Podcasts about gay men

I have told you many stories about my life. But what I haven't told you is there was a series of events that occured that laid the groundwork for many things to come in my life.  I am not proud of what happened, but in hindsight maybe it was all for the best. This talks about my life in elementary school and Junior High School. I will do a second part to this talking about my High School experiences in another episode. 

For many gay men, friendship is complicated, performative, and sometimes downright painful. We crave genuine connection but end up navigating cliques, comparison, and quiet loneliness. In this episode, Michael and Pepper are doing an exposé on gay friendships to unpack what's really going on beneath the surface and why so many gay friendships fall short of the depth and safety we actually want. We're breaking it down in three parts: The Pretty Lies: Performative friendship, superficiality, and toxic group dynamics The Ugly Truth: How shame, fear, and survival strategies get in the way of true friendship True Friendship: What fun, nourishing gay friendship looks like and how we can build it This episode is your invitation to shift from followers to friendship, and from competition to collaboration—and start building real connection. Related Episodes: Making Friends (Introvert Edition) How to Make Friends with Gay Men Today's Guest: Pepper Rojas Instagram Today's Host: Michael DiIorio Instagram Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

In this episode of the Brief Talk Podcast, host Unb Tim welcomes Cisco from Yocisco, a brand that originated as an online magazine for gay men of color and evolved into a successful underwear line. Cisco shares his journey from being a go-go dancer to launching his brand, discussing the challenges of representing people of color in fashion, the importance of body diversity, and the current trends in men's underwear. The conversation also touches on masculinity, gender expression, and the need for inclusivity in the fashion industry. Cisco emphasizes the brand's commitment to confidence and representation, while also sharing insights from his experiences in the go-go dancing scene. Takeaways Yocisco started as an online magazine in 2007. Cisco transitioned from go-go dancing to entrepreneurship. The brand focuses on catering to gay men of color. Challenges include representation and inclusivity in fashion. Body diversity is a key focus for Yocisco. The brand offers a range of products including swimwear. Cisco emphasizes the importance of confidence in fashion. The conversation highlights the evolution of masculinity. Less judgment in the community is needed. Future collaborations and discussions on masculinity are planned. Titles From Go-Go to CEO: The Yocisco Journey Breaking Barriers: Fashion for Gay Men of Color Sound Bites "I lost everything, man." "I saw a hole in the market." "We just need less judgment." Links: Store - http://www.yocisco.com  Social Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/yoscico  BlueSky - https://bsky.app/profile/yocisco.bsky.social NOTE - if reading this after the show has dropped, sometimes the account gets deleted by the social media site.  Support UNB For on going support join our Patreon - www.patreon.com/unbblog You can now Join for free.  For one time support  visit our support page - https://www.underwearnewsbriefs.com/about/support-unb/ You can donate by Ko-fi or Paypal  Or buy from the UNB Store - www.unbstore.com  Gift us something from our wish list - https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/KCJXCDDPU0LI?ref_=wl_share  Buy Amoresy - https://amoresy.com/UNBTIM Buy BodyAware - https://bodyaware.com?bg_ref=7FgHF6QR1x Buy Xdress - https://xdress.com?bg_ref=cG6ohBdgUO Buy Real Men - https://www.rmac.store/TIM77812 Find out More  Read more at unbblog.com Follow unb on Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/unbblog Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/unbblog Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/unbstoreandblog/ Follow Tim Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/unbtim Instagrm - https://www.instagram.com/unbtim Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/unbtim BlueSky - https://bsky.app/profile/unbtim.bsky.social Spandex Party - https://spandexparty.com/unbtim Send Feedback/questions to feedback@brieftalkpodcast.com 

How do the unmet needs of our childhood shape who we are today? And more importantly, how do we learn to meet those needs for ourselves as adults? In this deeply personal and eye-opening episode of Gay Men Going Deeper, we explore the re-parenting process—a therapeutic model that helps us heal old wounds, develop self-compassion, and rewrite the internal narratives we inherited from childhood. We'll be getting personal as we reflect on on three powerful questions: 1️⃣ What needs went unmet for you as a child? 2️⃣ How did you cope with these unmet needs? 3️⃣ How have you learned to meet these needs for yourself as an adult? From loneliness and perfectionism to people-pleasing and self-expression, we dive into the real-life stories and coping strategies that shaped our past and the lessons we've learned to become the men we are today. Tune in for an honest, vulnerable, and inspiring discussion on how we can become the loving, supportive parents we always needed—for ourselves. Related Link: Inner Child Work Today's Hosts: Michael DiIorio Matt Landsiedel Reno Johnston Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

In recent years, "twink death"—the idea that a young, slim gay man loses social value as he ages out of the "twink" category—has gained traction as a viral online concept. Though often treated as a humorous social media trend, it highlights the deeper issues around ageism, body image, and the pressure to conform to narrow beauty standards within the gay community.In this episode, we unpack the cultural categorization of twinks, explore the origins and implications of "twink death," and discuss how gay men can challenge ageist beauty standards and embrace aging with pride.Related Episodes:Listen to Episode 32. Gay Men and Body ObsessionListen to Episode 60. Is 30 Gay Death?Additional Resources:The Pressure to Achieve Perfection: Body Obsession in the Gay Community and Its Impact on Self-WorthDebunking 'Gay Death': How Gay Men Can Age with PrideTwink (Urban Dictionary)Twink (Dictionary.com)Twinkie (Collins Dictionary)What is a Twink?Twink (Wikipedia)Twink Death (Urban Dictionary)Twink Death (Know Your Meme)Twink Death and Its ConsequencesExoletus (Wikipedia)Twink Death: Is the Party Really Over?Twink DeathSupport the showGet Your Merch

Season 5: Episode 18Gay men, married to women, coming out, getting divorces and becoming besties with their ex-wives. In this episode, Mike interviews two of the men in his gay discussion group, Nate Erisman and Dan Kroening, who have done just that. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Everything Numa⁠⁠⁠Mike's Gay Discussion Group⁠⁠

In this episode, I explore the many ways gay men experience betrayal—in relationships, friendships, family, and professional life—and how we can heal from these wounds with clarity and strength. If betrayal has touched your life, listen in and consider therapy or coaching with me to reclaim your peace of mind and restore trust in yourself and others.

Following the governor's May revision and a projected deficit of $12 billion, state lawmakers have a month to pass a balanced budget. Also, challenges facing California's tourism industry. Finally, the Sacramento Gay Men's Chorus. What's Next After the May Revise

Kevin Corbett, Managing Director Gay Men's Chorus joins Steve Dale on the show to share details on their upcoming show, called the “Gay 90's.” The show will feature over 200 voices and everything that makes the 1990s unforgettable.

This week, Bunnie's asks the big question - why is she so attracted to alpha gay men? Then, the girls unpack drama between Holly Madison and Zak Bagans, and kinks that involve stripper heels and CEOs. Bunnie also shares more about meeting Lana Del Rey, her floating rib, and surviving Stagecoach on her period. Just another normal week around here.Watch Full Episodes & More:www.dumbblondeunrated.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Matt speaks with therapist and author, Tom Bruett, about how to avoid losing yourself in your relationships. By balancing connection and autonomy in our relationships, we can foster more secure relationships that allow us to maintain our sense of self while allowing our partner to do the same. If you easily lose yourself in your relationships or you're having a hard time establishing intimacy, this episode will offer a refreshing perspective and tangible takeaways to help you improve your relationship with yourself and others. The concepts and questions we explore in this episode are: What is codependency and enmeshment? What are the consequences of being codependent or enmeshed in relationships? What causes codependency and enmeshment? How can we heal from codependency and enmeshment? What is interdependency and differentiation? How does interdependence and differentiation support secure relationships? How does attachment style play a role in this topic? What are some tangible ways to practice interdependence and differentiation? Book by Tom Bruett: The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men: From Honeymoon to Lasting Commitment Today's Guest: Tom Bruett Instagram Today's Host: Matt Landsiedel Facebook Instagram TikTok Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

In this weekly Sex and Intimacy Q&A, Tami and Erin Snow answer participant questions about sex, intimacy, addiction, betrayal, and more. They consider timelines in recovery, what full disclosure entails, and how to know if your partner is an addict or just a full-blown jerk, or both.    TAKEAWAYS: [:30] Is this seminar only for partners experiencing betrayal?  [3:55] How do I know if my partner is an addict or just an a**hole?  [7:25] How should I define my inner circle behaviors after chem sex recovery?  [12:09] My wife can't get over my affair, it's already been 10 months.  [19:50] Can I trust that my husband suddenly has no urges to act out?  [27:10] My husband says he'll tell me anything that I ask him about. Was his disclosure incomplete?  [31:52] Do you suggest a 12-Step program for the betrayed partner? It's not my fault!  [35:55] Can you clarify between a porn addict and a sex/love addict?  [44:10 How long does recovery take on average?  [49:19] Can recovery happen without a formal 12-Step program?   RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “She's not going to believe that you're not sexually attracted to them when she doesn't believe anything you say right now.”  “The action that it takes to rebuild trust takes time.”  “You may not be enmeshed in your partner's behavior, but you are deeply involved.”  “What matters most is the quality of the time that you are spending on your own individual work to heal and to rebuild trust.” 

This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit HelloAlma.com/ATPP to learn more Get the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/ Join the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new Join The Couples Therapist Couch Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/295562197518469/ In this episode, Shane talks with Tom Bruett about The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men. Tom Bruett, LMFT is a therapist, trainer, consultant, and author who works extensively with the queer community. He is the founder of the Queer Relationship Institute, which provides therapy for queer folx and training for therapists who work with queer relationships. Hear how to be more open & sensitive with your clients, the 7 stages of relational development, why you should trust your intuition with your clients, how to work better with queer couples, and how to model that these types of conversations are okay. To learn more about Tom Bruett, the Queer Relationship Institute, and The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men, visit: QueerRelationshipInstitute.com The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men  

David Cotton is a life coach who came out later in life as gay. On his Podcast, OUT LATE WITH DAVID, he talks with others who've made this LGBTQ+ coming out journey later in their life: https://open.spotify.com/show/5SWVY1TK6780z43iKVXq3T?si=iaHZ8hheTWOlRrzYjoWa5g​⁠YT: ​⁠ https://www.DavidCottonCoaching.comhttps://www.OutLateWithDavid.comhttps://linktr.ee/davidacotton—Thanks again David for joining us on this video today! We are humbled at the amazing work you're doing for so many.—MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHLEcaJ0RewmS9XyfVa-fww/join - Get a personalized shout-out at the end of every video - Get access to behind the scenes content - Get special icons that appear next to your name whenever you comment on our videosMERCH: https://www.amazon.com/shop/outloudEmail: OutLoudJB@gmail.comIG: @OutLoudJBYouTube: https://youtube.com/@OutLoudJBThanks to our MEMBERS:Horacio ClownStuart LeeHen PenBritt SaundersJeremiah CoopersmithJoseph Hoagbin MDJason VanOverbekeRob SmithAltlover85JuliusGeorgeAdam BathGregger SpeaksRickMichelle

In 1965, when he was 17, Perry Brass hitchhiked from Savannah to San Francisco where he spent a year living on the street, sleeping between parked cars or in SRO hotels, doing any job he could, and loving the freedom of it.After Perry moved to New York, Perry joined New York's groundbreaking Gay Liberation Front in 1969 and the staff of Come Out!, the first Gay Liberation newspaper. His poetry was published in many “gay firsts,” including The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse, the first mainstream collection of queer poetry. He has since published 23 books, most recently “My Life without Money and other poems.”In 1972, Perry and two friends started the Gay Men's Health Project Clinic, the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast, still active as New York's Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. The Gay Men's Health Project Clinic, organized and run by the men who used it rather than by doctors, became the model for many grass-roots health organizations in the gay community.

