Orion Taraban: People Don’t Want Relationships. Give Them What They Want.

The best defense against manipulation is learning about manipulation. Learn about the tactics. Learn about the strategies and you know forewarned is forearmmed. Power is getting other people to do what you want. The thing that moves the needle is not physical. What moves the needle is the person inside. And the person inside is of beliefs and thoughts and feelings and emotions and impulses and memories and experiences. Some of which are conscious but most of which are not. And this is the half asleep driver that's running the machinery of the human being that you have to interact

with. On the one hand, people might complain when their dates aren't very exciting and they don't feel anything for them, but if that ever falls through, they complain that they were lovebombed and manipulated by Makavelian narcissists. So, it's like those two expectations are kind of two sides of the same coin. Other people are generally the best and the worst thing that can happen to somebody. Other people could Make our lives very very good or they can make our lives very very very bad. Dr. Orion Taban, what is your definition of relationships? Okay, jumping right in.

So, a relationship in my opinion is when two people exchange unequal goods of comparable value. And once that occurs, you have a relationship. No matter how you consciously choose to define it, and this is true whether you have a business relationship, a friendship, or sexual relationship, some good needs to be exchanged. Um, those goods have to be unequal. What does that mean? Uh, I can't give you I guess I could give you what you already have, but you probably don't want it because you already have it. To want means both to desire and to lack

and we tend to want what we don't have, right? So that's why the goods that are transacted are generally not the same. That's how we kind of do business with each other. And they have to be within the same general bar ballpark with respect to their subjective valuations uh with respect to the people involved. if they're too far away, people feel like it's unfair, inequitable, they're being taken Advantage of, and or they just refuse to move forward with the relationship. Uh, and that is the fundamental economic basis for all voluntary relationships between human beings. And

before you became a doctor, you trained as an actor. Uh, what did acting teach you? Different life a long time ago. Uh-huh. Yeah. What did acting teach you about relationships? Acting taught me a lot about people, about emotions, about psychology, and through that about relationships. For example, whether we like it or not, the only thing that another person can use, like the person you're doing a scene with, and the only things that the audience can really resonate are things that are observable. You have to say the thing. You have to be able to hear it

in your tone. They have to be able to see it in your face. And I think this might sound obvious to a lot of people, but I think that there is this tenor in a lot of modern relationships that just feel like if I can feel it inside of me, if I can authentically feel love or authentically feel affection, that's enough. Um, and it's not like a an actor who we could presume authentically felt Something but made no sign of it with respect to his expression or his tone of voice or his behavior would not

succeed in communicate that communicating that emotion to anybody and probably wouldn't succeed very much as an actor. Right? So the things that we have inside, we have to learn how to communicate appropriately and that in large part means kind of speaking the language of the audience or the language of the the person that you're doing the scene with. Um you can't insist on your own language of communication in spite of the audience or your scene partner. And this also and I think people are wary of this because the the correlary to this understanding is that

some there are some people who are very good at communicating an emotion that they don't authentically feel. And that's that's the danger there. And I think that's why people tend to go away from that because they're more comfortable in the authentic genuine emotional world. um they don't like the idea that someone could be very good at mimicking authenticity which trained actors absolutely can do and that mimicking authenticity is is that manipulation U I mean probably yeah I mean manipulation as I discussed in the book is a word that has a lot of baggage related to

it uh the literal definition is something that you can uh kind of move with your hand. Like manu is like manual labor. So to manipulate means that you can kind of have a grasp on something. Um we often go to people and experiences to be manipulated. Like when we go to a movie, we want to be manipulated into thinking that we're in the scene of the action. No one wants to pay the ticket and sit there and say, "I'm just looking at reflected light on a screen." Um they're not going to feel anything. they're going

to think the whole experience was overblown and expensive, right? So, people go to certain places and experiences in order to be emotionally manipulated. And I think that relationships, especially romantic relationships are one of those places, though we don't like to admit that. Um, you see some of that come out in especially young people's dissatisfaction with uh not having the feels like pe a lot of people date for the spark. They want to have a feeling. They want to be able to feel excited. They want to feel alive. They want to feel. And um unfortunately a

lot of the things that stimulate feeling are dramatic. I mean that's what movie makers and entertainers have figured out a long time ago. um it's it's not really grounded in that which is sustainable and mature. Um that in fact can be very boring. Mature relationships tend to be fairly boring actually. Um so on the one hand people might complain when their dates aren't very exciting and they don't feel anything for them but if that ever falls through they complain that they were lovebombed and manipulated by Makavelian narcissists. So it's like those two expectations are kind

of two sides of the same coin. It's the need or the desire for that kind of emotional stimulation that leads that person to seek out individuals who can provide it. Yeah. So manipulation then maybe this experience that can be embedded within a relationship like it's embedded within going to the movies. So I I wonder what's the distinction then between um a a pathological or a negative manipulation and the the manipulation that people want. Sure. Like I was a teacher for 20 years and that's a form of manipulation as well is that these Students were paying

me money and consenting to an experience where I was going to reach into their minds with my words and alter the way that they think. That's manipulative. but they were doing it willingly and we were all kind of on the same page about everybody wanted this to happen and this was the desired outcome. So that's we could say a a positive form of manipulation like I don't think anybody would have a problem with that but it is technically manipulation. I think that the danger becomes when I use hypothetically I use my skills or my knowledge

to um execute to change an to change you on the inside your mind or your emotions in a way that only serves me or is at you and or is at your detriment. I think we can all agree that that's where it kind of crosses over into the the darker aspects of manipulation. Um and people do that. uh especially when they feel like they don't have a chance of getting what they need or want in more constructive, positive, explicit ways. People aren't going to give up on what they need and want, especially what they need.

If I can't earn it, if I can't uh take it by force, if I can't beat you in competition, If I can't um get you become friends and get you to agree to give it to me willingly, like if I could if I despair of all of these potential solutions with respect to getting what I want from you, a lot of people will eventually resort to more of these underhanded negative manipulation techniques. Yeah. So what makes the most effective manipulation techniques? Because it seems we could see if something is totally for that person's benefit and

not for us and and that maybe mixed signals are are more effective. Uh yes. So one of the main things I mean there's lots of ways to manipulate people. Um you have to be somewhat unpredictable. You can't be completely stochastic and random because then it's hard to create any kind of emotional expectation. So manipulators and you can see this in the movies, you can see this in popular literature, they build an expectation or a pattern and then they break it. And there's lots of ways to do that. You can do that through pattern disrupts which

have to do a lot of hypnotists and mentalists use these sorts of communication techniques where you kind of have a steady cadence or an Atonal presentation and then you break it very quickly um that inspires an emotional reaction in people and when you get people to start to feel they stop critically thinking. I mean, this is something that advertisers have figured out um decades ago. So, it's very difficult to get what you want through direct appeal to people's logic and reason. Advertisers used to do that before like madmen in like the 30s and 20s. If

you go back to read newspaper ads, they're they're horrible by today's standards in the sense that they give like an essay that's a reasoned argument for why their product is superior and explains all the great specs and characteristics of what you might buy. And that doesn't sell nearly as well as some sort of emotional story that just happens to be associated with the product that they have on offer, right? You stop thinking because people don't actually buy the product, right? They don't buy Coke. They buy joy and connection. They don't buy a herpes medication. They

buy the freedom to go play beach volleyball whenever they want or whatever is in that commercial, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, That that first episode of Mad Men, I think the line they come up with when they're talking about how to sell cigarettes, it's it's toasted. Like it completely takes your mind off of whether or not this is going to give you cancer. Uh, I actually have not seen Madman. Maybe I should. Um, but I know a little bit about the real life story of the Madison Avenue Revolution. And it was not led by Don

