Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike.
And I'm Nate.
What are we smoking tonight, Mike?
We are smoking and I'm excited for this one.
Me as well.
I'm a little surprised.
Let me before you say what we're smoking, I'm a little surprised we're not doing the
other saison.
Oh, we could have.
I didn't think about it.
Hey, that's okay.
It's our you know what?
It's our show.
It is what we want.
Okay.
So what are we doing, Mike?
Sorry to cut you off there.
No, you got me thrown off.
I was like, Oh, shoot, you're right.
We're gonna smoke the H Upman vintage Cameroon.
The HP Lovecraft vintage Cthulhu?
Something like that.
All right.
I've never heard of this brand, to be honest with you.
But it does say it says H Upman.
And that's two ends at the end in case you're trying to Google it.
And then it says 1844 and vintage Cameroon underneath it.
And it came with a really nice, I mean, really nice, probably oh, two third cedar sleeve
with gold ribbon on both ends and stamped in red vintage Cameroon.
So very, very nice presentation on this stick.
It is a nice presentation.
And I have never really heard of it either.
So okay.
Okay.
Well, we're trying this for you, the listener.
Also before we're gonna we're gonna light up here, we're gonna light up.
We've got a doozy of a topic, a doozy.
And Mike, so we've got this we've got this program, program, program program, where we
can record not in the same space as one another.
And we get to pick our little username.
So I usually go with my you know, like my gamertag or whatever.
And Mike is usually just Mike.
But now suddenly tonight he is Lord Mike of the Dell.
I'm very interested in the in the little backstory as long as it's short because I could not
handle a long backstory right now.
But if it's a short backstory, very curious.
Oh, usually it's Mike and you fill it in.
But we had a little mishap with our emails.
So as quickly as I could, I came up with the coolest name I could think of at the time.
So it'll be different next time, I'm sure.
Yes, next time it will probably be Mike, probably just be Mike.
Yes.
So first puffs.
I mean, I took one puff, but I like it.
And I know you can't really judge a stick on the on the first puff.
But with the with the underground shade, you can.
But this one, this one is quite nice.
I'm excited for the rest of this one here.
Right.
I was excited, first of all, because I've never heard of this brand.
And the presentation is quite nice.
You know, the band is really attractive and the packaging is really nice.
And typically, if you're going to put shit in a box, you don't you don't have to make
the package that nice.
You know?
Yeah.
I mean, like, look at the freaking Swisher sweets.
Right.
There's nothing.
So apparently the H.O.T. men, they were brothers and they were pioneers in the cigar industry.
Just on a quick Google search, we can look you know what?
We can look up more later, but we don't have to right now because we've got a doozy.
I don't know if I mentioned that, but it's a doozy of a topic tonight.
Yes.
It's not going to be Google the show at least the whole time.
No, because I've got five pages of notes.
Five pages.
Wow.
Which is probably less than any show Mike's ever researched.
You know, when we do the Mike knows he's like, I've got 13 books here and I'll read to you
them from them.
And I've read them twice in the last week and and stuff.
So but it did take me a couple of weeks to get all this stuff put together.
And I had to be careful because it's not really a topic you really want in your like saved
Google searches.
I mean, Mike knows what the topic is, but you guys don't yet.
So I felt the same way about my show.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Your show, the next show, the next episode is going to be fun.
I'm excited.
I'm really excited.
And I'm also excited that we're doing this episode first because I have a couple of jokes
already pre worked out.
You know, you got to plan these things.
So, oh, absolutely.
Yes.
Spontaneity is the enemy of comedy.
Yeah.
I mean, pre planning is pre planning.
And you know, what is it?
Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part or something.
So yep, we're not going to have any humor emergencies on the podcast.
We might have other emergencies for sure, but not humor.
Definitely.
My dog is very angry at something in my garden.
I don't know what this is.
Nothing there, but she thinks there is.
Well, then I'm angry at your garden too, Mike.
I'm angry at your garden too.
So what are you pairing your cigar with tonight, by the way?
Oh, yes.
I did want to talk about that because I went out.
So today is the Sunday before Labor Day when we're recording this episode.
So this is one of those episodes where there's only like a couple of days delay from when
we record it to when you hear it.
Yes.
And it is fucking hot.
Oh, man.
It's so hot.
I had to open my garage early today and turn on all the fans and get some air in here because
I really didn't want to sit outside because of the mosquitoes and all that stuff.
So it's a decent temperature.
I'm not wearing much in way of things, but I went out today.
We did some shopping or I did some shopping because nothing's going to be open tomorrow.
Even if they are, I really don't want to support them.
When I picked up a little four pack, I figured to this episode to next episode.
So when you ask me next episode, when I'm pairing this with it, it'll probably be the
same thing unless this episode goes really sideways and I get lit up.
But I'm pairing it with a prize Miraculum, which is P-R-Y-E-S.
It's a Midwest IPA and it is a local Minnesota Minneapolis beer from down here.
Nice.
What are you pairing yours with?
I also picked it up today, Summit Twins Pilsner.
And then I made myself a vodka sunrise.
Oh, nice.
Yes, because we had orange juice left over and I wanted to get rid of it.
And I also want to get rid of my old grenadine.
So perfect.
Yep.
Probably not the best thing to have with a cigar.
It's not the worst thing either, though.
It is a nice thing to have when it's 97 fucking degrees outside.
Very, very true.
And you know what?
On this show, we really don't judge.
I mean, we judge other people, but not never our guests and never each other.
We try not to blast anybody by name.
Yeah, exactly.
So the topic, do you want to know, do you want me to tell everybody what the topic is
tonight, today, this episode?
Well, we did dangle it and we haven't yet disclosed.
We did dangle it.
Yeah, we did not disclose it.
So speaking of dangling, this is just the tip.
Is it a clip or a snip?
So we're talking about circumcision, but male circumcision.
We'll bring in the female circumcision a little bit later on, but I'm not going to bring it
up right now because we're talking about the male circumcision.
You know, we're both men and we're both either are or are not circumcised.
So it's a 50-50 option, I suppose.
Yeah.
I mean, there's not really a third option.
So I did a bunch of research and I came up and I came across a really fascinating book,
very fascinating.
And I feel like if the timelines would have aligned, this person would have been an excellent
guest on our podcast.
But alas, he's long since dead.
But I kind of tried to put it together in some semblance of maybe like something that
might make sense of a way to try and talk about this topic because I feel like, and
you can correct me if I'm wrong or you can tell me what your feelings are, Mike.
I never really knew anything about it really, right?
Like probably till, I mean, I don't know.
Like trying to think back on my life, when did I realize circumcision was a thing?
I'm just going to go out there because I feel like we can't really talk about this topic
without me.
I don't know.
I feel like my research might not be as valid if I'm just not fully open and honest.
So like being circumcised, I didn't know that that was maybe not how men are born probably
until maybe college or something.
I don't know.
But I went to high school in the early 2000s, right?
So like how would I, there was no internet really.
And everything that you wanted to download took forever because the JPEGs loaded line
by line, pixel line by pixel line.
So I had no idea that there was even another way for that.
So it was just like, I was raised as that this was normal.
And I feel like a lot of people either raise that this is normal or it's not really talked
about that much.
So I wanted to try and put together this kind of research in a way that made sense for hopefully
both parties.
You know what I mean?
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
It's because circumcision is one of those body mutilations that we as a society just
kind of accept.
Now look, potentially that's the whole end of my research is, is male circumcision genital
mutilation or not?
So let's try and reserve judgment until then.
Okay.
Well, I have an opinion on it already.
I have an opinion on it as well.
Okay.
I also have an opinion on it.
I would like to hear the science though.
Like hopefully there's science to everything.
We're going to go through everything.
There's some science talk.
We're going to go through all of it.
I almost gave some, some major spoilers and it's like, come on.
I'm talking to myself here.
Like, come on, Nate, like you did all this research and finally you have five pages of
notes.
And I was like, usually Mike has the five or six, 10 pages of notes.
And I'm like, Oh, what's going on here?
I've never heard of this stuff.
So, and I almost like glue that.
I almost, I almost blew my wad early.
Um, and I don't mean to, but whatever ends up happening with this episode, I promise
you the listener will be satisfied or not.
Uh, you know, the main point of the show is so that I can smoke and drink and bullshit
with Nate.