From Madonna to Mariah, Beyoncé to Barbra— throughout the generations, gay men have been obsessed with divas. But why? In this episode of Gay Men Going Deeper, we're diving into the deep connection between gay men and our beloved divas, exploring: Who are the divas and what do they have in common? Why divas resonate so deeply with gay men How these women inspire us The diva anthems that have become the soundtrack of self-confidence What it means to channel your inner diva in everyday life. Who are today's divas? This isn't just about pop culture—it's a conversation about power, identity, and how divas have given generations of gay men comfort and strength. Today's Hosts: Michael DiIorio Matt Landsiedel Reno Johnston Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

In this weekly Sex and Intimacy Q&A, Dr. Rob Weiss and Tami answer participant questions about sex, intimacy, addiction, betrayal, and more. They offer resources for therapeutic separation, communication at every stage of recovery and reconciliation, and tools for practicing empathy with betrayed partners.    TAKEAWAYS: [:24] Does my partner need to see a psychoanalyst first to get honest about his past?  [4:28] What resources are available for communication building in the later stages of recovery and reconciliation?  [9:17] How can I work to regain trust after recent relapses?  [13:35] How do I start the amends process with my betrayed spouse?  [17:43] Why do betrayers have to go to Porn Addiction 101 through Seeking Integrity?  [22:10] How can I handle my ex's new girlfriend joining the family?  [24:30] What does loving detachment really look like?  [30:51] Can addicts and their partners heal outside the therapeutic setting?  [34:20] What is the correlation between sex addiction and OCD?  [36:41] How can I feel safe even though I have forgiven my partner?  [41:05] What tools can an addict use to practice empathy with their partner?  [42:25] What resources are available to get CSAT couples on the same page regarding key terms?  [47:00] My partner's blameshifting and defensiveness is escalating in therapeutic separation, what should I do next?    RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “Stop the problematic behavior first, then address the underlying issues.”  “I'm never in the later stages of recovery. Recovery is something I will do for my whole life.”  “Your living amends happens when you act differently.”  “If the worst thing happens, what are you going to do to take care of you?” 

Vote for Eve Hall as Best Educator at the ASN Awards:If you're enjoying the show and feel it's been helpful, I'd be honored if you could take a moment to vote for me as Best Educator in this year's ASN Awards. Your support means so much to me! Vote here:  2025 TOP 8 FINALIST | 2025 ASN Awards Women in Podcasting Award Voting! Make sure to vote daily. I am in two categories: Educational Podcast and Wellness Podcast. Your support is greatly appreciated! Latin Podcasting Fan Favorite Award is another award that I have been nominated for. Vote daily: Vote Popularity Award 2025 Latin Podcast Awards – Latin Podcast Awards Episode Summary: In part two of our bold, no-holds-barred conversation with gay OnlyFans creator and self-proclaimed bear and bottom Koby Falks, we dive deep—literally and figuratively—into the world of gay sexual health. From the realities of anal sex preparation to the evolving norms around condoms, PrEP, and STI testing, Koby shares personal experiences, practical advice, and unfiltered truths that every sexually active person should hear. Together, we unpack the cultural shift happening in the gay community around protection and pleasure, the science behind douching (and why technique and timing matter), and how regular STI testing plays a crucial role in safer sex practices. We also break down myths around oral sex, explore real-life risks, and share a powerful role-play that reveals common missteps in sexual communication and consent. Whether you're LGBTQ+, curious, or simply want to better understand sexual health from a fresh, honest perspective—this episode is packed with education, empowerment, and yes, a little role-play fun.  What You'll Learn in This Episode: The difference between a light and deep douche (and when to use each) Why condoms are becoming rare in certain gay communities How PrEP and DoxyPEP are changing the sexual health landscape The truth about STI transmission via oral sex How to reduce risks with regular testing and smart habits The importance of healing and gut health after repeated anal play What to say (and what to reject) when safety is on the line Connect with Eve Hall, Host of Please Me!Website: pleaseme.online I'd love to hear from you! Help me choose a question for my Please Me! Friday Series of episodes, where I answer listener-submitted questions. Send your questions and let me know what topics you'd like me to explore next! Bare Business and Beauty: A Wellness Retreat for Women: I'm excited to announce my new one-day event, Bare Business and Beauty: A Wellness Retreat for Women! Join me for a transformative day of self-care, empowerment, and growth. Get all the details here: Events - Please Me! SDC.com: Join the premiere "modern lifestyle" ENM website with a free trial membership using code 37340. Sign up on SDC.com  Connect with Koby Falks: Instagram: @kobyfalksTwitter/X: @kobyfalksxxx  All links and premium content: [Link in bio or search “Koby Falks” on Google] Additional Resources: https://howtocleanyourass.wordpress.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In December 2024 Matthew asked Amy and Greg who made them experts on what makes someone a Christian. They answered.In this episode Matthew takes their answer and explains why he's unimpressed. Especially because of the way their comments negatively affect LGBTQ+ people and those who want abortion to be a valid choice.1) The Jan 2025 episode being responded tohttps://www.str.org/w/-strask-who-made-you-the-experts-on-what-makes-someone-a-christian-2) the Dec 2024 episode that prompted Matthew's questionhttps://www.str.org/w/-strask-how-can-so-many-professing-christians-support-things-that-are-anti-christian-3) When the ‘Biblical View' for Evangelicals Was That Life Begins at Birthhttps://religiondispatches.org/when-the-biblical-view-for-evangelicals-was-that-life-begins-at-birth/4) EP105 Answering the STR challengehttps://open.spotify.com/episode/54nXmumqLbErTTXE4PtYWD?si=glUJty8XTVadUfNvJwWW7g5) Godwin's Lawhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law6) Gay Men under the Nazi Regimehttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gay-men-under-the-nazi-regime7) Trump curtails protections around diversity, LGBTQ rightshttps://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-sign-orders-ending-diversity-programs-proclaiming-there-are-only-two-sexes-2025-01-20/To contact us, email: reasonpress@gmail.comour YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@reasonpress2901Our Theme Music was written for us by Holly, to support her and to purchase her music use the links below:https://hollykirstensongs.com/https://hollykirsten.bandcamp.com/

The women in our lives have influenced us in ways we don't always recognize, but when we take a step back, their impact is undeniable. In this heartfelt episode, we're celebrating the uniquely beautiful relationships gay men have with women—from mothers and grandmothers to besties, sisters, and beyond. We're showing love to all the women who have supported us, shaped us, and often modeled the traits that helped us become who we are today. Some of the topics we'll explore: How our childhoods were shaped by the women around us The unique love and support between gay men and women What makes female friendships different from male friendships The role of empathy and emotional intelligence in these relationships How friendships evolve over the years Join us for a deep conversation about the power of women and how these relationships continue to shape us—today and always. Today's Hosts: Michael DiIorio Matt Landsiedel Reno Johnston Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

Troy Love and Tami answer participant questions about attachment wounds, shame, healthy boundaries, and the reality that an addict is always going to be an addict. It's only how they chose to move forward in recovery that will change their life for better.    TAKEAWAYS: [:30] My partner betrayed me and now we live like roommates. How can I refine myself whether I stay or go?  [6:27] How can I stop judging myself for staying?  [10:01] My wife doesn't think I'm working hard enough in recovery. Is there a timeline we should know about?  [17:09] Will I ever be able to live my life without triggers?  [21:55] Are men and women meant to be in marital couples? It appears to be societal not biological.  [24:40] How can I engage in healthy sexual activity, without blurring the lines between the patterns of my unhealthy sexual behavior?  [30:16] I'm not sure my spouse is even sober, which treatment group is right for him?  [34:03] How can I address the pain of recovery preemptively before I move to soothe by acting out?  [38:42] My partner is still acting out and even harming others. How can I move forward?  [41:19] My avoidant attachment style is making connection feel non-exisistent.  [45:54] Has Seeking Integrity considered having a moderator who is a betrayed partner?  [47:51] If relationships are so painful, why don't we tell people that relationships aren't for everyone?    RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “Wounds need to be healed regardless of what choice you make about staying in a relationship.”  “Every partner wants it to be all better right now, and that's just not reality. You will always be an addict.”  “Shame is going to unravel connection faster than anything else.”  “We all have attachment wounds, and they are going to get bumped.” 

38 is a ugly number (02:00)Ruben Studdard failed a generation (03:10)Woo use to serenade wanches (12:48)Running away from your duties (15:38)Anything after you use the word “But” (21:35)Yolo going to be the death of folks  (27:35)Don't bring Roaches (33:06)Bigg Jah (37:00)Creating day-traders (42:00)What happen to regular Gay Men (45:17)You think we heading into a recession ? (55:45)Socials Twitter@THDLongviewWoo@Deshawn_903TikTok @Deshawn__903@LakeportWooWordpress@woonation.wordpress.comEmailTruthHitDifferent@gmail.Com

In this episode, Ken explores how gay men can reclaim positive masculinity—balancing strength, emotional intelligence, and authenticity amid today's political and cultural battles. Learn how evolving healthy masculinity empowers gay men personally, professionally, and within our larger society.

There's a lot of googling happening in this weeks episode but it's all for a good cause as the lads reveal the funniest tribute act names that exist around the globe. For the theme they discuss all the weird and wonderful ways people make money on the internet; from ASMR to muckbangs, the lads are on a mission to find out the most lucrative online career in case the podcast goes tits up.Sign up to the I'm Grand Mam Patreon for more stunning content: https://www.patreon.com/imgrandmam ✨ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you find yourself putting other people's needs ahead of your own? Struggle to set boundaries? Feel responsible for keeping the peace even when it costs you your authenticity? In this episode, gay therapist Michael Pezzullo joins Michael to go deeper into the roots of people pleasing—especially why so many gay men fall into this pattern. We'll explore how people pleasing shows up in everyday life, why it's so hard to stop, and how the fear of conflict and rejection keeps us from showing up fully in our relationships. We'll also discuss: How to recognize when you're people pleasing (and why it's not the same as being kind) The impact people pleasing has on your self-confidence and relationships Why gay men are especially prone to it How to handle the fear of disappointing others What you can do to finally break the cycle If you're ready to stop performing for approval and start living with more authenticity, this episode is for you. Today's Guest: Michael Pezzullo Website Instagram Today's Host: Michael DiIorio Website Instagram Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

Dr. Rob and Tami answer participant questions about rebuilding trust through intimate conversations, ideas for setting healthy boundaries after betrayal, and the danger of an addict swearing that they're done acting out for the rest of their life.    TAKEAWAYS: [1:15] Current and upcoming resources at Seeking Integrity.  [3:20] Do sponsees pay upfront or make monthly payments?  [4:45] Are there agnostic 12 Step programs?  [8:22] Ideas for connection activities that rebuild trust?  [16:01] My husband is attending groups to placate me but is not participating. Is this normal?  [20:04] Setting healthy boundaries after betrayal.  [21:35] What are the statistics surrounding porn sobriety?  [24:15] The danger of swearing that you'll never act out ever again.  [31:39] You are the only person that can take care of you. [33:30] Don't believe an addict when they are love-bombing you. [36:41] Are 30% of men on dating sites really already married?  [40:32] Recommended sources for healing the shame of my partner's betrayal?  [49:52] Is there a way to engage in self sexuality that would not be considered acting out?  [53:40] What is the recommended protocol for moving through fallout from a therapeutic disclosure?    RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “When people come together and try to support each other and find a way to heal as a group, to me, that is a spiritual experience.”  “To understand what I'm going through and really listen to me, that is intimacy.”  “The only thing I can guarantee is that I'm consistently working on this and I'm committed to it.”  “You are the only person that can take care of you.”   

Gay men's specialist psychotherapist and coach Ken Howard, LCSW, CST, breaks down Jack Canfield's The Success Principles through a queer lens, showing how its life-changing tools can help gay men overcome internalized shame, build self-worth, and boldly pursue their goals.  Ken shares practical, affirming insights inspired by Canfield's book to help you design the life you truly want.

