Is it Sunset for Sunscreen? The 331st Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Jun 23

Published date: June 23, 2026
Hosts: Dr. Bret Weinstein and Dr. Heather Heying
Podcast: DarkHorse Podcast
Episode: The 331st Evolutionary Lens live stream
Transcript source: SRTX transcript file

Video: Watch on YouTube
Audio: Listen on Spotify

Summary

On the 331st Evolutionary Lens livestream, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying examine the relationship between sun exposure, sunscreen use, skin cancer risk, and all-cause mortality. They discuss a large UK Biobank study, the difficulty of treating all sunscreens as one category, concerns about ingredients such as aluminum, and practical ways to reduce burning while still receiving sunlight. The episode then turns to Oregon Initiative Petition 28, a proposed animal-rights measure that could restrict hunting, fishing, animal research, conventional livestock production, and lethal pest control. They close by considering meat, ethics, evolution, and the consequences of policies that deny human biological reality.

Hosts

Dr. Bret Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist, co-host of the DarkHorse Podcast, and co-author of A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century. His work focuses on evolutionary trade-offs, institutions, free speech, medicine, and the challenges of modern life.

Dr. Heather Heying is an evolutionary biologist, author, and co-host of the DarkHorse Podcast. She writes Natural Selections and co-authored A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, which applies evolutionary thinking to contemporary life.

Mentioned

Timestamps

00:00:00: Finally, Summer!
00:02:49: Sponsor: MUD\WTR
00:05:24: Sponsor: Caraway
00:07:05: Sponsor: Puori
00:09:27: Should You Use Sunscreen?
00:10:49: The 470k-Person Skin Cancer Study
00:16:29: Dissecting the Research Paper
00:29:28: Aluminum in Sunscreen & Cancer Risk
00:41:26: Bret Weinstein’s Six Hypotheses
00:50:10: “Sunscreen” Is Not a Good Category
00:53:38: The Case for Simple Solutions
00:57:38: Ditch the Sunglasses?
00:59:13: Sun, Shade & Avoiding Burns
01:05:19: Oregon’s Vegan Ballot Measure
01:08:29: Who’s Behind IP28?
01:14:30: Meat, Ethics & Evolutionary Reality
01:21:21: Gather Your CSC & Parasol

Main Topics

summer and seasonal sun exposure
sunscreen and skin cancer risk
UK Biobank skin cancer study
all-cause mortality and sunlight
sunscreen ingredients
aluminum in sunscreen
mineral and chemical sunscreens
sun acclimation and avoiding burns
sunglasses, hats, and shade
Oregon Initiative Petition 28
animal-rights ballot measures
hunting and fishing
animal research
livestock production
lethal pest control
veganism, ethics, and evolution

Search Keywords

Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, DarkHorse Podcast, Evolutionary Lens 331, sunscreen, sun exposure, skin cancer, melanoma, UK Biobank, all-cause mortality, aluminum in sunscreen, mineral sunscreen, chemical sunscreen, sunglasses, vitamin D, Oregon IP28, Initiative Petition 28, animal rights, veganism, hunting, fishing, animal research, livestock, pest control, evolutionary biology

Transcript

[00:00:04] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Hey folks, welcome to the 331th episode of the DarkHorse podcast live stream.

[00:00:13] Dr. Heather Heying: I'm just going to start with that. Yep.

[00:00:17] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Obviously. Yep. Um, I'm Dr. Bret Weinstein. You're Dr. Heather Heying. It is a summer finally, finally summer this year.

[00:00:25] Dr. Heather Heying: It is summer. And so we are going to talk about the sun.

[00:00:28] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yes. Yeah. Which we get more hours. Uh, well, every day we get just a tiny bit less now, but anyway, we are approximately at the maximum as of two days ago.

[00:00:39] Dr. Heather Heying: And it is glorious, uh, three days ago, but yes, it is absolutely glorious. This far north, uh, yeah, there's already the faintest hit, hit hint of light in the sky by like four 15, uh, 4am even. And at 10pm there's, there's still light as well. So it's, it's really an extraordinary place and time to be alive. Actually.

[00:01:03] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. It's great. That's great. It's worth all that, that winter in order to get the benefit of the glorious long summer days.

[00:01:10] Dr. Heather Heying: Maybe. As someone who has long experienced cheating photo periods, uh, I'm, I'm not sure that, but I do, I do love this time of year here in the Pacific Northwest. Um, so yeah, we're going to talk about, uh, uh, let's see vegans and sunscreen and sun, oh my.

[00:01:27] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[00:01:28] Dr. Heather Heying: Today.

[00:01:29] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. It's, um, you know, it's a lot or maybe it's going to be less, but we'll see.

[00:01:34] Dr. Heather Heying: I'm not sure that it's a lot, but we are going to talk about sun and sunscreen and, uh, some of the apparently conflicting evidence as to whether or not sunscreen is good for you, uh, go check us out on locals. There's no Q and a today, but, uh, all of our past Q and a's are on locals and, um, we always have the watch party going on there and a reminder that if you're watching us on YouTube, uh, they have in theory, we monetized us, but, uh, but things are, things are weird over there. So if you are watching there, please consider subscribing, liking, sharing. Uh, so we can try to figure out, uh, what we'll watch, watch your ship.

[00:02:10] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Clicking the notification bell. In addition, apparently that has magical implications.

[00:02:14] Dr. Heather Heying: Is Watchership a word?

[00:02:16] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Uh, Watchership, uh, viewership. What? That's the one. That's, that's the ship in question. Viewership. Yeah.

[00:02:25] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. I don't like Watchership.

[00:02:27] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I like it. It's going to become a thing.

[00:02:29] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. Um, all right. But before we get into the meat of the show or the, uh, or the tofu of the show spending, we have three sponsors right at the top of the hour, as always carefully chosen. If you hear us reading ads here, you know that, uh, we truly do believe in these products or services in this case, three products.

[00:02:50] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Our first sponsor for this episode, Heather is Mud/WTR. Mud spelled correctly. Water spelled very efficiently. If you like your routine.

[00:03:02] Dr. Heather Heying: I mean, if you're going to say it, you gotta, you gotta give them a hint.

[00:03:04] Dr. Bret Weinstein: MUD slash WTR. Yep. All right. If you like the routine of making and drinking a cup of something warm in the morning, but don't drink coffee. If you're thinking, or if you're trying to cut down on coffee intake, try Mud/WTR. If you're looking for a different way to kick off your day with a delicious warming, enhancing drink, try Mud/WTR. Mud/WTR makes fantastic products. Their original super functional coffee alternative has a beautiful list of ingredients that can be read right off this can. They include cacao and chive for just a hint of caffeine, lions, main mushrooms to support focus, cordyceps to help you support physical performance, chaga and rishi to support your immune system and cinnamon, which is a potent antioxidant. That's what's in their original coffee alternative, but Mud/WTR makes a whole suite of other drinks too. They've got a matcha coffee alternative and a mushroom coffee and a turmeric forward drink that is caffeine free and has the same mushrooms plus ginger, cinnamon, and Bayobob. What? And Mud/WTR has a drink they call rest, which has a roibos tea and valerian root, turkey tail, and ashwagandha, a place I've always wanted to go.

[00:04:16] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes, you have. You never go in though.

[00:04:17] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Chamomile and passion flower. There's still time. There are more products than that too. So you should go Mud/WTR and find exactly what you're looking for. Every single ingredient in their products is a hundred percent USDA organic, non-GMO, gluten-free and vegan. That means it does not eat meat. Mud/WTR's original flavor is warm and spicy with a hint of chocolate plus masala chai, which includes ginger and cardamom, nutmeg, and cloves. It is also delicious blended into a smoothie. True. Ready to make the switch to cleaner energy? Head to Mud/WTR.com, M-U-D-W-T-R.com and grab your starter kit today. Right now, our listeners get an exclusive deal up to 43% off starter kits, plus free shipping and free rechargeable frother when you use the code darkhorse. That's right. Up to 43% off with the code darkhorse at M-U-D-W-T-R.com. After your purchase, they'll ask you how you found them. Please show your support and let them know that DarkHorse sent ya.

[00:05:23] Dr. Heather Heying: All right. Our second sponsor this week is Caraway, which makes high quality, non-toxic cookware and bakeware. Whether you're looking to make easy summer meals as things heat up outside or planning some big shareable dishes to take to picnics and potlucks, Caraway has the right solution for you. Having beautiful, simple, functional cookware, bakeware, and other kitchen essentials in your kitchen helps maintain visual calm, which is awesome no matter the season. Caraway has everything from mixing bowl sets to cutting boards, muffin tins to big pots on which to braise a piece of meat or make a long, stippered stew. A long, stammered stew. Long, simmered stew. Stammered. Whether you're spending time at the grill, the stove, or the oven, Caraway has the gear for you. Roast chicken and Caraway's cookware makes a summery cocktail with their bar set or bake a seasonal berry crisp in their bakeware. Caraway kitchenware is crafted with FSC certified birch wood, premium stainless steel, enamel cast iron, and naturally slick ceramic. They make several lines of cookware and bakeware, our favorite to their stainless steel line and their enamel cast iron, which is offered in six stylish and beautiful colors. These pots are strong and highly scratch resistant the last generations. We're cooking with Caraway in this past year. Zach, our elder son, was two in his first college apartment.