So I'm going to win either way.
The same, the same.
I'm I've already won.
I've already won.
I've won all day cause it's fucking Sunday and tomorrow is labor day.
So no work tomorrow.
I still need to pressure wash.
You don't have to.
Uh, anyway, I think before we get going, the important thing for all of our listeners to
remember is Mike and I are not medical professionals.
Anything we talk about in the show has nothing to do with medical advice.
If you think you have a tumor or a rash or a lesion or whatever it is, go seek medical
help.
We don't, I can't, if you are debating on whether or not getting circumcised or circumcising
your child, do not take this podcast as a scientific evidence.
I will put, I will put all of the links to the sources that I cite in the episode description.
If you want to do your own research, you can start where I started and you can go from
there.
I'm not telling you to circumcise or not to circumcise.
I am not a religious figure despite being an ordained minister and I am not a doctor
despite some, some cursory Googling, uh, more so than you have a tumor and you will die.
I thought for sure you were going to mention being an Eagle Scout, dude.
I thought for sure.
Okay.
So one, I do, I do look, dude, I do one circumcision over summer camp and now suddenly that's the
merit badge I have.
Yup.
Like I thought you were going to be like, despite the fact that I have my medic merit
badge or, uh, despite the fact that I am certified in CPR.
Okay.
So I do have my first day merit badge and my life saving merit badge.
Um, and no spoilers.
So circumcision is generally not a life saving operation.
So it, uh, for all the Scoutmaster jokes that you have, um, out on summer camp, like, Hey,
I learned how to suck dick from my, from my Scoutmaster or, you know, whatever, whatever
it might be.
Um, circumcision really doesn't come up that much in Boy Scouts.
Um, and I can, and I can attest to that.
Well, I am a CPR certified and, uh, yeah, I am also not a medical professional.
Yes.
And neither are some medical professional professionals.
And generally, generally speaking, when erect, uh, most penises look very much the same,
I guess from what I've heard from, um, uh, scientific statistically important study.
From hours and hours of recent research on the internet that I, that I did.
Uh, so I figured we'd start with the origins of circumcision, right?
So Mike, when I talked to you about circumcision, which we don't ever do that because we also
don't talk about like operating systems, you know, when it's like, Hey, um, uh, would you
recommend Microsoft or Windows to a friend?
I don't think not.
I don't talk about operating systems with other people.
That's that's not something I talk about.
Uh, but we're really enough.
We do talk about operating systems, Nate, because we do the show.
Yeah, we do the show.
We talk about operating systems.
He's Mac, I'm Linux, uh, and also windows.
And I just switched.
I just ditched Apple dude and I'm on, uh, Android and it's great.
Oh really?
Cool.
Yeah.
Well, we can talk about that later.
Um, if we end up with extra time at the end, which we might, I don't know.
I mean, we might breeze through this.
It might be a quick snip.
I mean a quick clip.
Uh, fuck, I don't know something, uh, snip, snip anyway.
Uh, but I figured we'd talk about the origins a little bit.
So when I say circumcision and I don't, this is not trying to like bait you into some kind
of big like racial debate.
But when I say circumcision, what does everybody think?
What do people think?
Like who circumcises the most?
The Egyptians, the ancient Egyptians.
That's who I'm thinking about.
Okay.
That's not who you should be thinking about in modern day, but I don't want to say the
word.
I don't want to say it.
This is a, this is a truthful and fair and open and honest podcast.
Usually Judaism is strongly associated with circumcision.
There you go.
And this is, um, none of this is done in a way to like criticize any of these religions
or civilizations or whatever, unless at the end we decide that it is genital mutilation,
but we have to wait till the end of the episode.
So none of all of this is like open and free and happy right now.
So the earliest, the earliest evidence of circumcision and you're right, Mike, ancient
Egyptian.
Okay.
It's around a 2,300 BC, which is what?
At least like 500 years ago, right?
Oh, at least 500 years ago.
So they've got like Egyptian paintings and they also, um, uncovered a, like a carving,
like a stone carving and like the top part is kind of cut off, but you can definitely
see the lower parts.
There's like a person kneeling down and like, has like a scissor type device and the other
person's like genitalia are clearly out.
So you can, you can tell like, it's definitely like circumcision.
Like there's not much question there.
And I'm not even an ancient Egyptologist or like an Indiana Jones.
Like that's not who I am, but looking at the picture, you're like, yeah, that dude's going
to get snipped, you know?
But basically for the Egyptians, it was a, it was a ritual circumcision as a prerequisite
to entering the priesthood.
Interesting.
So it wasn't a society wide.
Uh, no.
And, and, and this is going to be a recurring theme through some of this stuff that we're
going to talk about.
So I want everyone to keep in mind circumcision, at least in Egypt appears to have been a ritual
as a prerequisite to becoming a priest.
And this will tie into our, our Jewish friends in a little bit.
Um, but there's a Greek historian Herodotus.
Oh my God.
I did, I told you that story.
When I was in college, I was doing research for some paper, doesn't matter.
And uh, so I have the entire collection of Herodotus in like on my desk and my buddy,
who was my roommate was like the histories of Herodotus.
What's that?
And I started, I just couldn't, we were stoners obviously.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's, I just, I couldn't stop myself from breaking out laughing because I was like,
Oh my God, this is so crazy all over again.
Well, I'm sorry.
I like, I know how to pronounce Socrates.
Uh, but we, and this has been like a recurring theme this season on the, on the podcast is
Nate can't pronounce stuff.
Hardy har har.
So I'm not Herodotus.
I wasn't intentionally being dense.
I was just trying, you know, like I don't speak the Greek, right?
Trying to bait me is what you're doing.
Well, it worked.
It worked.
Okay.
So, uh, Herodotus, Herodotus, Herodotus, Herodotus.
Okay.
Uh, so apparently Herodotus recorded this practice in Egypt in the fifth century BC.
And in the Semitic tradition, male circumcision is linked to a covenant with God dating back
to Abraham.
Okay.
So many Western scholars attribute it to ancient Egypt, but many scholars today believe that
the origin of the practice goes back further and originates with the inhabitants of Southern
Arabia and parts of Africa.
Interesting.
That doesn't surprise me.
No.
And over the millennia, circumcision has been most often used as a religious rite, a rite
of passage into madhood, but it's also been a form of punishment in wartime.
So modern, modern day times, circumcision is widespread in Australia, Canada, the United
States, South Korea, most of Africa, parts of Asia, but it's relatively rare for non-religious
reasons in like South Africa, Southern Africa, Latin America, Europe, and other parts of
Asia.
Interesting.
All right.
And, um, because we had on our show and I'm good friends with Simcha, I did ask him a
few things about circumcision, him being Jewish.
And, um, but you know, I wanted to get an expert's opinion on this.
And so he, he, he pointed me in some certain directions.
And so I did find some stuff because, okay, it was Robin Hood, Men in Tights, right?
And you've got a friar talking, he's got the little like Dick Eotene.
Yes.
Mel Brooks.
Yes.
Yeah.
Mel Brooks, right?
So I feel like it's, it's safe to say most often when people nowadays think of circumcision,
the first thing is, is a Jewish ritual.
And it doesn't have to be, that doesn't have to be something negative.
It doesn't have to be something, you know, but it just, it is what it is because that's
part of their religion.
So, but anyway, so I tried to do a bunch of different research and stuff.
I've got this whole, whole section here now called ancient practitioners.
So we're trying to figure out where this kind of came from and what was going on here.
So let me take a couple more puffs off the, off the cigar.
Do you have any questions so far, Mike?
We've kind of broadly said that it could have come from Africa.
Could it come from Egyptians?
I mean, Egypt is in Africa or on the African continent.
It's on the African continent, but it's, I mean, it's a Mediterranean, imperial nation
in terms of like historical sense.
It's not really considered part of Africa.
Well, it's part of Africa, but it's North Africa and North Africa was part of the Mediterranean
slash European zeitgeist.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a Western nation.
It's definitely on the African continent, but it wasn't necessarily classified as an
African nation, you know, as Mediterranean, like you said, you know, there was a lot of
different people.
There's a lot of Nigerians there and stuff.
Yeah.
Let's not go there.
Okay.
It's not, uh, you leave the farmers alone.
Okay.
Yeah, we're going to, we're going to go to ancient practitioners.
So it says here, or the research that I've done, these are all my notes that I took.
So I'm like, it says here, all the notes I took previously, uh, last episode you heard
me take notes.
No.
So it's all really evidence, uh, archaeological or textual within or beyond the Torah, uh,
to support that the notion of circumcision was customary among the Canaanites, Canaanites,
Canaanites, uh, Homer didn't, yes, Homer didn't mention anything about circumcision being
customary in his work, Troy, uh, which goes by Ayleon in other languages, I guess.
The Ayleod.
It's not Ayleod.
It's I with a, with a asterisk over the top of it or apostrophe over the top of it.
L I O N.
Oh, was that Ayleod?
And the parentheses it says, it says Troy.
So interesting.
Apparently has a work called Troy.
I mean, I feel like he was fairly, fairly, he had more works than the Ayleod and the
Odyssey, right?
Like he probably wrote more than two books.
Uh, it's my understanding that Homer is more of a mythic character.
That's like, uh, not like Jesus.
It'd be like, uh, John who wrote a book in the Bible, like it's not really one person,
you know what I mean?
Yeah.
John in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John didn't really write anything.
Right.
Well, like John supposedly wrote several books.
It's like not, no.
Yeah.
So well, and apparently it's supposedly this person named Jesus lived, but there's not
a whole awful lot of proof to corroborate that.
So hold on a second, bro.
A guy told me that there was a fountain in Jew Judea that they just discovered.
So obviously Jesus was real.
I know.
And it had the same number of pillars that the Bible said it did.
Exactly.
But that's, that's another episode.
We're just talking about snipping, sniffing the dick here.
Okay.
Hopefully, I mean, there's not really like a hashtag sarcasm, but you know, uh, our last
exchange was.
So there's also some Roman historians, Titus Livius of Alexandria.
He didn't really write anything about circumcision occurring among the Carthaginians or any other
Phoenician settlements in North Africa.
Phoenician Phoenician.
Is that Phoenician blind or Venetian blind?
Venetian.
Okay.
We're with, we're all on the same page here now.
And the Sumerians nor the Akkadians or Assyrians, they didn't know or adopt circumcision.
And there's no description or support from any archeological evidence that this custom
was used in connection with the cult of God ill LL or other Semitic diet deities before
Abraham first visited Egypt.
Okay.
That's a lot of like mumbo jumbo stuff, but these are all like ancient religious cults
and I don't know, cult probably, I'm sorry, most of them were empires.
Most of them were empires, Syrians, Akkadians.
Uh, yeah.
Those are like the Canaanites or the Canaanites.
I mean, they were all empires.
So none of them did circumcision.
So even in the old Testament, Eliza from Damascus, whom Abraham rescued on his way to Canaan
was apparently uncircumcised.
So the name Eliza, Eliza, L E I E Z E R in Hebrew means God in the aid indicating that
he was a believer in God.
And so Abraham went heading to Kenan for a long time thereafter.
He was also uncircumcised.
So Abraham was, Abraham was uncircumcised according to things, texts back then, according
to the Torah, Abraham was finally circumcised at the age of 93, 90.
You're very, very close, a lot closer than I would have given you credit for.
So at the age of 90, he was circumcised, which is wild because we always hear about like,
Hey, our life expectancy is getting longer and longer and longer.
But you know, Abraham 90, he's like, yeah, I'm still, you know, young enough.
Let's clip this stuff off here.
There's quite a few biblical characters that lived quite extensive, quite long lives.
Yes.
And so it's also written that Eliza and all the other males in Abraham's family were circumcised
at the same time.
Good, good going Abraham.
I mean, I guess.
So the evidence kind of supports that during pre Abraham times circumcision wasn't really
a Semitic custom or required by God.
Okay.
It says God, ill, L or all.
So I L E L or a L. So on the door of the sixth dynasty tomb of the Pharaoh, Ankh-mahur, this
is going to be, I should, you know what I should have done?
I should have typed all of these names into like Google text to speech and practice my
pronunciation for this episode, but I didn't.
But there's a circumcision scene depicted.
This was a 2,355 to 2,343 BCE is the oldest example of circumcision from ancient Egypt.
Now here's where we start getting interesting because we're still kind of going through
some of the ancient stuff, right?
We're getting out.
It's all this ancient stuff.
It's kind of, it's, I don't know, maybe you're interested in it.
Maybe you're not.
But it's, for me, it's moderately interesting.
I find it to be interesting.
I'm sure Mike's at half mass this whole time, you know?
Oh, you know, I'm, I've been rubbing.
But Mike's also a history major and you the listener might not be, and I'm not, but I
do find history to be interesting.
But I mean, we're also talking about like ancient dicks, so they got to smell bad, right?
I'm guessing so.
Like what was dick hygiene?
Like I can only think of like, and I always come back to this and I don't know if it's
right or wrong, but like, you know, the settlers, the American, European settlers going out
west for gold and like the Oregon Trail and walking across death Valley and fucking wool
three piece suits, you know, like, and they don't really pay.
Like it's got to smell bad.
It, I mean, yeah.
And there's animals everywhere and they're not bathing and there's no clean water.
I mean, that's the biggest thing.
You don't have clean water.
Not like the Roman, the Romans had baths and aqueducts and stuff like that.
So that's all fine and dandy, but you know, like some of these other cultures, I don't
know.
Okay.
Like a, like a wet market, you know, it's not going to be nice.
Yeah.
So to carry on with what I had mentioned earlier that would, that I said would come back time
and time again in ancient Egypt, the performance of circumcision was initially limited to the
priesthood who, in addition to the cleanliness of this operation and parted to that class,
class added the shaving of the whole body as a means of further purification.
So once the priesthood, the religious class starts doing circumcision, guess who follows?
The nobility, royalty and higher warrior class also adopted circumcision as well.
And there's, and research says it was either as a hygienic precaution or this is my emphasis
here, more likely, an aristocratic prerogative and insignia.
Okay.
And this is going to come back throughout what we're talking about here with circumcision
is it started out in ancient Egypt as a class marker.
And then the nobility and royalty and the other classes, higher classes adopted it as
well.
And among the Greeks, around the times of Pythagoras, the philosophers, the Greek philosophers
were also circumcised, but there's no mention really that the circumcision went beyond the
intellectual class.
So it's really, they're really talking about the research that I've done, you know, and
it was like, this, you know, this research is probably enough to get like a, I don't
know, B plus or an A minus in a college course, right?
Like I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go write a treatise on circumcision, but I
wanted to present like, this is something like, where did it come from?
Why are people doing this?
What's going on here?
So I'm, you know, I'm trying to satisfy the curiosity itch, but go maybe a little bit
further than just base curiosity, right?
We've got that with the classes.
And now we're kind of moving through my things.
I hope that kind of makes sense.
This is kind of like when I was doing the research, this is kind of what made sense
for me to kind of chunk these out as.
So I'm kind of, we're going to go into some current practitioners.
Hell yeah.
So we've got-
Jews, Americans.
Easy Mike, easy.
You said you weren't going to say that term.
I mean, it's like-
Talking about Americans.
Not offensive.
Talking about Americans.
Okay.
All right.
So current practitioners, so circumcision currently is practiced in one of three ways.
We've got the ancient traditional method, the now common method, which was introduced
by rabbis and the medical method used by most non-Jews and non-Muslims.
Okay.
So the last method here is kind of been disconnected from religion or tradition with the rationale
mostly attributed to hygiene.
Okay.
But here's where it kind of gets a little interesting is because medical circumcision,
meaning not religious or traditional, was widely used by the British army prior and
during World War II to prevent military personnel serving in Asia and Africa from contracting
sexually transmitted diseases.
Is that effective?
We're going to get into that.
We're not going to answer that right now.
But that was kind of like, that was the biggest or most recent medical with the air quotes,
medical reason to circumcise.
They didn't want to get their military men coming back with some weird disease.
But the whole point is the British army was like, hey, our men are going out there.
We don't want them to come back with diseases.
We've heard or somebody said that maybe like snipping that will prevent it.
Okay.
So here's, okay, I thought I was going to like save this for later, but apparently part
of this research is it is clear that medical circumcision for the preventing of sexually
transmitted diseases has no evidence basis.
So it has no evidence basis, right?