Many gay men struggle with saying no, setting boundaries, or engaging in difficult conversations due to deep-seated people-pleasing tendencies and fear of conflict. But staying silent often leads to resentment, burnout, or feeling disconnected from your true self. As recovering people-pleasers themselves, Matt and Michael have plenty to share about their own journeys toward becoming more assertive in their boundaries. In this episode, we dive into: The difference between people-pleasing, healthy compromise, and values-based choices Practical strategies to speak up with confidence and authenticity How to set boundaries and say no without guilt or fear If you've ever found yourself saying “yes” when you really meant “no” or avoiding confrontation at the cost of your own needs, this conversation is for you! Today's Hosts: Michael DiIorio Matt Landsiedel Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

Debbie McRae and Tami tackle ‘betrayal brain', the intrusive thoughts, and emotional flooding that often accompany betrayal. When the brain is in survival mode, neurological and psychological effects are out of the betrayed partner's control. They discuss tactics to regain control when the brain is hijacked.    TAKEAWAYS: [1:26] When betrayal occurs, the architecture of the brain is reshaped.  [4:50] Warning signs of betrayal brain.  [5:46] Four areas of the brain are affected by betrayal.  [10:45] Triggers can occur even when the relationship feels safe.  [12:07] Regaining control when the brain is hijacked.  [25:37] Self-compassion practices and therapy after betrayal.  [27:30] The betrayed partner has no control over how the brain is going to react. [31:41] Keeping regulation expectations simple. [33:54] Does my PTSD and anxiety make it harder to overcome betrayal brain?  [40:12] What boundaries can I enact with a sex addict who is breaking the law? [46:17] Handling abandonment to create safety.  [49:10] How can I increase my functionality to what it was before PTSD?   RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “When betrayal occurs, it shatters trust in an instant.” “Even neutral interactions that the betrayed partner is experiencing can be triggering.”  “The betrayed partner has no control over how the brain is going to react when it senses threat.”  “Self care is brain care.”   

In this episode, we will discuss "A Peculiar Legacy" with novelist Rashid Darden. A Peculiar Legacy is part contemporary fiction and historical fiction. It's the story of a Black community in the District of Columbia called Slope that gathers in silence every Sunday, without the presence of a Pastor, in silent prayer, with occasional vocal ministry from among themselves. Rashid Darden is an award-winning, best-selling novelist of the urban LGBT experience, a seasoned leader of Black fraternal movements and nonprofit organizations, and a professional educator in alternative schools. He is local to the District of Columbia and Conway, North Carolina.

Reginald Robinson and Zaire Willis return to tackle tough questions as it relates to homosexuality as it relates to scriptures and the church. Must watch! Register for We Need to Heal Weneedtotour.comFollow Reginald Robinson https://www.instagram.com/rrobinsonintl?igsh=Ym1jNWV2NHpwdmtzFollow Zaire Willishttps://www.instagram.com/zaire.willis?igsh=MTh6OHFkM2F0MnY3cA%3D%3D&utm_source=qrBooking: https://www.bnymen.com/bookBNY Conference Registration: https://www.bnymen.com/bnycon25Need Help ? BNY Connect Lead Form: https://bnymen.activehosted.com/f/1Cohort for Men Struggling with Same Sex Attraction BNY Phoenix: https://www.bnymen.comDonate to BNY: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/ET45VGVSLXGPUThe Azonwus:Become a member Join this channel to get access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC38bNJV-Z15_bObHOwCiPSA/joinFinancially Support this Podcast:$TheAzonwusPayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XGXMV74G4JKNJSubmit Your Story for a chance to feature - Email short video to: TheAzonwus@gmail.comSocial media: Wordsbyezekiel Thisisglory Weneed2talkexpSign up for The Azonwus relationship coaching waitlist:Listen to all podcast episodes:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0TKwMpqdBMoYHlTVdH3FzAApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-need-to-talk-podcast/id1729269461Book Us for an Event: http://www.wordsbyezekiel.com/bookezekialazonwuMerch: Shop — WORDS BY EZEKIELThe Azonwus Books: The Whole Woman https://a.co/d/jioxLDuThe Whole Man https://a.co/d/ejIGSqI

In this episode we're joined by Firefly - a Tantric practitioner, coach, and teacher.We talk physical intimacy, sexual energy, and the power of anal massage.Host: Gareth JohnsonTwitter: @gtvlondon

In this episode, Matt speaks with Psychotherapist, Merle Yost, about how shame may influence sexual desire and arousal by eroticizing shame as a way of coping with it. Merle shares his story about being sexually molested by his father and the impact this had on his sexual development. Join us for this interesting topic that is often not talked about but deeply impacts many of us. The concepts and questions we explore in this episode are: What does it mean to eroticize shame? How do shame and desire become intertwined? What is dissociation, and how can someone overcome it? Why is there so much sexual compulsivity in the gay community? What are some common ways people turn shame into pleasure in BDSM, kink, or other erotic practices? How can someone safely explore these dynamics without reinforcing negative self-perceptions? Can eroticizing shame be a healing experience? If so, how? How can someone tell if they are using this exploration in a healthy or unhealthy way? Today's Guest: Merle Yost Facebook Instagram Today's Host: Matt Landsiedel Facebook Instagram TikTok Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

Dr. Rob and Tami tackle hard questions about sex and intimacy in the wake of betrayal. They cover the role of a spouse in supporting their partner ‘for better and for worse”, how to set boundaries that take care of you first, and addressing the trauma and intrusive thoughts that often come after disclosure.    TAKEAWAYS: [:20] Where do personal responsibility and societal norms come into play?  [7:27] A spouse's job is to take care of themselves. [12:30] How can I deal with my trauma and intrusive thoughts about my partner's acting out?  [18:56] Acknowledging the level of troubled your partner really is.  [23:07] How can we connect through non-sexual intimacy? [30:02] Is it common for people with addictions to seek out others with similar problems?  [38:42] Does our marriage counselor also need to be a CSAT?  [41:42] My spouse is refusing a polygraph test. How can I ever trust him?  [46:50] Should I address porn viewing or obsessive masturbation first?  [49:47] My partner has been with underage girls. How do I handle this?    RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “As an addict, I need people to support me and relate to me, but as a spouse, that's not your job.”  “Addicts are not bad people. They're broken people.”  “If I fight my addict, I'm going to lose every time.”  “The more questions you ask, the more questions it will bring up.”  ‘Express what you need but don't blame if you're not getting it.”   

Communication is at the heart of every relationship—whether it's with friends, partners, colleagues, or even yourself. But what does it actually mean to be a strong communicator? In this episode, we're diving into the key skills that make conversations more effective, engaging, and authentic. Join us as we discuss: What makes a strong communicator? The role of emotional intelligence in communication Common barriers that create conflict and misunderstandings Practical tips to improve your listening and speaking skills Whether you want to deepen your connections, set clearer boundaries, or simply get your point across without second-guessing yourself, this episode will give you insights to help you communicate with more clarity and impact. Related Link: Authentic Relating and Empowerment for Gay Men Today's Hosts: Michael DiIorio Matt Landsiedel Reno Johnston Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

Therapist Erin Snow shares insights into addiction, betrayal, boundaries and healing. She underscores the impact of addiction in the workplace, the importance of setting boundaries after betrayal, the realities of weaponizing sex in a partnership, and why betrayed partners often pursue safety seeking behaviors during healing.    TAKEAWAYS: [2:05] How addiction manifests in the workplace.  [5:17] My husband is SA genetic – is nature or nurture going to win out?  [9:45] The intimacy disorder underneath compulsive sexual behavior.  [11:32] Healthy goals for a successful separation from an addicted partner.  [17:18] The benefits of a period of separation in the healing journey.  [19:00] Can married sex addicts use their spouses to act out even if they don't have extramarital affairs?  [24:45] My partner threatens to leave me if I don't give her what she wants. What should I do?  [25:30] My partner doesn't like to talk about consequences if he acts out. What can I do?  [29:45] How can I turn away from shame and toward growth and healing?  [33:14] Should I report my ex to help keep women safe? [39:17] Is lying an inner circle behavior? [45:20] Should I hire a polygraph test to help me heal from my partner's lying behavior?  [50:49] My partner is not being fully honest in therapy. What should I tell her CSAT to help us both?  [52:34] Should I stop snooping even though I continually uncover my partner's lies?   RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “Our willingness to change dramatically shifts when the consequences are more painful than continuing is.”  “The person who is willing to stop and turn around and stare that generational pattern in the face and is willing to do the work can break the cycle for generations to come.”  “Let each other go, or get a really solid plan together for the time that you're separated.”  “Your boundaries are about what you are going to do, and they require your partner to do nothing.”  “I don't have to have some kind of proof that something is dramatically off to set a boundary so that I feel safer.”   

Therapist Ken Howard, LCSW, CST, explores The White Lotus Season 3's buzzed-about gay incest story line, why taboo fantasies intrigue gay men, and how pop culture stirs both desire and discomfort. A candid look at erotic imagination, psychological nuance, and separating fantasy from reality.

They didn't teach us about gay sex in school… so we had to teach ourselves. From porn to awkward trial-and-error hookups, most of us pieced together our own “education”—for better or worse. In this episode, Michael is joined by porn star turned sex educator, Patrick Marano, to talk about the sex ed we should have had, how we've had to create it for ourselves, and why stigma and censorship still keep gay men in the dark. Some of the topics covered in this episode:

Therapist Debbie McRae discusses options for the betrayed partner when the betraying partner is stalling or not fully in recovery. She offers tactics for partners who are stuck in the cycle of fear and uncertainty and are ready to regain control in healthy ways while seeking safety after betrayal.    TAKEAWAYS: [1:05] Common recovery limbo scenarios and what each one means.  [4:33] Recovery limbo happens when the betraying partner won't take responsibility for their behavior.  [7:25] Seven signs that your addict partner is struggling with recovery.  [9:23] Six strategies for regaining healthy control after betrayal. [13:14] Setting boundaries for effectively reestablishing safety.  [21:06] The importance of a healthy support group and self-care in recovery.  [25:26] Betrayed partners need therapy too.  [29:21] What to do after you've tried unhealthy safety seeking.  [31:42] The thought of physical intimacy gives me the ick feeling. How can I begin to heal?  [37:13] Connecting with your spouse about physical intimacy outside the bedroom.  [39:04] At what in point in recovery is couples counseling recommended?  [45:05] The value of releasing information in couples therapy.  [46:11] My CSAT wants to bring my betraying partner into our session. Is that odd?  [50:45] My partner is an avoidant porn addict, is psychoanalysis recommended?    RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “True recovery requires that the addict partner have that intrinsic motivation to heal their addiction.”  “You have to be, as a betrayed partner, really open and honest and authentic about your boundaries.”  “The goal of a boundary consequence is not punishment, it's creating safety.”  “Don't just identify as a betrayed partner. You have to hold onto you as well.”   

Today we have couples and relationship therapist, Tom Bruett, LMFT (he/him). Tom specializes in supporting gay men and is the author of The Go To Relationship Guide for Gay Men: From Honeymoon to Lasting Commitment (out now!). I was excited to have Tom on because I want to create more space to talk about the power and complexities of the romantic relationships we pursue in our Second Adolescence. In this conversation, we chat about a lot of the work Tom does with gay men, what couples and relationship therapy entails, how and why unaddressed trauma comes up in our relationships, how relationships can be containers for our own personal growth and healing, and so much more. I so loved getting to connect with Tom and am excited to invite you all into the chat!About the guest:Tom Bruett, LMFT is a therapist, trainer, consultant, and author who works extensively with the queer community. He is the founder of the Queer Relationship Institute, which provides therapy for queer folx and training for therapists who work with queer relationships. Tom has trained under Drs. Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson in the Developmental Model of Relationship Therapy, which he now trains other therapists in. His book The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men: From Honeymoon to Lasting Commitment will be published by Jessica Kingsley in March 2025. In his downtime, he loves theatre, travel, and collaborating with his partner to keep their rescue dog, Millie, from causing too much mischief. Get Tom's book HERE.You can follow Tom's work at @queerrelationshipinstitute and www.queerrelationshipinstitute.com.For more, visit www.secondadolescencepod.com or @secondadolescencepod.

