Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2476 - Shanna H. Swan
Uploaded: 2026-03-31T17:00:29.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2476 - Shanna H. Swan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-03-31. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2476 - Shanna H. Swan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-03-31. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2476 - Shanna H. Swan

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Great to see you again.
Great to see you, Joe.
Happy to be here.
Happy to have you here.
So you've got a documentary about the – essentially about the same subject
that you talked about
last time you were here, the impact of microplastics and all these various endocrine-disrupting
chemicals that we're dealing with.
Right.
Right?
Right.
Tell me about it.
Well, it started as a movie on plastic.
And when I met Louis and he filmed me in New York about five years ago also, it
wasn't the
small study that we have today.
But let me backtrack because I want to tell you something that I never told you
but was
so important to me.
So you remember when I was here, you said, are you saying the toxins in the
environment are
threatening the survival of the human race?
Right.
And I said, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Yes.
Yes.
And then you said something which changed my life.
You said, why don't people know about this?
Remember that?
Yes.
I went home and I thought a lot about that question and that was what led me to
create
the program that I have now, Action Science Initiative, which is doing short,
impactful, relatively
cheap interventions to alert people to the problem and communicating this in a
way that
I'm hoping will reach more people than academia, where I was speaking before.
Because before I talked to you, I talked to my peers in, you know, academia and
the ivory
tower, you know, at the meetings where they all went at the, they read the
papers that we
all read, but the general public didn't get this.
So you really were, I have to tell you, thank you.
And you were actually very influential in my life.
Well, I'm very happy to help.
When I first heard about your book and I started going over the details of it
and the subject
matter, I was shocked.
I couldn't imagine that something like this could not just have happened, but
there's no
large scale effort to reverse course or to change course or to do something
about it, or at
least to make people aware of the impact that plastics are having on us.
Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine.
There's a guy named Philip Franklin Lee, who is a Michelin star chef that lives
in Austin.
And he has this amazing sushi restaurant, Sushi by Scratch and great chef.
Anyway, he was experiencing fatigue, like always tired, got his hormones tested,
extremely low
testosterone, but then got his microplastics tested and they were off the
charts.
Did a series of interventions to try to clean his body out from that, stopped
drinking anything
out of plastic, stopped using plastic, just by whatever he did.
I'm not sure if he did the plasma phoresis thing that I just did recently.
His testosterone went up to 1200 with no testosterone replacement, no nothing.
Just eliminating microplastics from his life over a period of time raises
testosterone.
So that's fantastic and it's what we are seeing in the film and so on.
I want to just make a small point, which is microplastics and plastics and
plasticizers are not identical, right?
Okay.
Right.
So microplastics are relatively newcomer to the scene because we've had
plastics since 1950, right?
Microplastics have been there but not recognized until relatively recently and
actually measuring
them in our bodies is much harder than measuring the plasticizers, which are
the chemicals that
are put in plastic to give them the various properties that they have.
Phthalates.
Phthalates is one, bisphenol A is another, and so on.
So there are other, you know, and by the way, well, we'll come back to that
later.
So yes, we can measure those, but measuring microplastics in particularly if we're
going
to go into your brain or into your testicles, you know, into a woman's placenta,
obviously
that's much more difficult.
So they're not the same, but the microplastics, what they are is the actual
pieces of plastic
that carry the plasticizers along with them.
So they kind of piggyback on.
So they do double damage because they carry the chemical harms and they also
physically enter
the cells, right?
So do you remember, I'm sure asbestos you know about, you know, and silicosis,
and these
were other examples of particles that went into the body and conveyed both
chemical harm
and physical harm, like inflammation and so on and so forth.
So they're all bad, but they're not identical.
And what we studied in the plastic detox, which is the film, that was, we did
not study any
microplastics.
We studied the plasticizers.
So you probably remember, I think I told you last time, well, why should you
remember?
Anyway, they're water soluble.
And so they, remember that, you know, so they go into your urine and then they're
pretty easy
to measure.
So I'm going to give this to you.
This is a kit.
Open her up.
I don't tell you what it is.
Okay.
Learn what's inside.
All right.
It looks like you pee in that.
Hmm.
Okay.
That's right.
Keep going.
And there's more stuff in there?
Yep.
Okay.
Something to send it back.
Right.
And then this looks like a biohazard bag.
To put your pee in.
So my pee doesn't kill anybody.
And this is, it's got a QR code on it.
Say hello to a healthier you.
So those are ways to find out ways to lower your exposure.
Okay.
Yeah.
A lot of people get these harmful chemicals from drinking coffee, hot liquids
out of paper
cups.
Yeah.
From the paper cups that are lined with, for example, bisphenols.
But the coffee itself is made in a, most coffee makers contain a lot of plastic
also.
Right.
In both the cups and in the, the device that's making the coffee.
That's why we use metal.
And just make a French press.
That's good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I do that at home too.
I got rid of my plastic coffee machine.
Me too.
Me too.
Me too.
I was thinking about it.
It was like, why am I pouring hot water into this plastic thing that can't be
good?
Yeah.
It doesn't taste as good.
You're learning.
You're learning.
French press tastes better anyway.
So here's my suggestion.
If you're willing to do this.
I am willing to do this.
You are.
Good.
Cool.
Yes.
Me in the cup.
Send it in.
Got it.
Then my colleague, Jenna Wah, and her team will analyze it for not everything
in the world,
but the bisphenols, the phthalates, and the parabens.
Okay.
That's what they're, they're going to be adding pesticides soon, and that would
be great to have
that as well.
Hmm.
Then, if you want to go to phase two, I can, I have some things here that you
could swap
in your kitchen, and you could go to that QR code and find out other things
that you could
reduce.
And then, if you wanted to, we could send you another kit, and you could see if
your levels
changed.
Okay.
You want to do that?
Okay.
So, what is phase two?
Phase two would mail you back another kit.
Uh-huh.
You take your urine again, and that's it.
And so, that's to see if it's changed because of lifestyle changes.
That's right.
That's right.
Right.
That's right.
So, you would be doing what the couples in, part of what the couples in the
intervention
did.
The couples in the intervention also were infertile.
And so, we're not going to touch your fertility question, but they also, the
men collected sperm,
and we can do that if you want, but I don't think you, you know, you may not
want to talk
about that on your ... But that's what we did in the intervention.
So, we, in the intervention, we found ... I'll just ... This is what the
intervention was.
There's a company called Fellow, which is grown out of UCSF, and they're very
big now.
I think they have like 200,000 men in their files who have had their semen
tested, okay?
And at the time they have their semen tested, they're asked, "Could we recontact
you for
research?"
That's one important question.
And they're asked, "Why did you want your sperm tested?"
And if they say, "Because we're infertile, or subfertile, or we worrying about
our fertility,"
we ask, or they ask, "How long has it been that you've been having this problem
with fertility?"
And if it's more than 12 months, then they're technically infertile, right?
So, if they said they would agree to be recontacted and they were infertile,
they were potentially
eligible for this intervention.
You with me?
So, actually finding the couples that are in the film was a long process.
They had to, of course, agree to be filmed.
They had to have what we call, terrible word, idiopathic infertility, no known
causes.
And they couldn't be obese.
They couldn't be smokers.
They couldn't have a diagnosis, a medical diagnosis that explains.
We don't want it to be unexplained.
Got it.
Okay?
So, sort of, we winnowed down to what was six couples.
Part of them dropped out for personal reasons, so I won't go into that.
But that's how we got those couples.
They had to be couples, by the way.
And they had to be staying together for the next three months and not doing IVF.
Okay?
Okay.
So, that was the setup.
And then, the company called Million Marker that you're going to send your P to,
they have
an education program, and that's a lot of what they do, the testing and the
education.
And so, all of those couples, you know, they talked to them and said, "Tell me
about what
you put on your face this morning.
Tell me what you washed your clothes with.
Tell me what you clean your counters with," and on and on and on like that,
right?
So, they took an inventory of what the couples were doing.
And then, they started this educational program, which they're very good at and
been doing for
a while.
Once a week, they talk to them.
"So, how's it going?
Have you changed this?
What are you using now?"
And so on.
So, it was not just a one-time thing.
And if you were doing this, it would be short, you know, just like use these
things maybe.
But along with that, we sent them the fellow kits to collect their semen.
Okay?
Okay?
So, we have beginning, middle, and end.
It was three months, so beginning, six weeks, twelve weeks.
And, you know why three months?
Why?
It takes 70 days to make a sperm.
Mmm.
So, we wanted to have a turnover within the course of the intervention.
Yeah.
So, we sent them a kit, and they collected their semen at home, which is nice
for guys,
because you don't have to go into the lab and do it there.
You know, it's much better at home, right?
Awkward.
Yeah.
And they sent it in, and they figured out how to get all the parameters right,
even though
it's mailed.
And, yeah, so the couples did that.
So, we had, over time, levels in their body of the chemicals, semen quality,
what they were
doing, what they changed in their life, because we had this record of
everything they changed.
And then finally, we saw who got pregnant.
And I hope your listeners will watch The Plastic Detox.
It's a movie that a lot of people love and found, you know, really moving.
And you should watch it.
Can I ask you about the coffee question?
When you go to a place like, let's just say Starbucks, not to single them out,
but are
they using plastic with their coffee machines?
Are there coffee machines made with plastic?
I don't know about any particular place except my kitchen.
I was just with the question.
Yeah.
I suspect that they are using plastic.
Right.
So, if people stop at a place like that on a regular basis, on their way to
work in the
morning to get coffee, and they use, they bring their own plastic, or excuse me,
they bring
their own stainless steel thermos or mug, that would eliminate some of it, but
perhaps-
One source.
Yeah.
They're getting it actually from the coffee machine itself.
Yes.
Because I see when they slide those-
Yes, yes, yes.
That's right.
When you see these big industrial machines, and they slide those filters in,
those filters
are plastic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, they're probably, they probably have bisphenol in them.
Yeah.
Right.
It's a plastic tray.
I don't know.
But then there's a paper filter in the plastic tray.
Right.
So, you're getting it, no matter what.
If they use those pods-
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
At home.
Bruno, 