Likewise, the notions that circumcision will prevent boys from masturbating or developing
epilepsy are baseless and bizarre.
Are you telling me that Western doctors would perform medical procedures with no evidence?
Yes, but only with circumcision, nothing to do with gender reassignment.
Oh, I wasn't even thinking about that.
Well, don't, don't think about that.
We don't want you to.
It's best not to.
Anyway, carry on.
There's also, so in the United States, France and England, there's a class.
It's a class, a class thing that observe circumcision is a hygienic precaution.
Okay.
That sounds like it might be something that the lower classes do.
To me, it sounds like something that the class that can afford to go to Epstein Island and
not take any flack for it would do, but teach their own.
We don't know.
There's no evidence on that because they haven't released that data.
I understand.
Okay.
I'm going to get into some of the religious stuff with Judaism because I had a very good
question.
I thought I felt like it.
I felt like it, but I'm going to, I'm going to kind of go on the, on the basis of the
Judaic reasoning for circumcision.
Then I'm going to tell you my question and I'm going to tell you the answer to my question.
Sound good?
Yes, it sounds very good.
I'm about halfway done with my cigar, by the way.
Me as well.
Yeah, it's pretty good.
You, it is good off me.
Let's not fight this episode, Mike.
It did not have nice ash or only got about an inch on it.
Yeah.
The ash hasn't been as good as some of the other ones, but it's been tastier than some
of the other ones too.
So,
Absolutely.
I mean, I, so I quite like it.
I'm just about, I like it paid page three of my notes.
So it's a good halfway, halfway cigar checkpoint.
So good call, Mike.
Perfect.
I haven't got a lot of flavor change.
It's been pretty steady.
Oh, it's been, it's been solid.
It's been, I know we haven't said that this is the right term, but I'm going to say buttery.
Like it's been smooth, you know, like not, not tasting like butter, but you know, when
you like, you eat some bread or you eat something and it's just like, it's like just moist enough
and it's just flavorful enough.
And it's just, it's not necessarily like a punch in the taste buds, but it's like, it's
like checking all your boxes.
You know what I mean?
Absolutely.
So this one's quite, quite delightful to me.
So in Judaism, they call it a, well, probably mispronounce this it's B R I S. I'm going
to say bris, bris.
So that's a physical symbol of the relationship between God and the Jewish people.
And so it's a constant reminder of what the Jewish mission entails.
And this is from Chabad.org.
And they say that this reminder of the covenant between God and man is something that men
need more than women.
Is there any reason for that?
Or is it just a claim that is unsubstantiated?
I'm sure it's not unsubstantiated, but I'm not sure that it has any kind of like scientific
basis.
So if we get down to it, right.
So yeah, it's religious.
So it's religious.
So let's, let's look at it this way.
As a young man in high school, when you got your driver's license, did, did your parents
insurance rate go up more than your best female friends parents insurance rate went up?
I don't know.
I'm going to guess.
It did.
Yes.
I know that
young men cause a greater spike in insurance premiums than young women.
Despite the fact that statistically speaking, young women are worse drivers than young men.
Young women get in more accidents than young men.
That's not what Hollywood would have you believe.
That's not what society would have you believe.
But as a young man, you make your parents insurance go up more so than a young female.
So I know that my insurance as a young male adult was higher than all of my girlfriends
and I had a better driver record than all of them.
Yes.
Right.
Yeah.
So, you know, is there a reason that the Jewish men need bigger reminder than Jewish women?
Maybe religiously, but I'm sure statistically it's probably not true.
Religiously, it might be true.
And I, you know, that's, I guess the trouble with like kind of researching some of these
topics or like this topic in particular is it's so ingrained in certain religions and
certain traditions and certain other things, you know, that to answer fully all of these
questions it would be a 25 page document of notes rather than a five page.
So I tried to not question extra questions that popped up like, do Jewish men need a
bigger reminder than Jewish women?
I don't know.
Maybe, maybe they do.
Maybe they don't.
I don't know.
They, they do seem to really avoid the, the vaginal blood.
So maybe, maybe they're onto something.
I don't know.
Maybe they're not.
Who knows?
Tough to say.
Well said.
I guess they have like a, I don't know if you play like video games and stuff and like
you try and like spam this thing that gives you like resources or whatever, there's like
a cool down time, right?
You know, like you can only spam it every five minutes or something.
Well apparently like after a Jewish woman's period, there's like a seven day cool down
period where it's not allowable, you know, for hanky panky and stuff.
But you know, they put it, they put a timeline on it.
And they also put a timeline on after giving birth.
That those both seem reasonable in ancient society.
Yeah.
Well, and they even seem reasonable in modern society, I guess, like honestly.
Oh, for sure.
You know, but I'll tell you like the, let's just, I don't mean to be like, I'm not trying
to like minimize this by what I'm about to say.
I'm just trying to like phrase it in like a conversational way, not in a making fun
of way.
The cool down period giving birth is less than the medically prescribed, let's say cool
down after a C-section.
Sure.
So they didn't medically prescribed C-section is like longer than what the Jewish like after
giving birth cool down period is.
Well they were trying to make these decisions in ancient times.
They didn't have years of medical research to back up their claim.
They just knew it was a good idea.
No, and yeah.
And I mean, I'm not trying to say anything negative about it.
I'm just saying like, if I'm looking at this and saying like, it seems understandable that
it wouldn't be the same.
An American doctor is saying after a C-section, you need X number of weeks before even thinking
about doing it.
And the Jewish people are like, Hey, we need slightly less number of weeks for doing it.
Like that's, I mean, I feel like that's a good like feather in their cap for them.
You know what I mean?
Like they're close to what Western medicine says.
And Western medicine is probably saying like, you can go back a lot earlier than you think
because we got to have you back at work.
We got to make you making money for the rich people.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Yeah.
It's going to be the minimum allowable time for sure.
Well, undoubtedly.
So anyway, not, not supposed to be like a judgment thing.
Uh, but so my question then was what's the point of religion, right?
Like the point of religion is we want to try and emulate God.
We want to try and emulate the religious figure.
We want to be like them.
And in the Bible, it says God created man in his image or her image or however you translate
the ancient Hebrew or whatever it is.
So my question was if we are made in God's image, is God circumcised or not?
No.
Ah, that's where you might be wrong.
My friend.
Okay.
According to habad.org, God created the world imperfect and gave humans the mission to perfect
it.
So God created wheat and humans make bread.
God created a jungle and humans create civilization.
And the point is that God himself or herself, the giant God schlong is circumcised and he
gave humans the extra bit of skin in order to make them make the covenant with God by
stepping that little bit of skin off and proving that they are worthy of God's love.
You would think in the handbook that we all got at birth, that would have been a little
bit bigger print because I never got that message growing up Catholic.
But that's Catholic, that's Catholicism.
I just don't know why my handbook is that much different.
Well, now look, I grew up Lutheran, which is Catholic light, basically.
Yes.
Even though they'll bitch and moan about how different it is from Catholicism.
Me?
It is not.
No, not you.
I'm just saying people like the Lutherans are like, well, we, you know, Martin Luther,
we seceded from those evil Catholics and blah, blah, blah.
It's like, well, why are you doing all the Catholic shit?
Yeah, you're not speaking in Latin.
But they have saints and stuff?
But it's all the same shit.
They don't have saints, but they still have all the same like the Lord's Prayer, the Communion,
and they don't, I mean, they don't, so they don't do the confessional.
But they have like just almost not quite as long, but like almost as long services and
like a lot of the same things are there.
If you've been to both kinds of services, which I have, the only Catholic service that
was drastically different for me than a Lutheran service was in Annapolis.
I went to a Catholic service on the base and it was fully in Latin.
So very easy to sleep through, I guess, is the summation of that.
How could you do that?
I mean, when I was actively Catholic, I always skipped leg day at the gym.
You know what I mean?
Oh, I know what you mean.
I was a lot more fit in those days so I could kneel and stand up, kneel and stand up, kneel
and stand up ad nauseam.
Anyway, back to the topic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's all kind of part of the topic.
Catholics, they don't, Catholics don't really circumcise, do they?
No, no, no, especially not like the German Catholics.
Yeah.
So my grandmother was full blooded German and we were Lutheran.
So I feel like that kind of had part of part of something to do with it.
I feel like Lutherans are more pro circumcision than Catholics, but I could be wrong.
Probably.
I mean, there's looking back at it.
I think that a lot of the Catholic teaching is anti-Semitic.
Not like not like overtly anti-Semitic, but it's definitely subtext.
Well, it's probably developed or, you know, like Judaism and Catholicism coexisted for
a long enough time before these other Protestant religions came out that Catholicism has probably
evolved to become anti-Judaic and vice versa, right?
Yeah.
I would say that it's less now than it was 80 years ago, let's say, to put a specific
date on it about 80 years ago.
But you know, it's still there.
It's still subtext.
Yeah.
So our next little foray is going to be into medical necessity.
And I know you were talking about medical necessity and whether or not circumcision
will reduce the risk of things.
Now this is from the National Library of Medicine and they say it's become clear in recent years
that circumcision has long-term medical benefits.
There were three randomized trials in Africa that demonstrated that medical circumcision
reduces the acquisition of HIV among males by 51 to 60% and reduces the acquisition of
genital herpes by 28 to 34% and it reduces the risk of human papillomavirus, which may
lead to penile cancer by 32 to 35%.
Terminalysis, they claim, has also suggested that these preventative benefits increase
over time.
So I mean, you know, 28 to 30%, 30 to 35%, those are all like fine numbers.
But I guess like the big one is the HIV apparently dropping by 51 to 60%.
So it does lower your odds of getting a venereal disease.
Well, according to three randomized trials in Africa.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I'm just saying like...
It might be suspect.
It might be true, but it might be suspect.
It might be suspect.
It might be true.
So there are instances where, and this is according to the Mayo Clinic now, where there
is a medical need for circumcision.
And I did talk to a nurse from the neonatal intensive care unit and they said a lot of
preemies, preemie boys, need to be circumcised for medical reasons.
And so this now is according to the Mayo Clinic, this is kind of the research to kind of back
that up, is the foreskin can be too tight to be pulled back or retracted.
So especially with, and especially with preemie babies, they kind of swell up with fluids.
So then it becomes an issue when the foreskin can't retract as intended.
Right?
Sure.
And then the Mayo Clinic here to counter, maybe not counter, but to shed some additional
light on what we previously read from the National Library of Medicine, Mayo Clinic
says in other cases, particularly in parts of Africa, circumcision is recommended for
older boys or men to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted infections.
There we go.
If you're living in an area where sexual infections are rampant, it will probably help, I guess.
But it's interesting that these two independent websites, one is a.gov, one's a.org, would
kind of say Africa is kind of a shithole for STDs.
You know what I mean?
I mean, I don't know if that's true or not.
I know that supposedly AIDS is very common there, but it doesn't have the same symptoms
as AIDS in the United States.
So it's questionable whether or not.
I'm just saying that it's interesting that they said that the National Library of Medicine
was like, oh yeah, circumcision is awesome.
It cuts down HIV in Africa.
You know what I mean?
I'm not saying that it's not true.
I'm just saying we have to take some of this stuff and be like, okay, well, they're citing
three different trials in Africa.
They're not necessarily citing three different trials in Detroit or Dallas or Japan or South
Korea or someplace where there's standards that we would recognize.
Yeah.
And maybe easy access to prophylactics, like condoms or safe sex or other.
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, maybe circumcision is great and everybody should do it.
I don't know.
I want to study from New Zealand.
Canada.
Was Frodo circumcised?
I don't know.
I don't know how it's reproduced for the most part.
I don't know either.
I'm sure there's a lovely fanfic out there about that whole thing.
Now, one of the other interesting things when I was talking to our friend Simha was that
he said that there were people that were born circumcised.
And I thought to myself, that has to be silly.
So I looked it up.
Okay.
So in the book, The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, whom I'm predisposed to like because
that's a variation of my full name, but there are a whole list of people from the Israeli
scriptures, Israelite scriptures, that are born circumcised.
They include Adam, no last name needed, Seth, also no last name needed, Shem, Noah, Jacob,
Joseph and Moses, the wicked Balaam, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, and some name I can't pronounce,
Zerubabel.
Z-E-R-U-B-B-A-B-E-L.
I am not going to attempt to pronounce that.
I do not know what that is.
Let's move along.
So it's being born without a foreskin was regarded as a privilege of the most saintly
of people.
So they were people made in the image of God.
Has this been recorded to happen in modern times?
That was my next question.
It's called, it's called apostheia, A-P-O-S-T-H-I-A, in parenthesis, natural circumcision.
It's the condition of being born without a prepus, prepus, P-R-E-P-U-C-E, which is
the medical jargon for foreskin.
So you can literally be born without a foreskin.
But according to the National Library of Medicine, only sporadic cases are ever reported.
So it's not a common thing.
But we talked on a previous episode about two blonde haired, blue eyed people make a
baby could be redheaded and brown eyed or something.
You know what I mean?
It's not super common, but it can apparently medically happen.
The other question I had was, maybe this is more of an episode about how my brain works
and less about circumcision, but hopefully it's both.
I mean, hopefully it's more about the circumcision and nobody's trying to psychoanalyze me because
that would be bad, I think.
But I live at Mike's house and my name is also Mike.
So if you need to commit me, that's where I am.
So then I thought, what about, so we kind of went through, we went through the ancient,
the origins of it.
I wasn't super satisfied with, well, ancient Egypt did it and whatever, but that's fine.
And then we kind of went through like modern times and then we kind of went through, you
know, like religious reasons, medical reasons, people born circumcised.
Well then I thought, well, what about uncircumcised adults that choose circumcision?
Like what's the studies on that?
Well, like what's going on there?
Is that a thing?
Because we had a son not that long ago, three months ago.
And this of course was a topic open for discussion in our household prior to his birth.
And of course, and you might not know this Mike, but you probably do because if you do
anything in life, you know, there's a whole, was it cadre?
Like a slew, like a whole bunch of people that want to give you input on whatever it
is that you're trying to do, right?
Whether it's a kid or a dog, if you want to try and like learn pickleball, like everybody
has an opinion.
We all have one or multiple.
But there was somebody who said that they chose not to circumcise their son.
And when their son was an adult, they chose circumcision, they chose to go have it done.
So I was like, well, that's interesting.
Like would people choose that?
You know, like I just, everybody has a, has a different like life circumstance.
But for me, like it's a fairly sensitive area, but at least for me, would I choose to have
things cut off of it?
I'd probably not like that probably be my last inclination.
You know what I mean?
But I don't have the luxury of like saying that because that choice was made for me when
I was an infant.
So apparently like some older boys and men need to have circumcision due to medical problems.
Some of them have a scarring of the foreskin that stops it from retracting, which kind
of goes back to that, you know, like medical reason for an infant, right?
Like if it doesn't retract, you get all sorts of infections and stuff because you can't
just have like pee, you know, up in your body and stuff.
It's got to get rid of there.
You can have recurring inflammation or recurring inflections, infections, and you can have
a foreskin apparently that's too tight that causes pain or spraying when urinating.
So I guess the way that modern urinals are designed doesn't take into account like a
foreskin that's too tight.
So if you find yourself at like the state fair with the urinary trough, the pee trough,
and you're not getting it in the trough, you probably need to be circumcised because you
probably have a foreskin that's too tight.
Again, I'm not a doctor.
I'm just saying.
Right.
This is not medical advice.
Warning, warning.
And then, yeah, and then there's also like if you have recurrent urinary tract infections,
that would be another medical reason for choosing circumcision.
So you've got adult circumcision and there's, so that was from betterhealth.gov.
And then we've got a medstarhealth.org, which says that you, there's some skin conditions
as well, in addition to what we just talked about that might lead people to choose circumcision,
which are genital warts.
So if you have warts developing on your foreskin, I'm sorry, this episode is gross.
Everybody, it is what it is.
You know, like we should be comfortable talking about this stuff, I guess.
I don't want to.
Well, facts are the facts.
You know, facts are the facts.
I mean, the facts are the facts, you know.
And maybe, you know what, you know what, people talk about getting mammograms and they set
up these free mammogram booths and stuff.
Like this is that for men.
Okay.
If you have genital warts on your foreskin, talk to your doctor.
Okay.
Like just do it.
It's not a big deal.
It says circumcision might help with that.