Navigating healthcare as a gay man isn't just about checkups—it's about self-advocacy, access, and fighting systemic bias. In this episode, I break down the clinical, financial, cultural, and emotional barriers that make medical care more challenging for gay men, from dealing with dismissive doctors to securing PrEP, HIV treatment, or mental health support. If you've ever felt frustrated by insurance battles, medical gaslighting, or the stress of getting the care you need, let's talk about how therapy and coaching can help you take back control.  

Is your dating profile truly showing the best version of you? In this episode of Gay Men Going Deeper, we're diving into the do's and don'ts of crafting a profile that is aligned with what you're truly looking for. On the apps, your profile is the first impression that counts so whether you're looking for love, fun, or meaningful connections, it matters. Some topics we'll discuss: What it means to show your authentic self without being cringy Choosing the best photos Crafting a bio that stands out. Common profile pitfalls How to be clear without being overly rigid Balancing confidence with humility How we communicate on apps Tune in for tips, insights, and takeaways to help you create a profile that attracts the right matches and reflects the real you. Join Michael's FREE one-time workshop where we'll give your dating profile a glow up: The Dating App Glow Up Today's Hosts: Michael DiIorio Matt Landsiedel Reno Johnston Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

Dr. Rob Weiss and Tami answer participant questions about the importance of combining sex and drug addictions in treatment and recovery, the danger of staying stuck in the rage phase, and who you have control over in healing and recovery (it's you and only you!).    TAKEAWAYS: [:55] Does ‘vanilla' porn really affect our relationship? I don't believe it's hurting my partner. [5:53] What are the major differences between sex addiction treatment/recovery and drug addiction treatment/recovery?  [12:25] The importance of tackling both sex and drugs in addiction treatment and recovery.  [15:40] I'm stuck in the rage phase - how can I decide to heal or leave?  [23:05] You cannot drag someone else into healing, but you can heal YOU.  [27:18] My partner is so ill that I can't help him anymore. What do I do now?  [35:24] Why do so many CSATs coddle their patients?  [41:11] My partner recently uncovered childhood sexual trauma. What should come first - couples therapy or CSAT work?  [46:48] Can my partner pray his way out of addiction? [49:35] Write this down - there is nothing I have ever done or am currently doing or will ever do to make my partner act out.    RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “If you have a sex addiction, I don't want you to stop having sex. I want you to do it in a way that's healthy and honest.” “Addiction is not about the behavior, it's about the function it serves.”  “You have the opportunity to choose. You don't have to stay stuck in this.”  “Give yourself the gift of getting the help you need.”   

Life feeling a little too much lately? You're not alone. But what if you could hit reset and find your calm—no matter what's happening around you? Even if that means you relinquish your family upbringing, get ex-communicated from your church, and finally start living your truth as a gay man, as you always meant to be. Enter Chad Michael Hardy, author of Law of Zero, here to help you ditch the stress, drop the guilt, and reclaim your joy. What you'll learn: Chad's 5-step approach to finding peace, love, and balance How to break free from guilt and stop the overthinking spiral Why zero isn't just a number—it's a state of mind If you're ready for less stress & more YOU, this episode is a must-listen! About Chad While the world today seems filled with upheaval and uncertainty, finding calm within the chaos can feel impossible. Enter Chad Michael Hardy – a new author who's compelling and inspiring memoir/self-help story is especially timely in today's polarized climate. While avoiding political discourse, he offers fresh ways to process personal stressors and find clarity in challenging times. Chad's backstory: From gaining global fame as the creator of the controversial “Men on a Mission” calendar that led to excommunication from his faith and revocation of his BYU degree, Chad's journey also includes embracing his identity as a gay man raised in a devout Mormon household. Now, Chad is channeling his unique insights into Law of Zero, his debut book that reached #2 on Amazon's Gay & LGBTQ+ Bestsellers list (Gay & LGBTQ+) and #16 in New Age Self-Help in less than a week of debuting on January 7th. In Law of Zero, Chad blends his remarkable story with practical guidance to help others reset, recharge, and reclaim joy. His five principles - Find Awareness, Secure Alignment, Take Ownership, Release to Receive, and Engage Power - provide actionable tools to manage stress, rediscover balance, and live authentically. Connect With Chad Website Instagram Chad's Business Instagram LinkedIn Hey Guys, Check This Out! Are you a guy who keeps struggling to do that thing? You know the thing you keep telling yourself and others you're going to do, but never do? Then it's time to get real and figure out why. Join the 40 Plus: Gay Men Gay Talk, monthly chats. They happen the third Monday of each month at 5:00 pm Pacific - Learn More! Also, join our Facebook Community - 40 Plus: Gay Men, Gay Talk Community Break free of fears. Make bold moves. Live life without apologies

In this episode, Matt speaks with men's coach Shay Doran about the psychology and mindset of erectile dysfunction. Did you know that some research indicates that gay men experience a higher rate of erection problems compared to straight men? This episode unpacks the reasons gay men experience erection problems and how to overcome them. If you struggle with erection issues or performance anxiety and feel ashamed and alone, then this episode can help you feel less alone and see a way out of the suffering. The concepts and questions we explore in this episode are: How do erection challenges show up? What are the three main unique factors in how it shows up for gay men? How does sexual performance anxiety come into play? How does perfectionism play a role in ED? The cycle of shame and secrecy caused by negative feedback loops How demisexuality plays a role in ED Exploring solutions to ED Related Links: Shay Performance Anxiety Quiz Matt Sexual Performance Anxiety and Erectile Dysfunction Research - Study published in the National Library of Medicine Research - Study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine Today's Guest: Shay Doran Website YouTube Instagram Today's Host: Matt Landsiedel Website Instagram TikTok Support the Show - viewer and listener support helps us to continue making episodes - CONNECT WITH US - Watch podcast episodes on YouTube Join the Gay Men's Brotherhood Facebook community Get on our email list to get access to our monthly Zoom calls Follow us on Instagram | TikTok Learn more about our community at GayMenGoingDeeper.com - LEARN WITH US - Building Better Relationships online course: Learn how to nurture more meaningful and authentic connections with yourself and others. Healing Your Shame online course: Begin the journey toward greater confidence and self-worth by learning how to recognize and deal with toxic shame. Gay Men Going Deeper Coaching Collection: Lifetime access to BOTH courses + 45 coaching videos and 2 workshop series. Take the Attachment Style Quiz to determine your attachment style and get a free report.

Dr. Rob Weiss and Tami answer participant questions about the challenges of rebuilding trust in a betrayed relationship and the importance of focusing on what you can do as a betrayed partner instead of focusing on what your addict partner can't or shouldn't do.    TAKEAWAYS: [1:40] My reluctant, betrayed spouse has been gone for a year. How can I approach them about my behavior?  [6:43] I feel like I'm seeing the world through a different lens in recovery. Is this typical?  [10:33] How can I better understand my partner's damage and betrayal trauma?  [14:04] I think my spouse is lying about his recovery and he failed his porn addiction test. Now what?  [22:45] What resources are available to learn more about addiction so I can better understand my loved one?  [27:02] I don't trust my partner's CSAT because of my history with unhelpful counselors. What can I do to improve our dynamic all around?  [33:25] What are some actionable ways I can rebuild trust with my betrayed partner?  [39:25] What is the best 12-Step recovery program for me?  [44:05] I can't stop lying to my betrayed spouse. Is this a slippery slope back into addiction?  [51:16] My partner has multiple addictions and is compartmentalizing recovery. Is this the best approach?    RESOURCES: Seekingintegrity.com Email Tami: Tami@Seekingintegrity.com Sexandrelationshiphealing.com Intherooms.com Out of the Doghouse: A Step-by-Step Relationship-Saving Guide for Men Caught Cheating, by Robert Weiss Prodependence: Moving Beyond Codependency, by Robert Weiss Sex Addiction 101: A Basic Guide to Healing from Sex, Porn, and Love Addiction, by Robert Weiss Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, by Robert Weiss Seeking Integrity Podcasts are produced in partnership with Podfly Productions.    QUOTES “If you choose to leave your partner, you don't do it to make them do something differently.”  “While in recovery, we have to look at the world through a different lens.”  “Getting sober is not about not doing things.”  “If we're not in recovery, we are not living in integrity. But if we're willing to change, we can have an amazing life.”  “You cannot fix a problem with intimacy and connection and loneliness while the person is still acting out.”  “A spouses job is to take care of themselves, their self-care and their boundaries, not to focus on you.”  “Being honest takes practice if you've been lying forever.”  