Draper. It was led by psychologists. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what what psychologists? What what's the story there? Oh, it's there's there's a really um interesting story there. Um, okay. So, uh, BF Skinner was a a behavioral psychologist in the early 20th century. I think he was a professor at Princeton, well into academia. This was the age of psychology, really trying to be a science. And he has a very interesting story because he was obviously brilliant, but was an unconventional character. He was eventually booted out of academia because he was caught having an affair with his research

assistant. And uh that just like shocked the the the respectable world of Princeton and uh they kicked him out even though I think he was a tenure professor. And uh he said, "Okay, well go [ __ ] you guys." and he went to New York and he basically took his understanding of human behavior and motivation and brought it to Madison Avenue and made millions of dollars in like 1940s money which is insane amount today and he lived this very high life for a while among New York's culturati and upper class and as dethroned academic. I

mean, he's a he has a very fascinating lifestyle. Someone should make a biopic of his of his movie one day. Yeah. Sound sounds really good. And like the Skinner box that was him, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He did a lot of really questionable stuff. Yeah. It seems so much of this is about emotion. And one thing that I read in your book is that maybe we could say that we manipulate ourselves with our emotions. How does that work? Um, we certainly try to manipulate ourselves all the time. uh consciously. I mean, we we try to

psych ourselves up in advance of a presentation or to calm our nerves before we go to talk to a pretty girl. I mean, we we want to change our emotion um all the time. And the issue is that emotion is very difficult to change directly. Um there are Two it's like emotions down here, but there are two handles sticking out of that emotion. And we can use that indirectly to navigate and manipulate the emotion. One is our thinking and the other is our behavior. And of those two levers, behavior is far more powerful than thinking.

Um so that's those are one way and of course if that fails, we fall into trying to manipulate our feelings through drugs and alcohol or through video games and uh pornography or streaming Netflix until 3 in the morning. uh social media. I mean there's when people despair of those levers themselves, they they sort of export responsibility for their emotional manipulation to outside sources. And there's an entire multi-billion dollar industry that's several of them that are very good at uh changing people's emotions exogenously. Yeah. This idea of changing them through these two levers, thought and behavior.

We often hear about changing emotions through thought that you know your your mind is going to dictate where you go or have a mindfulness practice. What's the behavioral way to to attack your emotions and and work on them? Yeah. One of the most powerful behavioral Interventions as a therapist is just to behave as if like that's what it's called. And this is something that uh they've been doing for the last 60 years in cognitive behavioral therapy. So, somebody wants to be more confident. Okay. So, you ask them, "Well, what would it look like if you

already were confident like from the outside? What would it look like as if you were behaving as though you already confident?" And he'd talk about all this, that, I'd have my shoulders back. I would look people in the eye. I wouldn't be afraid. Well, I can't see that. I can't see whether you're afraid or not. So, let's just stick from the outside. Okay. Well, uh, I'd go I'd go directly up to the person I wanted to talk to. I would be direct about what I was thinking and feeling because I wouldn't fear the social con.

Okay, we can't. And I like, okay, well, act as if you already were confident. And the miracle is is that that's the fastest way to start to feel confident. Now, of course, the person on the inside might not have any experience behaving in that way. And so, he might feel terrified. He might feel like a fraud. He might Experience a great deal of what we call cognitive dissonance because there are parts of him that seem to be at odds with each other. Like the way he feels about himself is at odds with how he's currently

acting in the world. Um, but the thing about cognitive dissonance is that it doesn't last for very long in the vast majority of people. It's a stressful state and stress wants to resolve itself along the path of res resistance and the path of least resistance when there's cognitive distance between how you feel about yourself and what you're doing is generally to fall on the side of what you're doing. It's almost like your unconscious mind is like, I don't understand. Like I'm getting impulses from the emotions saying I should be afraid and socially anxious, but I'm

getting data from the behavior in the motor cortex that says that he feels safe and is confident. Which one should I believe? And generally behavior is weighted more heavily than the feeling. And so after a little bit of time, you know, 5 to 10 minutes, it starts to kind of collapse in the side of the behavior. And if you do that repeatedly, dozens of times, maybe even hundreds of times, Depending on how deep the emotional script is that you're trying to overwrite, you can eventually become confident. And you generally become confident as by acting as

if you already are. Yeah. There's that word again, acting. I mean, it it seems that your acting training is is really integrated with the psychology thing. It's it's not a a veering off. Well, because I think acting has to do with being a human and acting means you take action. Is like that's that's what we're here to do. We're here to make choices. We have to make decisions. We're not like guided just by instincts. We're not we have conscious minds. Um we can't be passive. That's a choice as a human being. So, we have to

act and move through the world. And we also have to move through the world that is populated by other people. Some of whom might want the same things as us and are our competitors um or our friends. Often they can be the same people. Uh or they they're indifferent to us or they they hate us and they they see us as their rivals or or they're envious. I mean, you have to learn how to navigate what's going on inside of other people by reading because other People are generally the best and the worst thing that

can happen to somebody. You know, we don't really need to be afraid of mudslides and tornadoes as much anymore. We have to be more afraid of other people. Other people could make our lives very very good or they can make our lives very very very bad. And it's not like people are walking around wearing signs to let you know which one is which. Um, in fact, the really bad ones often are very indistinguishable from the ones that look very good. So, you know, everyone's an armchair psychologist. They're trying to figure out what's going on inside

of the mind of that person. Is he trustworthy? Is he safe? Can does he have what I want? Can he will he give it to me? What's the best way to get what I want from this person? When I talk like that, it it makes people seem very self-interested, which is, I think, the way that they are. Um, a lot of people don't consciously move through life thinking, how do I get what I want from other people, but often that means that they're just ineffective at getting what they want. Yeah. And you talk about how