[00:06:31] Dr. Heather Heying: He says it's amazing, which we know to be true, and we know that he will be cooking with it for a long time to come. Right now, you can save up to $230 on the 12 piece cookware set as opposed to buying the products individually. Plus, if you want to include their fan favorite minis duo, you can save up to $350. Visit carawayhome.com slash DarkHorse to take an additional 10% off using code DarkHorse on your next purchase. This deal is exclusive for our listeners. So visit carawayhome.com slash DarkHorse or use code DarkHorse at checkout.

[00:07:03] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Oh yeah.

[00:07:06] Dr. Heather Heying: Our final sponsor this week is Puori. Puori makes a wide array of supplements and powders from vitamin C and magnesium to creatine and protein powders. What makes Puori different is how clean and pure all of their products are. All of them. Puori was founded in 2009 by two men who set out to create the cleanest and purest products to support their own active lifestyles. Since then, their product portfolio has grown to address common nutritional deficiencies in the developed world. Knowing that health requires a good diet, physical activity, recovery and balance, the founders of Puori have rejected quick fixes from the very beginning and insist on the most stringent Puority testing on all of their products. Let's focus on Puori's grass fed whey protein powder, which was named best overall by Vogue US and cleanest protein by Wired. Our 20 year old son Toby agrees he's been making protein enriched smoothies for a few years now, but had a hard time finding a protein powder. The elect of Puori's protein powder. He says this is the best of all the ones I've tried. It's smooth going down and full of great whey protein. Toby loves the bourbon vanilla flavor, but they've also got a dark chocolate flavor made from organic cocoa powder. Puori's grass fed whey protein powder is not just nutritious. It's clean. A significant fraction of protein powders on the market contain lead and amounts

[00:08:15] Dr. Heather Heying: that are known to be dangerous. In comparison, Puori consistently meets California Prop 65 standards and is clean label project certified. Puori's protein powder also delivers a whopping 21 grams of whey protein in each serving and is free of GMOs, pesticides and exogenous hormones. Whether you're looking for magnesium or a multivitamin collagen or protein powder, you can't go wrong with Puori. Use code darkhorse at Puori.com. That's P-U-O-R-I. Puori.com slash DarkHorse to get 32% off your first Puori grass fed whey protein order when you start a subscription subscription. In addition, you get a free premium shaker bottle on your first subscription order. Subscription is going to be the word that I cannot say today. Go to Puori.com. That's P-U-O-R-I.com slash DarkHorse and use the code DarkHorse at checkout for this amazing limited offer.

[00:09:06] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Can you say conscription?

[00:09:07] Dr. Heather Heying: Conscription.

[00:09:08] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, no problem. All right. So it's just subscription.

[00:09:12] Dr. Heather Heying: Just subscription. There must be other descriptions.

[00:09:17] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Uh, there's a scripts Institute, but that's no, I don't think there are spelled.

[00:09:25] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. Um, all right. Should we talk about the sun? Yeah. Or yeah. The sun, I guess a bit. Uh, I'm going to finish my sort of setup of this with a short reading from our book, the medicine chapter of our book in which we talk about, uh, sunscreen and sunlight and vitamin D. And I think I've shared that on air before. Uh, but, uh, so this is, this is not a new topic for us, but it being the summer, uh, there is of course a lot of opportunity to get out on the sun. And many people have, uh, gotten into the habit because they were advised to by health professionals, by their doctors, by their mothers, by, you know, any number of people, uh, that what you need to do, if you're going to spend time in the sun is slather yourself with sunscreen. And so the question is, does this make sense? And I was prompted to think about this in part because, uh, it's, it's summer now and we've been having a remarkably warm late spring and early summer here in the San Juan islands where usually it stays cool for a while. But it's been, it's been quite sunny, quite hot. And, uh, when I ran into this, I'm going to start with this, um, sort of summary of a newish piece of research and then go to the research itself. Here we have, uh, Nicholas Hulsher, a master of public health, uh, writing on his sub stack focal points, courageous discourse. The headline of which is study finds

[00:10:60] Dr. Heather Heying: sunscreen use linked to higher risk of multiple skin cancers. A 470,000 plus person study found sunscreen users face dramatically higher risk of melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma, even after accounting for major skin cancer risk factors. UK Biobank study involving over 470 K people found that individuals who reported using sunscreen more frequently had substantially higher risk of multiple skin cancers. Even after researchers accounted for major confounding factors like age, sex, skin type, tanning ability, sunburn history, suddenly abuse in time spent outdoors. The findings are worrisome. And this is just the very quick, um, summary of the relevant to the part of the story that he's reporting on part of this large study melanoma. They found an increase, uh, according to his summary here of 292% higher risk of melanoma with sunscreen use. And he's, um, he's aligning some of the details people were reporting. So this is observational. This is after the fact. People were reporting either, you know, variation in sunscreen use. And he, I believe is just summarizing basically sunscreen use versus no sunscreen use. So he's, he's lumping some categories, uh, for basal cell carcinoma, you had 140% higher risk, uh, in users with sun of users of sunscreen than in those without. And for squamous cell carcinoma, 126% higher risk.

[00:12:30] Dr. Heather Heying: Uh, and again, uh, in, uh, what, what this study attempted to do was control for, like it was not looking specifically at sunscreen risk. That was one of very many variables that it was assessing, uh, based on a preexisting data set that it went in and looked at. It was actually interested in, and here's the title, uh, gene environment analysis in a UK biobank skin cancer cohort identifies important SNPs and DNA repair genes that may help prognosticate disease risk. Now, you know, but I have to tell the audience that as soon as I saw that headline that now this, this title, title of a research paper, unlike a headline, the authors do get to decide what the title of their own research paper is. That's already a very long title. It's pretty informative, but no one in their right mind should have used the word prognosticate in a scientific paper when obviously what they meant was predict. Same meaning, sure, but prognosticate. Uh, so I'm sort of, I'm a little bit leery of these authors to begin with because I don't, I don't trust their editorial common sense.

[00:13:37] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. It's, um, doubly bad because not only does it overcomplicate, everybody knows what predict means prognosticate is going to throw people. So it's jargon that is exclusionary with no benefit, but because prognosis is also a real thing, it sort of makes it sound more medical rather than just straightforward predict. Would be perfectly clear what it meant. So yeah, I agree with you that that was poor judgment on somebody's part. Yeah.

[00:14:04] Dr. Heather Heying: Okay. So, um, this guy again, Nicholas Holcher, um, doesn't do much beyond beyond this. He's, uh, it's a, it's a short piece. And at this point I basically want to go to the paper itself and just show a couple of, a couple of individual bits.

[00:14:19] Dr. Bret Weinstein: So let me just get what I got so far. The study was looking for many different factors, trying to figure out what factors were predictive.

[00:14:27] Dr. Heather Heying: It was actually really looking for, uh, heritable for genetic genetic.

[00:14:33] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Transmit is right.

[00:14:34] Dr. Heather Heying: And it, and it attempted to control for all these by measuring them. And sunscreen use is one of the things that was trying to control for along with age and sex and history of burning and, uh, childhood, uh, childhood burns and, uh, winter exposure to the sun, you know, just a number of things that they, that were there. Attempts to control so that they could then know if they were finding any real, uh, variation in genetic risk in this mass at 470,000 people, uh, uh, dataset.

[00:15:06] Dr. Bret Weinstein: So that does a couple of things. One, it's really good. It's encouraging that this is a real result because it wasn't that they went looking for it and then found it, which possibility that they fooled themselves or some by some other mechanism. So finding something you didn't expect is interesting. But arguably it makes this an observation. It is now needs a test. Yes. Um, so philosophically speaking, that's important.

[00:15:33] Dr. Heather Heying: It absolutely is. And they do not like to the extent that they found this and they did, uh, they don't want to put any attention on it at all. And in fact, they want to basically explain it away. So this is not, this is the, the, the message of this paper in either the abstract or the discussion is not, well, look at what we found. It's like, oh yes, there was this, but here's why it's probably not real. So, and that's what I'm,

[00:15:59] Dr. Bret Weinstein: and the effects, the effects were huge. It sounds like, you know, a hundred percent increase would be double. And this is above that for at least two of the types of cancer. So that's, that's amazing. Yes.