Dr. Gary Null provides a commentary on "Universal  Healthcare"       Universal Healthcare is the Solution to a Broken Medical System Gary Null, PhD Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For over 50 years, there has been no concerted or successful effort to bring down medical costs in the American healthcare system. Nor are the federal health agencies making disease prevention a priority. Regardless whether the political left or right sponsors proposals for reform, such measures are repeatedly defeated by both parties in Congress. As a result, the nation's healthcare system remains one of the most expensive and least efficient in the developed world. For the past 30 years, medical bills contributing to personal debt regularly rank among the top three causes of personal bankruptcy. This is a reality that reflects not only the financial strain on ordinary Americans but the systemic failure of the healthcare system itself. The urgent question is: If President Trump and his administration are truly seeking to reduce the nation's $36 trillion deficit, why is there no serious effort to reform the most bloated and corrupt sector of the economy? A key obstacle is the widespread misinformation campaign that falsely claims universal health care would cost an additional $2 trillion annually and further balloon the national debt. However, a more honest assessment reveals the opposite. If the US adopted a universal single-payer system, the nation could actually save up to $20 trillion over the next 10 years rather than add to the deficit. Even with the most ambitious efforts by people like Elon Musk to rein in federal spending or optimize government efficiency, the estimated savings would only amount to $500 billion. This is only a fraction of what could be achieved through comprehensive healthcare reform alone. Healthcare is the largest single expenditure of the federal budget. A careful examination of where the $5 trillion spent annually on healthcare actually goes reveals massive systemic fraud and inefficiency. Aside from emergency medicine, which accounts for only 10-12 percent of total healthcare expenditures, the bulk of this spending does not deliver better health outcomes nor reduce trends in physical and mental illness. Applying Ockham's Razor, the principle that the simplest solution is often the best, the obvious conclusion is that America's astronomical healthcare costs are the direct result of price gouging on an unimaginable scale. For example, in most small businesses, profit margins range between 1.6 and 2.5 percent, such as in grocery retail. Yet the pharmaceutical industrial complex routinely operates on markup rates as high as 150,000 percent for many prescription drugs. The chart below highlights the astronomical gap between the retail price of some top-selling patented pharmaceutical medications and their generic equivalents. Drug Condition Patent Price (per unit) Generic Price Estimated Manufacture Cost Markup Source Insulin (Humalog) Diabetes $300 $30 $3 10,000% Rand (2021) EpiPen Allergic reactions $600 $30 $10 6,000% BMJ (2022) Daraprim Toxoplasmosis $750/pill $2 $0.50 150,000% JAMA (2019) Harvoni Hepatitis C $94,500 (12 weeks) $30,000 $200 47,000% WHO Report (2018) Lipitor Cholesterol $150 $10 $0.50 29,900% Health Affairs (2020) Xarelto Blood Thinner $450 $25 $1.50 30,000% NEJM (2020) Abilify Schizophrenia $800 (30 tablets) $15 $2 39,900% AJMC (2019) Revlimid Cancer $16,000/mo $450 $150 10,500% Kaiser Health News (2021) Humira Arthritis $2,984/dose $400 $50 5,868% Rand (2021) Sovaldi Hepatitis C $1,000/pill $10 $2 49,900% JAMA (2021) Xolair Asthma $2,400/dose $300 $50 4,800% NEJM (2020) Gleevec Leukemia $10,000/mo $350 $200 4,900% Harvard Public Health Review (2020) OxyContin Pain Relief $600 (30 tablets) $15 $0.50 119,900% BMJ (2022) Remdesivir Covid-19 $3,120 (5 doses) N/A $10 31,100% The Lancet (2020) The corruption extends far beyond price gouging. Many pharmaceutical companies convince federal health agencies to fund their basic research and drug development with taxpayer dollars. Yet when these companies bring successful products to market, the profits are kept entirely by the corporations or shared with the agencies or groups of government scientists. On the other hand, the public, who funded the research, receives no financial return. This amounts to a systemic betrayal of the public trust on a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Another significant contributor to rising healthcare costs is the widespread practice of defensive medicine that is driven by the constant threat of litigation. Over the past 40 years, defensive medicine has become a cottage industry. Physicians order excessive diagnostic tests and unnecessary treatments simply to protect themselves from lawsuits. Study after study has shown that these over-performed procedures not only inflate costs but lead to iatrogenesis or medical injury and death caused by the medical  system and practices itself. The solution is simple: adopting no-fault healthcare coverage for everyone where patients receive care without needing to sue and thereby freeing doctors from the burden of excessive malpractice insurance. A single-payer universal healthcare system could fundamentally transform the entire industry by capping profits at every level — from drug manufacturers to hospitals to medical equipment suppliers. The Department of Health and Human Services would have the authority to set profit margins for medical procedures. This would ensure that healthcare is determined by outcomes, not profits. Additionally, the growing influence of private equity firms and vulture capitalists buying up hospitals and medical clinics across America must be reined in. These equity firms prioritize profit extraction over improving the quality of care. They often slash staff, raise prices, and dictate medical procedures based on what will yield the highest returns. Another vital reform would be to provide free medical education for doctors and nurses in exchange for five years of service under the universal system. Medical professionals would earn a realistic salary cap to prevent them from being lured into equity partnerships or charging exorbitant rates. The biggest single expense in the current system, however, is the private health insurance industry, which consumes 33 percent of the $5 trillion healthcare budget. Health insurance CEOs consistently rank among the highest-paid executives in the country. Their companies, who are nothing more than bean counters, decide what procedures and drugs will be covered, partially covered, or denied altogether. This entire industry is designed to place profits above patients' lives. If the US dismantled its existing insurance-based system and replaced it with a fully reformed national healthcare model, the country could save $2.7 trillion annually while simultaneously improving health outcomes. Over the course of 10 years, those savings would amount to $27 trillion. This could wipe out nearly the entire national debt in a short time. This solution has been available for decades but has been systematically blocked by corporate lobbying and bipartisan corruption in Washington. The path forward is clear but only if American citizens demand a system where healthcare is valued as a public service and not a commodity. The national healthcare crisis is not just a fiscal issue. It is a crucial moral failure of the highest order. With the right reforms, the nation could simultaneously restore its financial health and deliver the kind of healthcare system its citizens have long deserved. American Healthcare: Corrupt, Broken and Lethal Richard Gale and Gary Null Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For a nation that prides itself on being the world's wealthiest, most innovative and technologically advanced, the US' healthcare system is nothing less than a disaster and disgrace. Not only are Americans the least healthy among the most developed nations, but the US' health system ranks dead last among high-income countries. Despite rising costs and our unshakeable faith in American medical exceptionalism, average life expectancy in the US has remained lower than other OECD nations for many years and continues to decline. The United Nations recognizes healthcare as a human right. In 2018, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the American healthcare system as "politically and morally wrong." During the pandemic it is estimated that two to three years was lost on average life expectancy. On the other hand, before the Covid-19 pandemic, countries with universal healthcare coverage found their average life expectancy stable or slowly increasing. The fundamental problem in the U.S. is that politics have been far too beholden to the pharmaceutical, HMO and private insurance industries. Neither party has made any concerted effort to reign in the corruption of corporate campaign funding and do what is sensible, financially feasible and morally correct to improve Americans' quality of health and well-being.   The fact that our healthcare system is horribly broken is proof that moneyed interests have become so powerful to keep single-payer debate out of the media spotlight and censored. Poll after poll shows that the American public favors the expansion of public health coverage. Other incremental proposals, including Medicare and Medicaid buy-in plans, are also widely preferred to the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare mess we are currently stuck with.   It is not difficult to understand how the dismal state of American medicine is the result of a system that has been sold out to the free-market and the bottom line interests of drug makers and an inflated private insurance industry. How advanced and ethically sound can a healthcare system be if tens of millions of people have no access to medical care because it is financially out of their reach?  The figures speak for themselves. The U.S. is burdened with a $41 trillion Medicare liability. The number of uninsured has declined during the past several years but still lingers around 25 million. An additional 30-35 million are underinsured. There are currently 65 million Medicare enrollees and 89 million Medicaid recipients. This is an extremely unhealthy snapshot of the country's ability to provide affordable healthcare and it is certainly unsustainable. The system is a public economic failure, benefiting no one except the large and increasingly consolidated insurance and pharmaceutical firms at the top that supervise the racket.   Our political parties have wrestled with single-payer or universal healthcare for decades. Obama ran his first 2008 presidential campaign on a single-payer platform. Since 1985, his campaign health adviser, the late Dr. Quentin Young from the University of Illinois Medical School, was one of the nation's leading voices calling for universal health coverage.  During a private conversation with Dr. Young shortly before his passing in 2016, he conveyed his sense of betrayal at the hands of the Obama administration. Dr. Young was in his 80s when he joined the Obama campaign team to help lead the young Senator to victory on a promise that America would finally catch up with other nations. The doctor sounded defeated. He shared how he was manipulated, and that Obama held no sincere intention to make universal healthcare a part of his administration's agenda. During the closed-door negotiations, which spawned the weak and compromised Affordable Care Act, Dr. Young was neither consulted nor invited to participate. In fact, he told us that he never heard from Obama again after his White House victory.   Past efforts to even raise the issue have been viciously attacked. A huge army of private interests is determined to keep the public enslaved to private insurers and high medical costs. The failure of our healthcare is in no small measure due to it being a fully for-profit operation. Last year, private health insurance accounted for 65 percent of coverage. Consider that there are over 900 private insurance companies in the US. National Health Expenditures (NHE) grew to $4.5 trillion in 2022, which was 17.3 percent of GDP. Older corporate rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans argue that a single-payer or socialized medical program is unaffordable. However, not only is single-payer affordable, it will end bankruptcies due to unpayable medical debt. In addition, universal healthcare, structured on a preventative model, will reduce disease rates at the outset.    Corporate Democrats argue that Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a positive step inching the country towards complete public coverage. However, aside from providing coverage to the poorest of Americans, Obamacare turned into another financial anchor around the necks of millions more. According to the health policy research group KFF, the average annual health insurance premium for single coverage is $8,400 and almost $24,000 for a family. In addition, patient out-of-pocket costs continue to increase, a 6.6% increase to $471 billion in 2022. Rather than healthcare spending falling, it has exploded, and the Trump and Biden administrations made matters worse.    Clearly, a universal healthcare program will require flipping the script on the entire private insurance industry, which employed over half a million people last year.  Obviously, the most volatile debate concerning a national universal healthcare system concerns cost. Although there is already a socialized healthcare system in place -- every federal legislator, bureaucrat, government employee and veteran benefits from it -- fiscal Republican conservatives and groups such as the Koch Brothers network are single-mindedly dedicated to preventing the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. A Koch-funded Mercatus analysis made the outrageous claim that a single-payer system would increase federal health spending by $32 trillion in ten years. However, analyses and reviews by the Congressional Budget Office in the early 1990s concluded that such a system would only increase spending at the start; enormous savings would quickly offset it as the years pass. In one analysis, "the savings in administrative costs [10 percent of health spending] would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."    Defenders of those advocating for funding a National Health Program argue this can primarily be accomplished by raising taxes to levels comparable to other developed nations. This was a platform Senator Bernie Sanders and some of the younger progressive Democrats in the House campaigned on. The strategy was to tax the highest multimillion-dollar earners 60-70 percent. Despite the outrage of its critics, including old rank-and-file multi-millionaire Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, this is still far less than in the past. During the Korean War, the top tax rate was 91 percent; it declined to 70 percent in the late 1960s. Throughout most of the 1970s, those in the lowest income bracket were taxed at 14 percent. We are not advocating for this strategy because it ignores where the funding is going, and the corruption in the system that is contributing to exorbitant waste.    But Democratic supporters of the ACA who oppose a universal healthcare plan ignore the additional taxes Obama levied to pay for the program. These included surtaxes on investment income, Medicare taxes from those earning over $200,000, taxes on tanning services, an excise tax on medical equipment, and a 40 percent tax on health coverage for costs over the designated cap that applied to flexible savings and health savings accounts. The entire ACA was reckless, sloppy and unnecessarily complicated from the start.    The fact that Obamacare further strengthened the distinctions between two parallel systems -- federal and private -- with entirely different economic structures created a labyrinth of red tape, rules, and wasteful bureaucracy. Since the ACA went into effect, over 150 new boards, agencies and programs have had to be established to monitor its 2,700 pages of gibberish. A federal single-payer system would easily eliminate this bureaucracy and waste.    A medical New Deal to establish universal healthcare coverage is a decisive step in the correct direction. But we must look at the crisis holistically and in a systematic way. Simply shuffling private insurance into a federal Medicare-for-all or buy-in program, funded by taxing the wealthiest of citizens, would only temporarily reduce costs. It will neither curtail nor slash escalating disease rates e. Any effective healthcare reform must also tackle the underlying reasons for Americans' poor state of health. We cannot shy away from examining the social illnesses infecting our entire free-market capitalist culture and its addiction to deregulation. A viable healthcare model would have to structurally transform how the medical economy operates. Finally, a successful medical New Deal must honestly evaluate the best and most reliable scientific evidence in order to effectively redirect public health spending.    For example, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Obama healthcare adviser, observed that AIDS-HIV measures consume the most public health spending, even though the disease "ranked 75th on the list of diseases by personal health expenditures." On the other hand, according to the American Medical Association, a large percentage of the nation's $3.4 trillion healthcare spending goes towards treating preventable diseases, notably diabetes, common forms of heart disease, and back and neck pain conditions. In 2016, these three conditions were the most costly and accounted for approximately $277 billion in spending. Last year, the CDC announced the autism rate is now 1 in 36 children compared to 1 in 44 two years ago. A retracted study by Mark Blaxill, an autism activist at the Holland Center and a friend of the authors, estimates that ASD costs will reach $589 billion annually by 2030. There are no signs that this alarming trend will reverse and decline; and yet, our entire federal health system has failed to conscientiously investigate the underlying causes of this epidemic. All explanations that might interfere with the pharmaceutical industry's unchecked growth, such as over-vaccination, are ignored and viciously discredited without any sound scientific evidence. Therefore, a proper medical New Deal will require a systemic overhaul and reform of our federal health agencies, especially the HHS, CDC and FDA. Only the Robert Kennedy Jr presidential campaign is even addressing the crisis and has an inexpensive and comprehensive plan to deal with it. For any medical revolution to succeed in advancing universal healthcare, the plan must prioritize spending in a manner that serves public health and not private interests. It will also require reshuffling private corporate interests and their lobbyists to the sidelines, away from any strategic planning, in order to break up the private interests' control over federal agencies and its revolving door policies. Aside from those who benefit from this medical corruption, the overwhelming majority of Americans would agree with this criticism. However, there is a complete lack of national trust that our legislators, including the so-called progressives, would be willing to undertake such actions.    In addition, America's healthcare system ignores the single most critical initiative to reduce costs - that is, preventative efforts and programs instead of deregulation and closing loopholes designed to protect the drug and insurance industries' bottom line. Prevention can begin with banning toxic chemicals that are proven health hazards associated with current disease epidemics, and it can begin by removing a 1,000-plus toxins already banned in Europe. This should be a no-brainer for any legislator who cares for public health. For example, Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, notes that "the policy approach in the US and Europe is dramatically different" when it comes to chemical allowances in cosmetic products. Whereas the EU has banned 1,328 toxic substances from the cosmetic industry alone, the US has banned only 11. The US continues to allow carcinogenic formaldehyde, petroleum, forever chemicals, many parabens (an estrogen mimicker and endocrine hormone destroyer), the highly allergenic p-phenylenediamine or PBD, triclosan, which has been associated with the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria, avobenzone, and many others to be used in cosmetics, sunscreens, shampoo and hair dyes.   Next, the food Americans consume can be reevaluated for its health benefits. There should be no hesitation to tax the unhealthiest foods, such as commercial junk food, sodas and candy relying on high fructose corn syrup, products that contain ingredients proven to be toxic, and meat products laden with dangerous chemicals including growth hormones and antibiotics. The scientific evidence that the average American diet is contributing to rising disease trends is indisputable. We could also implement additional taxes on the public advertising of these demonstrably unhealthy products. All such tax revenue would accrue to a national universal health program to offset medical expenditures associated with the very illnesses linked to these products. Although such tax measures would help pay for a new medical New Deal, it may be combined with programs to educate the public about healthy nutrition if it is to produce a reduction in the most common preventable diseases. In fact, comprehensive nutrition courses in medical schools should be mandatory because the average physician receives no education in this crucial subject.  