000 a year, going a salaried job route is probably not the way to go. You might become the CEO but, it's unlikely statistically.

As a sales guy, if you want to be a real estate broker or head hunter or any other sales person, it's not uncommon for people to make easily six figures in those types of jobs. So, I think you really have to assess your own mate value before determining what to do. If I wasn't who I am in terms of my personality and height and all that kind of stuff, changes are, I'd probably be in a relationship.

So, I dated a girl off and on recently for about three years and she's awesome. I do love her. We cuddled. We took walks together. It's nice to have someone to depend on but, every time I went off and I hooked up with another girl (because I don't want to hide stuff, so I would tell her I'm not available), I could tell that it really hurt her and it made me feel bad because, I knew that the lifestyle that I was living was not the life style that she wanted to live.

The other analogy that I use is marriage. I think when a guy and girl get married, the woman says, "Wow, isn't this great? I have this husband. We're together for the rest of our lives." The guy thinks, "Well, I wish I could have sex with other girls. My wife isn't going to let me. So, I'm kind of monogamous just her but, I'd rather not be but, oh well. At least, I'm with her right?"

When I look at swinger couples, it's the opposite. The guys say, "Isn't this great? We're married. We have this great relationship. We get to have sex with all these other people" and the wives think, "Well, this is okay. I mean, I love him. I do this for him. It makes him happy. I get to stay with him." They'd rather not be swingers. They'd rather be monogamous.

[Angel Donovan]: Is that the general rule? Just a bit of background, you've spent time in the porn industry, 10 years as an actor?

[Dave Pounder]: Yes, actor, producer, director, consultant and I got into the porn business actually through the swinger world.

[Angel Donovan]: Right so, how much swinging have you done in your time?

[Dave Pounder]: I've been in the lifestyle since probably 2000 so about 14 years and then, the porn was just about a year after that.

[Angel Donovan]: So, we haven't really talked in depth about swinging before. Can you give a quick background on that? What does that actually mean? Does that mean that you have a set community? What is swinging?

[Dave Pounder]: Swinging is kind of like a sub-culture. It's mainly couples, couples meeting other couples. Then, some couples want to meet single girls or single guys. Obviously, just from our own conversation, there are not a lot of single girls in the lifestyle. So, if you go to like a swinger event, you're going to see overwhelmingly couples and then, you'll see guys, if that party allows single guys which a lot don't. Then, you'll see a very select handful of single girls.

Now, the single girls are a little crazy. They're nutty, to the point that even on my profile in certain swinger sites I say, "No single women, just couples with a straight husband" because, a lot of times, the girls that are single girls are into drugs. They're just in a bad place in life, kind of like the adult film actresses.

What I've noticed about the couples is nine times out ten, it's not like the couple just jumped into the lifestyle. The guy nudged the wife. They talked about it for years before they finally went to the first experience and just watched other people having sex. It was a very slow process to get the girl into the lifestyle where she became comfortable.

[Angel Donovan]: Once she's in there, does she get into it and she enjoys it or is it how you described before, where she's just doing it because she likes the guy?

[Dave Pounder]: It's just like a male in a monogamous marriage. So, think about a male in a monogamous and could have a great wife and kind of be happy but, he still kind of wishing he could have sex with other girls. So, the girl could still be enjoying the environment and happy with her husband but, she doesn't necessarily need to go out and have all of these different things.

I've noticed too that when couples split up in the lifestyle and they're no longer together, the guy tries to remain in the lifestyle as a single guy and most girls just leave the lifestyle entirely, not all but most. So, it's definitely drawn upon evolutionary lines. Even when you look at couple profiles on the swinger sites, there's like 50 pages and 48 are of the girl and there is two of the guy. It's always about advertising the girl.

[Angel Donovan]: That's funny. That's like on http://www.OkCupid.com because, on some of these profiles where they're basically looking to hook up with single girls mostly. They're looking for a single girl to partake in their sexual lifestyle and they'd be a couple but, most of the shots were often of the girl.

[Dave Pounder]: Of the girl?

[Angel Donovan]: Yes. So, to get started, what did you do? Are there some sites on line?

[Dave Pounder]: What happened was, the first girl I dated in college for six years, we used to go to strip clubs together because, she didn't want to hook up with the girls because she wasn't cool. So, she said, "Well, let's just go to strip clubs and stuff."

They got me a subscription to Hustler magazine and I was living in Irvine, California at the time working for some internet company. Then, I noticed an article about a swingers club in Costa Mesa and it was called (I don't even know if it's still around because, this is back in 2000) Panther Palace.

So, I did some research on Panther Palace and this was before the internet was super popular so, you had to mail out information. They would call you. You would meet this people at a non-descript location. They would make sure that you weren't a cop, not that it was illegal but, they were just trying to keep it under wraps.

Then, when I got out of grad school and I moved back to Irvine, I basically went there and I checked it out and sure enough, I hear this girl making these sex noises and there's like a gang bang. There was a girl and 20 guys and then, other couples in other rooms hooking up.

Then, I met this guy Maurice and Maurice introduced me to a couple that he knew. I hooked up with that guy's wife on the coach and then Maurice noticed that most people go get a room, I was just doing it in front of everybody. I didn't care. Maurice said, "I know a guy in L.A. in the adult film business. He's a production manager for Wild Life Videos. His name was Adam.

He said, "Do you want be in an adult movie?" At the time, I was 24 or 25 and I said, "Absolutely, that would be fun." So, he put me in touch with Adam and that's how I ended up getting into the adult film industry.

[Angel Donovan]: So today, in terms of swinging, what do you do? Are there some specific sites, big sites that people use?

[Dave Pounder]: There are and I'm going to give those out and the reason for that is that the lifestyle is a very tight knit community and what we don't want in the lifestyle is a bunch of horny guys just signing up so they can try get off. Obviously, the people that are listening want dating advice. How can they better interact with girls? What we don't want is an influx of single guys coming in that doesn’t understand the rules.

[Angel Donovan]: It sounds clearly for couples. We get all types listening to this, by the way. We have married guys. We have long-term relationship guys. We have all sorts but, I understand. They can Google around but, are there basically a few big ones and you have some niched ones or how is it?

[Dave Pounder]: A lot of it's regional like if you're in the Northwest or the Southeast, depending on where you are. A lot of people will be on one site and they'll meet me because, they did a search and there's maybe like a couple profiles in this area and I'll tell them, "Have you looked at this site?" They'll say, "Oh wow, that's the regional site for this."

There's probably one or two big sites in every region of the US. It's all over the world but, I'm just talking the US. It's maybe like the West Coast, the Southeast, the Midwest, the Northeast and the Central Plains. So, probably like five different regions but, there's a practice to it that you've really have to be indoctrinated in the sense that there are so many guys.

A lot of couples will put on there, "No single guys" on their profiles because, they're tired of guys relentlessly calling them. The guy's role is really just a toy to the relationship. So, you could have sex with the hottest girl in the world and most guys will keep endlessly calling the couple and they'll have to change their phone number and say, "Screw these single guys. We hooked up with them and they don't leave us alone. They showed up at our house. Our kids were home."

[Angel Donovan]: They're not cool.

[Dave Pounder]: No, now the guys that are cool, guys like me that have a lot of validations and have been in the lifestyle for a while and we understand how the game works and there's a validation system like, "Oh, I met Dave and he was great."

[Angel Donovan]: It's like a referral or friendship based?

[Dave Pounder]: Yes, it's like on Ebay, you guy something?

[Angel Donovan]: Do you do ratings or stuff on the site?

[Dave Pounder]: Yes exactly like, "Oh, he was great. He was not great." The other thing too is like a lot of couples will tell you that it's hard for couples to meet couples because, everybody has to like everybody. Often times, they'll like guys like myself or what they call "Preferred Single Guys" or "Respectful Single Guys" because, most guys, if you're personable and outgoing, can get along easily with both the guy and the girl and then, they welcome you into the relationship.

Single girls are too but, it's really hard to find single girls who are sane or not on drugs or some other situation like that but, it's definitely growing. There's definitely a lot more people in the lifestyle now. There are more sites then there ever was and I think that people are sort of adopting this non-monogamy lifestyle just because of the market conditions that are happening in the dating world.

[Angel Donovan]: I think I've spoken about this on the pod cast before, one situation I've come across, a girl I met, she had to open her marriage up and start going to swing clubs and stuff because, her husband was cheating on her constantly. She wanted to keep the marriage together for the kids and she loved him and so on so she said, "Okay, let's open the relationship up." Is that like a very typical situation?

[Dave Pounder]: That happens. I talk in my book about guys can be in the best relationship ever and if they have the opportunity, they'll still cheat knowing that they won't get caught. Women cheat for a reason. So, in other words, this woman probably wasn't cheating until she discovered that her husband was cheating on her or that her husband wasn't emotionally available.

[Angel Donovan]: It was slightly different. She wasn't interested in cheating. She said, "If you want to have sex with more women, fine but, let's be open about it."

[Dave Pounder]: Sure and that's good. I talk to a lot of these wives in the lifestyle and I ask them, "Would you rather do this with your husband together or would you rather have him go off and do his own thing and you just don't know about it or you stay at home?" Invariably, the women say, "No, no, I want to know. I want to participate," even though they don't like it they say, "I want to be part of it. I want to know what's going on."

What's interesting is the girls who don't know what's going on are actually happier. When I look at women or I survey women and I know their husbands are cheating because, let's say I know the guy and let's say the wife doesn't know, she seems much more content believing that her husband is monogamous.

If you read my book, it really, really gets into that. I might as well plug it while I'm up here. If you go to http://www.ObsceneThoughts.com, you can read the book reviews, you can read the editorial reviews from Kirkus Reviews, from Ford Clarion. It really has a good evolutionary explanation of the differences of men and women and it says the best way for a relationship to happen.

What it is that my observation is that the best relationship are where the guy and a girl are in a perceived monogamous relationship where the girl believes that it's monogamous and the guys just subtly cheats. I think that's most relationships today and that's where both parties are maximized.

I use an analogy of poison and I say for example, "Angel, I'm going to poison your cereal and you're okay with dying" and you say, "That's cool, no problem." You're suicidal, I'm going poison your cereal and you're okay with it. So, I put poison in your cereal, you eat the cereal and then, you die. What killed you was the poison.

What if I didn't tell you that I was poisoning the cereal. You had no knowledge and I poisoning your cereal. You ate the cereal without the knowledge but, you're still going to die because, it was the agent of the poison that killed you.

Conversely, if I told you that I was poisoning you, so you believed in your head that you were being poisoned but, I never added any poison to the cereal. You're not going to die because, there's no poison in it.

Contrast that with infidelity, if you're a wife and your husband tells you he's not cheating but, he's cheating on you every day, in theory. Every day, he hires a different escort to meet him at work and have sex with him at lunch. If the wife never finds out, even though his penis entered a million vaginas, she is content and happy as can be.

Meanwhile, let's say he never cheated ever. He's been completely faithful and he goes home and he gets this psychological condition to be deceitful and says, "Honey, I have to tell you something. I've cheated on you with 200 girls." He just said this thing and wants to see her reaction. She's going to cry and be miserable and probably end the relationship even though he never cheated. He just gave her the perception that he did.

It's not like the minute a guy has sex with another girl, the wife has a heart attack or the minute the penis passes the vaginal plain that she passes out right, that would be a reason to say, "Don't cheat because, there's a consequence." The real consequence unlike the poison is the knowledge or the belief that your husband is cheating irrespective of whether it's actually happening.

[Angel Donovan]: What do you think of intuition though because, I think a lot of the time, where the guy doesn't say anything, I think women often have suspicions. Like you were saying in your relationships like when you're not available or something is going on, they'll start making the assumption that you were with other girls.