[00:16:11] Dr. Heather Heying: Um, okay. That's the wrong paper. Uh, here we go. Uh, here's, oops. Here is the paper in question that is, nope. Uh, that, uh, came out in 2023. So it's not brand new. Uh, but, uh, this is the paper, uh, that we were just seeing a summary of in Hulscher sub stack this month. Again, uh, Jeremiah and et al, 2023, uh, gene environment analysis in the UK biobank skin cancer cohort identifies important SNPs in DNA repair genes that may help prognosticate disease risk. Uh, okay. I'm going to read the abstract and then just scroll down and show you a couple of, couple of things that they do. Uh, background despite well-established relationships between sun exposure and skin cancer pathogenesis and progression specific gene environment interactions in at risk individuals remain poorly understood. Methods we leveraged, which means they went into an existing, uh, dataset. We leveraged a UK biobank cohort of basal cell carcinoma, cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, melanoma in situ, invasive melanoma and healthy controls to quantify the synergistic involvement of genetic and environmental factors influencing disease risk. So there they do say it's, they weren't just half of the genetic stuff, but my sense reading the paper is that they were trying to control for the environmental stuff so that they could figure out if there's, uh, if there are genetic, uh, if there are predictive factors

[00:17:38] Dr. Heather Heying: in our, in individuals genes. We surveyed, uh, little under 9,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms. That's the SNPs from the title from 190 DNA repair genes and 11 demographic behavioral risk factors results. Clinical analysis identified darker skin and hair colors as protective factors. That is, uh, something we all know, right? Dark skin and dark hair, uh, are predictive of being less likely, uh, to burn and less like less likely to get skin cancer. Uh, where was I, um, we identified, there we go. Um, I'm sorry, I can't even figure out where I just was. Oh, clinical analysis identified. Yes. 11 SNPs were significantly associated with, uh, BCC. This is not, this is not the important part. Um, so in the results, the only thing they say with regard to environmental factors or new non-genetic factors is darker skin, darker hair. And then they talk about the various, uh, genetic things that they found conclusions. We identified novel risk factors for, uh, keratinocyte carcinomas and melanoma, highlighted the prognostic value of several Fanka alleles among individuals with a history of sun lamp use and childhood sunburns. And demonstrated the importance of combining genetic and clinical data and disease risk stratification. Impact the study revealed genome-wide associations with important implications for understanding skin cancer risk in the context of the rapidly

[00:19:11] Dr. Heather Heying: evolving field of precision medicine. Now I read the entire abstract so that you can see that there's no mention of what Pulsar in his sub-stack is leading with, is saying that this is the surprising, uh, finding in this paper. There's no mention of it at all. And it ends with this, uh, term of art jargon, if you will, precision medicine. Uh, precision medicine is basically a stand-in for how can we know your genetics so finely and, and generate a therapeutic that is targeted for your genes, the particular alleles that you have such that we can fix you. That is precision medicine in the modern era.

[00:19:50] Dr. Bret Weinstein: All right. I want to ask you a question before you go for it.

[00:19:52] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. Um, I'm sorry. I thought I might've gotten this wrong. There's one more sentence in the abstract and they do actually, um, they do actually mention, um, well, they do actually mention other things. Major individual factors, including sex, hair and skin color, and sun protection use were significant mediators for all skin cancers, interacting with over 200 SNPs across four skin cancer types. So again, they don't. They sort of circle around it, but they don't, they don't indicate anything about what Alsher has suggested they find.

[00:20:29] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Okay. So I don't want to drag us too deep into the weeds, but I see one potential confound in the sunscreen result based on how they dealt with race. Did they deal with it other than to say skin color?

[00:20:46] Dr. Heather Heying: Um, I'm not sure what you mean.

[00:20:49] Dr. Bret Weinstein: So let's take, uh, African Americans. African Americans do not typically burn. They do not typically get skin cancer. They do not typically use sunscreen. So you might find a correlation with sunscreen. Your tendency to put on sunscreen is correlated to your fear of getting a skin cancer. So the fact that people in fear getting them might get them.

[00:21:14] Dr. Heather Heying: So this, this is one of the complications of all of the work, all of the decent work, which is inherently, uh, complicated in part because it's inherently about complex systems. And I don't have any way to look into the models, the statistical models that they used, nor if I did, because those aren't in the public domain, nor if they, nor if I did, would I be able to interpret them? And this is of course, part of, you know, part of my longstanding objection to these very complicated statistical models. Do they provide, uh, more power? Yes. But at the cost of, uh, confidence, and I'm not talking about statistical confidence, but like human confidence that you actually know what it is that the model did and could, and can trust that it did the right thing. Should they have done exactly what you're talking about? Yes. I don't know if they did or not.

[00:22:07] Dr. Bret Weinstein: But they do address skin color and they try to control for it. Right. So it's possible that it gets subsumed in that. I don't know. Okay.

[00:22:16] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. I just, I don't, I don't remember enough about what is in this long, long ornate study, uh, to, to say, okay. So they, they go through their work here. And in the results, actually in the discussion section, we have. Uh, usually the first sentence of the discussion section is what the authors think is going to be the biggest take them take away. So I'll just start there before going to what I've highlighted discussion by leveraging robust data sets from the UK BB. We performed disease environment, disease, gene, and gene environment investigations and identified key variables underlying the complex interplay between 190 DNA repair genes and 11 environmental and demographic factors in the pathophysiology of melanoma. And correct keratinocyte carcinomas. Okay. So that's just, uh, a repeat of what it is they did and doesn't say anything about what they found first sentence of the second paragraph of the discussion. We first conducted disease environment analysis and showed that sex skin and hair color skin tanning behavior and use of sun protection show the greatest associations with risk of all four cancers. This is consistent with previous findings as skin associate DNA damage upon exposure to UV light is a major driver of both skin cancers. While hair color is a weak proxy for skin tone and genetic makeup and is not directly related to this effect.

[00:23:46] Dr. Heather Heying: Moreover, male sex was positively associated with BCC basal cell carcinomas and particularly CSCC consistent with previous findings and natively associated with M-invenom in contrast to the literature. So that's, I didn't actually know that there was a sex, a sex axis along which skin cancers were predicted. Surprisingly, at first, frequent use of sunscreen was greatly associated with all cancers. This surprising association was reported in prior studies. Let me take a step away from what I'm reading of this study for the moment, the study, which was published in 2023. I went and looked at the references a couple of them from the late nineties. If I remember correctly, I'm one of them's from 2019 and the 2019 one is the really big one. And it's called challenges and assessing the sunscreen melanoma association, which had been found before. And it attempts, it attempts to go in and look at all of the existing work and it's basically inconclusive, but it does find some support for sunscreen actually being protective against melanomas. And so these authors in the 2023 paper are citing three previous pieces of work. The most recent of which tries to go in and make sense of it says, we're not really sure it's messy. All of the results seem to go in different directions, but there's one pretty decent study they find that seems to suggest that sunscreen is protective against melanoma.

[00:25:15] Dr. Heather Heying: Okay. So that's who these people are citing. They say, surprisingly at first, frequent use of sunscreen was greatly associated with all cancers. This surprising association was reported in prior studies. This paradoxical finding was the increasing risk of skin cancers with increased sunscreen use, which we posit can be explained by greater exposure to UV light and or lack of reapplication of sunscreen throughout the day, or due to increased use of sun protection following skin cancer diagnosis. Collectively, however, these findings demonstrate the importance of adequate and frequent sunscreen use and minimization of exposure to UV light, particularly in individuals with fair skin. What? Those last two sentences of this highlighted section of the discussion are extraordinary. This is some of the most egregious pseudoscience I have actually seen, given that they, they, and just like, let's just walk, walk through it one more time. And then you could have your what reaction, right? Surprisingly at first, frequent use of sunscreen was greatly associated with all cancers. That's their result. Surprisingly, actually also doesn't belong in that sentence, but maybe for readers who are like, wait, did I read that wrong? No, even the, even the authors, they're telling you were surprised by this. Again, uh, frequent use of sunscreen was greatly associated with all cancers.

[00:26:33] Dr. Heather Heying: That is their result. Okay. It's not their only result. They've got a lot of other things that they found, but then they say. This paradoxical finding was the increasing risk of skin cancer with increased sunscreen use. That's what they found, which we posit can be explained by greater exposure to UV light, except they're also looking at sun exposure and or lack of re-application of sunscreen throughout the day. User error in the sunscreen use, insufficient, like they were, they, what? What? Or due to increased use of sun protection following skin cancer diagnosis. The idea of being that sunscreen use is itself indicative that you're more prone to skin cancer because you've already had a diagnosis, which isn't a terrible hypothesis, but the idea that they're putting, they've got three explanations to whisk away their result and then ignore that result for the rest of their discussion, the rest of their paper. Is extraordinarily bad for.

[00:27:39] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Well, it is absolutely par for the course for modern science, where there is dogma in each of the fields. You can validate the dogma, the more extreme your validation, the faster you're going to rise. And if you say anything that goes against the dogma, you have to explain it away and you have to deliver the paragraph that says we found X, but we still believe Y.

[00:28:02] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes.

[00:28:02] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. The point is this is, hey, this isn't science you're looking at. It's something that uses the language of science. It has some of the methods of science, but it is not scientific because somebody's got their thumb on the scales. Now. The right way to say what they found. Is we do not know what to make of this result. Yes, it is possible that this result does not mean what it appears to mean, because for example, people with a diagnosis go on to use more sunscreen.

[00:28:32] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes. But it is also their job actually to posit. Yeah. But you don't posit as a way to to

[00:28:37] Dr. Bret Weinstein: talk away your results. You say that's a possibility. It's also possible that this result means something and that sunscreen is not having the intended effect. This is a place where further study is urgent.

[00:28:49] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes.

[00:28:49] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right.

[00:28:50] Dr. Heather Heying: Precisely, precisely. So that's. And we see evidence that these authors are at least being dishonest with themselves and their intended audience. And again, I went back and looked at the research that they cited, which suggests that there is a relationship between melanoma and sunscreen use in some surprising directions. And that too is inconclusive. Okay, but I actually think that this conversation so far is missing two of the bigger points. One of which is that sunscreen itself is a category error. Sunscreen isn't one thing. Right. And most sunscreen, for instance, I didn't know this until this week. Most sunscreen has aluminum in it.

[00:29:41] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Lumin dioxide?

[00:29:42] Dr. Heather Heying: Lots of lots of forms of aluminum here. I'm actually going to read. It's a it's a most of, if not all of this one page. That one. Here we go. Letter to the editor published in 2007 in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine. Aluminum, a potential pro-oxidant in sunscreens and sunblocks. Question mark. Okay. So it's a letter to the editor. This is not a test of hypothesis. It is basically a hypothesis to the editor. We have measured, and this is written by, so let's just go to the bottom so I can, where are the authors? The authors, since somehow they're not on here, are Nicholson and Exley. This is again published in 2007. Oops. Oh, they're there. Nicholson and Exley. We've measured the aluminum content of sunscreens and sunblocks, which either include or do not include in aluminum salt. For example, aluminum hydroxide, aluminum oxide, aluminum silicate, aluminum stearate, aluminum starch, acetenylsusinate as an ingredient. All those aluminums. Aluminum was present in all products. And its content was of particular significance in three products, each of which listed it as an ingredient. That sentence is doing a lot of work too, because that sentence strongly implies that they were looking at several sunscreens, many of which did not have aluminum on the ingredient list, but all of the products that they tested had aluminum in them.

[00:31:11] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[00:31:11] Dr. Heather Heying: Okay. So after numerous inquiries, the manufacturers were not forthcoming as to the role of aluminum in their product, except the manufacturer of simple sun protection cream who confirmed that aluminum hydroxide was added to their product to coat the surface and thereby prevent the agglomeration of another ingredient, titanium dioxide particles. Who guidelines for the application of sunscreens and sunblocks recommend a single application of at least 35 milliliters of product to achieve the stated sun protection factor, SPF. For three of the sunscreens and sunblocks investigated in the study, a single application of product result in about 200 milligrams of aluminum being applied to the skin surface. In addition, who guidelines suggest reapplication of product every two hours, which for example, for an average day on the beach, would result in up to a gram of aluminum being applied to the skin surface. Skin is permeable to aluminum salts when, for example, they are topically applied as antiperspirant formulations. It will accumulate in the skin and will be transferred from the skin to systemic sites. It is highly likely that the everyday use of sunscreens and sunblocks is a hitherto unrecognized contributor of aluminum to the human body burden of this non-essential metal. Perhaps of immediate significance is the potential for aluminum in the skin to act as a pro-oxidant.

[00:32:26] Dr. Heather Heying: Recent research in Free Radical Biology and Medicine, the journal where they're publishing this letter, has shown that UV filters and sunscreens promote the formation of reactive oxygen species in the nucleated epidermis of the skin. The authors speculated upon the role which might be played by antioxidants, either already in the skin or included in sunscreen formulations, in counteracting the pro-oxidant activities of UV filters, but they did not consider how the presence of additional pro-oxidants might exacerbate such effects. Aluminum is one such pro-oxidant and could significantly increase the potential for oxidative damage in the skin. Whereas the relationship between the burgeoning use of sunscreens and sunblocks and the increased incidence of skin cancers and a particular melanoma is highly controversial, it is not hitherto to be considered that aluminum in these products could be an extremely significant contributing factor. Of course, aluminum is already on the skin surface and may not need to be a component of sunscreens and sunblocks to exacerbate oxidative damage attributed to the application of such products.

[00:33:23] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Wow.

[00:33:23] Dr. Heather Heying: Wow. And also just that is how it's done. Like put aside the content for the moment. They have built a careful argument in which they actually collected observations. They have not tested a hypothesis, but they have collected several observations which will look like lab tests to many people, right? They solicited information from manufacturers. They did chemical analyses of several sunscreens. They found aluminum at various levels in every single one of the products that they found. They did a literature review. They posited a mechanism by which aluminum in sunscreens being absorbed by the skin might have a toxic effect on health and they have not made any claims that are beyond what they know.

[00:34:09] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, that's amazing for multiple reasons. One, when you put on sunscreen, you tend to be putting on a lot. I mean, sometimes I guess you just put it on your face. But if you're out in the sun, you're likely have a lot of stuff exposed. You're putting on a lot. So you're talking about a large amount of this potentially pro-oxidant. Yes. And if I'm remembering, you know, chemistry was probably my weakest science. But if I think about what I think I know about chemistry, you've got a, you've got oxidants, which are actual molecules in a state. That's reactive. Right. And antioxidant is going to neutralize it. If you put a bunch of stuff all over your surface, it's going to occupy all of the antioxidants that you have available. So one mechanism here as to where cancer might come from is that you're leaving a lot of reactive oxygen species now free to basically attach to and disrupt the various systems that are keeping cancer at bay. Normally you're, it's like, right. It's like throwing a bunch of stuff at your immune system so that immune system is preoccupied dealing with garbage and it misses the pathogen that sneaks through because, you know, all of your cells are busy. So, okay, that's interesting. Did I also, maybe I just misunderstood something, but they say that the aluminum was in there to tint the titanium?

[00:35:44] Dr. Heather Heying: I don't think tint. Let's see. They say because

[00:35:50] Dr. Bret Weinstein: the titanium will tend to be white, which might be off putting.

[00:35:55] Dr. Heather Heying: So they, they inquired after all the manufacturers of the products that they were looking at and they only heard from one and from that one manufacturer who really, I feel bad for them that they actually responded and they're, of course, being singled out here. They confirmed, quote, that aluminum hydroxide was added to their product to coat the surface and thereby prevent the agglomeration of another ingredient, titanium dioxide particles. So not tint, but keep it aggregated.

[00:36:23] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It's basically emulsifying it. If it were a fat, it would be, it's keeping it separate rather than emulsifiers.

[00:36:30] Dr. Heather Heying: One of the great evils of the modern era, as it turns out.

[00:36:33] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. All right. Well, that's interesting.

[00:36:38] Dr. Heather Heying: So, and I bring, I bring that up. This is, this is one of my two main critiques of the really fairly pseudo scientific work that is being done on whether or not sunscreen help, you know, protects against or against or tins to make you more likely to get skin cancer. One of, one of my main issues is sunscreen isn't sunscreen, right? Sunscreen is wildly variable. According to this 2007 letter in all of the sunscreen products that they looked at every single one of them contained aluminum. I, you know, have, I happen to know that there's at least one out there in the market and I hope more than one at this point that doesn't contain any aluminum at all. And that's a van man sunscreen, which is Tello and zinc and, you know, a few other things, but I went and looked, you know, and they, they are a sponsor of the show, but they're not a sponsor today. They're not paying me to say this, but. They, you know, they, they have a, you know, rather than a chemical, a mechanical sunscreen, meaning that the zinc actually tints your skin.

[00:37:41] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. It's a physical block.

[00:37:42] Dr. Heather Heying: It's a physical block and it's in a base of, of Tello and maybe beeswax. I don't remember everything else, but that is actually, you know, it's otherwise, it's all the same good stuff that's in their regular Tello balm, which is, is fantastic. And, uh, there, you know, there are, there are moments, there are situations, uh, when even people who don't want to use sunscreen in general for lots of reasons, some of which we haven't even gotten to yet may end up needing sunscreen. But I would say given, given what we've heard so far, you can't trust the labels on the mainstream sunscreens. Apparently even the ones that don't list aluminum often have aluminum in them. Aluminum is a known a pro-oxidant. Many people by now have heard about the potential risks of wearing aluminum based, uh, antiperspirant. Why would it be any better to coat your entire skin and then bake it into your skin, uh, in the form of sunscreen? I feel like it's gotta be worse.

[00:38:43] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. Well, and even worse, the, I consider them insane, but the spray on sunscreens that people use, you're also potentially breathing this stuff or the person sitting next to you on the beach is going to be breathing it. Right. Which is like the worst possible case in terms of, you know, short of injecting it, having it come into your lungs is, uh, very dangerous. I mean, it's dangerous almost no matter what it is.

[00:39:06] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah, exactly. Okay. So, uh, there's that not all sunscreen is created equally. Uh, and my, my, my message still not medical advice is avoid sunscreen whenever you can, but if you're going to use it, find sunscreen that is as pure and clean as possible. It uses a physical barrier rather than a chemical change in your skin. And man, man sunscreen is, uh, the example that I know to fit that, uh, that category. Uh, but there's also the question of whether or not, um, sunscreen use has an effect on all cause mortality that is separate from skin cancer. And so much as we were talking about during COVID, if all you're looking at is, okay, we've got this product and the reason we're telling you to use it is to deal with, we got product X and we were using it to deal with Y. And the only thing you look at is when you use X, do you see a reduction in Y? Then you are potentially going to miss all of the other possibly positive, but often negative effects of X that will not be found when all you're looking at is Y. This is true for statins. It's true for COVID vaccines. It's true across many, many pharmaceutical products.

[00:40:26] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Another way to put it is because you're dealing with a complex system and your purpose is to live a long time and live well, you care about the integrative measure. You don't care that it does something positive to one metric if it does a bunch of negative things to a bunch of other factors. So the thing you really care about is, Hey doc, if I take this thing, do I live longer? Right.

[00:40:46] Dr. Heather Heying: Um, exactly.

[00:40:47] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Exactly. Before we get there though, I wanted, I came up with five and then you have added a sixth hypothesis that I think could account for the correlation they see. And interesting

[00:41:00] Dr. Heather Heying: correlation in the diamond, uh, the 2023 paper, uh, that finds that positive

[00:41:07] Dr. Bret Weinstein: association with cancer with skin cancer. Right. Okay. And so I think this is interesting because that, that result is suggestive that something is going on, whether the something is straight forward Lee, Hey, this stuff causes skin cancer or not is, uh, something that needs to be understood. Okay. So here are what I think are the six hypotheses that would account for this as far as I can tell. Great. First is that you might paradoxically have a greater risk of sunburns, which are known to be, uh, causal to skin cancer by virtue of the fact that sunscreen prevents you from developing the resistance to the sun that occurs over the course of a season. Right.

[00:41:58] Dr. Heather Heying: So I prediction of that would be, uh, that, uh, people who visit the sun and spend a couple of days outside otherwise don't have seasonal exposure to the sun. This isn't going to apply to this is, this is going to be about establishing your baseline over a season and, uh, becoming, becoming behaviorally, uh, a cultured to the idea that you're actually. Protected.

[00:42:28] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. And just to make that clear, I find I'm somebody who is prone to burns, but if I expose myself to the sun rather than hide from the sun, I develop the capacity to be in the sun for a longer and longer period of time. When I get in trouble as if I, at the beginning of the season, go out and have a very long exposure, but if I build up my tolerance, I actually have a tolerance, which is because I have endogenous sunscreen that darkens me and protects me.

[00:42:53] Dr. Heather Heying: And it may be. So if. If there are people around you, if you live in a place where summer is a season where you spend time outside and there are other people around you who are generating their, their skin resilience over time in, you know, without relying on sunscreen, then your social events over the summer are likely to involve more and more time spent outside because the people with whom you are with. Uh, are going to have a greater capacity to end up in the sun. You may not, but you may not be thinking about that.

[00:43:26] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. And so the way to test this hypothesis is to control for burns. That's one way to test it. Um, you could also control for skin darkening, but the basic point is if you controlled for burns, does the correlation go away. Um, with sunscreen. That is the sunscreen is interfering with your protection against burns. Okay. The second hypothesis is chemical toxicity.

[00:43:54] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah.

[00:43:54] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Um, so chemical toxicity, there might be a carcinogen in many sunscreens, which would, uh, have the effect directly. You could test for that by comparing between chemical sunscreens and physical sunscreens. Uh-huh. Um, the.

[00:44:16] Dr. Heather Heying: And so that's, that's a, that's in the category or part of the story.

[00:44:22] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. The third hypothesis is that it blocks, and this is related to the first hypothesis, but separate. If we take away the question of burns, that it blocks the production of endogenous melanin. Um, and by blocking that production exposes your tissues, even if they don't burn to UV radiation, they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. So the point is you end up lighter because you're using an extrinsic sunscreen and it may be that being lighter exposes you to UV. So, um, that that could cause it.

[00:44:58] Dr. Heather Heying: Four is interesting. So you're talking about like subdermal tissues.

[00:45:01] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. Yeah. That your skin has a reaction that's there. It's built in sunscreen. That's not there all the time. It responds as you know, the darker you are, the more there's there all the time, but for all

[00:45:12] Dr. Heather Heying: that's your dodge in the sunscreen.

[00:45:13] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. Yeah. But you know, the fact that we tan it's to happens for a reason. Um, and there's a reason that people who are tan look good, right? That's the paradox of this whole thing. Don't tan has always been like, huh, why does that look healthy to us? Yeah. Um, okay. The fourth one goes back to something that long time listeners will remember, which is that there are. Um, paradoxical results. Dermatologists have been surprised, for example, that people who have sun weathered skin, who they would have thought had a very high risk of skin cancer have essentially not.

[00:45:50] Dr. Heather Heying: Now, um, this, the paper that I was talking about in the beginning, the, uh, I'm sorry, Jeremiah paper, um, actually does mention, uh, looking older than the having sun weathered face, uh, being protective against some or, or showing a correlation as if it is protective against some skin cancers.

[00:46:10] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right.

[00:46:11] Dr. Heather Heying: And so I will remind people that

[00:46:14] Dr. Bret Weinstein: the explanation for that, I believe coming from my grad work on telomeres is that when you get a mutation that causes cells to divide and head towards being a tumor, the number of cells in the patch of unregulated tissue. Is smaller, the more damaged your skin has been ahead of time. So the older you are, the more damage you've lived through, the shorter your telomeres, the fewer cells result from that mutation. And so the point is your risk of a future cancer depends on a second mutation, which is proportional to the number of cells in which you are running that risk. So the smaller that patch of cells, when you get your second mutation, uh, the less likely it is to be in one of those cells. So residual teal, the basic point is the more you protect something early, the greater your cancer risk later. So it could be a weird paradoxical telomere result.

[00:47:14] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. But, but don't burn.

[00:47:18] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. Right. But don't burn. Right.

[00:47:21] Dr. Heather Heying: Um, like no, no burns are protective.

[00:47:24] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Burns are never good. Burns are the thing that causes cancer. Sonic and that's, that's kind of the division that I think is straightforward and obvious at this point from the evidence incomplete as it is that we have now is do expose yourself to the sun, but don't burn. Right. At all costs, avoid burning. Even sunscreen might be a better alternative to a burn, but figuring out how to behaviorally prevent it or use a physical sunscreen rather than a chemical sunscreen.

[00:47:52] Dr. Heather Heying: Uh, and sometimes physical sunscreens are called hats. Totally.

[00:47:57] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yes. Get yourself a thick hat.

[00:47:59] Dr. Heather Heying: It doesn't even need to be thick so long as it's opaque.

[00:48:02] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It's to be thick enough to cast a good shadow. That's pretty much all hats.

[00:48:06] Dr. Heather Heying: That's wide.

[00:48:10] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Little joke. Um, all right. The fifth hypothesis is the one we mentioned earlier that there's some reason that is not causal about the sunscreen, but something like, um, people use sunscreen in proportion to their concern about cancer and therefore cancer prone people are wearing more sunscreen and it's really their endogenous risk, which they are correctly predicting. Yeah.

[00:48:33] Dr. Heather Heying: Which is, which is one of the ones that the authors that Jeremiah et al say as they're trying to get their result,

[00:48:40] Dr. Bret Weinstein: they strangely narrow it. And they said, if you've had a diagnosis of cancer, maybe you're using more sunscreen. And really the point is now people who are pale or people who've had a history

[00:48:48] Dr. Heather Heying: of, well, they can't say pale because they've like, they've separately. Assessed skin color, skin tone in, in their work. So they, they think that that, that paleness is not, uh, what explains this result away because they have already effectively controlled for those for that.

[00:49:05] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. All right. Well, in some way, maybe, maybe race then falls out as a non explanation if they've dealt with it through skin color. And then the last one is the O2 mechanism or at least the, uh, the oxidative species and that aluminum in sunscreens might be binding up all of the antioxidants that you endogenously produce to protect yourself, making yourself vulnerable. I think that that's kind of an interesting one. So anyway, that's five and possibly six different hypotheses that could account for this result if the, if the result is real. And I think the result looks like it's real. The analysis is weird, but there's some reason there's a correlation there, whether it's causal or not remains to be seen.