There's an immune mediated skin condition called lichen sclerosis.
And it can cause the scarring of the foreskin.
It causes it to become too tight around the shaft and the head of the penis.
And that can make infections.
So if you have that, talk to your doctor.
See if circumcision is right for you.
And there's something called phimosis, which is the foreskin tightens and kind of traps
urine underneath the skin, which is a bad situation all around, as most of us can imagine.
So they're definitely, I mean, kind of answer your question, Mike, like there's some like
preventative medical things that kind of sort of might be based in scientific fact for circumcision,
but there's definitely some things that a man can experience or an older boy can experience
where you might want to get circumcised if you have not been.
Like if there's pain, if there's tightness, if there's warts and infections, right?
Yeah, that all makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean, so there's definitely, there are definitely some medical things.
Is it enough medical things to preventatively do it?
We're going to come to that.
I'm going to guess no.
I'm going to guess no, since they weren't chopping dicks off like a hundred thousand
years ago or 10,000 years ago or whatever.
So, yeah, I mean, that's true.
I want to try and find.
So I found this amazing book.
It was crazy good.
This guy, let me see if I can find which, yes, here it is.
So it was, this book is called Prehistory of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to
the Present and it was written in 1891.
And this dude, he was not publishing a scientific article if that's what you're trying to look
for.
But this guy was like, why are we chopping people's dicks off?
And I'm like 1891, like I'm an 1890s motherfucker.
Like why are we doing this shit?
And like he went and did all this research about like the ancient Egyptians.
And that was part of the stuff that I quoted.
But then he also like, he went through like, dude, and you can find it on like Project
Gutenberg.
I'm going to put the link in the thing in the description, but like it's the whole book
there and the table of contents alone is worth the read, just the table of contents.
You don't have to read the whole book.
But like, it's like, if you can imagine somebody like in the 1800s being like, dude, what's
going on with this?
And trying to figure it out.
He doesn't have the internet, right?
And he's like, was this guy English or was he an American?
What's going on here?
I'm sure he was English.
I don't know.
Oh, that one.
I would love that.
Like, yeah, I mean, late Victorian, early Edwardian English guy.
It's so good.
Like the whole, the way, the tone of the book was amazing.
Like, you're like, oh my God, this guy is just like stream of consciousness writing
about what he's finding out almost.
You know what I mean?
Like it was not what you would expect from a scientific article or journal today where
it's like removed emotionally.
So it's very interesting.
It's entertaining.
Yes.
And I feel like, I feel like he did as best as he could.
Scientific, you know, like to make it scientific, right?
Like he wasn't trying to be conversational with it.
He just kind of like came out because it was, you know, it was 1890.
Like what are you going to do?
Like you can't, you know, you don't have the same kind of like high science that we have
nowadays with things where it's like, well, you can't question this or I can't have feelings
about this or I can't.
It was a little bit different, a little bit different era, but that doesn't mean that
his research was any less justified.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
Do you want to talk about the national trends or do you want to talk about whether or not
it's genital mutilation first?
National trends.
Genital mutilation is probably the end cap.
I think that'll be the nightcap.
So they did a study on the 32 year period between 1979 through 2010, the national rate
of newborn circumcision in the United States here declined by 10% overall.
So in 1979, the rate was 64.5% of newborn men were circumcised.
And in 2010, it was 58.3%.
Interesting.
The highest circumcision rate ever was in 1981 at 64.9% and the lowest ever was 2007
at 55.4.
And this is according to the CDC.
I'm kind of surprised that it's that low.
I figured it would be significantly higher in the United States.
Okay.
I mean, not that I've done any research on it.
Fairly normal based on a study of pornography, but that was done by somebody else.
Yes.
I'm not looking that close.
Yeah.
That's not what I'm looking at.
I'm just saying like, you know, AI helped.
So there's this other thing here where it says that there's a social anthropologist
named Sarah John's daughter.
And she pointed out that there's not a one-to-one relationship between the amount of genital
tissue removed in males, females, or even intersex people.
And either subjective satisfaction while having sex or feeling of having been personally harmed
because one private's parts were altered.
Medically unnecessary genital surgeries of whatever degree of severity will affect different
people differently.
This is what she says.
This is because each individual's relationship to their own body is unique, including what
they find aesthetically appealing and what degree of risk they feel comfortable taking
on when it comes to elective surgeries on the reproductive organs.
And even what degree of sexual sensitivity they prefer for personal and cultural reasons.
That's why ethicists are beginning to argue that individuals should be left to decide
what to do with their own genitals when it comes to irreversible surgery, whether, whatever
their sex or gender.
And this is Sarah John's daughter and there's a Dr. Brian D. Earp.
And so this is kind of their take on circumcision.
There's another thing here where and we're going to briefly talk about female circumcision,
which was primarily an African, can I say Negroid?
This is what is from the source.
An African Negroid custom.
That used to be like the technical term.
I think that it is now considered racist.
You know what?
I'm sure it is.
I'm sure at one point in time, that was the scientific term that was accepted.
So it was a research paper.
I'm not, I'm not, this isn't my own words, but they, but this scientific journal says
that the African Negroid custom is not discussed in detail because it is an inhumane custom
based on total selfishness.
So they're talking about the ancient, an ancient version of the belt of fidelity in which ancient
Greece used circumcision when their warriors headed to war and its main purpose, and this
was female circumcision.
They would circumcise the women when the men went to war to prevent the women and their
partners from receiving sexual acts and for receiving pleasure from those acts and in
part to reduce fertility by preventing complete expulsion of menstrual blood from the womb.
So you know, the female circumcision was kind of to population control.
And then let's say here that I've got another study here from the National Library of Medicine
where neonatal male circumcision is a generally safe procedure with an overall complication
rate and this isn't Israel of just 0.34%.
But they say that some patients do experience risk and complications from male circumcision
are usually minor, often involving bleeding, oozing or a local infection.
And they're almost always correctable.
That's that.
I have one last thing before we get in, before we kind of like you and I kind of talk about
what our thoughts are.
Do you have any, any thoughts so far, Mike?
No, I, no, not really.
Which means you do, but you're going to hold on to them until the end.
Yes, I believe so.
All right.
So here's something from the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.
And I wanted to mention this because this is going to tie into what I'm going to say
because I read a lot of things on whether or not male circumcision is genital mutilation
or not.
And we're going to get into it a little bit, but here is an abstract from the Oxford Journal
of Legal Studies.
And it says in the United Kingdom, male genital cutting is in principle legal and may even
be ordered by a court, which is weird.
Like the court could order you to become circumcised.
Whereas female genital cutting is a criminal offense.
Yes.
So basically they're trying to propose that there's a different foundation for the categorical
rejection of female genital cutting versus the male medical cutting.
And the best, the best thing I read, which I didn't, I didn't cite or quote, but because
it was one of those things where it's kind of like somebody's opinion, but it was somebody
who was not just some guy or some dude or some woman or some whatever hiding behind
like a user handle online.
But this was somebody and they were saying, look, when we talk about genital mutilation
and you talk about male circumcision, most people will come out and say, yeah, but compared
to female circumcision, it's nothing.
Now what this person said was we generally, when we're comparing male and female circumcision,
generally people are taking the absolute worst case scenario for female circumcision or female
genital mutilation.
And they're comparing it to the best case scenario of male circumcision or male genital
mutilation because there are a lot of other forms of female genital mutilation or female
circumcision that don't, don't involve the cutting of everything off.
You know what I mean?
Like there's a, there's something called like nicking, I guess.
And I don't know what that is or what it does because I didn't really want to know.
You know, some of this stuff is like, I don't want to know.
But basically they're saying like, we take the worst possible scenario of the female
version and compare it to the best possible version of the male version.
So we're not really comparing apples to oranges here.
When we're talking about is circumcision, male circumcision, is that genital mutilation?
Well, it's certainly mutilating genitals.
If you look at the genitals as not being, you know, if normal is what you're born with
standard issue and you're modifying it, then you could describe it as mutilation.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, you know, like it's a part of it is to Mike, like I wanted to talk about this
and I'm glad you brought it up.
The way we're born is, and this isn't meant to be some huge philosophical gender affirming
or denying or whatever.
This is just like, as we're born, we're supposed to be able to survive.
Look at any other creature on the planet, right?