In addition, preventative health education should be mandatory throughout public school systems.   Private insurers force hospitals, clinics and private physicians into financial corners, and this is contributing to prodigious waste in money and resources. Annually, healthcare spending towards medical liability insurance costs tens of billions of dollars. In particular, this economic burden has taxed small clinics and physicians. It is well past the time that physician liability insurance is replaced with no-fault options. Today's doctors are spending an inordinate amount of money to protect themselves. Legions of liability and trial lawyers seek big paydays for themselves stemming from physician error. This has created a culture of fear among doctors and hospitals, resulting in the overly cautious practice of defensive medicine, driving up costs and insurance premiums just to avoid lawsuits. Doctors are forced to order unnecessary tests and prescribe more medications and medical procedures just to cover their backsides. No-fault insurance is a common-sense plan that enables physicians to pursue their profession in a manner that will reduce iatrogenic injuries and costs. Individual cases requiring additional medical intervention and loss of income would still be compensated. This would generate huge savings.    No other nation suffers from the scourge of excessive drug price gouging like the US. After many years of haggling to lower prices and increase access to generic drugs, only a minute amount of progress has been made in recent years. A 60 Minutes feature about the Affordable Care Act reported an "orgy of lobbying and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead—except the taxpayers.” For example, Life Extension magazine reported that an antiviral cream (acyclovir), which had lost its patent protection, "was being sold to pharmacies for 7,500% over the active ingredient cost. The active ingredient (acyclovir) costs only 8 pennies, yet pharmacies are paying a generic maker $600 for this drug and selling it to consumers for around $700." Other examples include the antibiotic Doxycycline. The price per pill averages 7 cents to $3.36 but has a 5,300 percent markup when it reaches the consumer. The antidepressant Clomipramine is marked up 3,780 percent, and the anti-hypertensive drug Captopril's mark-up is 2,850 percent. And these are generic drugs!    Medication costs need to be dramatically cut to allow drug manufacturers a reasonable but not obscene profit margin. By capping profits approximately 100 percent above all costs, we would save our system hundreds of billions of dollars. Such a measure would also extirpate the growing corporate misdemeanors of pricing fraud, which forces patients to pay out-of-pocket in order to make up for the costs insurers are unwilling to pay.    Finally, we can acknowledge that our healthcare is fundamentally a despotic rationing system based upon high insurance costs vis-a-vis a toss of the dice to determine where a person sits on the economic ladder. For the past three decades it has contributed to inequality. The present insurance-based economic metrics cast millions of Americans out of coverage because private insurance costs are beyond their means. Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University political economist, has called our system "brutal" because it "rations [people] out of the system." He defined rationing as "withholding something from someone that is beneficial." Discriminatory healthcare rationing now affects upwards to 60 million people who have been either priced out of the system or under insured. They make too much to qualify for Medicare under Obamacare, yet earn far too little to afford private insurance costs and premiums. In the final analysis, the entire system is discriminatory and predatory.    However, we must be realistic. Almost every member of Congress has benefited from Big Pharma and private insurance lobbyists. The only way to begin to bring our healthcare program up to the level of a truly developed nation is to remove the drug industry's rampant and unnecessary profiteering from the equation.     How did Fauci memory-hole a cure for AIDS and get away with it?   By Helen Buyniski   Over 700,000 Americans have died of AIDS since 1981, with the disease claiming some 42.3 million victims worldwide. While an HIV diagnosis is no longer considered a certain death sentence, the disease looms large in the public imagination and in public health funding, with contemporary treatments running into thousands of dollars per patient annually.   But was there a cure for AIDS all this time - an affordable and safe treatment that was ruthlessly suppressed and attacked by the US public health bureaucracy and its agents? Could this have saved millions of lives and billions of dollars spent on AZT, ddI and failed HIV vaccine trials? What could possibly justify the decision to disappear a safe and effective approach down the memory hole?   The inventor of the cure, Gary Null, already had several decades of experience creating healing protocols for physicians to help patients not responding well to conventional treatments by the time AIDS was officially defined in 1981. Null, a registered dietitian and board-certified nutritionist with a PhD in human nutrition and public health science, was a senior research fellow and Director of Anti-Aging Medicine at the Institute of Applied Biology for 36 years and has published over 950 papers, conducting groundbreaking experiments in reversing biological aging as confirmed with DNA methylation testing. Additionally, Null is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker, bestselling author, and investigative journalist whose work exposing crimes against humanity over the last 50 years has highlighted abuses by Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, the financial industry, and the permanent government stay-behind networks that have come to be known as the Deep State.   Null was contacted in 1974 by Dr. Stephen Caiazza, a physician working with a subculture of gay men in New York living the so-called “fast track” lifestyle, an extreme manifestation of the gay liberation movement that began with the Stonewall riots. Defined by rampant sexual promiscuity and copious use of illegal and prescription drugs, including heavy antibiotic use for a cornucopia of sexually-transmitted diseases, the fast-track never included more than about two percent of gay men, though these dominated many of the bathhouses and clubs that defined gay nightlife in the era. These patients had become seriously ill as a result of their indulgence, generally arriving at the clinic with multiple STDs including cytomegalovirus and several types of herpes and hepatitis, along with candida overgrowth, nutritional deficiencies, gut issues, and recurring pneumonia. Every week for the next 10 years, Null would counsel two or three of these men - a total of 800 patients - on how to detoxify their bodies and de-stress their lives, tracking their progress with Caiazza and the other providers at weekly feedback meetings that he credits with allowing the team to quickly evaluate which treatments were most effective. He observed that it only took about two years on the “fast track” for a healthy young person to begin seeing muscle loss and the recurrent, lingering opportunistic infections that would later come to be associated with AIDS - while those willing to commit to a healthier lifestyle could regain their health in about a year.    It was with this background that Null established the Tri-State Healing Center in Manhattan in 1980, staffing the facility with what would eventually run to 22 certified health professionals to offer safe, natural, and effective low- and no-cost treatments to thousands of patients with HIV and AIDS-defining conditions. Null and his staff used variations of the protocols he had perfected with Caiazza's patients, a multifactorial patient-tailored approach that included high-dose vitamin C drips, intravenous ozone therapy, juicing and nutritional improvements and supplementation, aspects of homeopathy and naturopathy with some Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic practices. Additional services offered on-site included acupuncture and holistic dentistry, while peer support groups were also held at the facility so that patients could find community and a positive environment, healing their minds and spirits while they healed their bodies.   “Instead of trying to kill the virus with antiretroviral pharmaceuticals designed to stop viral replication before it kills patients, we focused on what benefits could be gained by building up the patients' natural immunity and restoring biochemical integrity so the body could fight for itself,” Null wrote in a 2014 article describing the philosophy behind the Center's approach, which was wholly at odds with the pharmaceutical model.1   Patients were comprehensively tested every week, with any “recovery” defined solely by the labs, which documented AIDS patient after patient - 1,200 of them - returning to good health and reversing their debilitating conditions. Null claims to have never lost an AIDS patient in the Center's care, even as the death toll for the disease - and its pharmaceutical standard of care AZT - reached an all-time high in the early 1990s. Eight patients who had opted for a more intensive course of treatment - visiting the Center six days a week rather than one - actually sero-deconverted, with repeated subsequent testing showing no trace of HIV in their bodies.   As an experienced clinical researcher himself, Null recognized that any claims made by the Center would be massively scrutinized, challenging as they did the prevailing scientific consensus that AIDS was an incurable, terminal illness. He freely gave his protocols to any medical practitioner who asked, understanding that his own work could be considered scientifically valid only if others could replicate it under the same conditions. After weeks of daily observational visits to the Center, Dr. Robert Cathcart took the protocols back to San Francisco, where he excitedly reported that patients were no longer dying in his care.    Null's own colleague at the Institute of Applied Biology, senior research fellow Elana Avram, set up IV drip rooms at the Institute and used his intensive protocols to sero-deconvert 10 patients over a two-year period. While the experiment had been conducted in secret, as the Institute had been funded by Big Pharma since its inception half a century earlier, Avram had hoped she would be able to publish a journal article to further publicize Null's protocols and potentially help AIDS patients, who were still dying at incredibly high rates thanks to Burroughs Wellcome's noxious but profitable AZT. But as she would later explain in a 2019 letter to Null, their groundbreaking research never made it into print - despite meticulous documentation of their successes - because the Institute's director and board feared their pharmaceutical benefactors would withdraw the funding on which they depended, given that Null's protocols did not involve any patentable or otherwise profitable drugs. When Avram approached them about publication, the board vetoed the idea, arguing that it would “draw negative attention because [the work] was contrary to standard drug treatments.” With no real point in continuing experiments along those lines without institutional support and no hope of obtaining funding from elsewhere, the department she had created specifically for these experiments shut down after a two-year followup with her test subjects - all of whom remained alive and healthy - was completed.2   While the Center was receiving regular visits by this time from medical professionals and, increasingly, black celebrities like Stokely Carmichael and Isaac Hayes, who would occasionally perform for the patients, the news was spreading by word of mouth alone - not a single media outlet had dared to document the clinic that was curing AIDS patients for free. Instead, they gave airtime to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, who had for years been spreading baseless, hysteria-fueling claims about HIV and AIDS to any news outlet that would put him on. His claim that children could contract the virus from “ordinary household conduct” with an infected relative proved so outrageous he had to walk it back,3 and he never really stopped insisting the deadly plague associated with gays and drug users was about to explode like a nuclear bomb among the law-abiding heterosexual population. Fauci by this time controlled all government science funding through NIAID, and his zero-tolerance approach to dissent on the HIV/AIDS front had already seen prominent scientists like virologist Peter Duesberg stripped of the resources they needed for their work because they had dared to question his commandment: There is no cause of AIDS but HIV, and AZT is its treatment. Even the AIDS activist groups, which by then had been coopted by Big Pharma and essentially reduced to astroturfing for the toxic failed chemotherapy drug AZT backed by the institutional might of Fauci's NIAID,4 didn't seem to want to hear that there was a cure. Unconcerned with the irrationality of denouncing the man touting his free AIDS cure as an  “AIDS denier,” they warned journalists that platforming Null or anyone else rejecting the mainstream medical line would be met with organized demands for their firing.    Determined to breach the institutional iron curtain and get his message to the masses, Null and his team staged a press conference in New York, inviting scientists and doctors from around the world to share their research on alternative approaches to HIV and AIDS in 1993. To emphasize the sound scientific basis of the Center's protocols and encourage guests to adopt them into their own practices, Null printed out thousands of abstracts in support of each nutrient and treatment being used. However, despite over 7,000 invitations sent three times to major media, government figures, scientists, and activists, almost none of the intended audience members showed up. Over 100 AIDS patients and their doctors, whose charts exhaustively documented their improvements using natural and nontoxic modalities over the preceding 12 months, gave filmed testimonials, declaring that the feared disease was no longer a death sentence, but the conference had effectively been silenced. Bill Tatum, publisher of the Amsterdam News, suggested Null and his patients would find a more welcoming audience in his home neighborhood of Harlem - specifically, its iconic Apollo Theatre. For three nights, the theater was packed to capacity. Hit especially hard by the epidemic and distrustful of a medical system that had only recently stopped being openly racist (the Tuskegee syphilis experiment only ended in 1972), black Americans, at least, did not seem to care what Anthony Fauci would do if he found out they were investigating alternatives to AZT and death.    PBS journalist Tony Brown, having obtained a copy of the video of patient testimonials from the failed press conference, was among a handful of black journalists who began visiting the Center to investigate the legitimacy of Null's claims. Satisfied they had something significant to offer his audience, Brown invited eight patients - along with Null himself - onto his program over the course of several episodes to discuss the work. It was the first time these protocols had received any attention in the media, despite Null having released nearly two dozen articles and multiple documentaries on the subject by that time. A typical patient on one program, Al, a recovered IV drug user who was diagnosed with AIDS at age 32, described how he “panicked,” saw a doctor and started taking AZT despite his misgivings - only to be forced to discontinue the drug after just a few weeks due to his condition deteriorating rapidly. Researching alternatives brought him to Null, and after six months of “detoxing [his] lifestyle,” he observed his initial symptoms - swollen lymph nodes and weight loss - begin to reverse, culminating with sero-deconversion. On Bill McCreary's Channel 5 program, a married couple diagnosed with HIV described how they watched their T-cell counts increase as they cut out sugar, caffeine, smoking, and drinking and began eating a healthy diet. They also saw the virus leave their bodies.   For HIV-positive viewers surrounded by fear and negativity, watching healthy-looking, cheerful “AIDS patients” detail their recovery while Null backed up their claims with charts must have been balm for the soul. But the TV programs were also a form of outreach to the medical community, with patients' charts always on hand to convince skeptics the cure was scientifically valid. Null brought patients' charts to every program, urging them to keep an open mind: “Other physicians and public health officials should know that there's good science in the alternative perspective. It may not be a therapy that they're familiar with, because they're just not trained in it, but if the results are positive, and you can document them…” He challenged doubters to send in charts from their own sero-deconverted patients on AZT, and volunteered to debate proponents of the orthodox treatment paradigm - though the NIH and WHO both refused to participate in such a debate on Tony Brown's Journal, following Fauci's directive prohibiting engagement with forbidden ideas.    Aside from those few TV programs and Null's own films, suppression of Null's AIDS cure beyond word of mouth was total. The 2021 documentary The Cost of Denial, produced by the Society for Independent Journalists, tells the story of the Tri-State Healing Center and the medical paradigm that sought to destroy it, lamenting the loss of the lives that might have been saved in a more enlightened society. Nurse practitioner Luanne Pennesi, who treated many of the AIDS patients at the Center, speculated in the film that the refusal by the scientific establishment and AIDS activists to accept their successes was financially motivated. “It was as if they didn't want this information to get out. Understand that our healthcare system as we know it is a corporation, it's a corporate model, and it's about generating revenue. My concern was that maybe they couldn't generate enough revenue from these natural approaches.”5   Funding was certainly the main disciplinary tool Fauci's NIAID used to keep the scientific community in line. Despite the massive community interest in the work being done at the Center, no foundation or institution would defy Fauci and risk getting itself blacklisted, leaving Null to continue funding the operation out of his pocket with the profits from book sales. After 15 years, he left the Center in 1995, convinced the mainstream model had so thoroughly been institutionalized that there was no chance of overthrowing it. He has continued to counsel patients and advocate for a reappraisal of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis and its pharmaceutical treatments, highlighting the deeply flawed science underpinning the model of the disease espoused by the scientific establishment in 39 articles, six documentaries and a 700-page textbook on AIDS, but the Center's achievements have been effectively memory-holed by Fauci's multi-billion-dollar propaganda apparatus.     FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE   To understand just how much of a threat Null's work was to the HIV/AIDS establishment, it is instructive to revisit the 1984 paper, published by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute, that established HIV as the sole cause of AIDS. The CDC's official recognition of AIDS in 1981 had done little to quell the mounting public panic over the mysterious illness afflicting gay men in the US, as the agency had effectively admitted it had no idea what was causing them to sicken and die. As years passed with no progress determining the causative agent of the plague, activist groups like Gay Men's Health Crisis disrupted public events and threatened further mass civil disobedience as they excoriated the NIH for its sluggish allocation of government science funding to uncovering the cause of the “gay cancer.”6 When Gallo published his paper declaring that the retrovirus we now know as HIV was the sole “probable” cause of AIDS, its simple, single-factor hypothesis was the answer to the scientific establishment's prayers. This was particularly true for Fauci, as the NIAID chief was able to claim the hot new disease as his agency's own domain in what has been described as a “dramatic confrontation” with his rival Sam Broder at the National Cancer Institute. After all, Fauci pointed out, Gallo's findings - presented by Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler as if they were gospel truth before any other scientists had had a chance to inspect them, never mind conduct a full peer review - clearly classified AIDS as an infectious disease, and not a cancer like the Kaposi's sarcoma which was at the time its most visible manifestation. Money and media attention began pouring in, even as funding for the investigation of other potential causes of AIDS dried up. Having already patented a diagnostic test for “his” retrovirus before introducing it to the world, Gallo was poised for a financial windfall, while Fauci was busily leveraging the discovery into full bureaucratic empire of the US scientific apparatus.   