[00:49:53] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. I mean, it's hard. It's, it's very hard to assess because there's so much, uh, behind the scenes and visible to the reader, complex statistical models that are complicated statistical models that are being used. And again, I keep on saying it, but it really feels critical to me. Sunscreen is not actually a good category. I, you know, I, I would, I feel very strongly about the hypothesis that, uh, this result would look different if you, if you compared all these aluminum based sunscreens, aluminum based meaning just that they have aluminum containing sunscreens. Uh, that the authors of the 2007 letter to the editor, uh, we're looking at to a, uh, to a sunscreen like van man's, which has no aluminum in it at all and uses a physical barrier as opposed to a chemical, um, a chemical element.

[00:50:47] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. Or even zinc oxide, which is, you know, rarely used anymore, but it's just that white stuff that people.

[00:50:54] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. I just don't know what else is in those.

[00:50:55] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. That's a good question.

[00:50:56] Dr. Heather Heying: I don't, I don't, I assume that many of those also had other things in them that it wasn't just pure zinc oxide. I doubt they were. Um, but I wanted to say too, um, that I guess we, I already did this before you went through your hypotheses, um, that my, my objections to the conversation as it seems to be happening is one sunscreen isn't one thing. The use of sunscreen in this research is a category error and there's multiple types of sunscreen, some of which I don't expect would end up being toxic, uh, in and of themselves. But also there's the question of all cars, all cause mortality. And what else are you keeping your body from, from getting by applying sunscreen? Uh, even if we accept as, as you and I did in our book here, uh, that sunscreen itself is going to reduce skin cancer incidence, which, uh, interesting to find, to find that here. So we have in the medicine chapter of hunter gatherers guide to the 21st century, which we was, was published in 2021 related to the productionist thinking around vitamin D is the fact that for decades now, we have received a nearly universal recommendation to slather ourselves with sunscreen whenever we're in the sun. Reduce your exposure to the sun, the larger it goes and skin cancer rates fall. True enough. That's where I don't know. Uh, guess what goes up when sun exposure goes down though, blood pressure and as

[00:52:18] Dr. Heather Heying: blood pressure climbs, so do rates of heart disease and stroke. People who avoid the sun have higher overall mortality rates than do people who seek it. A research study on Swedish women reported this remarkable result. An evolutionary analysis suggests the latter, at least on this topic, the medical literature is catching up to that conclusion as well. So that, um, that Swedish forward study is, is excellent. And, um, that's, that's my nod to it with the bit from hunter gatherers guide. The idea that, uh, the only thing you should be thinking about with regard to sunscreen, should I use it or not? Is your risk of skin cancer is patently wrong. So again, be thinking about the effects on your overall health and whether or not being exposed to the sun might be good for you. And the answer has to be yes. The answer has to be yes, because we evolved outdoors under the sun.

[00:53:35] Dr. Bret Weinstein: All right. I want to add something more general consideration. I'm toying with the idea. I haven't a hundred percent convinced myself of it yet, but I'm increasingly convinced of the following thing. All actual solutions in a complex system are simple. That if you apply a complex solution in a complex system, the likelihood of unintended consequences is so, so high that it can't possibly work. So at the very least, there's a strong bias towards, we tend to think, oh, that system is complicated. We're going to need a complicated answer. And the answer is no. If it's truly complex, then you're looking for a simple answer. That's the most elegant and possible. Yes. And I guarantee, but it's possible. It's possible. Yeah. And you might have some chance of understanding the impact of what you've done enough to track whether or not it was actually a win. I wanted to go back to your point about hats. Okay. A hat. Sometimes I look at people wearing hats like hats with brims. Which you do yourself. Which I do myself. And, you know, like glasses, like that's a weird technology you're wearing on your face. But we have taken it as part of what it is to be human and we don't look at somebody wearing glasses. You know, they're not wearing toasters. Right. I mean, sometimes. On Halloween, perhaps. But my point is this. A hat is kind of a strange object. Right.

[00:55:02] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It's like a shadow caster that you, you know, ring your head with so that the shadow follows you around like a cloud. You know, you could imagine that, you know, instead, if you wanted, you know, to raise the humidity, you could have a mister around your head and it would make equally as much sense as a shadow cast.

[00:55:17] Dr. Heather Heying: I can basically guarantee you that product exists.

[00:55:20] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It probably does. Yes. But, but here's my point. How elegant is a hat actually? Pretty elegant. Because if you think about, you've got a complex system that is your skin that has a built in mechanism. Like you have your endogenous level of melatonin based on the latitude that your ancestors lived in. That does a pretty good job of fending off your regular level of incidence of sun exposure. Then you have your capacity to ratchet up your UV protection. Your skin does it automatically upon exposure to sun. If you're exposed to that, you know, in a reasonable way, your skin will darken and that will give you just enough protection that you don't burn, which is really the thing you're trying to fear. Okay. But what if it's not enough? Well, you could slather stuff on. Sure. Or you could wear a shadow caster around your head. What does the shadow caster around your head do that none of the others do? Well, because it's at a distance and because you're walking around and looking at things and walking there and then turning around and walking back, it casts a shadow some percentage of the time. Right. If you want to go full sombrero, it's a lot of the time because it's casting a very big shadow, right? A small brim casts a little bit of a shadow. But the point is what it's doing is breaking up your sun exposure. Sometimes the shadow is over your face and you are not in the sun.

[00:56:45] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Your face isn't. Sometimes you turn your head and you're directly in the sun. And as you're walking around, as you're looking at different things, you're getting little bits of sun exposure. It does exactly the right thing to basically... It's like a... What are those like meshy jersey kind of things that people sometimes wear? I think...

[00:57:08] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. Or I mean a straw hat, I think does also the job that you're talking about.

[00:57:12] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. So the point is you can block some percentage of the sun by making a mini pergola. Right. And you know, I think the jerseys people do it because they're trying to not trap heat. They have to wear a jersey to have their number or whatever and their team affiliation. But they try not to trap heat. So it's like, you know, 50% more space and fabric. Yeah. But the point is it's an elegant solution to the problem. Why? Because it's simple.

[00:57:38] Dr. Heather Heying: It's simple. A parasol is similarly simple. Sunglasses, as opposed to myopia or presbyopia correcting glasses, also seems simple. But I think a hat will not trick your body into imagining that it's in a different sun situation that it is, especially because you do move around and you do end up experiencing these different sun exposures. Whereas sunglasses, I believe, actually trick your brain and therefore your skin into responding to a darker moment than is going on and put you at greater risk of burning.

[00:58:24] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I would love... I mean, I don't know, but I would love to know.

[00:58:27] Dr. Heather Heying: That's the hypothesis. So I love it. Yeah. And you know, so this will sound crazy to many people. Don't you sunscreen? Don't wear sunglasses. Like, what do you want me to do? You want me to stay inside? Like, no, go outside. Don't use sunscreen. Don't wear sunglasses. It's summer. That sounds risky to a lot of people. And it may be impossible for more than a few minutes at a time, at least at first. And certainly there are a lot of people living in climates where their ancestors did not evolve. And if you, you know, if you're pale-skinned and red-haired out of Ireland and living in Southern California, you're going to need to be using some protection. Better to make it physical protection in the form of fabric or, you know, or zinc-based sunscreen than anything chemical. But also you came up with advice when our kids were young. Where, you know, they were... I was lucky just never to have had burning skin. And so I didn't see coming that children would burn. And you generated advice for them that almost 100% worked. And I think it did 100% work. It was just sort of user error when I didn't.

[00:59:39] Dr. Bret Weinstein: So it doesn't work if you don't do it. And there are times when you can't pull it off.

[00:59:43] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes. So what is the advice?

[00:59:45] Dr. Bret Weinstein: The advice is you're out in the sun for a half hour. You begin to think, maybe I'm going to burn. You spend a few minutes in the shade. Sometimes you can do it by turning so that the side of you that's been in the shade, because you're, you know, lying on the beach or something, is not the side being exposed. But the point is...

[01:00:03] Dr. Heather Heying: But my experience, because we all do become more susceptible to feeling the heat of the sun and potentially burning as we age, my experience is that getting your entire body out of the sun, or call it five minutes every 30, actually almost entirely resets the clock.

[01:00:21] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yes. And I will tell you, I don't know if this is actually right in any physical way, but the experience matches the idea that there is some capacity to absorb the insult of the sun and that it gets exhausted, right? Like you're, you know, like a sponge soaking up a liquid. And the point is, if you can empty it and it empties fast, then you can soak up that same amount again. So it's not proportional. It's not 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off. It's 30 minutes on, five or 10 off. And the place where this fails is if you screw it up and you forget. Forget, for example, you're snorkeling, so you're cool and you're not thinking about the heat. That'll do it. Or you're in a freaking kayak crossing between A and B and there is no shade, right? So there are cases in which you can't pull it off. But when you can pull it off, I think it's near perfect. And I will say on the sunglasses thing, you did this first, but I now do not wear them except in circumstances where I have to, like driving into the sun. It's not worth the risk. Boat in the sun even worse. And

[01:01:34] Dr. Heather Heying: so I do have a pair of sunglasses that I very much like and I do use sometimes, but they're very pale. So they do less to confuse my eyes when I'm outside wearing them than would very dark sunglasses. Yeah.

[01:01:49] Dr. Bret Weinstein: And I almost wonder if I'm sure there's some research, but I would be interested in a set of sunglasses that disrupted as few things as possible. I personally hate sunglasses that change the color profile of the world. I find that awful. But, you know, something for cameras, if you're shooting outdoors, there's a thing called a neutral density filter. Neutral density filter changes nothing about the photons coming through except how many of them. So there are variable ones that you put on the lens and you can rotate them and it gets darker and darker.

[01:02:30] Dr. Heather Heying: Is it polarizing? No. It sounds like a polarizing filter. Maybe not.

[01:02:36] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I do not think it is inherently polarizing. Certainly polarizing does some of this, except that polarizing cuts literally the angle of the light. But in any case, something glasses wise that disrupted as few of the channels as possible, especially something. I mean, the problem is fashion wise, nobody's going to want, you know, like a variable thing.

[01:03:04] Dr. Heather Heying: Try it on the tech bros, see if they can start a thing.

[01:03:07] Dr. Bret Weinstein: But anyway, from the point of view, they will. From the point of view of you're trying to live your life and disrupt your health as little as possible, a sunglasses that reduce the light as little as necessary to do whatever it is you're trying to do and distort the light as little as possible is likely to be least disruptive.

[01:03:29] Dr. Heather Heying: I wonder, actually. So I said this thing about sunglasses and astute viewers may realize that that doesn't make sense, given that I always show up here in glasses. I'm actually quite myopic. I require corrective lenses to move around the world, but I normally wear contacts when I'm not on camera. I wear contacts. And so I can wear sunglasses. I have never ever worn tinted contacts, but I wonder if tinted contacts don't have exactly the same problem. And like like just being in the habit of wearing sunscreen, it may be even worse than having sunglasses on because you don't even realize that you're sending your body the wrong the wrong signals. And I hope that regular contacts don't have this problem. But of course, you know, wearing a form fitting piece of plastic on your eyes can't be 100 percent safe. Yeah, it's not

[01:04:21] Dr. Bret Weinstein: it's not going to be good. Yeah. A question for I didn't know that tinted contacts were a thing. I'm sure that contacts that change your eye color for fashion reasons exist. Is that the extent of them?

[01:04:33] Dr. Heather Heying: I think so. Yeah, I mean, I don't I've never looked into it. But I have no idea how widespread in use they are, but they're widely available. I'm always it's always an option when when I get my contacts.

[01:04:47] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It raises all kinds of concerns. Right. Imagine imagine you're single and you fall for somebody who's been wearing the wrong eye color would result in tinted love. I just think that's

[01:05:03] Dr. Heather Heying: terrible. Or maybe that's the joke. I can't tell.

[01:05:09] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, but it can't be good.

[01:05:11] Dr. Heather Heying: No. No. All right. One more story for today.

[01:05:17] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[01:05:17] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. I think I should just I think I should just read read the article. But my lead up to it is that the New York Times. Yeah, that's right. I still occasionally read the New York Times cannot figure out what team it needs to be on. And that's I just you know, you got to feel for them. They've been so they've been trying so hard to just have one position and one position only.

[01:05:44] Dr. Bret Weinstein: And the evil is on two sides of something. They're trying to get

[01:05:47] Dr. Heather Heying: it's so hard for them. Just like feel for the New York Times. Let me see. Does this have? Okay, here we go. Can you see my screen at this point? Good. Protect every animal from cruelty. Not in 2026, Oregon Democrats say. A possible referendum in Oregon on animal rights would end fishing, hunting, even pest control. Just when Democrats are trying really hard not to be seen as "weirdos" again. I just the headline and subheadline alone are worth the price of admission here. Like, yes, I'm still sending some of our hard earned money to the New York Times so that I can see stories, stories like this. And so before I am going to read part of this, I will say that we've been we've been talking a lot about California and Washington and how completely off the rails they are. So I thought it was time to spend a little time talking about Oregon and how it too as a whole, I think it's a good thing. Because a Western state sandwiched between California and Washington has gone off the rails.

[01:06:47] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Okay, completely nuts.

[01:06:49] Dr. Heather Heying: Completely nuts. Okay, so this is published a couple days ago, January 21st. This is David Michaelson, the organizer of the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions wants quote a system where we're not killing or hurting animals anymore. Oh, and he says it that way. It sounds totally reasonable, does it not? Okay, since the 2024 elections, Democrats in or seeking office have tried hard to stick to the new playbook. Focus on pocketbook worries, criticize President Trump if you must. But for the love of all that is sacred, avoid the social issues that Republicans have used to paint the party is out of touch. And maybe even a little weird. A little weird. Okay, a new animal rights measure in Oregon has Democratic leaders like Governor Tina Kotak going out on a limb. They want voters to know they're just as committed to killing animals as Republicans. I had to read that several times to establish that Governor Kotak, who is a piece of work like she is seriously woke and very left wing and not doing good things for Oregon. The New York Times is making sure that we know that Governor Kotak is, quote, just as committed to killing animals as Republicans. Wow, quite a framing. The measure known for now as Initiative Petition 28 is the stuff of political nightmares for Democratic leaders in Washington. That's Washington, DC in that state. It would give all animals the same

[01:08:13] Dr. Heather Heying: protections from cruelty that Oregon grants dogs and cats and in the process remake the state's economy and dinner plates. Hunting, trapping and fishing would be outlawed along with scientific research on animals, lethal pest control and conventional livestock production. Incredible. The goal, said David Michaelson, a substitute teacher, vegan and the petitions organizer, quote, is to have a system where we're not killing or hurting animals anymore. Democrats in Oregon are fleeing Mr. Michaelson faster than Bambi's mother tried to escape the hunter or perhaps faster than James Tellerica, the Democratic nominee for Santon, Texas, reached for a barbecued hunk of meat to prove he's not vegetarian. "No establishment Democrat in Oregon would ever support this," said John Horvick, senior vice president with a polling firm, DHM Research. Still, he added, Republicans see this as an opportunity to say, "Look at those crazy Democrats being weirdos again." Ms. Kotek, up for reelection in November, said in a social media video last month that she wanted, quote, "to be very clear, she's against something she sees as attacking the people who feed our communities." Okay, I'm going to go down. I just want to tell you a little bit about the guy who's behind this. I've gotten a few emails telling me it's not the right time for this, Mr. Michaelson said, by that logic, it never will be. Mr.

[01:09:32] Dr. Heather Heying: Michaelson is an unlikely candidate to upend Oregon politics. Originally from Southern California, he moved to Oregon from Denver in 2020 because he figured his chances of meeting another gay vegan were better in Portland. He did part-time work gathering signatures for several liberal ballot measures and realized he could use Oregon's system for his own passion, convincing people to stop hurting animals. Most people really like their companions, their pets, Mr. Michaelson said. We're just trying to say these other animals have those needs, too. IP28 is his third attempt to qualify for the ballot. His initial effort collected just 2,000 signatures. This time, he gave himself the full two years allowed under Oregon law to gather signatures and put more energy into fundraising for paid canvassers. He and other supporters have collected more than 135,000 signatures, etc. One more thing about him. He's collected more than 305,000 dollars to fund the campaign with help from PETA, the Craigslist Charitable Fund, and his own pockets where he found 35,000 dollars. "I live very cheaply," he said. "No car, no children, or roommates." So, this gay vegan who wants to stop all hunting, fishing, trapping, livestock production, and animal research in Oregon is the male equivalent of the middle-aged white woman who is looking to the state to fix all of her problems for her.

[01:10:56] Dr. Heather Heying: Also, actually, the young, childless white women who don't have a place to direct their energies that historically would have been there. Here we have a guy who is a substitute teacher and yet found 35,000 dollars in his own pockets, as the article reads, because he has no car, no children, no roommates. I don't know why roommates would make his life more expensive, but he basically has no affiliations. And so, he's focused entirely on a social campaign. He focused entirely, like his entire life on the social campaign, as later in the piece you see Oregonians complaining. "He's an outsider!" He's like, "Well, okay, he's from Southern California, and then from Denver. Can we stop being scared of outsiders in all of their forms? That's become an easy boogeyman for people on the right." However, he's moved in. He has no affiliations. Apparently, he hasn't been lucky in finding his gay, vegan love of his life in Portland, although I'm sure there are others who fit that description in Portland. And so, he's putting it all into a petition, which I don't think could possibly have a chance of passing, even in Oregon. Even, given that Oregon's population is largely centered in Portland and Eugene, which some proportion of the people might even vote for such a thing. But it can't possibly pass yet. The idea that anyone is taking this seriously is extraordinary.

[01:12:28] Dr. Heather Heying: And the idea that the New York Times can't quite figure out which side they're on is just hilarious.

[01:12:32] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Somebody finally got far enough out to the left that the New York Times is like, "It seems like a bridge too far." All right, I got a number of things to say. One, to your point about the childless white women looking to the state to solve their problems. That's part of it. It's also using the state to bully others. Oh, yes. Yes, yes. Those are two aspects of the same syndrome, but they are different. But I wanted to just point out a couple things. Animals? All animals?

[01:13:10] Dr. Heather Heying: Yeah. I have not gone and looked at the petition. I don't know what all is written in. But it does say in this article something about pest control. Now, my guess is they're talking about like...

[01:13:25] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Vertebrates.

[01:13:26] Dr. Heather Heying: I bet that he's only concerned about vertebrates. What kind of bigotry is that, dude?

[01:13:31] Dr. Bret Weinstein: In which case, the New York Times, of course, has tripped over its own shoelaces because to say all animals is so unthinkably extreme, even for a vegan. I mean, can you drive if insects are going to get killed on your windshield?

[01:13:48] Dr. Heather Heying: Could you wash your face and kill some of the mites that were living in your eyelashes?

[01:13:52] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Can you slap a mosquito? Right? I mean, the point is insects are animals.

[01:13:56] Dr. Heather Heying: You can clap along with a mosquito.

[01:14:00] Dr. Bret Weinstein: That's something I'd be likely to do. But anyway, all animals is a question mark. If it really says all animals, then that tells you this is just next level in terms of the insane.

[01:14:09] Dr. Heather Heying: My guess is it's vertebrates, even if he doesn't know what a vertebrate is. Right.

[01:14:15] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Here's another thing, and I think it's just time that we do this logic cleanly. There is something counterintuitive about animal husbandry. The desire... First of all, I should just say, I believe I speak for you. If I say something that doesn't sound like I speak for you, feel free to correct it.

[01:14:37] Dr. Heather Heying: Oh, I will.

[01:14:39] Dr. Bret Weinstein: I know you will. There's a lot that we do to mammals especially, but also some birds that is unthinkably terrible and should be ended absolutely immediately. The factory farming of these creatures is completely inhumane. The use of them in testing. There is an argument, in fact, a quite compelling argument that there are some things for which you need to be. You need to test on animals because they're the only complex systems that will allow you to predict impacts on humans. But what we do to animals in product testing is insane. And if you saw it, it would make you cry. So this is no defense of that at all.

[01:15:30] Dr. Heather Heying: And some unnecessary cruelty still remains.

[01:15:33] Dr. Bret Weinstein: A huge amount. Just unthinkably much.

[01:15:37] Dr. Heather Heying: Even in research, certainly in livestock and chicken.

[01:15:42] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yes. And if you were to understand the massive fishing fleets, I don't mean to blame China specifically, but they seem to be a major culprit in the Pacific at the moment. These giant fleets that are just thrashing the oceans, just absolutely liquidating the wildlife there. There's a lot of unthinkably terrible stuff. And yes, animals need much better protection than they have. Including insects need protection from the insane pesticides that we're distributing.

[01:16:15] Dr. Heather Heying: Yes.

[01:16:15] Dr. Bret Weinstein: With all that said, however, the idea that you are raising those animals to kill them and eat them, and that's mean, is wrongheaded. And the way to think of it is this. Let's take a domestic chicken. Domestic chickens outnumber jungle fowl, their closest living relative, by who knows how many orders of magnitude in terms of the number of individuals alive on Earth today. Jungle fowl could go extinct. The chicken can't go extinct, right? Right. Let's say that we decide not only that raising of chickens in cages and even free range chickens are just technically free range. Let's suppose that we decided that all raising of chickens is wrong because it either involves exploiting them for their eggs or killing them for meat, or very often exploiting for their eggs and then killing them for meat and killing as mean. Okay? Say we stop doing it. Chicken goes extinct. Did you do it a favor? No. The fact is...

[01:17:25] Dr. Heather Heying: The future chicken whom you saved from being killed never came into existence in the first place.

[01:17:30] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Right. And if you think about whether or not, you know, you would be spared all of the suffering that you will have in your life by never having been, most people would prefer to have been even knowing that they will ultimately die and that they may die horribly. Most people would rather have lived a life. It doesn't make any sense. So the point is the chicken or the goat or the sheep or the cow have arranged, they have evolved into a mutualism with people. And the mutualism involves them living. I would have them all live under natural circumstances where they actually have joy and pleasure and all of that. I don't want them to live intolerably. But they would rather, if they could speak for themselves, exist and then cease to exist as a result of the deal that they've worked out with humanity rather than break that deal and banish them to extinction. But he wants to go extinct. The whole point of your evolutionary drive is to not go extinct. So you are not doing them a favor by not eating them. You are doing them a favor by eating them and recognizing that they should be raised in a way that actually matches our values rather than hidden away so that we can't see the suffering that we are causing. We should raise them honorably, but we should raise them and we should eat them and we should not feel bad about it. We would not be doing them a favor by not doing it.

[01:18:58] Dr. Bret Weinstein: And frankly, there are a lot of issues that work this way. If you think about what is actually in that creature's interest, it's not always what you think. An evolutionary analysis actually is very clarifying in this regard. What would the animal want? All these people who want to end suffering, that would be an insane thing to do. Actually, even human suffering, which is not good when it happens, is part of the system that allows you to have meaning in life.

[01:19:25] Dr. Heather Heying: It is motivational.

[01:19:27] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It gets you to solve your problems. If you were to turn, it's like medicine sees pain as a disease. If we get rid of pain, hey, we can anesthetize that. Don't. People who have the malady of not being able to feel pain die early, all of them. They can't figure out how to live because pain is a teacher. So the point is these things...

[01:19:51] Dr. Heather Heying: It's an evolved signal and it's a useful one. Some things that evolved are no longer useful, but before you get rid of it, go chesterton's fence on it and figure out what you're getting rid of. Why is it there in the first place?

[01:20:02] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Which is not to say that there aren't instances where it's useless. If you have lost a limb and you have pain in a phantom limb, that pain isn't helping you. So we should try to figure out how to anesthetize that one. But that's the exception. In general, pain is telling you something. Either you're doing damage or you're taking a risk that is unacceptable and will cause damage. It's telling you something. So anyway, the point is enough. I don't want to be told by some vegan that I can't eat ethically raised meat. Who the hell appointed this guy? I evolved as a meat eater. I am entitled to eat meat and I am not doing the animals any favor by not eating them. You just don't understand what you're talking about, sir, at all. So go educate yourself and stop trying to boss other people around. And if you wanted to, if you wanted to make your efforts useful, you could point them at the inhumane treatment of animals in laboratories, in factory farms. If you want to talk about that, you'll find a much larger audience of us ready to listen, but you're not in a position to tell us what to eat and whether or not we can go fishing. I'm sorry. It's just not your business. Amen.

[01:21:12] Dr. Heather Heying: All right. All right.

[01:21:14] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Here it is.

[01:21:17] Dr. Heather Heying: I hope he sees that.

[01:21:18] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah, I hope so too. Yeah.

[01:21:20] Dr. Heather Heying: Well, maybe, maybe that's it, man. All right. Should we go out in the sun without sunscreen or sunglasses and just enjoy the rays on our skin?

[01:21:27] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Yeah. I mean, and if it's really intense, we could put on our circular shadow casters.

[01:21:32] Dr. Heather Heying: Or maybe I'll carry a parasol.

[01:21:35] Dr. Bret Weinstein: It's not done so much here, but yeah. Yeah. Oh, that does remind me. I got a lovely parasol from Rupert Lowe. Oh, what's really an umbrella? It's a, it's a restore Britain umbrella, which I managed to get home in winter. I managed to get home in one piece and I'm very proud to own it. But anyway, if you haven't watched the Rupert Lowe episode of DarkHorse, check it out. Rupert, somebody you should know about. He is a fellow traveler. I think you'll really dig it. And I think restore Britain and rescue the Republic are the right ideas. And this is how we, we fixed the West.

[01:22:12] Dr. Heather Heying: Excellent. Excellent. Beautiful. So check out our sponsors this week. Again, they were Mud/WTR, Caraway, and Puori. Join us on Locals to check out previous Q&A's and such. And until you see us next time, we'll be back on Wednesday next week on our usual time and place. Be good to the ones you love, eat real food, and get outside.

[01:22:37] Dr. Bret Weinstein: Be well, everyone.

Bret WeinsteinHeather HeyingDarkHorse PodcastEvolutionary Lenssunscreensun exposureskin cancermelanomaaluminumsunglassesvitamin dOregonanimal rightsveganismhuntingfishinganimal researchpest controlevolutionary biology

Jennifer Donogh