Like how they're born and sometimes, yes, sometimes as a, there's a calf have a medical
issue that the farmer or somebody needs to correct so that they can live.
Yes, of course, of course, you know, but by and large, like the majority of baby cows
should be able to live on their own as they are.
And the same with humans.
I mean, so what?
We have tonsils.
What tonsils do?
Nobody knows.
I mean, I'm sure people know.
I don't know.
I know a lot of people get them out and they live just fine.
What does the appendix do?
I don't know.
People get it out and it's fine.
Like those are kind of like the two most common like things, right?
I mean, I don't know about most common.
I'm not a doctor, but you know, appendicitis and tonsil, tonsilloxamines, like those are
kind of the things, right?
They seem pretty common.
I've heard of them at least.
So you know, it's not like people are electively choosing to get those things out, but they
don't necessarily serve a purpose, but you can live with them.
You can live without them, you know, like gallbladders, spleens.
I don't know.
Like those things are kind of like extra organs from an evolutionary past.
Is the foreskin an evolutionary thing from the past that we don't need nowadays?
I mean, we don't need it for sure, but do we not not need it?
You know what I mean?
Like, I mean, that's kind of the question.
I mean, I think that it's just a cultural relic of the past.
And maybe I think a lot of the ancient prescriptions have origins that are bathed in mystery.
You know, maybe it did serve a viable function for desert tribe people 2000 years ago or
2500 years ago or 3000 years ago.
Yeah, don't give water to the dead.
Right.
Exactly.
They didn't exactly have access to water to bathe.
So maybe that was a factor, whereas like people indigenous to the United States had plenty
of water.
There's water everywhere around here.
So yeah, so it's like one of those things where like evolutionarily humans, almost sapiens,
had a foreskin and evolutionarily we haven't got rid of it yet.
Get rid of it yet.
You know, like the same with the tonsils.
Like you can totally get rid of your tonsils and you probably have a lot less problems
in your life if you do.
I'm not a doctor.
Don't do that.
You know, like they don't really serve an overabundant purpose in modern times and they
are more likely to cause issue in modern times than not, I guess, from what I've heard or
what I feel.
Like that's my feeling in my body.
Like is that true?
I don't know.
It could be.
Yeah, I have no idea.
I still have my tonsils.
So yeah, I still haven't had a need to cut them off.
Yeah, I still have my gallbladder.
I still have my spleen.
I still have my appendix.
Yeah, that too.
I get that.
But I feel like if there was anything that I want to get rid of, it would be my tonsils
because they sound like problem things, right?
And I just want, you know, like if health care and health insurance and money wasn't
a thing, I'd be like, eh, you know, like I'm not doing anything this week.
Like, why don't you take them out?
But I also had my wisdom teeth out as an adult and that sucked dick.
So maybe I wouldn't want them out, you know, because like it, but now they're gone.
So like it's fine.
But you know what I mean?
Like it's one of those weird things.
But going back to our previous, one of our previous episodes about tattoos and tanning
and ear piercings, if it's not a medical necessity, you know, so that, that law article that I,
that I was referencing, they basically said like, if it's not a medical necessity, then
any genital cutting, genital surgery is mutilation.
I fall into the category of if it's not medically necessary, that is something that should be
up to that individual once they are an adult.
And I know that messes with certain religious groups, but other religious groups in the
past have had to change their practices to comply with secular society.
So it's not unprecedented.
Yeah.
And the other thing is that, so Lutherans anyway, believe at baptism at birth, right?
But the Baptists believe in baptism when the person is old enough to understand the covenant
that they're entering with God.
Yes.
So that is a very drastic change.
I know in Jewish culture, it is on the eighth day, they get their, their bris, their circumcision.
I was told that, and there's some like pretty good like YouTube videos out there.
There's one, and I don't know if it was Simcha's friend or somebody else, but they were kind
of doing like a impromptu song about the first time they were drunk was when they were eight
days old, because in Jewish custom, they will take some wine and rub the baby's gums with
wine so that they're kind of like drunk during the procedure.
I mean, not drunk, but like, you know what I mean?
It kind of the same as like the modern Northern Midwestern saying, oh yeah, my baby cried
in the nineties or eighties.
So I gave him a little bit of whiskey or rum and they called him and went to sleep.
Yep.
So, you know, but they rub wine on the gums and apparently the baby doesn't cry for more
than like 10, 15 minutes during the ceremony.
But you know, it's still like, maybe it is a better choice for an adult because it is
irreversible.
Right.
This is my mentality, you know.
I read, I read an article, maybe I didn't read an article, maybe I watched a video,
but a Jewish rabbi had mouth herpes and he was doing these brises.
And I guess that in whatever subsect of Judaism that this rabbi was a member of, the pastor,
the rabbi, like sucks the baby's dick after he cuts it.
And he was spreading herpes to Jewish male children through this ritual.
And I don't think it was, it's like sucking, it's like kissing or whatever.
I don't really know the details and I'm not going to pretend to know.
Yeah, it's not a full on sexual act.
No, it is not a sexual act.
Because there's also something where if you have a newborn baby, don't let anybody kiss
them because you can get like the cold sores, herpes or whatever, you know, like they could
get that real easily because they don't have the immune system up for that.
So I mean, there's definitely some scientific basis.
I don't know about the whole like what they do, but you don't have to be a medical professional
to perform a circumcision basically, as long as you have kind of the religious grounds
to do it on, I guess.
Right.
Because I realize aren't medical doctors.
No, no, they're not.
Some probably are, but I don't think it's a requirement.
It's not mutually exclusive.
I'm just saying like most probably aren't.
Right.
And I know for a fact, because I read many stories about it, that in Minnesota, they
wanted to ban female genital mutilation.
And there was some pushback about that because the Somali population, that is not an uncommon
thing in Somalia, and it came to a head.
The Somali population in Minnesota is not an uncommon thing.
Well, no, yeah.
I mean, outside of Somalia, Minnesota is the largest group of Somalians.
Yeah, it's kind of like their diaspora area.
But I know that they were performing female genital mutilation.
OK, not sure if they still are.
But they were getting some hot water and somebody brought their child across state lines and
did it in like Michigan or something.
And it kind of blew up, and I'm against that entirely.
Unless it's an adult, again, like if your adult self wants to do something.
Yeah.
But there we go.
Like age of consent is age of consent and we need to draw a line on where it is and
follow it with everything.
Yeah.
And we talked about that with the previous episode, too.
Like we don't really have a one specific age of consent because you got voting, which
is less, which is more than legal age to drive, but less than legal age to smoke cigarettes
and out less than legal age to drink alcohol.
And the age of consent for sex.
Yeah.
The age of consent for sex varies by state.
It's not a national law.
Some states is 16.
Like Oklahoma is 16.
Minnesota is 16.
16 or 15 if their partner is 18.
OK.
Yeah.
I mean, like, you know, some of that stuff seems like gross and icky, but some of it
is like, well, if you're a high school senior who's 18 and you're dating like a sophomore
who's 17, is that underage or not?
Like, so some I mean, you know, some of the laws make sense because they just kind of
have to.
But, you know, in order to Caprio and you're dating a freshman in high school.
Yeah, it's unwise.
It's probably still OK because you're a Hollywood superstar and love Epstein Island.
But, you know, for the rest of us, that's not OK.
Right.
Yeah.
Life.
There's a lot of great areas in life.
There's a lot of great areas.
I think, you know, I feel like circumcision should be up to the individual and not like
like even if we're looking at it religious through a religious lens, like I know a lot
of religion stuff happens because the parents are like, I want my child to not go to hell.
But that's not a good reason to do something for your child.
Probably.
I sympathize with the religious argument because people feel very sensitive about it.
But in the United States, Muslim men are not allowed to have more than one wife.
Mormons aren't allowed to have more than one wife.
You know what I mean?
Like we have these rules.
You know, like I understand it.
Like if you strongly believe in your religion that your child needs to be circumcised or
they're going to hell, like I understand why you'd want to do it.
I do.
I understand that.
I'm not trying to come at you.
I'm just saying like I understand that.
Part of it is you also have to understand that your child might not have the same religion
as you.
They might not have the same political viewpoint as you.
They might not have the same social viewpoint as you.
And at some point, I think this goes back and I have a lot of issues at work internally
in my head, right?
Because a lot of the managers are like, hey, I'm a leader.
And I'm like, no, you're a manager.
You're not a leader.
Like manager does not equal leader.
A leader's job is not to create followers, it's to create more leaders so you don't have
as much work to do.
Like you're supposed to hold people up so they can do for themselves what they should
be able to do for themselves and lead more people.
You know what I mean?
Right.
So I have this same mentality I have with parenting.
You know, like, yeah, do I want to help my child?
Of course, all the time, as much help as I can give them.
But sometimes the help I can give them is not helping them.
You know, and it's a weird thing to say, but like if I know my child is capable of doing
a certain thing, then I'm not going to do that thing for them.
I'm going to help them do that thing or I'm going to make them do that thing or I'm going
to like, you know what I mean?
So like at some point, like you can't project these things or maybe, you know, maybe not
I can't, but like I feel like people shouldn't project these things and say, I know my child
wants a covenant with God at eight days old.
Right.
And it's not the same thing as baptism because rubbing some magic water and ashes and oil
on a baby and saying some, you know, incantation does not affect them in any significant way
in the long term.
Or during times shooting them with a super soaker for the holy water.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, like I'm not, I'm not trying, so I'm not trying to like poop on you if you're,
if you're religious and you circumcise your child and you do this and you do that, or
if there's a medical reason.
But I think like my kind of general opinion is if you're doing it because it's a covenant
with God, then the person giving up the most, AKA the foreskin, I guess, should be fully
aware of the covenant that they're making.
Right.
Like I have a three year old, I could, I could go to her tomorrow and be like, Hey, will
you promise to take care of daddy when daddy's pooping his pants?
And she'd be like, Oh, I'd love to, that'd be the best.
But she's three, you know?
And so for me, for me, when I'm, you know, 90, it's saying like, look, you promised it,
you were three, you take care of me.
And she's like, it's too much.
I can't do it.
Like, that's not fair.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And again, it all goes back to what rights does an individual have and what rights do
they not have?
You know, yeah.
And bodily, bodily autonomy to me seems pretty fucking important.
And that goes, I think so pass this topic to like drug use and all sorts of other things
that are not all encompassing in our society.
Yeah.
Like I don't suggest anybody go out and start banging heroin, but I don't think that it
should be illegal either.
Like, yeah, I'm not recommending it, but if that's what you want to do, if you're, if
you're an adult and you have all the relevant information about what's going on in the world
with that topic, you should have the right to do it.
Like, yeah, I mean, I guess I don't recommend a lot of things.
Yeah.
On one hand.
And so I've read some studies that, you know, generally speaking, the poor communities don't
get the same level of sex education in school that the less poor communities get.
So it kind of feeds into the poor communities always have more kids and yada, yada, whatever.
And we talked about like in our, is this term racist or not?
Like the ghettos and stuff like that.
And you know, ghetto is kind of sort of totally like a racist term, but they're not being
taught the same thing.
So and I'm not trying to nitpick.
I'm just saying like when you're saying like, if they're an adult and if they have all the
relevant information, then they can choose to do heroin, which is fine.
But like who's saying that they have all the relevant information?
And I know like you can go to the library, everybody can go to the library, you get free
internet access and you can look up heroin and you can learn all about it.
You know, and we've talked about this too, like on some level is a societal issue where
we don't have that societal responsibility.
We don't have a unified thing.
And you know, in Florida, where they don't want, at least initially, they didn't want
the teachers telling the kids about different sexualities.
The presupposition was that the parents would then fill that role.
But the truth is the parents are not filling that role.
No.
And if they are, a lot of times they're filling their children's head with things that are
not scientifically accurate, right?
Yes, exactly.
So that I mean, you know, like, but so I guess it's like, it's not limited to circumcision
and we're not trying to call call people out for religious reasons of circumcision.
But if we're trying to say that we want adults to make the choice, the law already says you
have to be 18 to get a tattoo.
So I understand how anybody on the planet can say, we're going to circumcise you at
eight days old.
This isn't a religious, this isn't a religious, this is a legal, like as a society, this is
a legal thing.
I'm not saying as a religion, you shouldn't.
I'm just saying like, legally in America, we say you have to be 18 to get a tattoo.
Even if you have parental consent, you can't do it before 18.
Right.
And piercings, certain piercings, they do, they do allow people to pierce their children's
ears, but I don't think that they allow them to get piercings like more adult themed piercings.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah.
Well, we talked about this too, is like most ear piercing places won't do it before the
age of eight.
Sure.
A lot of them won't do it till they're adults, but you know, I mean, infant ear piercing
used to be a huge thing, but nowadays it's kind of fallen out of favor, at least legally
and whatnot.
So it's, I mean, I don't know, you know, I think I'd rather, honestly, I'd rather have
an ear piercing than my foreskin cut off, I guess.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's less of a problem.
In the grand scheme of life.
Right.
I got my ears pierced when I was 18 or 19.
So my parents didn't force me to get it.
Yeah.
Well, I used to wear hoops.
I used to wear them all years ago when I got my first real job and it was frowned upon
by my employer.
Your long hair catches in them, right?
Didn't have long hair then either.
But your girlfriend did.
Hey-o.
Hey.
So my fingers are burning, man.
How about yours?
Yeah, I'm done.
I just got done.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm like two puffs from being done.
This was like a really good cigar.
It was very, very consistent.
Yep.
It was consistent throughout.
All the way through.
From the first puff to the last puff.
Yep.
Very smooth.
It wasn't mind blowing, but it was good.
It wasn't mind blowing, but I don't know.
What do these go for, Mike?
I don't know.
We'll have to look it up.
Google the show.
Yeah.
Google the show.
Somebody else can Google it.
I'm just saying like, you know, if you wanted something that was solid, this one was fairly
light.
It wasn't overpowering.
It was very, very nice.
This wouldn't be bad to have a box of.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, no, it's good.
So I'm bringing up AgeCigarInternational.com.
All right.
It's a semi-redditable site.
And you can get a box of five.
We had a Toro for those who want to know.
And they're 50 bucks for five.
So they're about 10 bucks a stick.
Probably 13 at your local store of choice, I'm going to guess, which is, you know, if
you're looking at a 15 ish dollar cigar, 13 ish dollar cigar, you're most likely going
to get a good one.
Yep.
So yeah, I know I got these always.
I get them on sale.
I don't know what I paid for them.
Oh, for sure.
I won't deny it.
Yeah, not a bad stick.
And this is a stick that I would not hesitate to give to somebody who was like, I want to
try a cigar.
I've never tried one before.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Very, very nice stick.
I think it's a good representation of what a cigar should be.
Yeah.
It's got a nice presentation with the little cedar wrapper.
Yep.
It's got good shelf appeal.
Yes.
Which is important in a luxury product like this, for sure.
Yes.
So anyway, I hope we gave you shed some light on circumcision.
Kind of a difficult topic to talk about as two dudes, but maybe no more difficult.
I don't think it was.
I think it's perfect that it was two dudes.
I like the history of it.
It gives context to American.
Yeah, it started out as a class thing, priests and things, and showing their ultimate devotion
to their god and cleanliness and things like that.
So I guess even from ancient times, 3000 some BC, foreskin was kind of seen as maybe dirty
or more peasant class or something.
Oh, sure.
I mean, if you were a peasant, you certainly couldn't get that procedure done safely.
No.
And I feel like maybe the class thing was the most interesting thing I came across in
the entirety of my research was it was kind of a class thing.
And even in America, there's kind of a class thing where it's like upper middle class people
get circumcision under the guise of religion, but it's kind of really a class thing and
not so much a religious thing.
Catholics don't really care according to their tenants, but a lot of Lutherans do because
a lot of Lutherans are upper middle class.
Right.
And a lot of Catholics do not.
And that's also a class thing because of the historical anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church,
I think.
That's my opinion.
So I think that was my biggest takeaway from all of my research was it was maybe more class
than anything to do with medicine or religion necessarily.
Right.
And I think that was kind of done under the guise or excuse of religion, but it had more
to do with class.
True.
Makes sense.
So once again, it comes down to economic status and class.
As most things do in life.
It seems to be a uniting factor.
Indeed.
So that's it for this episode.
See you next week.
Yes.
Be safe.
I will talk to you soon.