While it would serve as the sole basis for all US government-backed AIDS research to follow - quickly turning Gallo into the most-cited scientist in the world during the 1980s,7 Gallo's “discovery” of HIV was deeply problematic. The sample that yielded the momentous discovery actually belonged to Prof. Luc Montagnier of the French Institut Pasteur, a fact Gallo finally admitted in 1991, four years after a lawsuit from the French government challenged his patent on the HIV antibody test, forcing the US government to negotiate a hasty profit-sharing agreement between Gallo's and Montagnier's labs. That lawsuit triggered a cascade of official investigations into scientific misconduct by Gallo, and evidence submitted during one of these probes, unearthed in 2008 by journalist Janine Roberts, revealed a much deeper problem with the seminal “discovery.” While Gallo's co-author, Mikulas Popovic, had concluded after numerous experiments with the French samples that the virus they contained was not the cause of AIDS, Gallo had drastically altered the paper's conclusion, scribbling his notes in the margins, and submitted it for publication to the journal Science without informing his co-author.   After Roberts shared her discovery with contacts in the scientific community, 37 scientific experts wrote to the journal demanding that Gallo's career-defining HIV paper be retracted from Science for lacking scientific integrity.8 Their call, backed by an endorsement from the 2,600-member scientific organization Rethinking AIDS, was ignored by the publication and by the rest of mainstream science despite - or perhaps because of - its profound implications.   That 2008 letter, addressed to Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts and copied to American Association for the Advancement of Science CEO Alan Leshner, is worth reproducing here in its entirety, as it utterly dismantles Gallo's hypothesis - and with them the entire HIV is the sole cause of AIDS dogma upon which the contemporary medical model of the disease rests:   On May 4, 1984 your journal published four papers by a group led by Dr. Robert Gallo. We are writing to express our serious concerns with regard to the integrity and veracity of the lead paper among these four of which Dr. Mikulas Popovic is the lead author.[1] The other three are also of concern because they rely upon the conclusions of the lead paper .[2][3][4]  In the early 1990s, several highly critical reports on the research underlying these papers were produced as a result of governmental inquiries working under the supervision of scientists nominated by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. The Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health and Human Services concluded that the lead paper was “fraught with false and erroneous statements,” and that the “ORI believes that the careless and unacceptable keeping of research records...reflects irresponsible laboratory management that has permanently impaired the ability to retrace the important steps taken.”[5] Further, a Congressional Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations led by US Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan produced a staff report on the papers which contains scathing criticisms of their integrity.[6]  Despite the publically available record of challenges to their veracity, these papers have remained uncorrected and continue to be part of the scientific record.  What prompts our communication today is the recent revelation of an astonishing number of previously unreported deletions and unjustified alterations made by Gallo to the lead paper. There are several documents originating from Gallo's laboratory that, while available for some time, have only recently been fully analyzed. These include a draft of the lead paper typewritten by Popovic which contains handwritten changes made to it by Gallo.[7] This draft was the key evidence used in the above described inquiries to establish that Gallo had concealed his laboratory's use of a cell culture sample (known as LAV) which it received from the Institut Pasteur.  These earlier inquiries verified that the typed manuscript draft was produced by Popovic who had carried out the recorded experiment while his laboratory chief, Gallo, was in Europe and that, upon his return, Gallo changed the document by hand a few days before it was submitted to Science on March 30, 1984. According to the ORI investigation, “Dr. Gallo systematically rewrote the manuscript for what would become a renowned LTCB [Gallo's laboratory at the National Cancer Institute] paper.”[5]  This document provided the important evidence that established the basis for awarding Dr. Luc Montagnier and Dr. Francoise Barré-Sinoussi the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the AIDS virus by proving it was their samples of LAV that Popovic used in his key experiment. The draft reveals that Popovic had forthrightly admitted using the French samples of LAV renamed as Gallo's virus, HTLV-III, and that Gallo had deleted this admission, concealing their use of LAV.  However, it has not been previously reported that on page three of this same document Gallo had also deleted Popovic's unambiguous statement that, "Despite intensive research efforts, the causative agent of AIDS has not yet been identified,” replacing it in the published paper with a statement that said practically the opposite, namely, “That a retrovirus of the HTLV family might be an etiologic agent of AIDS was suggested by the findings.”  It is clear that the rest of Popovic's typed paper is entirely consistent with his statement that the cause of AIDS had not been found, despite his use of the French LAV. Popovic's final conclusion was that the culture he produced “provides the possibility” for detailed studies. He claimed to have achieved nothing more. At no point in his paper did Popovic attempt to prove that any virus caused AIDS, and it is evident that Gallo concealed these key elements in Popovic's experimental findings.  It is astonishing now to discover these unreported changes to such a seminal document. We can only assume that Gallo's alterations of Popovic's conclusions were not highlighted by earlier inquiries because the focus at the time was on establishing that the sample used by Gallo's lab came from Montagnier and was not independently collected by Gallo. In fact, the only attention paid to the deletions made by Gallo pertains to his effort to hide the identity of the sample. The questions of whether Gallo and Popovic's research proved that LAV or any other virus was the cause of AIDS were clearly not considered.  Related to these questions are other long overlooked documents that merit your attention. One of these is a letter from Dr. Matthew A. Gonda, then Head of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, which is addressed to Popovic, copied to Gallo and dated just four days prior to Gallo's submission to Science.[8] In this letter, Gonda remarks on samples he had been sent for imaging because “Dr Gallo wanted these micrographs for publication because they contain HTLV.” He states, “I do not believe any of the particles photographed are of HTLV-I, II or III.” According to Gonda, one sample contained cellular debris, while another had no particles near the size of a retrovirus. Despite Gonda's clearly worded statement, Science published on May 4, 1984 papers attributed to Gallo et al with micrographs attributed to Gonda and described unequivocally as HTLV-III.  In another letter by Gallo, dated one day before he submitted his papers to Science, Gallo states, “It's extremely rare to find fresh cells [from AIDS patients] expressing the virus... cell culture seems to be necessary to induce virus,” a statement which raises the possibility he was working with a laboratory artifact. [9]  Included here are copies of these documents and links to the same. The very serious flaws they reveal in the preparation of the lead paper published in your journal in 1984 prompts our request that this paper be withdrawn. It appears that key experimental findings have been concealed. We further request that the three associated papers published on the same date also be withdrawn as they depend on the accuracy of this paper.  For the scientific record to be reliable, it is vital that papers shown to be flawed, or falsified be retracted. Because a very public record now exists showing that the Gallo papers drew unjustified conclusions, their withdrawal from Science is all the more important to maintain integrity. Future researchers must also understand they cannot rely on the 1984 Gallo papers for statements about HIV and AIDS, and all authors of papers that previously relied on this set of four papers should have the opportunity to consider whether their own conclusions are weakened by these revelations.      Gallo's handwritten revision, submitted without his colleague's knowledge despite multiple experiments that failed to support the new conclusion, was the sole foundation for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Had Science published the manuscript the way Popovic had typed it, there would be no AIDS “pandemic” - merely small clusters of people with AIDS. Without a viral hypothesis backing the development of expensive and deadly pharmaceuticals, would Fauci have allowed these patients to learn about the cure that existed all along?   Faced with a potential rebellion, Fauci marshaled the full resources under his control to squelch the publication of the investigations into Gallo and restrict any discussion of competing hypotheses in the scientific and mainstream press, which had been running virus-scare stories full-time since 1984. The effect was total, according to biochemist Dr. Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure. In a 2009 interview, Mullis recalled his own shock when he attempted to unearth the experimental basis for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Despite his extensive inquiry into the literature, “there wasn't a scientific reference…[that] said ‘here's how come we know that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS.' There was nothing out there like that.”9 This yawning void at the core of HIV/AIDS “science" turned him into a strident critic of AIDS dogma - and those views made him persona non grata where the scientific press was concerned, suddenly unable to publish a single paper despite having won the Nobel Prize for his invention of the PCR test just weeks before.  10   DISSENT BECOMES “DENIAL”   While many of those who dissent from the orthodox HIV=AIDS view believe HIV plays a role in the development of AIDS, they point to lifestyle and other co-factors as being equally if not more important. Individuals who test positive for HIV can live for decades in perfect health - so long as they don't take AZT or the other toxic antivirals fast-tracked by Fauci's NIAID - but those who developed full-blown AIDS generally engaged in highly risky behaviors like extreme promiscuity and prodigious drug abuse, contracting STDs they took large quantities of antibiotics to treat, further running down their immune systems. While AIDS was largely portrayed as a “gay disease,” it was only the “fast track” gays, hooking up with dozens of partners nightly in sex marathons fueled by “poppers” (nitrate inhalants notorious for their own devastating effects on the immune system), who became sick. Kaposi's sarcoma, one of the original AIDS-defining conditions, was widespread among poppers-using gay men, but never appeared among IV drug users or hemophiliacs, the other two main risk groups during the early years of the epidemic. Even Robert Gallo himself, at a 1994 conference on poppers held by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, would admit that the previously-rare form of skin cancer surging among gay men was not primarily caused by HIV - and that it was immune stimulation, rather than suppression, that was likely responsible.11 Similarly, IV drug users are often riddled with opportunistic infections as their habit depresses the immune system and their focus on maintaining their addiction means that healthier habits - like good nutrition and even basic hygiene - fall by the wayside.    Supporting the call for revising the HIV=AIDS hypothesis to include co-factors is the fact that the mass heterosexual outbreaks long predicted by Fauci and his ilk in seemingly every country on Earth have failed to materialize, except - supposedly - in Africa, where the diagnostic standard for AIDS differs dramatically from those of the West. Given the prohibitively high cost of HIV testing for poor African nations, the WHO in 1985 crafted a diagnostic loophole that became known as the “Bangui definition,” allowing medical professionals to diagnose AIDS in the absence of a test using just clinical symptoms: high fever, persistent cough, at least 30 days of diarrhea, and the loss of 10% of one's body weight within two months. Often suffering from malnutrition and without access to clean drinking water, many of the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa fit the bill, especially when the WHO added tuberculosis to the list of AIDS-defining illnesses in 1993 - a move which may be responsible for as many as one half of African “AIDS” cases, according to journalist Christine Johnson. The WHO's former Chief of Global HIV Surveillance, James Chin, acknowledged their manipulation of statistics, but stressed that it was the entire AIDS industry - not just his organization - perpetrating the fraud. “There's the saying that, if you knew what sausages are made of, most people would hesitate to sort of eat them, because they wouldn't like what's in it. And if you knew how HIV/AIDS numbers are cooked, or made up, you would use them with extreme caution,” Chin told an interviewer in 2009.12   With infected numbers stubbornly remaining constant in the US despite Fauci's fearmongering projections of the looming heterosexually-transmitted plague, the CDC in 1993 broadened its definition of AIDS to include asymptomatic (that is, healthy) HIV-positive people with low T-cell counts - an absurd criteria given that an individual's T-cell count can fluctuate by hundreds within a single day. As a result, the number of “AIDS cases” in the US immediately doubled. Supervised by Fauci, the NIAID had been quietly piling on diseases into the “AIDS-related” category for years, bloating the list from just two conditions - pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma - to 30 so fast it raised eyebrows among some of science's leading lights. Deeming the entire process “bizarre” and unprecedented, Kary Mullis wondered aloud why no one had called the AIDS establishment out: “There's something wrong here. And it's got to be financial.”13   Indeed, an early CDC public relations campaign was exposed by the Wall Street Journal in 1987 as having deliberately mischaracterized AIDS as a threat to the entire population so as to garner increased public and private funding for what was very much a niche issue, with the risk to average heterosexuals from a single act of sex “smaller than the risk of ever getting hit by lightning.” Ironically, the ads, which sought to humanize AIDS patients in an era when few Americans knew anyone with the disease and more than half the adult population thought infected people should be forced to carry cards warning of their status, could be seen as a reaction to the fear tactics deployed by Fauci early on.14   It's hard to tell where fraud ends and incompetence begins with Gallo's HIV antibody test. Much like Covid-19 would become a “pandemic of testing,” with murder victims and motorcycle crashes lumped into “Covid deaths” thanks to over-sensitized PCR tests that yielded as many as 90% false positives,15 HIV testing is fraught with false positives - and unlike with Covid-19, most people who hear they are HIV-positive still believe they are receiving a death sentence. Due to the difficulty of isolating HIV itself from human samples, the most common diagnostic tests, ELISA and the Western Blot, are designed to detect not the virus but antibodies to it, upending the traditional medical understanding that the presence of antibodies indicates only exposure - and often that the body has actually vanquished the pathogen. Patients are known to test positive for HIV antibodies in the absence of the virus due to at least 70 other conditions, including hepatitis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, syphilis, recent vaccination or even pregnancy. (https://www.chcfl.org/diseases-that-can-cause-a-false-positive-hiv-test/) Positive results are often followed up with a PCR “viral load” test, even though the inventor of the PCR technique Kary Mullis famously condemned its misuse as a tool for diagnosing infection. Packaging inserts for all three tests warn the user that they cannot be reliably used to diagnose HIV.16 The ELISA HIV antibody test explicitly states: “At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV antibody in human blood.”17   That the public remains largely unaware of these and other massive holes in the supposedly airtight HIV=AIDS=DEATH paradigm is a testament to Fauci's multi-layered control of the press. Like the writers of the Great Barrington Declaration and other Covid-19 dissidents, scientists who question HIV/AIDS dogma have been brutally punished for their heresy, no matter how prestigious their prior standing in the field and no matter how much evidence they have for their own claims. In 1987, the year the FDA's approval of AZT made AIDS the most profitable epidemic yet (a dubious designation Covid-19 has since surpassed), Fauci made it clearer than ever that scientific inquiry and debate - the basis of the scientific method - would no longer be welcome in the American public health sector, eliminating retrovirologist Peter Duesberg, then one of the most prominent opponents of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis, from the scientific conversation with a professional disemboweling that would make a cartel hitman blush. Duesberg had just eviscerated Gallo's 1984 HIV paper with an article of his own in the journal Cancer Research, pointing out that retroviruses had never before been found to cause a single disease in humans - let alone 30 AIDS-defining diseases. Rather than allow Gallo or any of the other scientists in his camp to respond to the challenge, Fauci waged a scorched-earth campaign against Duesberg, who had until then been one of the most highly regarded researchers in his field. Every research grant he requested was denied; every media appearance was canceled or preempted. The University of California at Berkeley, unable to fully fire him due to tenure, took away his lab, his graduate students, and the rest of his funding. The few colleagues who dared speak up for him in public were also attacked, while enemies and opportunists were encouraged to slander Duesberg at the conferences he was barred from attending and in the journals that would no longer publish his replies. When Duesberg was summoned to the White House later that year by then-President Ronald Reagan to debate Fauci on the origins of AIDS, Fauci convinced the president to cancel, allegedly pulling rank on the Commander-in-Chief with an accusation that the “White House was interfering in scientific matters that belonged to the NIH and the Office of Science and Technology Assessment.” After seven years of this treatment, Duesberg was contacted by NIH official Stephen O'Brien and offered an escape from professional purgatory. He could have “everything back,” he was told, and shown a manuscript of a scientific paper - apparently commissioned by the editor of the journal Nature - “HIV Causes AIDS: Koch's Postulates Fulfilled” with his own name listed alongside O'Brien's as an author.18 His refusal to take the bribe effectively guaranteed the epithet “AIDS denier” will appear on his tombstone. The character assassination of Duesberg became a template that would be deployed to great effectiveness wherever Fauci encountered dissent - never debate, only demonize, deplatform and destroy.    Even Luc Montagnier, the real discoverer of HIV, soon found himself on the wrong side of the Fauci machine. With his 1990 declaration that “the HIV virus [by itself] is harmless and passive, a benign virus,” Montagnier began distancing himself from Gallo's fraud, effectively placing a target on his own back. In a 1995 interview, he elaborated: “four factors that have come together to account for the sudden epidemic [of AIDS]: HIV presence, immune hyper-activation, increased sexually transmitted disease incidence, sexual behavior changes and other behavioral changes” such as drug use, poor nutrition and stress - all of which he said had to occur “essentially simultaneously” for HIV to be transmitted, creating the modern epidemic. Like the professionals at the Tri-State Healing Center, Montagnier advocated for the use of antioxidants like vitamin C and N-acetyl cysteine, naming oxidative stress as a critical factor in the progression from HIV to AIDS.19 When Montagnier died in 2022, Fauci's media mouthpieces sneered that the scientist (who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his discovery of HIV, despite his flagging faith in that discovery's significance) “started espousing views devoid of a scientific basis” in the late 2000s, leading him to be “shunned by the scientific community.”20 In a particularly egregious jab, the Washington Post's obit sings the praises of Robert Gallo, implying it was the American scientist who really should have won the Nobel for HIV, while dismissing as “