You're sister is a bit more unique because, you've told her it's like that but, in a married couple when things start adjusting and he's not there a few times and there's little things like that, girls tend to build intuition and I think a lot of a women will pick up on some kind of things. We're kind of evolutionary programmed if you read the research to kind of pick up on those kinds of things.

[Dave Pounder]: Well, take a guy like Tiger Woods. He was cheating with porn stars and escorts forever. His wife never knew about it. She was happy until one of the porn girls called his wife and told her and then, she learned about it and then, she flipped out even though he was doing it forever right?

The thing is, you've got to remember though, just because a guy wants to have sexual variety, doesn't mean he can attain it. If he works at McDonald's and he's short, he can want all the sexual variety in the world but, it doesn't mean that girls are going to have sex with that guy. That guy that's low status is more likely to have a normal recurring schedule where the wife says, "Oh, how come you weren't home at exactly 6:00 when you normally show up."

If you're Tiger Woods or a professional athlete or a politician or someone who travels a lot for business, the regular schedule is that you work late until 10:00 or that you are traveling and that you're gone and the person doesn't know. It's those people who are most desired by females, the social status and resources that are the ones that have the opportunity and those are the ones that are able to realize it. If you're an attorney and you're working on a big case and you're at the office every day until 10:00, if you sneak out at 8:00 and hook up with your paralegal and then, still come home at 10:00, nothing changes from the wife's perspective.

[Angel Donovan]: So is your perspective, just to get this tied down, for men, basically, if you're in a monogamous relationship, the reasons are going to be because your mate value isn't high enough. You would not be able to get easily access to other opportunities because, you're not attractive enough to women that you're interested in. Or is it because you're following social norms and you're doing the right thing because, you feel like it and, you happen to have more self-discipline than the majority of people so, you're successfully doing it and not cheating.

[Dave Pounder]: I would say that there are different relationship options that people can choose from. The can choose to be in a monogamous relationship or marriage. They can choose to be openly open. They can choose to be single their whole lives. They can choose to do whatever they want. Why people make their decisions is really up to them.

Now, if you are hypothetically a high-social-status male with resources and you choose to be monogamous. You can be monogamous and you could be secretly like, "This kind of sucks. I wish I wasn't monogamous" and be sadistic to yourself. It's much the same way that a girl can go to a swinger club with her husband and gang bang these guys because it makes her husband excited and not really like it but, do it for him. She could do that and just personally not be fulfilled in that nature.

Conversely, if you are a guy, like my friend Rubin who doesn't do very well with women, if he finds a girl that shows him interest and wants to be with him, he will jump all over that and commit to her and marry her and be with her. He won't cheat but not because he's chosen not to cheat but because, nobody else is coming up to him and giving him the opportunity. If they did, then he's likely to cheat and probably feel guilty because of the social norms surrounding that and then feel bad for that.

[Angel Donovan]: Do you think any guy who has a really attractive woman come up to him and present a very straightforward opportunity that's going to be kept secret is going to accept that?

[Dave Pounder]: As Chris Rock says, "I think men are as faithful as his options if guy believes that there is no way that his wife would ever find out." Guys know that girls don't just come up to the and say, "Excuse me, can I give you a blow job?" So, if I'm walking down the road and some girl comes up to me and says, "Excuse me, can I give you a blow job," I'm thinking, "Yes, I want the blow job but, this is weird. What is up? Is this a set up? Is there a hidden camera somewhere? Is someone trying to expose me." I would think something is up.

Conversely, you're a married physician and you're traveling and you're at a bar and you're talking to another girl who happens to be traveling and you guys are sharing drinks together. After two hours of conversation, it's the end of the night, people are going to go back to their hotel rooms for the conference the next day. The woman puts her hand on his leg and says, "Okay, if you want to hang out later, I'm in room 212," and then she goes upstairs. I think there's a very high likelihood in the upper 90% that she's going to have a knock on her door within the next half an hour.

[Angel Donovan]: Have you heard of the work of a David Deida?

[Dave Pounder]: I'm not familiar with David Deida.

[Angel Donovan]: He wrote a book called "The Way of the Superior Man." He's got a bunch of courses out there. He doesn't do anymore. There's another woman doing it. I've been following his stuff and he'll say that basically, men will do what you're saying on a first level. When they get to a certain evolution, he calls it "stages", when they get to another stage, they will start to make a different choice based things that are more important than sex like their purpose, whether it's a business or it's some other endeavor they have which will seem more important.

So, if you take the example of Tiger Woods, he had a lot to use in terms of reputation which obviously hurt him a lot in terms of his career and his financial opportunities. It hurt his sponsorship and all these kinds of things. His behavior had negative implications beyond just his relationship with his wife and far more for him because, he's a celebrity and we see that with more celebrities. They've got negative repercussions.

[Dave Pounder]: Important to also to frame that because, he was in the United States. If you look at Nicholas Sarcozy, the French President, he's notorious for having affairs and there's no social stigma.

[Angel Donovan]: French Presidents always do that though.

[Dave Pounder]: I think all presidents do that but, go ahead.

[Angel Donovan]: Alright, we're guilty of it too of course. I don't feel we expect that of Obama but maybe you can tell me more. I can kind of see his point of view. Lately, I got to a stage where I felt like I've played enough. This has been going on two years and I feel like I had a lot of stuff to do in life. I'm busy.

I went through a period of relationships for two years monogamous. Another one I had for just a few months and I decided to move away from that, again monogamous. Then, these were decisions I made after a very much player, multiple, polyamory focused lifestyle for many years, nearly a decade because, other things became way more important to me and another hook up was just another hook up. There were special hook ups and there were some special experiences but overall, it didn't really mean that much to me anymore. I don't know what you think about that.

[Dave Pounder]: Sure, I'll come to that. First of all, I think there are two things. Another thing that's probably going on with you that you didn't mention is that as you age, your testosterone levels decline and your testosterone is your mating hormone that makes you really go out and seek.

[Angel Donovan]: I check that. I boost mine. I think it is like 900, 1000.

[Dave Pounder]: Oh, you boost your testosterone?

[Angel Donovan]: Yes, I work on it naturally just to keep it up there. I'm 40 now so, I need to kind of do things to make sure it stays high.

[Dave Pounder]: One thing with testosterone, just so you're aware and your viewers, what happens is that your body produces a natural amount of testosterone. If you supplement that artificially, what happens is that your body will make a lower nature testosterone production to offset and then, if you stop that supplement, your body never returns to that normal level of producing.

[Angel Donovan]: Agreed. When I'm talking about boosting, I'm talking about natural methods. We've had guys talking about this and the dynamics of the body and we've covered these things before. We don't recommend taking testosterone.

[Dave Pounder]: To your earlier point, I agree with you doing stats. I'm the same way. I miss the last girlfriend I was hanging out with, walking around and doing stuff and I have opportunities to hook up that often times that I don't do as much. The analogy that I use is this, most women, they look at it as a binary, "He cheated on me or he didn't cheat on me," irrespective of the frequency of cheating.

I look at sexual variety for men like variety of food. Let's say, you just moved to a new area and you're a young guy. You want to try all the different restaurants. "Let's go to Miami. Let's go to West Palm Beach. Let's have pizza, Italian, Mexican." You're tying all these different foods and eventually, you're in your mid-30s, 40s and you think, "I'm sick of eating out all the time. Let's just eat at home and just be healthy and go to the gym."

A lot of people do that and they eat healthy and that's like being in the normal monogamous relationship. You're eating at home most of the time. Just because you used to go out every night which is the guy who, like you let's 10, 20 years ago when you were in the polyamory player lifestyle or how I was, that doesn't mean that you're never going to go out again.

My argument with your case, based on people that I know that are sort of in your situation is that maybe 20 years ago, you had dozens of partners per year now, you're going to have one or two extra pair partners per year as opposed to twenty, so to speak. I think it's unlikely that even with your experience and what you say that if you got married today that you would never have an affair for the rest of your married life. That's not likely. I'm not going to say you're going to go off and start hooking up with all of her friends and trying to do stuff.

[Angel Donovan]: I think, like you, I have the moral ethical thing that would get in the way. So, I'm not sure that marriage is for me, to be honest. Right now, I'm in more of a dating period again. So, you go through phases. I was just talking about that idea that you do go through these phases and maybe it becomes long term and maybe something else becomes more important than just having sex.

[Dave Pounder]: That's what I'm saying. So in other words, things become less important than just going out to the bar and getting drunk with your friends or just going out and getting food but, it doesn't mean that you're not going to go out still and get food every once and a while.

I agree with you, as people age, myself included and you (hearing you talk, I hear a lot of things mirrored in how I live my lifestyle today) is that if I'm with a girl tomorrow like dating, I don't have this urge to go out and have sex with everybody like I used to, like when I was in my 20s. However, from an ethical perspective, I want to know that I have the option if it arises to have a variety opportunity without feeling guilty or bad for taking it because, it's natural for me to do so.

Even though I don't anticipate that happening but, if it does, I want to know that I can take it without having to come back and feel guilty or bad. I think you and I have this same kind of approach to things because, we are knowledgeable about this and we've had a lot of experience. I don't think this is just you and me. I think this is all men.

Again, you and I are in a position where we're able to or were able to get more partners where maybe somebody else wasn't but, I don't think you and I are unique. I think we have the male brain. I think most females have the female brain and even females in the porn business.

I used to joke with my friends, "If you want to get laid, don't hang out with a porn girl. She's had sex all day long. The last thing she wants to do is have sex. If you want to get laid go hang out with a vanilla girl on http://www.OkCupid.com or Plenty of Fish and take her out once or twice and you have a much better chance of getting laid than hanging out with a porn girl unless, you're going to pay the porn girl." [01:00:09]

[Angel Donovan]: Hey Dave, we're on part two of the interview. Thank you for making your time available again.

[Dave Pounder]: Thanks for having me on the show again.

[Angel Donovan]: We were talking about so much last week so, I definitely wanted to get you back on. I thought what we'd do today is start looking at the porn star lifestyle. You've obviously spent quite a bit of time there and you have a reasonable understanding of it. How long were you in the porn world or actively and what kind of roles did you have for how long?

[Dave Pounder]: I was in there a little over a decade. I was working at a bank to start. As I said on the last show, I met this guy at swingers club who though that I would be good for the industry. So, when I went down there and did my first shoot, I then networked with everybody on the set and kind of made things happened but, I didn't quit my job at the bank for about another two years after that. So, I was kind of doing it part-time, kind of moonlighting.

[Angel Donovan]: How much was that? Was it just kind of once per month? It's interesting to get how often are actors doing work, typically?

[Dave Pounder]: It depends. Being a porn actor is like being a realtor. If you're a real estate agent, you could be working all the time; a lot of people have their license but, they don't do anything with them. It's really just individual. You're basically a sales man. You're going around to the different producers and the agents and hustle for work.

I would say when I first started, it was probably one or two a month because, nobody knew who I was and I was just calling around and going to the parties. I met this guy Chase Styles in the business and he just took me under his wing and started introducing me to all the producers, took me to the AVN show in January and then, all of a sudden, I started working once a week and I had to try and finagle things with my boss and make excuses at the bank. I would say, "I have to pick someone at the airport. I have to leave early.

I was living in Irvine at the time which is like a one-hour drive from L.A. or more often times in rush hour traffic. So, I would come in real early so, I could leave early. I would take a Friday off so I could come to the bank on Saturday.

Eventually, I just told my boss what I was doing. He wasn't really happy about it but he said, "Well, you've got to do what you've got to do." Eventually, the human resources people found out. I just told them, "Look, I'm not doing anything illegal. There's a law in Florida that you can't fire people for lawful off-duty conduct. I'm not using company resources. I'm not doing anything on company property. If you fire me, I'm going to challenge it."

They didn't fire me and I just started getting more work that it just made sense for me to quit the bank. I got in around 2001, 2003 I quit the bank and just went full time as a performer for a couple years.

[Angel Donovan]: How much work did you have to go full time?

[Dave Pounder]: I would say I was working three, four times a week.

[Angel Donovan]: Wow, how long was each? What is a full work day? Are you literally on set for eight hours and then, shooting different scenes?

[Dave Pounder]: It depends on the time of shoot. It's like if you're a plumber and you go and say, "What's a typical work day?" It depends. Does somebody just need to fix a leaky toilet or do they need to remodel a bathroom? You're talking 20 minutes versus a whole-day's job or several-day's job.

If you're shooting for a big company like Vivid or at the time, Digital Playground, VCA, these companies, it was like an all-day thing. You'd have to get to set really early. You might do your scene but, you may have to stick around because, you might have a dialogue later where you're interacting with other actors to have the plot come together. Those shoots typically paid more money, maybe $500, $600 a scene just to do the feature role.

Whereas if I did what was called a "gonzo shoot" which is basically, you just show up, pretty much what you see on the internet. There's no plot. You just show up, do your scene and leave. That you could be in and out completely between the minute you arrive on set and the minute you leave set, it's maybe four hours, half of which is paperwork and waiting around for the girl to do her makeup and stills and all that kind of stuff.

It was a really easy lifestyle. You could just bring a book and read or I'd just talk to people or I would call people from my phone or just network with the other performers that were at shoots before or after to try to get more work.

I actually preferred getting paid a lower rate, like getting paid like $400 to do a "gonzo shoot" as opposed to getting paid $500 or $600 to do a feature because, if I could make $400 and be there for four hours only doing an hour and a half worth or work not including paperwork, to me that was more advantageous than getting paid $500 or $600, 25% to 50% but now, you're there three times the amount of time.

[Angel Donovan]: It sounds like the hourly-rate works out better for the "gonzo".

[Dave Pounder]: It does but, on the other side though, it's the feature stuff that really gets distributed that ends up on cable in multiple countries. It has the widest distribution which means you get more notoriety which is more likely to lead to marketing deals if someone's going to create a product after you or you're going to get a contract with a company, they're looking more for name recognition. So, it's better for that.

[Angel Donovan]: Just backtracking, what is "gonzo'?

[Dave Pounder]: "Gonzo" just means there's no plot. You just show up, do the scene and leave. If you went to a basic porn website like http://HornySurferGirls.com [unclear 01:05:18]. "Hey, you're hot. Let's go back to my place." There is no plot. It's not geared toward women. Where these feature companies like Vivid and VCA, there was a huge storyline. It's almost like a soap opera.

You'd have to show up and pretend the girl crashed the car and you're mad and now you're taking her to the auto mechanic. The next scene is the auto mechanic and the girl in the waiting room. There's this big plot because, that appeals more to the female consumer.

[Angel Donovan]: So, that's targeted at couples?

[Dave Pounder]: Yes usually. Vivid is known and VCA and Digital Playground are known to target couples and you also get better distribution if there's a plot. You can go to the soft-core cable channels. They do shoot a hard-core and a soft-core cut. When you're doing a "gonzo" shoot, there's never a soft-core cut. It's just a hard-core cut which is why it takes a shorter amount of time to shoot it.

They say about 30% of the adult content market it women. So, that 30% is primarily going after the more storyline-based content as opposed to just the "gonzo" content. Although, there are women who watch the "gonzo" content as well.

[Angel Donovan]: This is women who are buying? They're paying for subscriptions on line or they're buying DVDs and so on but, is that based as a couple or is it really women going out buying this stuff directly?

[Dave Pounder]: We don't know. We just know the credit card is tied. Who knows, she might be there with her husband. They might be on the female's computer at the boyfriend's house. Just anecdotally, if you just hang out in a porn shop, just a regular shop but you see the traffic that comes through, you're mostly going to see men. The second-most common demographic will be couples and then, you'll see single girls but, you don't really see a lot of single girls hanging out in the porn shop although, they are there on occasion.

[Angel Donovan]: Maybe that's more of a social thing, they don't want to be seen there? Would they buy more on the internet?

[Dave Pounder]: Yes, absolutely.

[Angel Donovan]: That's interesting. How long were you an actor for?

[Dave Pounder]: Over a decade, I never stopped. I just started my own productions because, I could have control over the movie, the talent that we used. The whole time I was in the business, except for a small brief period where I actually met this girl that I got engaged to and I didn't want to freak her out to continue to do porn.

[Angel Donovan]: She didn't know?

[Dave Pounder]: She knew when I met her but, the thing is, I told her because we had a great connection. I said, "For you, I will stop doing the shoots. I'll just produce and direct and we'll use other guys." We used other guys anyways but, I would just not do any scenes because, I knew that would be important to her.

It was actually. It allowed us more time I didn't walk away from the whole thing, I just hired people to produce and direct and do everything. We were just off hiking and traveling around the country really. It was a great experience. I don't have anything bad to say about the business or about my time in it.

[Angel Donovan]: Great so, what were the social implications if any that you came across?

[Dave Pounder]: Just from being in the business?

[Angel Donovan]: Yes, just from being in the business. How did your lifestyle change? What things did you notice?

[Dave Pounder]: For me, nothing really changed. I mean, it changed but, I didn't care that I change. I anticipated the change. It's like saying, if you climb a mountain, "I know it's going to get colder. I know I'm going to have less access to bathrooms and running water. I'm not surprised by the change as I walk up the mountain because, that's why I'm walking up the mountain."

So, I knew that there would be difficulties having relationships after the business or that there were a lot of girls that would get opposed to that or trying to get a regular mainstream job would be difficult as a result of the past experience in the business but, I embraced those challenges. I wanted to address those challenges. I knew when I came in those things would happen and I would have the opportunity to go on shows like this and talk to a wider base or make arguments about why it shouldn't be an issue if people make it an issue.

For example, say you're working at a bank and the company finds out and they fire you. Let's say you live in a state that doesn't have lawful off-duty conduct statue and the company says, "We found out that you used to be in the porn business so now, you're fired. You can no longer be an accountant for our company." Well, why is that a bad thing?

If you're a teacher and they fire you because you were in the porn industry, what's the argument? You could say, "Well, the teacher setting a bad example for the kids." First of all, the kids don't find out. It's always the parents who find out. If the parent were to find out and say, "Hey, we should fire this guy. He's a bad role model for the kids." Why is the argument of being a bad role model only limited to the domain of human sexuality?

We have role models in regards to nutrition, physical fitness. Why don't we fire overweight teachers? Why don't we fire people who are eating poor diets or fast food? "We discovered that you went to McDonald's for lunch. You're fired. You're a bad role model for nutrition for the kids." Why just sexuality?

The other argument could be, "Well kids, it's illegal for them to perform in pornography or consume pornography. So, you were producing this product or you were involved with this product that is unlawfully consumed by a minor." Okay, if you're going to run with that argument, what if somebody used to own a bar?

If they used to own a bar and they don't own a bar anymore or even if they currently own a bar, why should the person who owns the bar be allowed to continue teaching but not the person who produces pornography. We know that to consume alcohol, you have to be 21 years of age. We know to consume pornography, you have to be 18 years of age.

So, if the social threshold is higher in terms of the age limit, then you would think that the penalty would commensurate with that. You would say, "Therefore, the teacher that owns the bar should suffer a harsher penalty than the person who owned a porn video."

Or the argument that, "We don't know if you were in the porn business, you might show them porn or try to recruit them in the porn industry." It's like saying, "You own a bar. You might give them alcohol or try to entice them to go into a bar." What professional would do that?

Anybody could entice someone into pornography or entice somebody into alcohol irrespective of the industry that they worked in. I could work in a Marshall arts company and try to give somebody alcohol. There's no correlation between the two. It's what they call an irrational fear because, people are afraid to discuss the topic.

If I take someone like myself who has no criminal background. I'm very vanilla for the most part. I'm as boring as it gets aside from my colorful adult industry experience. A person that sort of bringing the conversation would say, "What's the problem with adult content? Nobody is forced to do anything they don't want to do. You pick your scene partner."

An agent when I was a performer called me up and said, "We have a scene with so-and-so. Do you want it or not?" I can say no or yes. I never did anal shoots because, I'm not interested in anal. Actually, I did one but, it wasn't supposed to be. The girl just wanted to do it and she was really hot and I was just kind of feeling different that day. So, I said, "What the hell? Let's try it," but it was still my complete choice and a lot of people don't get that.

Belle Knox was the performer from Duke University who was in the news about a year ago because, they found out she was doing porn to pay her tuition. Everybody thought, "Why is this really bright girl who got into Duke doing porn," and she very rationally said, "Why would I take out student loans that I will be paying back for the rest of my life, put a huge financial burden on my family when I realize my premium being a young attractive girl that I can make a $1000 a day because, they pay the girls in the porn video and have no debt."

Everybody flipped out and went crazy and she said, "Listen, I choose my scene partners. I don't do anything I don't want to do. I can leave the set at any time." All these things she's saying is true but, there's this body of social conservatives that are against the fundamental idea of pornography that they just discount that with really listening to what she's saying.

[Angel Donovan]: Let's talk real quickly about the economic financial awards. How much were you making a week and someone like Belle Knox, how much would she be making?

[Dave Pounder]: It depends what your role is. If you're a performer, the girls typically make about twice what the guys make. So, if the girl is making $1200 on a shoot, the guy is probably making $600. If the girl is making $600 on a really small amateur shoot, the guy is probably making $300. So, the general rule of thumb is the girl makes about twice what the guy makes and just the function of how much she works.

The thing is, even though the guy makes a lower rate, they work much more often. So for example, a lot of these websites have a theme. There was the site called http://www.TheMILFHunter.com. It's about this guy that goes around and tries to hook up with these older women. It's always the same MILF Hunter but once you're the MILF, you only work for the shoot once. "We already shot Jennifer. So, we don't need to use her again. I don't want to see the same girl over and over and over again."

So, you always see the same guys. Even though the guy makes half the rate the girl does, the guy works 100 times longer and the guy can be in the business forever. A lot of the guys that come into the business, they never leave. A lot of girls, they're only in for a couple shoots or maybe a couple years and then, they're done. Once they've shot for all the producers, nobody wants to shoot them anymore.

Or they have to up what they do. Maybe a girl didn't do anal scenes, now she will. Now she opens up to a whole another set of producers that she didn't shoot for before. Whereas the guys can shoot for whoever. It's kind of a bulk discount deal. The guys get to work a lot more so, they're getting less rate. Plus, guys naturally want to do porn. It's an evolutionary component that it benefits us.

If I go out to a bar and I meet a girl and I have sex that night. Then, I go to the same bar and meet a different girl and have sex and go to the same bar the next week and go to a different girl and have sex and none of these girls call me and I never see them again. If my friends say, "Let's go out to a bar," I say, "Let's go to that bar. That was a great bar. I love that bar," because I'm getting the variety.

If it's a woman and she goes to a bar and she meets this guy and he gives her some spiel and she goes home and hooks up with him and he never calls her. Then, she goes the next week, meets a different guy, believes all the things he says, goes home, has sex with him and he doesn't call her. Now her friends say, "Let's go to that bar," the girl says, "Screw that. That bars a bunch of losers. Let's go somewhere else," because, she doesn't want the lack of investment or the lack of commitment.

So, porn is kind of antithetical to female evolved sexual psychology but, it's very in line with men so, there's a lot of guys who would do porn if they could. The only the reason the pay guys is really so they're available. I would have done it for free, part time here and there but, I would have had to prioritize the bank at the time. The only thing that allowed me to quit the bank so I was available to all the producers was to get paid to get some amount that would allow to stave myself. That's kind of consistent with what they pay male performers.

[Angel Donovan]: Why do women get into the porn industry?

[Dave Pounder]: Money.

[Angel Donovan]: Always, money?

[Dave Pounder]: Yes, that's it but, it's normal. Again, it's not in a woman's evolved sexual psychology. Think about what a lot of women like. Women typically like weddings and children and things like that. If you're a girl, I'm sure there are plenty of women out there, (I don't have research to support this, just anecdotally, logically thinking about this) I would suspect that there are a lot of women if you said, "Hey, I'm getting married. Will you help me plan my wedding?" That there are a lot of girls that would do that for free.

There are a lot of girls who would maybe take care of a baby for free. I don't mean long term but, little baby, play with them for the day and hang out with the kid. I think there are a lot of women that would welcome that or seek that out but, for guys, I don't necessarily think that's the case.

If I called you up and said, "Angel, I'm getting married. Will you plan my wedding for me?" You would say, "Yeah Dude, why don't you just do it? How much are you going to pay me? I have no interest in doing that." There's no natural genetic interest for that unless you're going to pay me.

That's how women are. If you didn't pay women for porn, there would be no female performers. This is why women are also paid so much more money because, girls will naturally just from an economic theory perspective go to something else that doesn't require them to go against their evolutionary psychology.

So, if you're a girl and you could do porn for $1000 a shoot or you could be a barista at Starbucks for $1000 a day or whatever, overwhelming, they're going to go to Starbucks. If you say, "Hey, Starbucks $1000 a day but, porn is $20,000 a day." Now, you're going to have a lot of girls going to porn.

If you look at the typical age and experience and education of a girl coming into the porn business, she's usually uneducated. She has a high school education at most, usually coming in at 18 or 19-years-old as everybody else at the age does. They don't have any marketable skills but, they know that their value is in their youth and their body.

Where else can you make $1000 a day? I mean, if you're 18 with a high school education, you go anywhere else, you're making minimum wage. You're making $8, $9, $10 an hour unless you live in Seattle where they jacked up the minimum wage recently. It's something like $12 or $13 I think. I don't know, some high number there. The choice is obvious if you need money.

A lot of these girls, they're single mothers or got kicked out of their houses, or whatever but again, they're not forced to it. Nobody's putting a gun to their head. If I'm a girl and I've gotten pregnant because I wasn't smart enough to use contraception, I have the option to get an abortion. I have the option to give it up for adoption. I have the option to work at Starbucks and work seven days a week and spend no time with my kid or I have the option to do one porn shoot a week and make $52,000 a year and spend six days with my kids and go to the beach.

[Angel Donovan]: I don't know if you saw it but, there was an interesting article, kind of a mini-report from an economist last week on the sex industry and escort. One of the things they did is they interviewed a girl who is doing it for monetary reasons, similar to what you're saying. They needed the money. Now, you have a lot of these forums on line which maybe you have for the porn industry where the girls can go and ask questions. They have a community of escorts talking to each other, giving themselves tips and so on.

So, some girls, when they're in need, maybe they're studying or whatever it is and they're go in there and they'll ask, "I really need the money right now. I've got debt or whatever. How safe is it?" They go through all the questions and basically, there are a fair number of women now going on line and those different modalities to sell sex.

Another option would be to become and escort which of course, you have to be even more sexually open. Are the girls coming to the porn industry relatively sexually open already. You described yourself that you were a guy when you got in and you were already swinging and stuff. So, you had a polyamorous lifestyle. It's not that far removed from your original lifestyle in that respect. Are the girls similar in that light?

[Dave Pounder]: I would say that the girls that I like working with are in the sense that all girls are basically coming into it for the money because, if you're a girl and you just enjoy sex for its own sake, you can get that easily by going to your local bar or just having a network of friends. There's always a willing, available guy.

For men, we're the ones that have to do the work to get sex. That's why the porn industry is appealing because, you can just go in and get paid to have access to what you would otherwise pay for whether it's through direct prostitution or through what I call "social prostitution" which is buying dinner and flowers and roses and other things to single resources towards women.

What I find is, there are a lot of girls doing it just only for the money. They don't even like sex. They're just there because, that's how they're going to get the money. They come through the shoot. You can tell that they're not excited to be there, that they're not animated and full of life.

Then, you have the girls that are swingers and their husbands come to the shoots and they watch and everybody's happy. The girl says to the husband, "Hey, can you believe I'm working with so-and-so. This is director so-and-so," and they're all happy and everybody's happy to be there but they were already in the business to begin with.

An analogy that I use in the book, not so much for the porn but just for women who are open to partner-variety which is kind of opposed to the evolved sexual psychology of women is kind of like a horse. A lot of people who love horses that live on farms and have horses will say that the horse loves to be ridden. "The horse loves when I ride him."

We know naturally that's not true because, any horse that you take in the wild and try to ride it, naturally, it's going to buck off the cowboy. The cowboy has to basically what they call "break the horse" just through riding it all the time and basically breaking it or taming it. Then, all of a sudden it allows people to ride it and then, the human basically rationalizes that the horse actually likes to be ridden where in reality, it would probably rather just be free in the wild, roaming around, not subject to whatever the master wants.

When, I look at women who are sexually promiscuous, enjoying partner-variety or sex for its own sake, most of those women from the research I've done have come from either a sexual abuse, they were either raped or molested by a parent or something (and that can happen just once) or they have sustained emotional abuse usually in a physical domain.

It's not it's someone saying, "You're stupid, you're stupid, you're stupid," but somebody saying, "You're fat, you're ugly, look at that nose, who would want to date you?" There are two different things going on.

With the girl that's say had he physical sexual trauma like the rape or the sexual coercion in some capacity, usually she's acting out or having sex with all these different guys as a means of catharsis to try to recreate the experience in her head to master it because, she'll never really understand it. That cycle just repetitively continues.

The other argument is that on the emotional side that she's not doing for catharsis but, she's doing it for self-validation to say, "I've been told my whole life that I'm ugly or that I'm fat or my nose is whatever but, this guy's having sex with me. So therefore, I am valuable." Then, the guy moves on to the next girl so, she feels bad. So, she goes out and she revalidates herself by having sex with another guy.

It's really for lack of self-esteem or emotional reason that you see a lot of girls that are actively seeking out partner-variety for its own sake. I would love to say that there are women who are promiscuous and there are women who aren't and there men who aren't promiscuous and there are men who are.

That's was my naive insight when I was 20-year-old and I broke up with my first girlfriend because I thought, "Well, she's just as sexual as me. I need to find someone like me who wants to go out and be a swinger and do all those kinds of stuff." The reality is, when you talk to these people who are swingers, very rarely does the wife get the guy into the lifestyle. It was almost always the guy 99 out of 100 times that not only asked the wife but, discussed it over years in their marriage.

I'll ask them, "How'd you get in?" They say, "Well, at first, we talked about our fantasies and I said I thought it would be really cool to see her with another guy. Then, we would be out and I would say, 'What about him? Wouldn't it be cool if we went back?' We talked about. Then, we thought about it. Then we went out and then, she changed her mind." It was this long process of "breaking her" into the lifestyle in the same way that you would break the horse into submission to allow it to be ridden.

I think that says a lot about psychology and about female sexuality and male sexuality and I think the happiest females generally are women that believe they are in monogamous relationship. I think the happiest males generally are males who are in open relationships or in the lifestyle.

I talk about this in the book that I think the optimal relationship is what actually is happening in most relationships when the people acknowledge which is the woman believes she's in a monogamous relationship where the guy's actually cheating when he travels or with a coworker or whatever but just isn't stupid enough to tell his wife about it.

Then, everybody's maximized. The woman thinks she's in a sexually committed relationship. The guy isn't but, he really is emotionally committed and everybody's happy. They have their kids. Everybody loves "Happily Ever After" assuming nobody finds out.

[Angel Donovan]: Basically, to sum up what you're saying and you also relay this in the book, porn actress is damaged goods in some way. I take by that, I guess you haven't had relationships with these types of women or you haven't been looking for relationships with these women?

[Dave Pounder]: I talk to them. You make your friends like any other job and you hang out with them and it just becomes an obvious, apparent trend. I remember, I had lunch with an agent here in Florida about two months ago, I keep in touch with people.

I haven't been in the business for a couple years now because, there's no more money in it so, I'm on to other things but, I asked him, "Not that porn is more accepted but, have you noticed a difference in the profile of the girl that comes in? Back when I was in the business, they were 18-25 and they were all from broken or sexual abused." He said, "It's all the same. They're all damaged in some way."

We know that and people in the business knows that. They don't like to talk about that but again, it's not necessarily a bad thing. If you're in a prison and you talk to the prison guards, most of those guys in prison had a pretty messed up lifestyle. That's why they ended up to a life of crime but, don't blame the prison just because, the prisoners end up there. Blame the process that made people commit crimes so they ended up in prison.

The porn industry doesn't make broken people. Broken people come into the porn industry. So, don't hate the porn industry for giving them an option. Hate the society, hate the fact that we don't openly discuss rape. Hate the fact that we don't more aggressively prosecute sexual offenders.

There was a recent study in the news that a lot of these universities are under fire because, they have unprocessed rape kits from students that were raped. That's inexcusable and that's your cohort of people who are coming into the porn business.

[Angel Donovan]: To extend this a little bit, if I think back through all my girlfriends and experiences, the most extreme experiences I had were with one girlfriend who was bi-polar and had a terrible childhood, more like the emotional abuse you were talking about throughout her childhood. I wonder if you've seen that as a general role in relationships in terms of the extremes women are interested in or explored. She was actively interested in exploring the extremes further than I was which is unusual for a girl. So, I'm just wondering if you've seen that kind of thing in your life?

[Dave Pounder]: No, not really. What I've noticed is once a girl falls in love with a guy, she's basically do whatever the guy wants her to do. Take something extreme, crazy like, "I want to watch you have sex with a German Shepard," or something crazy like that. If the girl loves the guy and she know that's really what he wants, she'll do it. It's amazing what women will do for a man that she loves.

If there's a girl that just shows up and they're on their second date and some guy has some strange sexual requests, it's extremely unlikely she's going to do that because, she doesn't care about the guy. She's just trying to get to know him but, once a woman falls in love with a guy, she will basically do whatever he wants to please him. Women are pleasers just naturally. They want to do well for those that they love. I think that's what I've seen.

When you go to a fetish convention and they're walking around in a dog lease with her husband and it says, "Slut" painted on their butt. I don't think if they break up or if the husband died in a car accident (the love the guy so, they're not breaking up with him) and they met the next boyfriend, I don't think she would say, "Could you put me on a lease and write 'Slut' on my butt?"

If the new guy's fantasy is to watch her have sex with other girls and not even guys, I think that's what she'll do for him. This is just anecdotal experience from what I see. I don't have any research to support those statements but, that's just what I've noticed in terms of a pattern.

Now, to your early point about somebody who's maybe had a crazy traumatic upbringing and they're into crazy stuff, that could very well be but, it's like anything else. You look at these people that shoot up movie theaters and try to cause mass destruction, most of them have mental illness. They're not rational sane people. The guy that was in the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre massacre thing, his psychology professor even wrote a letter that they were concerned about his mental state. Normal people don't do that.

So whether you're acting extraordinarily in a sexual capacity or in any other social context, I think a lot of that comes back to the mental illness that you described. When you talk about kinks and fetishes and weird stuff, I think, in the sexual context exclusively, I think that's women just responding to men that they love and trying to please the man they love and adore.

[Angel Donovan]: Interesting. Another thing I just wanted to see what your ideas would be on. There's been a community I've become a little bit involved in in L.A. It's a global community called "One Taste: Orgasmic Meditation." I don't know if you've heard of it. Basically, the structure is, once you get into it but, guys will go around and stroke a girl's clitoris for 15 minutes which is the structure of the Orgasmic Meditation.

You'll go to a girl's house. You'll give her Orgasmic Meditation and then, you'll leave. There's a big community of guys and women involved in this. I'm just wondering what your idea of how that's working is.

[Dave Pounder]: Okay so, first of all, I think there's this false assumption that the way to please women is through sexuality. "I stimulated her clit or I had sex with her with my enormous 12-inch cock." I think that's just male ego.

The reality is women are more turned on so to speak by expressions of love and romance and things like that. I don't know if you've ever read the book, "A Billion Wicked Thoughts" by Agi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. Actually, I was reading this again the other day and I underlined something that's perfect to what you just said. I'm trying to see if I can find it here.

Here it is, it's right here. This is a quote from the book "A Billion Wicked Thoughts" which is an academic book about sexual behaviors of men and women. "Men are quite prone to believing that they are inducing feelings of erotic ecstasy in their partner through their own sexual prowess. Women, on the other hand, are more easily manipulated by expressions of love."

That's very true. People ask, "How can I make sex better for my wife or my girlfriend? What should I do? Should I take up Viagra?" It's always this physical thing. "Should I stimulate her? Should I go down on her more?" I say, "The best thing you can do is just cuddle with her, have an emotional conversation, tell how much you love her, how beautiful she is and talk about your life together. Then start kissing her and have whatever sex you enjoy, just don't neglect her."

That will be so much better than some random stranger who's the Don Juan that's coming in and sticking his random fingers in her vagina and doing some technique that the guy thinks will work because, he's being myopic. He's thinking of it from his own perspective.

As a man, we don't care, if some random stranger that's hot could come up to me and stroke it just the right way and that's going to get me off and maybe better than anybody else I've ever been with if they know the technique. Men respond. For us, sex is like an oil change or like taking a dump. It's a physical reaction to a stimulus for the purpose of orgasm.

Sex for men is an end in itself. Sex is the end point where, for women, sex is just part of the journey toward emotional commitment and "Happily Ever After". I've seen this over and over and over again.

What's funny when you talk in these generalities, you can statistically said that men are taller than women. Anecdotally, you could be the coach of a woman's basketball team and say, "That's bullshit because, look at everyone on my team. They're all taller than men."

When you’re doing that, you're looking at what's called an adversely selected population. You're not randomly picking women at random and randomly picking men. You can do what's called a difference of means test. In statistics, that will tell with a certain degree of significance whether or not if one thing is true versus the other.

For example, people always say that I say, "All men cheat." I don't say that all men cheat. I say, "Men cheat," which is true because, when people have equal opportunity (because men don't have equal opportunity to cheat like women do), men overwhelming cheat more than women.

You can say, "I know Joe and Joe didn't cheat." I can say that Joe probably is short, doesn't have social status, and doesn’t have personality or humor skills, these other things. Joe might just be the security guard at the local condo development. It's not that he hasn't chosen to cheat. It's just that he hasn't had the opportunity.

People might be listening to this and thinking, "Oh, that's not true. I had this guy come over the other day and he totally manually stimulated me and blah, blah, blah." In a sense, you're kind of adversely selecting for a population of people who listen to pod cast about sexuality versus poling people at random from the population and looking for statistical differences and means between the two groups.

So, for people who are listening to this, that are particularly women who might be saying, "Oh, that's bull shit. I don't believe that," keep in mind that you are one of the few people more generally that listen to pod casts in general and then, about pod casts about sexuality that automatically puts you in a more progressive group.

People who listen to this show are probably more receptive to polyamory or more receptive to the swinger lifestyle, more receptive to these sorts of modern things.

[Angel Donovan]: Some of them are and some of them aren't.

[Dave Pounder]: No, I know.

[Angel Donovan]: I think that people want different things out of it. So, I get a lot of email about girlfriends. I get women asking about guys and they're more interested in relationships as well.

[Dave Pounder]: Right, of course.

[Angel Donovan]: I think we've covered polyamory from quite a few perspectives but, I think the actually number of people interested in that lifestyle. There's quite a few guys who are interested in meeting lots of women, just picking up on that kind of single lifestyle but, in terms of real polyamory, I think it's a relatively minority on the pod cast, from what I can tell.

[Dave Pounder]: But, from a statistical point, what I'm saying is take females who listen to pod casts about sexuality versus females who listen to pod casts about the stock market. Take those females (again, this would be the hypothesis, I'm actually doing this study) you pole them about what's called their SOI, social sexuality inventory or their restrictiveness versus sexuality that predispose them to more partners or more openness to experience or things like that. You're going to find that the women who listened to the sexuality pod casts more generally are going to score higher on an SOI score because, you're adversely selecting for those who are asking questions about sexuality and those who listening to sexuality versus those listen to stock market pod casts.

[Angel Donovan]: Absolutely, one of the things I say actually, if you've got a pretty developed sexuality and you're interested in that and you're looking for a partner who is going to be more suitable for you to go to the conferences around the subject. I've been to seminars and workshops and there's a set bias selection of women there who are very different from the girls you're going to meet in random coffee shops and so on.

[Dave Pounder]: I tell people, guys specifically, if you want a girl who understands how you think, go to an evolutionary psychology conference, go to HBES, go hang out there. Women are still women. They're still going to have their psychology the way that they are but, at least they're going to understand the way that you think.

[Angel Donovan]: What I love about this is, if you're interested in something, just get engaged with it. Get more engaged with it and you're going to meet more people including women who are more relevant to you. So, I really love that rule, get more social, get more engaged with your interests and it will help you.

[Dave Pounder]: Absolutely.

[Angel Donovan]: One thing I remember now. I kind of forgot it. A few years ago, the pick-up artists community, I'm sure that you've looked to those guy and seen what they're up to, they started watching this guy filming porn when you're coming from the perspective of the guy and you can't see the guy.

[Dave Pounder]: Oh, POV, point of view.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, point of view. There's this whole story behind which was it was real, that he was basically putting an ad in the paper for models or some kind of modeling or something. The girls were coming and he would interview them kind of as soon as they would enter the room, he would start filming them. Then, he would try and lead them to performing sex on the video tape.

All the pickup artists guys were convinced this was the real thing. I'm pretty dubious that I don't know if that's legal and I can imagine that it could kind of reality kind of porn story that would be put together. Do you know what I'm referring to? Have you seen that?

[Dave Pounder]: I know the content you're referring to. I'm familiar with the PUA, pick up artist communities and stuff like that. I can tell you that POV shoots exist. So, you're talking about legal versus illegal content. For example, prostitution is illegal, paying someone for sex or giving the idea that you're going to pay them for sex versus actually having people sign release forms and give IDs and all this kind of stuff. You can legally start an adult film business and you can contact the agents and have them send girls and you can pay for the girls and have everyone do their release forms and IDs and get your tax ID and incorporate and all this kind of stuff and legitimately do that.

If people are actually just posting ads and they're having girls come over and telling that and they leave and there's no release forms, no IDs, no nothing, that girl would go to the police and that guy could be arrested and put in jail because, he's doing something illegal. He's basically telling women he's going to give them money for this porn shoot, they're going to it and there was no release forms, no IDs, no age-checks, nothing. That would stupid from a legal standpoint assuming the girl’s sophisticated enough to realize that she was duped and then goes to the police.

There's a lot of POV pornography that's legitimate porn. It's a girl came from an agent, etc. If you are a girl, say you're just trying to find work in the business and you go to the internet and you type in "I want to be a porn star", there's the fake guy who's got his fake ad and then, there's the real agent.

Usually what happens is the girl doesn't call just one person. She calls like seven different people and then, the legitimate agents that know the process say, " Listen this guy is bullshitting you. Go here. Go to this blog. Read this. Look at our website. Look at all the girls we have. Google them. You'll see they work for the big companies" and they can get around it that way.

Or if they didn't, let's say they go shoot for the crazy guy or the fake guy and then, obviously, she going realize she's not getting paid, so, she's not going to get recurring work from that guy. Then, she goes back to the internet and eventually finds a real producer, tells the producer about the story. Then, that other producer might report who that person is. I would.

[Angel Donovan]: It's in his interest to report the smaller guys.

[Dave Pounder]: I would absolutely. If a girl came to me on a shoot and said, "I responded to this ad, I showed up at this guy's house, I gave him a blow job and nothing happened. He kicked me out." I would say, "Who was this guy? What was his phone number?" Then, I would probably report it.

[Angel Donovan]: That happens a lot?

[Dave Pounder]: No, I've encountered that. I'm sure somebody could do it but, I just saying that, if they were, there's kind of a market forces behind that to squash that out from at least sticking around. Then, the person who's doing it is putting himself at great legal risk. It's easier to just get involved with the swinger community or just go to Craig's list and go find an escort than it is to put yourself at that kind of legal exposure.

[Angel Donovan]: Let's move on to sexually transmitted infections because, I know that's a topic you've talked a bit about. What's the real deal? What are the risks in the industry?

[Dave Pounder]: Back in, I think it was the 90s, they really weren't doing any testing at all. A guy named Mark Wallace turned up HIV positive and he kind of hid his status and infected a bunch of other people. That's when the Free Speech Coalition, the porn lobbying group came together and formed AIM Healthcare Foundation where Sheryl Mitchell who was an ex-adult film performer oversaw that. She got her medical training and got her PhD in human sexuality and started this testing lab.

When I got into the business, all they tested for was HIV and I was getting gonorrhea, chlamydia every other month because, I was shooting a lot. I thought, "Why aren't we testing for this?" Everybody was opposed to this. "You're going to raise the cost. No one's going to do it. It's going to drive the business underground."

Eventually, years later, they finally decided after the Darren James thing in Brazil with the HIV thing, they finally decided to also test for chlamydia and gonorrhea. So, it was HIV gonorrhea and chlamydia. The HIV was done by what is called the PCR DNA test which is the most sensitive test available. It's the one they use on the blood donor population before they ship it off to hospitals.

[Angel Donovan]: How does that work?

[Dave Pounder]: There's basically a 14-day window, meaning, if you had sex with a girl a month ago and you went to the free AIDs clinic to get tested (let's say this girl gave you HIV), when you take the ELISA antibody test, that's going to turn up negative even though you're positive because, the window for development is three to six months but, it takes 6 months to be safe. You could get tested today and if you're negative, it's only negative for the partners you had six months or before.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, that's relying on the mechanism that your body has to create the antibodies and that can take a fair amount of time.

[Dave Pounder]: The antibodies right, fair amount of time, right. The thing is, when you get HIV, you're most infectious the minute you get it. So, if you got HIV today, you're most infectious tomorrow or actually within hours after you do it because, you're body hasn't built up the antibodies to help at least attempt to suppress it. A lot of people don't know that.

The thing is, the PCR DNA test is only a 14-day window. So, if you had sex with a girl three weeks ago and she had HIV and transferred it to you, conceptually, the ELISA antibody test would be negative for the next five and a half months while you're off infecting people but, the PCR DNA test is a 14-day window.

When I was in the business, they were doing it every 30 days. People made the argument, "Why every 30 days? It's a 14-Day window. Why don't you just do it every 14 days to help reduce risk exposure." That's what they do now. They test every 14 days. Now they test for hepatitis, they test for syphilis. So, they've expanded the testing.

[Angel Donovan]: And herpes?

[Dave Pounder]: Herpes they don't. They just assume that everybody in the business has it because herpes is a non-curable disease. It's a virus. It's like HIV, you can't cure it as of now but herpes is non-lethal.

So, if you have syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, these are all bacterial infections and you can take an antibiotic and it will get rid of it completely, meaning like you never had it to begin with. It's like literally eliminating it and there are vaccinations for hepatitis A and B even though those are viral. So, when you come into the business, they recommend you get vaccinated for hepatitis A and B.

Hepatitis C is not considered sexually transmitted. You can get it from crazy rough acts and things like that but, it's primarily done through needle sharing and blood and things like that. So, it's not even considered sexually transmitted. Although, for perm purposes, it might be. For me, I never concerned myself with that because, I never did the aggressive scenes. I was just doing vanilla stuff.

Now, HPV and herpes are with you for life and they're prevalent in the general community. If you're a man, forget porn just in general, one out of five guys has genital herpes, one out of four girls has genital herpes and of those, 80% don't even know that they've had it because they've never had an outbreak. So, they carry the virus, they've just never had anything, maybe a stressful life event or whatever that might trigger that outbreak.

The only way to know if you have herpes is not to wait until you have an outbreak but, to get what's called the "herpes select test". There are only two herpes tests that are approved by the FDA. The most common on is called the "herpes select test". It tests for type 1 and 2 and it's a blood test and that will tell you.

[Angel Donovan]: Is that an antibody test again?

[Dave Pounder]: That I don't know but, it's one of two that's approved by the FDA and it's the standard for knowing whether or not you have it.

A couple years, my friend Mike said, "Aren't you concerned about STDs being in the business?" I said, "Mike, you probably have herpes." He said, "I don't have herpes." I said, "Mike, how much you want to bet?" He knows how I cheap I am. I said, "Mike, you pay for the test and if it comes back negative, I'll pay you for the test and then another $100. If he comes back positive, he can just know."

That's how confident I was because, I knew Mike had hooked up with a lot of girls. He said, "Alright fine." He goes on line and he signs up and he pays the money online. I think it was a Lang Corp Quest Diagnostics or somewhere and he goes. I call him like two days and ask, "Did you go yet?" He said, "No, I haven't gone" and he never went. He paid for the test and he never went.

I said, "Mike, how come you won't go?" He said, "Because, if I go and I find out that I have it, then I feel like I have a social obligation to tell girls that I meet that I have it ethically. If I don't get tested and I keep my head in the sand then, I'm doing anything bad." To me, that was completely ridiculous. I said, "Don't you want to know just for your own sake, particularly because you just spent $80 or whatever it was for the test." Just this idea that ignorance is bliss. That's like saying, "I'm not going to get tested for HIV."

[Angel Donovan]: I recently went on a date with a girl and she told me the last girl she had as a boyfriend, after talking on the phone and within the first few minutes of meeting me, she told him this. She told me he had herpes and so, they had been very careful but, obviously, it kind of affected the way I was looking at the whole date afterwards. I have to admit I thought, "I don't think I'm going to go through with this." So I just said, "I had a nice date," and then I left.

[Dave Pounder]: I talked to this girl the other and she told me the same thing. She said, "By the way, I have HIV" and I said, "Why would you tell me that? 80% of people who have it, don't even know that they have it. So, why should you feel that just because you were proactive and got tested, that you have an obligation to tell other people. You could have been just as irresponsible and not got tested and not said anything and nothing would have changed."

[Angel Donovan]: Where would the obligation come if you wear a condom?

[Dave Pounder]: For me, I'm sure of very progressive in this sense, having herpes is like having a green toe. Every once in a while, your toe turns green. Who cares? For me, there are absolutely no health consequences. Actually, some studies have shown that having herpes might actually help reduce your prevalence of skin cancer, interestingly enough.

For women, the only risk is if you're having an outbreak at the time that you're delivering a baby, that you risk transferring the virus to the baby. What they'll do is they'll deliver the baby via C-Section but, there's no healthy consequence. So, to me, everybody could have herpes, I wouldn't care. It doesn't affect me.

HPV does nothing to men. Men can just be carries. I can get it from a girl and give it to another girl. HPV is the virus that can lead to cervical cancer. Now, they have Gardasil which the CDC recommends giving to middle school girls before they're sexually active. I got the Gardasil vaccine off label through NIH as part of a clinical trial that I'm proactively solicited to get as soon as possible to reduce my risk of being a carrier.

So, for me, herpes and HPV are irrelevant. It doesn't affect your health in one way or another. For women it’s only baby deliveries.

[Angel Donovan]: But, you can get outbreaks. I have a friend who has genital warts. He gets them coming up and he has to go and get them frozen and every now and again, it's pretty annoying from what I understand.

[Dave Pounder]: For those who don't know, genital warts is the same thing as HPV, the human papilloma virus. That's how it can display or present in men but, it doesn't have to. Yes, you get it frozen but again, it's nothing that's life-threatening.

It's kind of like telling somebody, "I have oral herpes." 80% to 90% of the general population has oral herpes and most people never have the cold sore outbreak but, they carry the virus. So, do you say, "By the way, I have oral herpes. Just want to let you know before you kiss me." There's no reason to say that because, the bulk of the population has it and a lot of people don't know that they have it.

I think that the burden of ethics really falls upon whether or not if you're going to cause harm to someone. So, if you have HIV and you don't tell somebody, I think that's an issue. If you have hepatitis, you could say, "I have hepatitis, you might want to get vaccinated." It's kind of like prosecuting someone for murder versus speeding. If somebody speeds, technically they're breaking the law but, who cares. It's not like they're going 90 in a 20. They're going 30 in a 20 versus somebody who murdered somebody or rapes somebody or something more aggressive.

So, you could say, "I have herpes, I have HPV or even chlamydia." I used to get to porn shoots sometimes and the girl would tell me, "I have chlamydia. Just FYI. I say, "I don't care. Let's do the shoot anyway. We're all here. If I happen to get it from you, I'll take an antibiotic and it will go away. If the girl said, "By the way, I just tested positive for HIV," I would say, "I'm out of here." You know what I mean?

What I would say to you based on your last comment, I'm assuming, I don't know you put assuming you're part of this pick up artist community and you've had a lot of partners, statistically, you're going to have it. The only way you're going to know for sure is to go and get the herpes select test, even if you've never had an outbreak.

[Angel Donovan]: Right, I had a herpes test a couple years ago after I've had over 100 partners. I lost count. It was negative but, that's was an antibody test. I know for sure because, I got it done in Bangkok and I discussed at length with the doctor the details of it.

[Dave Pounder]: But, you don't know if it was the herpes?

[Angel Donovan]: I don't know. It sounds like a brand name test.

[Dave Pounder]: It is.

[Angel Donovan]: I don't know that format of test. It sounds like it's a brand name so, I'll have to look at it. We'll shove all this in the show notes.

[Dave Pounder]: But seriously, just for your own personal, you should get the herpes select. It's like $80 and if you go to http:www.AnyLabTestsNow.com, there are all over the country, get the herpes select test and then, you'll know. I'm a data guy. Statistically, if you've had a lot of partners, even though you may have never had an outbreak, it'll let you know when way or another if you have it.

[Angel Donovan]: The other thing is for basically the last 10 years, I've worn a condom. I think, with two girlfriends who had been tested for things, I didn't use a condom and that was it.

[Dave Pounder]: The thing with condoms is that condoms are barrier protection for diseases that are transmitted via fluids, for example, HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, things like that. Now, herpes and HPV are viruses that are basically transmitted through viral shedding on the skin. So, using a condom does eliminate your risk of HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia, assuming it's not broken, that you used it correctly and it doesn't break. You could use a condom correctly and it might not break and you can still get herpes and you can still get HPV because, it's transferred from skin-to-skin contact.

Let's say a girl has herpes and let's say she's having an outbreak to make it more susceptible to transmission and let's say she's riding on top of you. The condom only rolls down to the base of your penis. If she's on top of you and she keeps bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, that can still transmit the virus to the skin area and you can have subsequent outbreaks there.

[Angel Donovan]: This is a yucky subject guys sorry but, I think it's good for you. Basically, would she be able to have sex if she's having an outbreak without having pain or some sign herself?

[Dave Pounder]: It depends on where the outbreak is. You don't necessarily have the outbreak in the vagina. You could have it in the pubic area. If you're a guy and you have herpes, you're not necessarily going to have an outbreak on the shaft of the penis. You could have it in the pubic area. Type 2 herpes is a general term saying, it recurs below the waist.

So, if it recurs on your knee or on your ankle, it's Type 2. If it recurs on your upper back, it's Type 1, not necessarily just on your mouth. So, the most prevalent place for it to recur for Type 1 is in your mouth or for your Type 2 is on your genitals or in the genital area. That doesn't mean that there absolutely going to occur there although, most of the time, it does.

A lot of people don't realize that although a condom does reduce your risk because it's covering the shaft or inside (if the girl is having an outbreak inside). If you're having an outbreak, particularly if you're a woman, it's going to be painful but, you don't have to have an outbreak to transmit it. It just makes you more likely to transmit it but, you're still engaging in what's called "viral shedding" which happens whether or not you're having an outbreak.

So, if you really want to reduce your risk of getting herpes, you want to take an antiviral drug sort of like Valtrex for example. If you get a prescription for Valtrex even without having herpes, you just take it and it dramatically reduces, I don't want to say eliminates.

If you're a germaphobe health nut and you say, "I want to make sure I'm doing everything in my power," the best thing you can do is just not have sex at all. If you say, "Okay, I'm going to have sex. I want to take every precaution available," then you wear a condom and you take Valtrex or Acyclovir or one of these antiviral drugs and that's it. Then, you do a visual inspection to make sure there isn't.

[Angel Donovan]: So, you're saying you'd take that when you're going to have sex like the same day?

[Dave Pounder]: No, you never know when you're going to have sex. I could have sex later today. You just take it every day. It's called suppressive therapy. You just take, I think it's 1000mg of Valtrex. You just take it every day. It's not going to hurt your system but, it could be expensive to do that. What I will tell people is, "Who cares?"

[Angel Donovan]: So, do you know people who do that. People who are in the business that have it and they want to reduce transmission. If you have an outbreak then, you can't shoot. You say, "Oh, this girl has an outbreak," then I say, "I can't shoot her with an outbreak." The outbreak can last one to two weeks which means, they're going to miss out on a lot of income. So, a lot of performers in the business will take the Valtrex to reduce the likelihood of having an outbreak which prevents them from working.

For the general population, I would say, "Who care? If you're going to get herpes, when you get it, you're initially going to have a lot of outbreaks. Eventually, over many years, you're going to have fewer and fewer and fewer.

When you first get it, you'll have an outbreak like once every few months. Then, it will be twice a year. Then, it will be once a year. Then, it will be once every three year and once every five years. That's what happens and that's how the virus develops but, generally speaking, there are no health risks.

What I would argue from a public health standpoint is, "If you're a girl or a guy, get vaccinated withe Gardasil vaccine when you're in middle school or as soon as you can. Get your hepatitis A and B vaccine, use condoms correctly and consistently and you've done 90%, 95% of the work.

[Angel Donovan]: You have to keep it practical. I think there are many things we don't understand about viruses. As time goes on, they understand that viruses occupy different organs and they can help to cause cancer and things like this. So I think, saying that it's definitely needles and of course, anything like the herpes viruses just being inside you or the HPV in guys. I'm not sure we can say that as yet. I'd be a bit more skeptical as to what we may discover in the future.

As you say, obviously it's not leading to anything acute that people have seen over quite a long period now. So, if it is causing some kind of damage or it's increasing your risks of some cancers as they found out with HPV with women and hepatitis with lung cancer then, it's like that. I think the medical establishment still understands viruses and their influences and so on.

[Dave Pounder]: Sure but, that argument could be extended to a lot of different things. Science is the best thing that we have. It's a self-corrective process and as we learn more information. Let's say we find out [unclear 01:55:43], we put that out and we develop interventions to prevent that from happening but, what you say is true of anything in science.

We don't know that drinking milk doesn't cause something or eating carrots. As far as we know carrots and bananas are healthy but, there could be a time where we find out that bananas cause glaucoma. We don't know. We can only go about what the best information is and that's really what we're conveying right now.

Sure, take your multivitamin, that's what we think now but, it could cause brain cancer 20 years from now. We don't know that but, we can only do what the best available option is through science and that's what we know now and there's no other better available option to rule your life best on other than science at this point.

[Angel Donovan]: To run off of this topic, what do you think porn stars should be doing today and are they doing it? Is it kind of regimented that way or do you think it still has a ways to go, other things you would add?

[Dave Pounder]: I think it has a ways to go. I'm a proponent of mandatory condom use in the adult film business. Most of the industry has opposed that even though most performers you talk to, the ones who come in right away are shocked that people don't use condoms in films. Once it becomes normalized to them, it's like a normal behavior, then they say, "Oh, it doesn't really matter."

It's a very low cost. If you buy condoms in bulk, you're talking like five, ten cents per use. It doesn't add to the cost of production. The biggest burden to producers is that it's hard enough to get guys to perform as it is, to get them to get erections with all the people standing around and the complications of the shoot. I think a condom only makes it more difficult but, I think from a public health standpoint, I think they should absolutely mandate condom use in the production.

Even the distribution in retail sales because, if it goes under market or underground and people are shooting without people knowing about it, you could hold the distributers accountable. You could say, "Listen, you're distributing content that doesn't have..."

It's the same way it would be like child pornography. It's illegal right but, what if they allowed distributors to distribute child pornography, the would say, "It would still be available." So, you go after the distributors, not just the producers and the retailers. If a retailer was selling it then, you crack down on them. That's the only way really to get people to respect the human rights around sex work, so to speak.

[Angel Donovan]: Great, thanks for your views on this because, I know this is something that you've got quite involved with.

So, what about mental impacts of porn? So you think it has negative mental impacts? We've got a few academics talking about dopamine and other mental affects like they have guys that have depression, lack of motivation, they have low testosterone, they seem to have impacts on their dopamine levels as well. What's your view?

[Dave Pounder]: As a consumer or a performer?

[Angel Donovan]: Yes, as a consumer.

[Dave Pounder]: Porn is basically a product that helps men achieve orgasm. Porn for men is like romance novels for women. It sets an unrealistic expectation of how women should look and perform sexually and romance novels set an equally unrealistic expectation about the level social status and personality and confidence and resources that their ideal man should have.

So, if you're an avid reader of romance novels and all of a sudden, the local mechanic flirts with you, you're thinking, "Oh my God, I would never date this guy. He's a mechanic. Why isn't he a physician or a business CEO with a bunch of power and social status?" Guys watch porn all day long and then, the slightly overweight girl is interested in them and they think, "I would never date her. She's fat." Unfortunately, it kind of normalizes.

There's a great article by Naomi Wolf that's actually on my website at http://www.PornographyExpert.com. You scroll down and it says "Naomi Wolf." It's called "The Porn Myth" or something along those lines and it talks about that difference.

Another cool thing to look at on the http://www.PornographyExpert.com is to look at the Don Simmons. There's a Donald Simmons academic video. It's ten minutes long that kind of gets to what you're saying.

If you think about nutrition for example, McDonald's and Burger King are not the number one restaurants because of their marketing. It's because they have fatty, salty, sugary food and that's what our evolved taste preferences have geared us towards. There's a reason that soup plantation or the local salad place or Jamba Juice isn't the number one selling food source because, it doesn't cater to our evolved psychology.

For men, we have cues to look for youth and fertility with our single by waist/hip ratios around .7, breasts, butt, and signs of health. So, what do pornographers do? They exploit. They say, "I know guys like these types of girls. Not all guys can get these types of girls naked. So, we're going to film them and we're going to sell them and we're going to make money and guy's will pay for it." When guys are used to watching that over and over and over again, that becomes their model for what their partner will be like. Then, they don't accept a "real" woman.

Conversely, when a woman reads the romance novel and the guy drops everything and professes his love and shares his kingdom and this huge house and all his social prestige with her, then she meets a "real" guy (as they say when women criticize the porn business) who just makes the per capita income of $36,000, she thinks, "I'm don't want to go out with this guy. He's not going to give me my house on the ocean. He's not going to have all this social influence that I'm so used to seeing that falls for heroine in the romance novels."

I think that's the problem. You just have these products that are designed specifically to resonate with the cues men and women respectively through porn and romance novels. Until people really understand the other gender, through shows like this or through reading books about likability or "Wicked Thoughts" or "The Evolution of Desire" or "What Women Want, What Men Want." All these books are also listed http://www.PornographyExpert.com website.

Once you have an understanding, then you can make it work. I tell people, "Think of men as one circle. Think of women of another circle and there's a little overlap like an Olympic ring. There's a little overlap where you can actually make relationships work. As long as guys stay in the porn world, their circle is isolated. As long as women stay in the television, romance novel, chick-flick realm, their circle is isolated and neither one will ever have a real relationship.

It's not until women actually watch porn and guys read romance novels and they have conversations with each other that that circle can eventually talk to each other and they can finally compromise in the interlap. That's what allows relationship to work in my view.

[Angel Donovan]: Have you read "50 Shades of Grey"?

[Dave Pounder]: I have not but, I should.

[Angel Donovan]: I got half way through the first one or a quarter.

[Dave Pounder]: But, that's all you need to read. It's like saying to the girl, "Have you seen 'Gang Bang Cum Sluts Number 23'?" It's like a four-hour movie that guys love. She says, "I saw the first 15 minutes." That's all she needed to watch was the first 15 minutes to get what guys need.

The thing is, if you're interested in this type of stuff, I go right to the academic literature which is the best place to go but, most people don't want to do that. If you're a girl, you can go right to the academic literature without watching porn to get the same information you would get from watching porn. To know that guys like low-investment sex, partner variety and it's an evolved mechanism that gets to our cost of sex.

[Angel Donovan]: What do you think of the research to date compared to your experiences? The work of Geoffrey Miller and we've had Glen Gehr here and we talked about David Bass and all this evolutionary psychology area that you've been talking about and that we've also had on the show previously, do you think the research fits your view of reality yet or are there still gaps?

[Dave Pounder]: I think the only gap is the fact that evolutionary psychologist are always quick to say, "This doesn't apply to everyone. It's not an excuse to let guys cheat or an excuse for women to be gold diggers." It's almost like they throw this political correctness spin at the beginning of every evolutionary psychology lecture.

I remember was taking this evolutionary psychology class just for the fun of it and before they started talking about rape as a possible adaptation just from an academic literature standpoint, there was this five-minute disclaimer. "We all know that rape is wrong." It's like this politically correct thing.

In my book, I talk in the introduction, I say, "Listen, I believe in what they call biological determinism. Sure, there are certain men that aren't going to cheat but they've chosen not to cheat." I look at infidelity in men specifically, like dieting. You could be the best healthiest work out guy in the world and you're eating carrots every day and lettuce and you're drinking water only. You have a cheese burger once a year, that's your infidelity. You're actually doing pretty well. You're a good dieting. You're a good dieter compared to the guy who has a cheese burger every single day.

Here's a guy in a relationship and he's getting a different escort every week at lunch when his wife's at home, he's not very good at monogamy. Somebody else who gets a blow job every six months from somebody he happens to meet, he's actually very good at monogamy. He's good at monogamy in the way that the guy who's eating really healthy at the gym is good at eating healthy even those he still had a hot dog on August 2nd where the rest of the year, he was eating vegetables and spinach.

[Angel Donovan]: I think there's one phrase you say in your book which kind of really defines the way you look at this. Let me know. You say, "Men are as faithful as their options when it comes to sex," which you kind of already said in this. The other things you said is, "Women need a reason to cheat and men a reason not to cheat."

[Dave Pounder]: Correct, that for sure. That comes from the movie "This Girl's Life" which is a great movie by the way for people who want to understand evolutionary concepts.

[Angel Donovan]: Can you say that again?

[Dave Pounder]: "This Girl's Life" and as well as the movie "Closer" are great movies.

[Angel Donovan]: Oh, I love "Closer". I interviewed a hard core gold digger that I met here and she mentioned that movie. She loves that movie and I loved it too. I really do think it is a really accurate view which is unusually for movies.

[Dave Pounder]: Absolutely, that and "This Girl's Life" and that's just the sexuality component. Then, you look at a movie like "The Notebook" which women love which is a great depiction of romance.

What women don't understand is that men can separate love and romance. I can be in mad love with a girl and have sex with all her friends and it doesn't change how I feel about the girl. I could meet a girl and have sex with her every day and never develop an ounce of feelings for her.

Conversely, I could spend quality time with a girl and never have sex with her and fall in love with her. For us, sex and love are completely devoid of one another. For women it's on the same wavelength. The same things happening.

The other quote you mentioned was "Men are as faithful their options", that's from Chris Rock. I would tweak it a little to say that, "Men are as faithful as their attractive options that they know are legitimate."

In other words, I know it’s very rare for a girl to just come up to me and say, "Excuse me, you're hot. Can you come back to my place so I can give you a blow job?" If that happened to me, I would want to do it but, I would think, "Am I being set up? Is this a trick? Is there going to be a negative consequence from doing this?"

[Angel Donovan]: I've thought about that recently too.

[Dave Pounder]: So that's that component. If the guy knows for sure that he's not going to be caught and that the girl that we're talking about is attractive, that she's not a 90-year-old, 500-pound woman, then I would say yes, that's true. I kind of qualify it a little bit.

Another great one too is that they say that, "Men are like Bluetooth and women are like Wi-Fi, where men are connected to you while you're there but, when we travel, we start looking for other devices. Women are like Wi-Fi___33 where they see all the available connections but, they connect to the strongest one."

You go to a place and you see the 20 different connections and you connect to the single that's showing the most commitment, the strongest bars. That's the one that you connect to. There are a lot of options, you connect to the one with the strongest bars.

For men, we're Bluetooth, we're connected to our girlfriend while she's there, then we travel and we need to connect to another device. When we come home, then we reconnect to the girlfriend. As long as women realize that male sexuality has nothing to do with them. People need to get out of their myopic mindset. Women need to stop thinking that men perceive sex the way that women do and men need to stop thinking that way.

To your earlier comment about this clit stimulating class, that's a male view of sexuality. It's not consistent with female sexuality. That is the equivalent of the female dating advice columnist for men.

[Angel Donovan]: Maybe I didn't explain it. It's a community where women will do what's called OM, orgasmic meditation and we're going to have an episode on this because, I want to talk about my experiences and I've interviewed people and so on. Basically, for the benefit here, it's where women will be doing this maybe three times a day. So, a different guy will come to their house to do this to them and then leave. What's interesting to me is the guy's not getting any sexual out of it.

[Dave Pounder]: But, they kind of are. If you go to a strip club and the dancer comes up to a guy and says, "Excuse me, want to go in the back room and rub my clit?" there are probably guys who would pay to do that. Whereas if I went to a place with girls and said, "Hey, if you give me $20, I will let you jerk me off", they would punch me or call the cops. It wouldn't be appealing.

People don't understand the difference in male/female sexuality. Guys could look at a picture of boobs, just look at boobs and we can jerk off to completion. Women never just look at a penis and orgasm to completion. There's more of a context around what's happening. There's a reason that romance novels take seven chapters before climax whereas porn takes seven minutes.

[Angel Donovan]: So, this community is very focused. There's a whole ritual about it and it's focused on the women's experience, I feel. It's focused on the meditation and there are aspects that come before and after the 15 minutes which are more of a ritual and about connection.

[Dave Pounder]: Let me tell you this, from what you're telling me and from what I know about female sexual psychology, that is as likely to be successful and take a national interest as Soup Plantation is to become the next McDonald's. It's not at all in line with female psychology.

[Angel Donovan]: You have to look into it because, it's got a fairly sizable community now and the people inside it are very "gung-ho" about it. You get some real fans of it. The founder is Nicole Daedone. Just check it out. I'll be interested to see what you think of it. It's kind of going in to the extreme opposite direction of porn in a way. It still kind of like polyamory in a way because, you have all these different partners and so on.

I know there are some more of your extreme views that I want to talk about or more shocking ones, let's put it like that, for most people. Some of the things you say is, "Women should embrace pornography and prostitution." What is the thinking behind that and I understand that the idea is to improve relationships in general and how males and females are relating to each other.

[Dave Pounder]: Sure, let's go back to the old age transaction of prostitution. A guy gives a girl money, a girl gives sexual access. If the girl isn't giving sexual access, the guy isn't giving money. If the guy's not giving money, the girl's no giving sexual access.

It was really the attractiveness. Before women could work, the more attractive women, the more successful men would pursue those or court those women and those move ahead and have nice lifestyles.

If you didn't win the genetic lottery of being an attractive female, you're basically relegated to living with your family for the rest of your life because, nobody would take you off their hands or living with a low-status male not having a similar life of somebody who was more attractive who was a physician or an attorney or somebody of social status.

So, women said, "We want to work. We don't want to be dependent on some guy for work." A lot of men were opposed to that. They didn't want women to work because, we could use the economic resources as a way of controlling them or making it harder for them to leave and not letting them being autonomous. I believe women should work. Let them work. If they want to work, let me work.

The counter end to that is men never developed our right to basically sexual access. To say, "Listen, if I am not the most personable, outgoing, confident guys, if I don't have these tactics that pick up artists communities use to have sexual access with an attractive women, why should I be relegated as a low-status male, making $10 an hour working at McDonald's, to having sex with unattractive, overweight women? Why can't I also have the attractive girlfriend just like the unattractive girl can now become her own attorney and live the lifestyle that she would otherwise have my marrying one."

I think a lot of women are opposed to legalizing prostitution for the very same reason that a lot of me were opposed to having women work because, they lose power, they lose control. I think if you legalize prostitution, as when you look at most of the countries where it is legalizes, the rates comes down.

If you try to get a quality prostitute in the US, you're looking at several hundred dollars if not a $1000 for a high end one but, if you go to Mexico or Thailand, it's very, very cheap because, it's legal and regulated. When you look at Western Europe, Australia, Canada, most of these places, prostitution is legal. It's just this sort of American social conservative religious influence that doesn't make it available.

I used to have a friend, Renee. She was awesome. I was not attracted to Renee at all. She had no boobs, red hair, slightly overweight but, she was the coolest chick on the planet. I used to hang out with her all the time. I used to say to my friends, "If Renee were hot, I would marry her." That's how connected we were.

Renee would say to me, "Dave, you have sex with everyone. How come we've never had sex." I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I said, "I don't want to ruin the friendship. That would be too weird. “The thing is in theory, if prostitution was legal, I would consider marrying Renee as being my partner and I would just my sexual variety somewhere else.

Like when I go to McDonalds, I would stop by the brothel, get my blow job and go home to Renee and then, Renee would be happy because, she's in a relationship with somebody that she connects with. But now, Renee is relegated to being single most of her life. As far as I know, she's never really had a boyfriend because, nobody wants to be with Renee if that entails the sexual exclusivity that they need to have.

I think that legalizing prostitution, one, you create a safe outlet for married men and men in general to have sex, where they're not going to be at risk for having to lie to a girl, saying that they love her and then, having that girl freak out and tell the wife and then, it ruins the family and everyone gets divorced. These professional women would understand that it's just a transaction and there's no risk at home of anything happening.

You'd be controlling for STDs through regulation that the guy couldn't bring back to the wife or girlfriend. You're creating jobs. You're giving people more empowerment. No one’s forced to go into prostitution but, if a girl wants to, it's within her full choice. You're expanding female choice and sexual autonomy for those who choose to do it. I just don't see any downside and this is why prostitution is legal in most developed countries.

[Angel Donovan]: Great, thank you for your views on that. I've got two last questions, just because, we're running out of time here which I'm kind of gutted about. Maybe we'll have you on a show a bit later for a third time.

[Dave Pounder]: For a third time.

[Angel Donovan]: Yes because, I'm sure that will be great for our audience. You've got so much to talk about. Who besides yourself would you recommend for high-quality advice in the whole dating, sex and relationships area. You've mentioned a few people already but, can you just kind of round it off?

[Dave Pounder]: That's a great question. First of all, tell people, if they go to http://www.PornographyExpert.com, I have all this academic literature of the people who talk the stuff that I'm talking about but, I think the key books to read are a book called "What Women, What Men Want, Why the Two Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently." That's written by an anthropologist at Syracuse University named John Marshal Townsend. That would be the key book to read.

Another key book to read is a book by David Buss at the University of Texas in the psychology department. He's an evolutionary psychologist called "The Evolution of Desire." I think those are the two best books I've read.

Within the community of evolutionary psychology, I've read this book. I don't like it much as the other two but, I'll just recommend it because, everyone else does. It's a book by Don Simmons who's a professor emeritus at the University of California: Santa Barbara, also in their anthropology department. His book is called, "The Evolution of Human Sexuality."

Again, if you read these other two books, you're going to get all the components of that book, it's just, his book is just really academic that it gets kind of boring for regular readers but, "The Evolution of Desire" and the "What Women Want, What Men Want" I think are better.

Then, I would suggestion that people watch the movie "This Girl's Life" to get a view of male sexuality as well as "Closer". And also to watch "Pretty Woman" and "The Notebook" to get an idea of what women want. "Pretty Woman" is unrealistic. The guys falls in love with a prostitute but, for what women's fantasy is so to speak.

Then to watch "The Notebook" for a depiction of how great romance can be for romance in itself, irrespective of sex. So, "The Notebook" is really the male emotional system at work and "Closer" or "This Girl's Life" is the male's physical system at work. I think since women fuse physical and love that "The Notebook" in itself is also a good view of how women view both the physical and the emotion component of sexuality.

Let me leave you with a funny story, if we have time, which is how I've been able to negotiate this conflict, it's called sexuality conflict theory in my real life. I was talking to this girl that I met at some dating site, I think it was http://www.OkCupid.com and girls always want to meet quickly.

I told her, "Listen, here's the thing. Imagine yourself as a guy and you go to a restaurant and you don't know if they're going to feed you but, you're hungry. You just see chicken fettuccini al fredo and let's just say, it's your favorite. You see it, you smell it and you want eat it but, the restaurant says, "I'm sorry, I don't know you well enough. Maybe come back tomorrow. You can sit in front of the dish. You can look at it, you can smell it but, you can't have it maybe until the third day" or whatever the girl says.

I said, "I understand women want to have sex just as much as men but there's a cost for women to have sex. You have to do your detective work to make sure that guy's healthy, emotional viable, genetics, in the event you get pregnant, even if you're not thinking about pregnancy, this is what's happening in your brain. “So when I talk to you to you on the phone, you can gage my level of intelligence. You can gage whether or not that I'm threatening, you can gage all these different things."

If I talk to the girl from one to two hours at a time over let's say 3 or 4 weeks, by the time I meet that girl, when I actually see her now and I see, "Wow, look at her nice boobs. She's very pretty. I really want to have sex with her." She's going to know chemistry right away because, she's already talked to me and she knows me that my likelihood of having sex at the end of that date is 98% if she likes me.

Whereas, even if it's out first date and we've never really had an in-depth conversation or really processed it by having many phone call before then, even if she likes, my likelihood is maybe 25% which kind of sucks if you're hungry and go to the restaurant and they're not going to feed you.

A lot of things that women don't understand, for men, we don't necessarily have to have sex, we just have to get off. In other words, if I'm making out with a girl and trying to have sex with her and she isn't ready, the guy shouldn't be frustrated and think, "Oh, this girl's a prude."

The girl shouldn't feel bad because, she's not ready. What she should do is keep making out with the guys because, she's comfortable doing that but, say to him, "What I think is really hot, I love watching guys masturbate. I think it's so hot. It turns me on," whether it's true or not.

The guy's comfortable, he's making out with her, he jerks off, and he just came. Now, even if the girl says, "I'm super horny." Now, he can do anything because, he has a refractory period but, he's happy. He came, he climaxed, he experienced his hormone release and now, he can cuddle and talk to the girl devoid of this alternative plan of trying to hook up with her.

I'm sure, you know as a guy, once you have sex with a girl, everything changes. You can completely be yourself. There's no bullshit. You don't have this alternative agenda of how to have sex with her because, once you come, you're just relaxed, you're one with the environment and what's happening and you can continue to build that emotional connection through conversation and cuddling and it's a completely different experience.

I can tell you over and over and over again that women are okay once they've conquered the social awkwardness of saying, "Hey, I met this guy. I went on a date with him and I watched him jerk off." But, if they communicate, if the guy can say, "Listen, I really want to have sex with you because, I'm a guy and I see you and it triggers these cues of arousal because, I see how pretty and when I can't have sex with you, it's like going to the restaurant, you want to eat you can't."

At least, when you go to the restaurant give the guy some chips when you go to a Mexican or give him bread and olive oil at the Italian. Give him something to at least stave him over until the food arrives. Women can easily do that.

If you're comfortable making out with the guy, suggest to him (because most guys aren't thinking about this in the level of detail that I am), "You know what would be really hot? I'd love watching you jerk off." She's making out with him, he jerks off, he comes, he's completely thinking, "This chick is awesome." He's relaxed, he orgasmed, she's happy because she didn't have sex yet because, she's not ready. Everybody wins. Now, they can get back to their lovely time.

Nobody thinks about these alternative ways or saying to a girl, "Listen, I know you don't want to have sex right away because, you don't know the guy and you have these security concerns." But, if you talk to them like you and I are talking right now. We know each other better on this call than on the previous call and better on the previous call than we did never speaking to each other and we'll know each other more on the third call.

If you're a woman, after all this talking, you much more likely to be receptive to a sexual encounter if we went on our first date after the fourth call for talking for an hour, than saying, "Nice profile. Let's meet for coffee," and you show up and then, the guy has to expend some kind of resources for something that isn't nearly certain on either capacity, whether the girl will like the guy or that the guy will like the girl.

I think there's a modern way to approach dating that's in line with everybody's sexuality psychology where everybody can be happy where those two circles can overlap but you can't know where those circles overlap unless you understand what motivates the other gender.

[Angel Donovan]: That's great. I think you've given us some really great viewpoints and I'd be interested to hear what some of the female audience is going to say to that. I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments about what Dave's saying here. If you agree or if that's going to insight you to run some experiments on your own dates like this and see if it goes much better and much better suited. Dave, thank you so much for your time today. It's been so great to interview you. It was so packed with information and views I think it's really valuable for the guys.

[Dave Pounder]: Thank you much, appreciate it.