maybe people don't wear signs saying Exactly who they are, but often people do wear signs. And it maybe it may be true, it may be not. And in your writing too, you talked about how um authority is things like the manipulation of awe, pity being the manipulation of disgust. Like it it seems that there's power in just projecting who you are and getting an emotional response from people. Power is getting other people to do what you want. I mean, that's I think the cleanest, simplest definition of power. And to get other people to do what

you want is generally but not always due to emotional manipulation. Uh the only other alternative to that is through like cold logical reasoning like the kind of stuff that Socrates did in the agora back in the day. Um and they had a lot of fun in the process as well. So, it's hard to tell the difference entirely between those two strategies. Um, all these various tactics of power that I discuss in the book are forms of emotional manipulation. Even things that seem to be overtly not about emotion like physical threats and intimidation. Physical threats and

intimidation actually only work and operate as Power as emotional manipulation strategies. They only work if I succeed in making you afraid. If my behavior, my threatening behavior fails to inspire fear in you, it fails as an emotional manipulation tactic. It fails as a threat and you will not comply with my designs, right? You might even laugh depending on how uh unthreatening or unafraid you feel, right? So the threat is always not um it's not physical. The the the thing that moves the needle is not physical. What moves the needle is the person inside. And the

person inside is psychological. It is a bundle, I don't I don't know how else to describe it, of beliefs and thoughts and feelings and emotions and impulses and memories and experiences, some of which are conscious, but most of which are not. And this is the half asleep driver that's running the machinery of the human being that you have to that you can see and touch and interact with. So, it's a very strange thing to be a human being. We're both kind of in like our separate meat suits that only have a few different apertures. Like

the amount of data that we can take in, especially relative to our instruments or other Animals in nature is is very small. Like we only see a very small section of visible, you know, visible light to human beings. Other animals can see much more light and take in much more data, etc. um we have to interact with each other through these through these really like basically concrete walls more or less. Um and we've learned to like tap on the walls in certain ways to communicate because we've said that these guttural sounds that I can make

with by constricting my throat and passing air over it are words and they signify meaning to you. Like that's [ __ ] amazing, you know? That's that's just like two prisoners tapping on a wall and eventually they they more or less figure out that there's an intention behind it and there's a meaning behind uh that intention. It's actually incredible. But on the inside uh you know on the inside I mean everybody is different but there's a potential of an entire universe on the inside. And then we get into kind of like Eastern mysticism where what

is the the the real boundary between the self and the rest of reality. Um anyway, I'm I'm meandering a bit here. I'm with you. I'm with you. So, if it's About these emotions that we deal with, what's the best defense against getting manipulated? Because we we want to still have our emotions. Well, the best defense against manipulation on the first hand is learning about manipulation. Um, learn about the tactics, learn about the strategies and you know, forewarned is forearmmed. And the best way to learn about that is to study sales. I mean, sales has nailed

it. They are master emotional manipulators because they do it for a living and there's billions of dollars on the line. And so there are people who have gotten very good and very dialed in on all kinds of different sales tactics and techniques. So the more you study sales um the more you'll understand how emotional manipulation works in the vast majority of cases. So that's one is forewarned is forearmmed. The second one is to become more comfortable tolerating certain emotions. As I discuss in the book, most people have a thumb screw, which I define as an

emotion that for whatever reason they find particularly intolerable to experience. For some people, it's anger. For example, maybe they grew up in a abusive Household. Maybe they had an angry uh abuse a physically abusive dad or an angry alcoholic mom. And so they've come to associate anger with all kinds of violence and abuse and they're terrified of it. And so they became so terrified of the anger in their family that they become terrified of the anger inside of themselves. And they really will bend over backwards to not feel anger. You could some you could push

these people around. you can dunk them in the mud and like they will fight with every cell in their body to not become angry because to them that anger is associated with these other really terrible memories and experiences. So um but if you were able to succeed in threatening to like inspire anger inside of them, they would likely do whatever you want to avoid that impulse to feel in that way. But that is only because that person has those experiences and those memories and that programming. Another person um it might be guilt. Maybe they had

a guilt tripping passive aggressive mother. Um and you know they're in a relationship and the guy's done nothing wrong but the woman just starts to cry and says you don't love me and you never Treated me good. And it could be total [ __ ] but it reminds him of the [ __ ] that his mom used to say 30 years ago. and suddenly he's willing to give her the ring and he's willing to buy her the the car or do whatever it is. Um, just stop saying these things that make me feel this way.

I can't take it anymore. But the issue is that he feels that he can't tolerate that feeling of guilt. Or the first person feels that he can't tolerate that feeling of anger. On the other hand, if somebody has learned to develop a capacity to feel without action, then those tactics might still succeed in inspiring the emotion, but the emotion doesn't become as intolerable to the people involved. Like in the second example, the guy might actually feel guilty, but he can remember, oh, I feel guilty because I grew up with a guilt- tripping passive aggressive mother,

and this is activating this unconscious, you know, memory association chain, and I'm feeling this way, but it's okay. I didn't actually do anything wrong in this relationship. I didn't say I didn't go against my moral code. I didn't break my word. I've done nothing wrong. She's just disappointed and she's actually being An ineffective communicator because she's not taking responsibility for her disappointment and she's placing it all on me because she wants something from me. Oh, it's like you you kind of have to remember all of that [ __ ] It doesn't necessarily make the guilt

evaporate right away in this case, but it's like you can just sit with it, especially if you're focusing on the kind of reasoning that I just described. You can let it inflame inside of you and then you can do nothing and it will eventually extinguish because of the cognitive dissonance. Again, your emotions are saying we got to do something. Your behavior is sitting still and not doing anything. There's a discrepancy there. Eventually, your mind says, "Oh, okay. Let's follow along behavior." Apparently, emotion is wrong here because if it was a really powerful need, we would

have taken action in some way by now. So, let's just turn the volume down on the emotion. Maybe that was a false signal. Yeah. Yeah. Or Ryan, this this emotion without responding or without reacting, without behavior kind of thing, it's making me think of that game that you talk about in your Book, the game of please no. Um, for those who aren't familiar, what is that and and how does it relate to relationships, dealing with people? Sure. The game of please no is a game. The actual game is a game that I played when I

was a first year actor at acting school at NYU. Um on a larger level though I think the game of please no is the fundamental game of human relationships. In acting school the game of please no involves two people and um the game has very few rules and goes on as long as it needs to. One person can only say please and the other person can only say yes or no. And this person starts from a no position. And the game continues until the please person can succeed in getting the other person to say yes,

but he can only say the word please. So this is a fascinating game. And I've seen games that have lasted 5 seconds. People get it on the first try. I've seen games that were cut off after two hours because the class was just over. Um, in reality, they go on indefinitely. Um, a lot of please no games end in stalemates. They don't end in um a yes. They often don't even end in a definitive no. They just end in a Indefinite middle ground. Um, but the idea here is from an acting perspective to get good

at your non-verbal communication. If you can only say the word please, you obviously cannot use your words to convey your emotional state or your intentions or your reasons or your arguments. You have to instead rely on your your tone of voice more than anything else. Your facial expression, your body language, your proxmics, how close or how far are you to the person involved? And you also have to listen um very carefully to the person that you're playing with because as I discussed in the book, the way somebody says no gives you a clue as to

how to get them to say yes. If their no is very strong, sharp, and loud, you're very far away from the right approach. Um, if there's more hesitation, if it's quieter, um, you you're you're probably homing in on uh the right tactic here. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Could we try? Could I could I try? We can. Okay. Do you want to start as the I I'll make you the best person. I I won't I won't be as good at it as you are, but I'll try. So, Sure. Just Okay. So, a couple more

rules. So, okay. Um, Uh, the it's the game is impossible to win if the yes no person just decides [ __ ] this guy, I'm never going to say yes. So, there's I mean, even if the game outside of the acting school has escalated to its final level, which is of course the threat of death, there are still people who choose to be martyed. they would rather they would die on that hill very literally and you can't get a dead man to say yes. So it's impossible to get certain people to say yes. I say

in the book you have to figure out who those people are and unless you're willing to go all the way and have it still not work, you should just cut your losses and move on to somebody else. Um, so the unspoken rule is that the yes no person has to be a good faith actor, which means that if and when he or she feels an authentic urge to say yes, they he or she actually does so as opposed to just saying no on principle because they want to win. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. With

any other rules? No. Okay. Here we go. Okay. Please. No. Please. No. Please. No. Please. No. Please. No. Please. No, please. Yes. So, how did how did that go? How was it for you? Well, it for me, I mean, I was am not skilled at this game, so I was really in the You did great for a first time, and I made you be the please person, which is much harder. Thanks. I'm just I'm still waking up. You're You're kind enough to be on my show, so I'm happy to play along. Um, yeah, I it

I felt like I was in the dark and I was just tossing out different forms. I guess the distinction was when I I think there were sometimes when you you sort of mocked me and I was like, "Okay, we can drop that one. Good. That's not that's not in play." But what what was happening on your end? What do you think? Uh, yeah. Yeah, I saw you try out a few different uh presentations and um uh I was trying to give you a little bit more uh feedback. I think I started the first one or

two I I was pretty flat. I wasn't Giving you a lot of information and I thought that was going to make it too hard. So, I started to give you a little bit more information in my rejections and that did you did pick up on that. Um you started to see when you were trying to be kind of like cutesy or or more feminine actually. That's kind of how you were read. Uh that's where I rejected you more quickly and more decisively. Um I did even imitate you mockingly that one time and you were like,

"Okay, that doesn't work." Um the closest you came you you gave a kind of a really uh firm almost like demanding um uh please. And that was that was close, but it was a little too like who the f, you know, I like I'm feeling this guy now, but like who the [ __ ] is this guy? So, I mean, it was just you had to find the right space. And I think you eventually landed on a place that was like direct, but without feeling um without coming off as uh like arrogant or doineering. Yeah.

And it's like, oh, okay, this guy seems like a decent dude. So that's when I decided to say yes. So that's how that's how I read you and that was kind of how my experience is now. Um it's interesting because you You you you are in the dark. You don't know in in most cases somebody walks into your store or you go up to a girl at a bar, you have in many cases ab zero information about this person. You might start making some very quick snap judgments based on their shoes. uh you know their

hairstyle, how they dress. Um but you don't know. You're going to try to test those things out very quickly. But you have to be willing to adapt because your first few attempts at figuring out who this person is, what they want, and what will work on them will probably be wrong. But if you just like fold over, you know, fold up, roll over and say, "Oh, I I tried once. It didn't work. I mean, the vast majority of please no games are not resolved on the first please. And there's there's information in a no. That

was that was a lesson from this that I I found really interesting and maybe people don't think about as much. Yeah. Um I had an episode on this a long time ago. I think it's called the truth about rejection. And I talk about how people generally have a very incorrect view of rejection in general. I they think it's painful, they think it's personal, and they think It's permanent. I call it the three Ps. And it's actually none of those things. Uh rejection is just information. And the more that you can think of it almost like

binary code where a yes is a one and a no is a zero. You're just getting data from the environment. And that data can actually help you improve your chances of getting incrementally closer to the one to the yes. um then you can you can treat this like a game. Um and people often don't like it when I talk about relationships being games, but also games are fun. Um games are people play all kinds of games for fun. They generally make our days liveable and and worthwhile. And when people approach things as a game, they

can have fun, they can relax, and it's often easier for them to get good at it. People can get very good at games. Yeah. With with the rejection thing, it it does seem so hard uh to face rejection. What do you think are anything else to consider when getting used to facing rejection? You just do it. I mean, like it was brutal as an actor. I was a sensitive young man. And when you're acting, you're constantly auditioning for roles. And the product that You're selling is functionally yourself. It's how you look. It's how you sound.

Like an author can have his book rejected. A painter can have his painting rejected. An actor is rejected. You know, and that's why so many performers actually have stage names to try to create some sort of psychological distance between themselves and like the commodity that they're selling that just happens to look exactly like them, right? So, uh the first dozen, few dozen rejections were brutal. I would take them so personally and get drunk and wallow in self-pity and uh go to some sort of uh inappropriate extreme and but after like a hundred it it you

start to develop kind of an emotional callous and you realize oh this isn't the end of the world I've been here before this is just part of the game it's part of the industry and it's also not the end of the world like you know maybe there's no part for me this time around, but I can still cultivate this relationship. This person's going to be putting on shows for years. Maybe the next time there's going to be something in it for me. You start to play the game of of that game. It's not just about

doing good in the audition. It's about doing well in the scene um in the industry and cultivating relationships long term. That's generally how people get parts. All right. We've talked about manipulation, about kind of putting up a front. One thing that often comes up with these topics these days is narcissism. And I've heard you say that you have sympathy for narcissists. What's that about? Oh, well, uh, I do. Yeah. A lot of people don't like narcissists. Um, I found especially that a lot of therapists, especially female therapists, don't like working with narcissists. I remember at

a lot of the placements I worked at, which were mostly composed of female clinicians because the profession is like 80 85% female at this point. And some of them would say, "I can't work with this guy. He's a narcissist." And I would work with them. Um, I worked with enough narcissistic men to understand that the things that are really distasteful about their presentation are really just clumsy facades and that all of these men are have turned out to be very scared like four-year-old boys on the inside. And they've built up these walls Um as an

emotional survival strategy and and and no one really has sympathy for a four-year-old who felt so unsafe that he had to build up those walls because the man is now a 50-year-old, you know, douchebag who is dating a 20-year-old and um driving a Corvette, etc., etc. So people just see the the presentation and they don't understand the um you know the origin of a lot of that behavior. And uh I like working with narcissists because they they they see through [ __ ] pretty well because they're master bullshitters themselves really. So you know you don't

have to pull punches with a narcissist. Um, in fact, you can't like what I've learned is that I mean I I I've had a number of guys they'll show up for the first session of therapy and they'll basically say something like, "Look, dude, I don't want to be here. I don't need to be here. I'm only here because my wife said she's going to leave me if I don't go to therapy because she caught me cheating for like the 14th time." So, here's the thing. Uh, just say that I came. I'll I'll write twice your

check. your fee and just like mark me as present or you know we don't even have to talk man it's Gonna be a really easy hour for you and that that would be kind of like the first 30 seconds of us of us meeting and then that generally the the session would go on a little bit and he'd tell me a lot about himself and he'd make sure he I knew repeatedly how much money he made and you know the zip codes for his various houses and all the cars that he owned etc etc and

Um, you have with these kinds of people, you have to be bold. If you try to take a conventional safe approach, they're they're not going to respect it because from that perspective, who are you? You're just this lowly clinician who's making 200 bucks an hour. Um, why should I take advice from you? You don't know the first thing about being successful. You don't know the first thing about taking risks. That's how I got to where I was. So, with these guys, I found that you kind of I've had to like take a big risk and

hit them over the head with a sledgehammer. Um, otherwise, they have no respect for you whatsoever and the entire therapy becomes a sham. So, what's the sledgehammer look like? Uh I I mean with one of these guys I remember I let him kind of rattle on for 40 minutes about All his various accomplishments and I don't know if he was waiting for me to be to make impressive noises with my mouth or something like that. Um but you know eventually there was a lull and I said you know that's this is just incredible. You know,

it's amazing to me that I can meet a guy who's so obviously accomplished and so [ __ ] stupid. And you know, that got him to kind of like sit up a little straighter because no one talks to the CEO of these companies that way. No one talks to the guy who is the the partner at the law firm in that way. And you have to be very you have to have something to back that up. You know, if you just start insulting a guy uh for no reason, that will get his attention. But you

have to then um follow that and you need to get his attention first before you say what what comes next. And what comes next has to be some sort of like a pearl. It has to be an incisive clinical observation that demonstrates that I'm [ __ ] competent, that I know what I'm doing. I might even know see more than you do, and I was able to do this in 40 minutes. And if and you have to show that you're [ __ ] awesome, Too. And you push back and you you you you do that.

And if you succeed, if it lands, if he thinks about it and says, "You know what? That's fair. That's right. Holy shit." Then you're he's like your best friend. And his narcissistic grandiosity extends to include you. Oh, yeah. Because of course, he has to have the best therapist. And you wouldn't believe this guy. Can you imagine? He told me to go [ __ ] myself in the first sex. I was this guy. The balls on this guy. Like they'll talk about it positively, right? Um, but a lot of women are loath to to have that

kind of direct confrontation with a man. And so that's why I don't think they get a lot they they get very far with a lot of narcissists. Yeah. Oh, Orion, you you've hit you've hit on so many truths about about this in just that one story. Um, you mentioned that the sort of four-year-old who puts up the defenses. What do you think is the origin of a real pathological narcissism? Well, um, let me just make kind of a difference between let's let's just define pathological narcissism for a second because clinically a pathological narcissist is someone

with a personality disorder, Narcissism personality disorder. Um, it's possible to be a narcissist, but to not be like a malignant narcissist. That person still has a pathology because his way of experiencing himself and others in the world is so distorted to the point where he can't even tell that it's him that's the distortion. He thinks the distortion is isomorphic with the outside world. That's why it's a personality disorder. The fish can't really see the water, right? The problem is always around the person. the person is fine, but the person is so warped that everything else

looks warped. So that person is pathological. Uh but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's exploitative and malicious. You know, those people tend to be more antisocial. And of course, narcissism and antisocial personality disorders are in the same cluster. There's a lot of overlap. They can they can both coexist. But just because someone has a pathological personality doesn't mean that they're necessarily dangerous or harmful to other people. Does that make sense? Mhm. Yeah. So did are you asking about the pathology as I defined it or why do people become dangerous and malicious Because that's generally what

people mean when they say pathological? Whichever you you'd like to discuss. I'm I'm just curious about how you approach this whole thing. um clin they're there they they probably have the same clinical origin plus one extra step from the person who decides to become exploitative maybe two um like I said the origin is is generally in childhood and there uh there is a sense that the the true person was not allowed to develop Uh there could be a number of reasons for that. It could be that the parents themselves were narcissistic. Um and they were

for example all about success and status and presentation and looking the part and keeping up with the Joneses etc etc. And they might have communicated sometimes very explicitly and directly um and sometimes just through their behavior that the real self is uh especially a child it's distasteful, it's inelegant, it's clumsy, it's immature. Grow up. Uh of course kids can only grow up as fast as they can grow up, right? But a lot of narcissists were parentified when they were small. Um, and they were made to act like little Lord Fontleroys before their time. Um, narcissism

can also result from inappropriate or neglectful reflection. So, there's a lot of theory and data to suggest that it's not like you come into the world knowing who you are as a baby. We learn who we are through our relationships, especially with our primary caregivers, especially with our mother, through something through a process called reflection. Like when the when the baby smiles for the first time at 6 months, he doesn't usually have a conscious decision to smile. His body is just sort of like writhing and making kind of little squirmy things and eventually a smile

happens. But if the mother picks up on it and and says, "Oh, you're smiling." and smiles back. Now the baby's like, "I am smiling. Oh, that weird squirm is that face in mom because I can't see my own face as a kid." So, I'm learning to see my own face in my mother's face and to experience my own chaotic mash of emotions as that tone as as like joy. It's like, oh, I'm learning that parts of things that are just coming out of me have meaning and are uh important because the mother is reflecting those

states and not other States. Does that make sense? Yeah. So if um and and a good mother reflects accurately, accurate is the key. Um, not some children will elicit things just in their own kind of innocent exploration that makes the mother very very uncomfortable. And so either she will ignore it or she'll call it bad and shameful and wrong because it makes her uncomfortable. And the child says, "Well, this came out of me. this is uh but it's clearly inappropriate, bad, evil, wrong, etc. So that's a part of me that needs to be hidden. That's

a part of me that can't that needs to die or that needs to stay in the shadows, etc. Um and kind of only parts of them gets validated and reflected as authentic and true and good and and worth being. And in some familial contexts, excuse me, um that can be a very shallow one-dimensional can result in a very shallow one-dimensional personality. So Orion, when you talk about this model of relationships where people are exchanging goods, it starts to sound like the exploitation of a narcissist in some ways, what do you think are the differences between

that model and exploitation? I I I'm afraid I don't see how exchanging comparably Valued goods would be exploitative. I think that's the basis of reciprocity, right? It's when it's when the aim is to get goods and maybe people don't go into those those negotiations aiming to give as much as they get. People probably want to come out on top. Well, sure. Everyone is seems to be like that. Like, yeah, nobody wants to pay more than they need to for what they want. And they'll do that in all kinds of different maybe they'll save coupons. They'll

talk to the manager. They'll say, "Hey, are can you go any lower on this?" They're not thinking this other person has bills to pay. They're thinking, "How can I get what I want for less?" And they think that they're savvy and smart when they do this financially in the economic marketplace, but people do this all the time in the emotional marketplace of human relationships as well. So, is it exploitative for people to to take advantage of opportunities to pay less? I mean, I think that might be human nature. Um, people will take what they can

get away with in on the whole. I I think that that's true. I think that if suddenly prices were abolished at a store and All purchases were at at willill donations with the suggested amounts of all goods on display. I think we all know what would happen. They're not going to think, well, the store needs to stay in business. So, if I and everybody else dramatically under buys these products, eventually it's going to run out. They're just thinking, "Fuck yeah, free food. This sounds good." Most people are very short-term thinkers. Of course, if they want

to continue to get reasonably priced food indefinitely, they should pay for it. That's the best way of ensuring long-term reciprocity of their needs and desires. And a lot of people figure that out the hard way. Sometimes they start by being short-term uh you know focused on their short-term gain and they realize that that actually burns out the basis of the relationship very quickly like the store with the suggested prices they go the store goes under now well now where am I going to get my food. So, you know, we we learn these things either through

modeling from our uh you know, parents and other caregivers and important relationships or we learned them through trial and error. But, um the to go back To your other question about where do malicious narcissists come from, they're people who um have either had that modeled that they they grew up and they saw exploitative behavior and they saw that it succeeded. That's an important part because if the exploitative behavior didn't succeed, they would be like, "Oh, that's loser behavior." But it worked. So, that's one part of it. Um, or they just have despared of getting anything

that they want or need more honestly. Um, there are three ways to kind of get what you want. I talk about this in the very first page of the book. You can move against people, you can move away from people, and you can move toward people. Um, not a lot of people today move away from people. That in involves becoming so self-sufficient that you don't need other people and or renouncing the needs or desires internally that encourage you to get those needs and desires met in relationships. So, sort of like going monk mode where like

I'm uh I'm a mystic and I'm renouncing this this need for uh comfort, for protection, for etc etc. So, used to be a much more popular solution, not so popular these days. Um, the second most popular Is move against people, which is either that I'm going to beat you fair and square in open competition, whether it's the open competition of the marketplace or some other game that's a proxy for status and and wealth and success, or I'm just going to [ __ ] take it because I'm I'm bigger and stronger. whether I'm gonna be a

mugger or a politician with an army. Uh I'm just gonna I'm gonna take it. Um and then the third type is to move toward people, which is a I realize that if I can get someone to like me, they're actually much more likely to do business with me. They're much more likely to give me what I want at a steep discount. I mean, think about the things that you would do for the people you care about. It's insane. Some people will lay their life down for the people that they care about, right? It's incredible if

you think about it from an evolutionary perspective that an individual would do that. So the benefits for successfully moving towards people are phenomenal. Phenomenal. They're even more so than moving against people because force can conquer, but it takes so much energy and maintenance to keep what you've conquered. And what's the point of conquering if you constantly have to put down the peasant rebellions and it's very expensive to expand your infrastructure? But if you win the hearts and minds, the people are loyal and enthusiastic citizens. You know what I'm saying? That's the true victory. Yeah. So,

Orion, on a on a tactical level, knowing all this, seeing the world through through your model, what can a guy who's not getting dates do to start getting some dates? Um, the main thing that matters in the sexual marketplace is attractiveness. That is I don't know how you can argue with that, especially in today's day and age where most relationships are begin their, you know, in their inception on online, whether it's a social media profile or a dating app profile. and you get six pictures and three short text responses at most, you are going to

be judged. You're going to be judged very quickly and you're going to be judged very quickly on superficial appearances. Accept that and thrive or just stay the hell away from those platforms. like and the idea here is to really try to see things from your customer's point of view. Uh this is a fundamental thing that marketers have learned. Back in the day when advertisers were appealing to logic and reason, they'd develop a new tool and they'd say, you know, it has 12 volts and it spins at 300 hertz and it it has a battery life

of 12 hours and it's made of it's like they they they're so proud of what they built and they're explaining all of the specs and um that go into it. No one's going to buy that. The customer is thinking, "Will this make a hole where I want a hole to be?" You don't sell the drill, you sell the hole, right? The hole is a solution to your customer's problem. 12VT battery adapter is not in the vast majority of cases. That's important to you. It's the manufacturer, but it's not important to your customer. So, it's important

for men and women, and women are so much better at this than the average man, to try to see this from your customer standpoint, which is like, what do women find attractive? And it might feel kind of memy in the beginning to try to align in a way to be more visible to your potential customer base. But that's the only way that you become successful in a market is you have To be visible and desired by your customers. Otherwise, you're just going to languish among your intraexual competition. So, you have to start with being attractive

and that starts immediately with being visually attractive. So, the easiest things to do is to lose body fat. There's so many overweight people in this country. Um, learn how to dress a little bit better. In many places in America, it's the it's very easy to be the best dressed man in the room. That's such lowhanging fruit, especially in San Francisco. And San Francisco is full of millionaires. It's very easy to be the best dressed man in a room in San Francisco, especially outside of the Castro. So, it's like all you and that automatically gives you

at least one point in the eyes of women. Good hygiene, good style, and presentation. As I've said, most men are wallpaper. They don't stand out from the undifferiated sea of just average men. Uh because it's scary to stand out and to take a risk. But the biggest risk as a man is not taking a risk because it means that you'll be invisible both to women and to your fellow man. So, of course, putting yourself out there, taking risks, Some of them, maybe even many of them will fall flat. You'll have to get used to rejection.

you'll have to get used to uh social embarrassment to some extent. Um but the alternative is languishing in mediocrity which is not a solution. We know from the data on dating apps that the top 85% of women are swiping on the same top 15% of men. If you're just an average guy in the 50th percentile, you are invisible. And this is a an evolutionary argument for why men seem to be genetically much greater risktakers than women. This is this is nothing new. The technology is new obviously, but this is nothing new that men do all

kinds of risky stupid [ __ ] especially when they're young, because the alternative is languishing in mediocrity. Maybe they'll die, but maybe they'll reproduce. And maybe you have to risk a lot to be able to be one of the guys, the males who get to reproduce. And that's true for a great deal of the animal kingdom. Well, Ryan, in in your book and in some of your models, you show things that suggest that men peak in their place in the marketplace much later in life than women. Uh what do you think for for these men

Who would want to date younger, more attractive women, but then they have an age gap to overcome? What was the problem with that? Well, some people, you know, it's it's looked down upon or Well, let them look down on it. I mean, if if you want to date younger women, it's like if let's put it this way in 2025, you're gay. You want to date men? Some people aren't going to understand that. What are you going to do? Not be gay. Are you going to say that that's I'm going to pretend to be straight so

that other people will accept a me that's not really me? I mean, [ __ ] that. So, if you're a guy and you want to date younger women and people don't understand that, who gives a [ __ ] Like, what's the alternative? That you don't do what you want and what you're attracted to so that other people can accept a you that's not you. It it it's it works for straits, too. So it's like the the the queers have taught have given a lot of good lessons to straits in the last couple of decades where

it's like own it like be proud of your desires and there's nothing to be ashamed of even though that people are going to Judge you. Let them [ __ ] judge you because they don't have to live your life. And maybe a part of why they're judging you is because that in the way that you're living is expressing a kind of uh a a freedom or even a fantasy or a desire that for whatever reason this person will not allow him or herself to experience because it's too dangerous or threatening. I mean, it's I think

it's no real coincidence that a lot of the politicians historically that have been so anti-gay have turned out to be caught in some sort of like, you know, gay orgy further down the road. You know, it's like they were they were closeted the whole time. So, it's it's just sort of strange. So, who gives a [ __ ] if people look down on it? I mean, people are going to look down on you even if you do exactly what you want them to do all the time. They'll think, "Ah, Brad, he's got no spine. this

guy just uh he'll do whatever other people think that he should do. Like that's not respectable either. So the point is is that whether you completely follow other people's expectations or you completely break with them, a sizable proportion of the population is Just going to decide for whatever [ __ ] reason that they don't like you and they don't want to support your decisions. That's okay. Those aren't your customers. They weren't going to buy. You run a car dealership. These people don't own cars. Why are you worried about their opinion? Does that make sense? Yeah.

Yeah. And and but if to answer your question, so the question was, say you're an older guy and you want to date younger women, like how do you go about doing that? Sure. Yeah. Well, you have to understand that the the the shaming around age gap differences, at least when it goes that way, no one seems to have a problem with the other way around, right? is that it's threatening to older women. Older women, especially if they're single mothers or divorced in their 40s, they don't want men in their 40s and 50s dating 20-year-olds because

who's going to date them? So there's a kind of a consensus among certain parts of the population that we have to make certain relationships shameful otherwise we're going to be completely outclassed in the market which is probably I mean it would be very rare for a 45year-old to beat Out a 25year-old in most men's eyes certainly in terms of pure attractiveness. The 45-year-old can have other things to offer but those come later after attraction and that's true for both men and women. It's like women aren't swiping on averagel looking dudes hoping that maybe he has

a great personality. So, you know, let's let's not be uh hypocritical here. Yeah. The thing to understand with respect to women in general is that as I say in the book, men tend to want the Barbie doll and women tend to want all the [ __ ] the Kend doll comes with. And that's part of why men get so attractive in their 40s and 50s is because you get a lot more and better [ __ ] by that time. By the time you're 40, you might actually be making real money. You might actually be established

in the world. You might have a little sophistication and culture. You might know the good places to to visit. You might know the nice restaurants to go to. Um you you clearly know yourself. I I would hope. And you can unapologetically say, "This is me. This is who I am. take it or leave it. And it it enables the woman to more or less show up. She can she of course decides whether you know Which Ken she wants to associate with. Maybe it's Malibu Stacy Ken or cowboy Ken or stock broker Ken. Um but she's

in doing so she's already entering into a fully extrapolated world. Like it's an or it's already furnished house. It's already decorated. U most women aren't excited by a barebones studio. They're not excited by the prospect of building something together. Despite what they say, they want a man who's already built. It's far safer for them. And generally, safety is a more important consideration for women than it is for men. A guy who has nothing as when he's young could turn out to be the best [ __ ] thing that ever happened to a woman, but he

might not. Chances are though, he's probably just gonna be h because that's how most guys turn out, you know. So, if he doesn't get it and maybe he goes to the moon, but he's most likely to be eh, that's kind of a big risk to a lot of women. Why not go for the guy who's already got it? Well, of course, the reason is because that's where all the [ __ ] women go. And so if women are only going to be going after the winners, which seems to be what they tend to do when

left to their own devices, They have to either believe that they can beat out dozens of their intraexual competition and or they have to be willing to share him. And that's generally what's happening in today's society. Women are sharing the top percentile men and most of the sexual um encounters and relationships are being consolidated into the the top tiers of men and the bottom tiers are going completely without. Or you have written a new book about Vincent Van Gogh. Don't know much about it yet. Uh but what would prompt you to to move in that

direction? Ah. Oh, yeah. Thanks for mentioning it. Yeah, the book is finished. Um, it's in the post-production stage right now. It's called Starry Night. It's a piece of historical fiction. It's based on the final 10 weeks of Vincent Van Go's life. This is a story that I've been interested in for 24 25 years. In fact, I wrote a play about it when I was at Tish many many years ago. Uh, I was fascinated. I I mean, like many people, I loved Van Go's paintings, but the more I learned about the man himself, the more haunting

and interesting the paintings became. I learned, for example, that he shot himself. A lot Of people know that he tried to shoot himself in the heart, but he missed. Like, it ricocheted off of his rib and went into his stomach. And it took him over two days to die. And apparently during that time he was lucid and rational for a lot of it. And he talked to his doctor and he talked to his brother. And I was always very interested to know what might happen to a person in that time between when he we he

has the intention to die and when he actually dies when there's no hope to be healed. For example, sometimes sometimes when people choose to to kill themselves, they do so in a way that doesn't necessarily guarantee success, which can be risky. But part of the psychological uh motivation there is to think, well, I'm going to leave some space for some sort of maybe even sign, some divine intervention to come in and save me, to really show me that this is the wrong thing to do. Um, that's why some people choose, for example, to jump off

bridges and not shoot themselves. This is a very morbid conversation, but this is a real serious problem as well. So, We can't shy away from talking about suicide. Um, one of the most popular places in the world to do that is the Golden Gate Bridge right around the corner from where I live. Um, there was a documentary a while ago, I think it was called The Bridge, about suicide in the Golden Gate Bridge, and the filmmakers were able to track down some folks who jumped off and actually survived. It's a very big drop, but it's

apparently one in 50 people, something like that, would hit the ground, be seriously injured, probably permanently for the rest of their lives, but would survive. And unanimously among all the survivors that they interviewed, these people would say that as soon as they cleared the railing, as soon as gravity kicked in and they were falling and they were aware that they were falling and that this was an irreversible decision, they unanimously said, "What the [ __ ] did I just do?" which I think is fascinating, which speaks to what especially cognitive behavioral therapists have figured out

a long time ago, is is that most people who kill themselves don't actually want to die. They don't actually want to die. They they want to be they They want to not be in pain. and they think that they they've despared of alternatives to escaping the pain besides death. But in the vast majority of cases, they haven't explored all the possibilities. That's why Beck, I forget his first name, uh, but he's one of the pioneers of CBT, said that suicide is, uh, it's it's it's it's a reflection of poor problemolving skills that there's this problem.

I'm in pain. I'm in an often usually emotional pain. and none of the strategies that I've hitherto used have succeeded in extricating myself from this pain. Um, I'm out of I'm out of options. Now, in the vast majority of cases, I think it's fair to say that people have not thoroughly explored all the options in reality, but their hopelessness has driven them to take this permanent solution to what could be a temporary problem. And you were going to say something else. Oh, and of course with Van Gogh, this is mixed up with the fact that

he was clearly mentally ill, suffering from schizophrenia and possibly some form of bipolar disorder. They called it manic depression back then. Um, and the fact that he was very unsuccessful, like he sold One painting in his entire lifetime and he died penniless in a garrett. Like, how does that affect a person? So, the there's a lot of um there's a and he was the the son of a like a priest, like a preacher in the in a Protestant tradition. So, he had he grew up with a lot of like theology inside of him, especially Christian

theology. and I I think he's just a really interesting person. And so I've tried to explore this question of why someone like Van Gogh who was also so talented and so loved postumously um like what were the factors that led to this decision and to tell the story from Vincent's own perspective but also the perspective of his caretaker brother and also the perspective of his doctor Paul Gashet. Yeah, I think it's uh I think it's a really good book actually. In all humility, I'm very proud with how it turned out. It it sounds like a

way through a book to explore that moment that you talked about in the documentary with people talking about when they jump and then what goes through your head, but to but to show that through many perspectives. Yes. But what's interesting in Van Go's case is apparently he wasn't like that. No. Some of His last words that were recorded by the doctor and his brother were, "This is what I wanted." His very last words can be translated as, "The sadness is everlasting." So he rationally defended his decision. when he came back to the inn that he

was staying and the inkeeper saw that he was all bloodied up, they called for the police. They were going to call for the police anyway. He was like, "Don't do that." It's like, "It's my body. I'm free to do with it as I wish." Which also leads to questions is is does an individual have a moral right to suicide? Um is is suicide ever be rational or is it always the reflection of mental illness? It's a complicated um it's a complicated subject and it's one that philosophers and psychologists have wrestled with for really millennia. And

that's what I think I think this book is a philosophical novel more than anything else. kind of like Camuz the Stranger or Ran's Atlas Shrugged or something like that is that there's a philosophy, a way of looking at the world that I hoped to put into the pages without really spelling out the the tenets of that philosophy. I wanted people to feel it and To experience it. A lot of these questions don't have easy answers. There's a lot of nuance and shades of gray. Um, just saying that everyone who kills themselves is mentally ill is

not correct. That suicide is is always wrong. I don't know if I agree with that. Um, that life is always worth preserving no matter what. I don't know. It's a tough one. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Um, so these are a lot of the questions that I I try to wrestle with in the book as well. Well, Dr. Ryan Taban, for people who want to follow along and and hear when that comes out before we get to our last topic, where's the best place for people to look for you online? Sure. Yeah, the best

place to find me is on YouTube. So, I have a channel called Psychax. I'm actually going to be changing it to my name very soon, just Orion Teraban, but we'll still have the handle Psychax as well. Uh on that channel in the description of every video you can get links to the other things that I do, links to the book that you mentioned, the value of others, uh my website where people can book consultations with me, um links to my private member community, the captain's quarters, Everything kind of spins through YouTube. So if you're interested

in what I have to say, I have over a thousand free full-length episodes on the channel. And if you want more, there's there's a lot more actually. I've been working pretty hard the last few years. Yeah. Yeah. We'll put some links in the description for people to check out. And uh Dr. Orion Taban, it shows that you've you've been working hard these last few years. I'd like to ask about you and your experience on this journey. I mean, what's it been like for you to teach so many people I see you're coming up on a

million subscribers on YouTube, you know, like you said, a thousand videos. I mean, what's what's that experience been? Uh, it's been like 99% a very positive experience. I'll be I'll be honest. I'm I'm very grateful. I think that the success that I've experienced recently has has changed my life for the better. I think it's helped me to to really become more confident in the things that I've been thinking and perceiving for some time. I think it's helped me to find my place in the world um on a larger stage as it were. I mean the

motivation for starting the Channel was that I was a a therapist in private practice and I was privately helping maybe 20 or 30 men a year which is no small thing if you can really help 20 people. Um but I also had the hunch that the things that we were discussing wouldn't just be helpful to these 20 men. maybe they might be helpful to 20 million, but given the nature of my profession, it wasn't really something that I could make public. So, I decided to take some of the the solutions and the perspectives and the

reframes that I was giving these people with respect to the problems that I was hearing and making episodes about them. And it was very slow in the beginning. Uh it was like nothing happened for a year and a half, two years. and I just was committed to consistently publishing. Um, and then you something took off. One thing led to the other and a lot of people are listening now. And it's a real privilege and it's a real responsibility to have the attention of so many people and it's not something I take lightly. Um, I try

not to be inflammatory or um, too controversial. Um, I don't want to make men angrier than they really already are on the Whole. I don't want to make women um, uh, not listen. I think there's a lot of things that, uh, women might need to hear for their own benefit and to have better relationships with men. But a lot of times the way that information is presented is such that the women can't hear it because of the words that are used or because of the tone of voice or the perspective just seems too against their

interests. Um men and women don't want the same thing. They're not the same. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're enemies. It can be. It goes back to those strategies of how we get what we want need from each other. The best solution is to move towards people because people will do all kinds of crazy [ __ ] for the ones that they love and care about, right? You get way more way more cheaply if you succeed in that um strategy. But if whatever reason you despair of that strategy, you're either going to move against

people or you're going to move away from people. And I think that's what we're seeing more and more of in the sexual marketplace these days because I don't think that um I think that the old ways of getting along Don't make a lot of sense these days and we're still in an experimental phase trying to figure out what the new strategies might be. Um but until something starts to click, yeah, we're going to see more moving against and moving away for better or for worse. It won't fall apart entirely, but it might get uncomfortable. What

makes you so sure it won't fall apart entirely? I mean, nothing really falls apart entirely, dude. It's like whatever ends. It's like the collapse of one empire. It will lead to chaos, but another empire rises up in its place. It's like life finds a way. Well, Dr. Orion Taraban, you are a unique communicator. um a remarkable communicator and I'm so grateful for you and for your book and for taking this interview. Thank you. Thanks, Brad. Thanks for playing the game with me and being the please person.