This week on Sibling Rivalry, Bob and Monét welcome Jacob as this week's guest and talk cussing around parents, Jacob's favorite Drag Race queen, and his family's April Fools' Day traditions. They debate Android vs. iPhone, the next big tech trend, and whether Bob and Monét should produce a show for the Gay Men's Chorus.  Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to https://Zocdoc.com/RIVALRY to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Want to see exclusive Sibling Rivalry Bonus Content? Head over to www.patreon.com/siblingrivalrypodcast to be the first to see our latest Sibling Rivalry Podcast Videos! @BobTheDragQueen @MonetXChange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crime & Punishment Episode #4 of 4.  In the late 1940s and 1950s, alongside the better known “Red Scare” that targeted alleged internal political enemies - American Communists - the US government led a crusade against gay men and women in the military and civil service. During the “Lavender Scare,” thousands of people were fired or forced from their jobs, dishonorably discharged from the military, and denied positions in the US government because of their sexuality. And those policies were enforced for decades - through “liberal” administrations, and the federal decriminalization of same-sex sex in 2003 - with life-ruining, and life-ending consequences for tens of thousands of Americans. And since we're basically reliving this awful period in history because Republicans believe that a time of queer persecution, women as second class citizens, and segregation and racism is America's “great” era, we better know the history so we can know how to fight.  Bibliography Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).  Julian Carter, The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–1940 (Duke University Press, 2007).  Josh Howard, The Lavender Scare, (Alexander Street Films). John Howard, Men Like That: Southern Queer History, (University of Chicago Press, 1999). David K. Johnson, “The Lavender Scare: Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Civil Service,” PhD Diss, (Northwestern University, 2000). E. Patrick Johnson, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South (University of North Carolina Press, 2008) Elizabeth L. Kennedy and Madeline Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (Routledge, 1993). Anna Lvovsky, Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life before Stonewall, (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices