transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:07] It is Thursday, the 23rd of April, 2026, and you're listening to Skeptics with a K, the podcast for science, reason and critical thinking. Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society, a non-profit organization for the promotion of scientific skepticism on Merseyside around the UK and internationally. I'm your host, Mike Hall. With me today is Marsh.

Speaker 2:
[00:28] Hello.

Speaker 1:
[00:29] And Alice.

Speaker 2:
[00:30] Hello.

Speaker 1:
[00:30] And I'm going to mithy you both at the top of the show.

Speaker 2:
[00:34] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[00:34] To talk about European Skeptics Congress.

Speaker 2:
[00:36] Oh, yes.

Speaker 1:
[00:37] Because we have tickets for that. We've announced the go live dates for tickets for the European Skeptics Congress.

Speaker 3:
[00:43] They're going on sale on the 6th of May.

Speaker 1:
[00:45] The 6th of May at 10 a.m. UK time.

Speaker 2:
[00:47] 10 a.m. UK time. That's 11 a.m. for Western Europe outside the, like the West part of Europe.

Speaker 1:
[00:53] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[00:53] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[00:54] Mid-day, across a bit more.

Speaker 3:
[00:56] Do you mean Central European time?

Speaker 2:
[00:58] Yes, but the West and half of the Central Europe.

Speaker 1:
[01:03] And it gets later in the day as we rock across. But yeah, there's lots of people, because we've been quite vague on the website and said tickets will go on sale in spring. Once spring got here, people panicked to say, have they sold out?

Speaker 2:
[01:17] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[01:17] Are they, no, God, have I missed it? No, you haven't missed it, folks.

Speaker 3:
[01:20] We've just accidentally been creating buzz. We didn't do it on purpose, honestly. We've just been planning and we started planning later than we would have liked, because we were all fucked from Q&A.

Speaker 2:
[01:31] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[01:33] So that's going to be on the 6th of May at 10 a.m. UK time. And you can buy your ticket at escliverpool.org.

Speaker 2:
[01:39] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[01:39] And I'll pop a link in the show notes as well.

Speaker 3:
[01:41] And we should be announcing some speakers on the same day.

Speaker 1:
[01:44] We will. We've got a little trench of speakers.

Speaker 3:
[01:46] We have one link to speakers, so we'll be announcing those on the same day.

Speaker 1:
[01:49] It's going to be terrific fun. Anyway, I just wanted to my view both with that, which was mostly so I didn't forget at the end of the show.

Speaker 2:
[01:56] Put the plug up front.

Speaker 1:
[01:57] Nice. Good.

Speaker 3:
[01:59] I thought today we would talk about a particular influencer who we are way behind the curve on, because I don't think we've mentioned this person on the show yet. The person is Clavicular.

Speaker 2:
[02:09] I knew you were going to say Clavicular there. That's interesting.

Speaker 3:
[02:13] We are like way behind the curve. Clavicular was like rising in popularity over 2025 in those particular Lux Maxing niche circles for a while over several, several months, and then just popped off in general society February this year.

Speaker 2:
[02:30] Yeah, it's wild how these things suddenly break out in that kind of way. Because you were behind the curve on talking about Clavicular, but you were ahead of the curve in talking about things like Lux Maxing and bone smashing, both of which I believe you've covered on this show.

Speaker 3:
[02:44] Which Clavicular does claim to do both of those things. And we collectively were talking about Clavicular to each other in February when it just finally tipped over into grown up social media, I guess we could say. By which point people were then arguing, well, once you've tipped off into popularity in that space, then your popularity is already in decline. And the reason he tipped into notoriety in the wider community for a little while was because of this clip that went round where it was captioned as Clavicular was brutally frame-mogged by ASU frat leader. And that was February this year.

Speaker 2:
[03:24] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[03:24] Do you want to say what frame-mogging is?

Speaker 2:
[03:26] It's nothing to do with Jacob Reiss mogging.

Speaker 3:
[03:30] So Clavicular, he's a Lux Maxer and he's specific, his name is taken from the fact that he claims to have this wide clavicle.

Speaker 2:
[03:38] Yeah, and the frame-mogging was essentially, he prides himself on his wide frame, which he sees as an evidence of him being more alpha than the other men around him. And this was a photo taken of him with somebody with a slightly wider frame.

Speaker 3:
[03:53] Yeah, so frame-mogging, as far as I understand it is, you stand next to somebody who has a smaller frame than you and get captured on stream or on camera, and you have then frame-mogged them, you have shown off, you've put them down by standing next to them on air.

Speaker 2:
[04:10] Yes, and it's like the, it's from, the mog bit is from male of the group, like alpha male of the group.

Speaker 3:
[04:14] So he kind of became really popular at that point. And there was obviously a lot of coverage of him. So Clavicular is, there was a New York Times interview with him. And their opening paragraph was, Clavicular is six foot two, weighs 180 pounds and has a 31 inch waist. His bioacromial width, basically the span of the clavicle from which the 20 year old streamer gets his name is 19.5 inches. He has a mid-face ratio, which is derived by dividing the distance from the pupil to the mouth by the distance between the pupils of 1.07. His chin to philtrum ratio is 2.6.

Speaker 2:
[04:46] Right. They might as well have got a set of calipers out and started measuring his skull to talk about his IQ.

Speaker 3:
[04:53] It really is so in that space, isn't it? Also in this interview, they said that he considers Mr. Boma, this is an actor, Matt Boma, to possess the most harmonious man's face in existence beyond even his own. And he specifically likes the idea of bimaxillary osteotomy, the double jaw surgery, because Matt Boma has got a particularly prominent jaw. It is noteworthy, I think, that Matt Boma is white, gay, German, and has very strikingly blue eyes. Like it is still very much in that sort of space as well.

Speaker 2:
[05:29] I mean, you threw gay in there. I don't think Hitler's ideal version of the Aryan male was gay.

Speaker 3:
[05:34] No, but have you watched how Lux Maxis talk about other men?

Speaker 2:
[05:38] No, but I mean, I can well imagine there is a strong element of self-denial.

Speaker 1:
[05:43] It is all a bit eugenics-flavoured, though, isn't it? It is all a little bit, like, kind of...

Speaker 2:
[05:48] Homosexuality, you can say what you like about homosexuality. It is not eugenics-coated, because it's not a lot of kind of, we need these homosexuals to be our perfect breeding population.

Speaker 3:
[05:58] It is, that is fair. That is not part of that same kind of context. I do think it is still noteworthy, especially when you engage with Lux Maxis, who are very much really engaging with the male gaze, and it's almost exclusively the male gaze. They will make a lot of really derogatory comments about attracting women, but it is very much about looking attractive as a man for other men.

Speaker 2:
[06:24] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[06:25] And there's no hiding that. There will be Lux Maxis who are specifically only aspiring to be aesthetic to other men, and there are Lux Maxis who are starting to, seen a bunch of stuff around them, starting to think about how to redefine makeup, so that they call it different things, so that they can be kind of using makeup.

Speaker 2:
[06:47] Makeup, to enhance features.

Speaker 3:
[06:48] And lifts in their shoes and all sorts of things, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[06:51] And gender of fema care is essentially what we're talking about.

Speaker 3:
[06:53] Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[06:54] But it all stems, a lot of it stems from parts of the incel culture. We had an article on it recently in The Skeptic about someone who felt themselves being pulled in that direction. It came from an incel kind of background, which is kind of ironic given that a lot of the people in that Lux Maxing type of world these days actively claim to eschew having sex because they don't want to lose their testosterone, precious bodily fluids, etc.

Speaker 3:
[07:19] Which we've talked about in the show before as well, the semen retention and the nut maxes in that sort of space. Actually, Clavicular is quite interesting in this space as well. In the interview that he did with the New York Times, they opened the interview by talking about how he's really tired when they turn up and he looks tired. He's only had three hours sleep because he was slay maxing the night before.

Speaker 2:
[07:42] Okay, that is where you spend a lot of time being Santa and giving out presents.

Speaker 3:
[07:47] Apparently, just having sex.

Speaker 2:
[07:49] Slay maxing.

Speaker 3:
[07:50] Slay maxing. So he's, an interviewer has rocked up and he's explained to them that, I'm sorry, I'm really tired, I was shagging all last night. Which is, I mean, and...

Speaker 2:
[08:01] It's probably not true, is it? Sorry, if I seem tired, it's because I was up all night shagging, mate. Definitely up all night shagging, come on.

Speaker 3:
[08:09] And then throughout the interview, they go on to, they follow him doing some of his kind of streaming stuff. And one of the things he's doing now apparently is he will go on dates with women as part of his streaming thing. And in the conversation, so they follow him around on a date, he takes another...

Speaker 2:
[08:25] I think I saw some of this, yeah, like the world's grimmest date.

Speaker 3:
[08:28] He takes another influencer to the aquarium where they touch a fish and he complains that it's like getting your phone out of the toilet and then says that he's going to do some hand sanitiser maxing. Okay, he wants to clean his hands.

Speaker 2:
[08:44] I don't think you have to max everything.

Speaker 3:
[08:45] Everything is maxing. And to be fair to him, he does ridicule himself for doing that, for making everything maxing. He comments that it's just become such a part of his lingo now that people take the piss out of him saying if he's at the mall and he says, shall we second floor max? People are like, you could just say go upstairs.

Speaker 2:
[09:03] Is he then just doing self deprecating maxing?

Speaker 1:
[09:07] Certainly what he's done by over use of the phrase maxing, what he's done is max maxing.

Speaker 3:
[09:11] Yeah, max maxing. So there's a couple of things that are relevant to that point though of having sex with women in particular. So he apparently in this interview confessed that knowing he could have sex with a woman was in some ways better than the deed itself.

Speaker 2:
[09:28] I'm sure that's true for her.

Speaker 3:
[09:32] Partly because he says it's going to gain me nothing. And it's a big time saver to not have sex. Because that's all sex is for, wasting time.

Speaker 2:
[09:39] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[09:39] But he also reckons he is infertile because he's been taking testosterone since he was 14 years old. So Brandon Peters is his birth name. He is 20 years old and he's become particularly notorious. More recently, he's been captured partying at a nightclub with Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate. He's kind of streaming pretty much constantly. So he says that shortly before he turned 15, he started taking injectable testosterone, which he was ordering off the internet, that at some point his parents discovered this, they took it off him and he then managed to get hold of various different drugs through that route, through that kind of online route. So he was taking testosterone fat dissolvers and biodegradable sutures.

Speaker 2:
[10:26] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[10:27] And he told the New Yorker...

Speaker 2:
[10:28] Sorry, he was taking biodegradable sutures. What was he doing with them?

Speaker 3:
[10:32] No elaboration on that.

Speaker 2:
[10:33] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[10:34] But he's doing all of this like bone maxing type stuff, I'm sure there are.

Speaker 2:
[10:38] But I thought sutures were used to hold wounds together. And they're biodegradable, which means that they're the kind of the disappearing strips basically that you use to like sew up a wound and the wound will heal itself and then it'll kind of... But you need to have a wound for that.

Speaker 3:
[10:51] I mean, if you smash your face with a hammer, then you might have a wound.

Speaker 2:
[10:55] But is it going to suit you that wound?

Speaker 3:
[10:56] I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[10:57] Are you going to hit your face with a hammer in a way that breaks the skin? That can't be good for his maxing.

Speaker 1:
[11:02] I mean, none of it's good for anything.

Speaker 2:
[11:05] If his theory is to try and like damage the bone so that the bone swells and then like blah, blah, blah, ends up in a better place. Because there isn't a middle ground to that dot, dot, dot profit. There isn't a version of that where open wound is part of it.

Speaker 3:
[11:21] No, I don't know, just it's presented without comment in this particular interview. And I'm leaning on this interview specifically because I want to present stuff that is how he has communicated it to other people and I'm not going to watch his hours and hours and hours of streaming content. Sorry, like I can't do that for the show. There's too much stuff out there. He is streaming upwards of eight hours a day.

Speaker 2:
[11:44] That said, Alice will watch eight hours of streaming if more people sign up to the Patreon. If we get like 50 people sign up to Patreon, Alice will watch a full eight hours of Clavicular streaming.

Speaker 3:
[11:54] But well, we'll come back to it. Yeah, so I wanted something that was in his own words because obviously when it comes to anything like this, there's a lot of sensationalized content around Clavicular. And I wanted to present as much of some level of realism as possible, appreciating that given the industry that he works in, we have to take everything he says about himself with a pinch of salt.

Speaker 2:
[12:14] Yeah, I mean, we're going to give him some degree of realism, but we are still going to call him Clavicular.

Speaker 3:
[12:20] Eventually, he said that his parents gave up, and he said, he told the New York Times that they realized there was kind of nothing that they could do to stop my ascension. So his goal is ascension to improve his face and his body and his appearance so much that he reaches like this ascension.

Speaker 2:
[12:37] He ascends into the very opposite of Nirvana.

Speaker 3:
[12:41] By 2025, he was streaming upwards of eight hours a day to Kik, which is a streaming platform. Have you come across Kik?

Speaker 2:
[12:49] I'm aware of it. I've never visited Kik.

Speaker 3:
[12:51] No, I've never seen Kik either.

Speaker 2:
[12:53] Streaming platform. It's one of those things that I'm going to end up having to watch Kik at some point, aren't I? That's kind of how my life normally takes me. Have you heard of this awful thing? No, but soon I'll know a lot about it.

Speaker 3:
[13:04] So it's apparently it's backed by an online casino company.

Speaker 2:
[13:07] Yes. Is it the same one behind Kalchi?

Speaker 3:
[13:09] I'm not sure.

Speaker 2:
[13:10] Might be a different one.

Speaker 3:
[13:11] The company is called Steak. If you know who's behind Kalchi, I can't remember who's behind Kalchi. So it was found in 2022. It's competitors Twitch, but it focuses on having a looser moderation and it paid the street streamers can make more money out of it. Specifically, one of the ways that streamers can make a lot of money from it and other people on the site are the clippers. So there's whole armies of people clipping content from kick streaming. According to GQ, Clavicular has 950 clippers dedicated just to his streaming platform, his streaming page.

Speaker 2:
[13:50] Yeah, this is the model that I'm going to say Andrew Tate, but actually it's that Iggy Semmelweis came up with. This is how Andrew Tate got big, is that he doesn't put out a huge amount of content necessarily himself. He has an army of people who take that content and spread it to a billion different places. That's what you do if you join the Andrew Tate Hustler Academy. You're basically doing that and if you do it well enough, you'll be able to ascend into a different tier of the Academy and get paid.

Speaker 3:
[14:18] Clippers are paid by views. On Kick Streaming, Clavicular says that his Clippers can be paid $30 per 1,000 views. It's in your interests to click and in fact, apparently Kick also pay Clippers. Some of Clavicular's Clippers are paid directly by Kick in a particular fashion. So it's in your best interests. A, it's in the best interests of the mainstreamer to make really content that is going to go viral, which in today's society just means stuff that is more shocking and Yeah, while it's controversial, keep saying the N-word, that kind of thing. which he does, yes, keep saying the N-word. And was recorded doing Heil Hitler salutes with Nick Fuenters and Andrew Tate.

Speaker 1:
[15:02] Oh, I did that today.

Speaker 2:
[15:04] With both of them?

Speaker 1:
[15:05] With both of them, yeah. No, no, what happened, we were in a meeting at work.

Speaker 2:
[15:09] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[15:09] And it was like, all right, folks, have a good day, goodbye. And then we all kind of put our hands up to wave goodbye to each other. But we did it really lazily. And I realized that we all just kind of vaguely high hilted at each other before the before the Zoom chat finished. And afterwards, I was like, oh, sure, you need to wave your hand. If you're going to wave your hand, don't just accidentally do a little Heil.

Speaker 2:
[15:29] That is true. But you say you were in a meeting at work. It was a Nazi meeting. It was a neo-Nazi meeting. I was at a Klan rally at work.

Speaker 3:
[15:38] So it's in your interest to create content that's particularly controversial or egregious. And then it's in the interest of the clippers to find something particularly egregious and controversial to make into a small clip, clip it out of context potentially and really amplify the views that you get.

Speaker 2:
[15:54] Well, other than that, other than the shock value element of it, it is just a standard channel marketing or franchise model, essentially, in that the majority of the delivery to the end user comes not from the person who created the initial brand, but through people who are paid to be the middleman along the way.

Speaker 3:
[16:13] Except the brand are individual people.

Speaker 2:
[16:16] Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[16:17] And individual people who are, you know, Clavicular is a 20 year old man who is literally just streaming his, I mean, yes, he's going out and doing things that he's claiming.

Speaker 2:
[16:27] Touching fish.

Speaker 3:
[16:28] Yeah, touching fish.

Speaker 2:
[16:29] He's saying until three in the morning having sex. Definitely having all of the sex. He did a sex to someone.

Speaker 3:
[16:34] But yeah. And you're also, you're amplifying your own audience by saying, well, okay, I've got 950 clippers who are watching upwards of eight hours of content every day to look for the clippable content and to find it quicker than any of the other clippers find it so that you can be the one that really spirals everywhere.

Speaker 2:
[16:51] Like, yeah, it's channel marketing with the sales competition. If I had my old B2B marketing head on, that's what we're looking at here. Salesperson of the year, but what you're selling is a neonati who hits himself in the face with a hammer.

Speaker 3:
[17:04] And this is culminated over the last few months. So he rose really in the wider public eye, the more mainstream public eye in February. And since then, I think he's been arrested twice. He's been filmed doing some pretty controversial things, including pointing a weapon at strangers in a car, apparently hitting somebody who kind of appeared in front of the bonnet of his car. And so this is the other thing about Kick, is once the streamers are massive and they're just roaming around the street streaming stuff, if you become a really big streamer, then other streamers or other streamers from the platform who want to get some kind of notoriety themselves, will try and pop up in the really viral streamers stream in the back of it. And there's a term for it that I can't remember now.

Speaker 2:
[17:46] But it's basically stream-mogging.

Speaker 3:
[17:49] Yeah, or fucking photobombing, essentially, so that they can get visibility on their own stuff. And so he does get chased around by lots of people quite a lot and apparently raised a weapon at some people in the car and also hit somebody in his car. So yeah, this all kind of ramped up and ramped up and ramped up. And then about a week ago, as of recording, just over a week as of this show going out, he was hospitalized after taking an overdose, which all happened while he was live streaming. So this was on the, I think, 15th of April, late on the 14th, early hours of the 15th of April. He was at a shopping mall with some other streamers and some other influencer-y type people and a bunch of other people live streaming. And I haven't watched this video because I think I don't want to seek it out for content, but he apparently starts repeating that he's not feeling well, that he's gone and then loses consciousness. And then one of the people he's with is another well-known streamer, cuts the stream and they get him into a car and take him to hospital. Now, this is not a, doesn't seem to be a stunt. He just seems to be incredibly unwell and relying quite heavily on drugs. So Clavicular apparently takes what he calls a penta stack. We've talked about stacks on the show before. The Nutsmaxxers use supplement stacking to improve their semen load and volume. And a lot of the other kind of biohacker, a community type people talk about stacks, particularly you'd see it with supplement stacking. But we also talked about it recently with biohackers incorporating peptides into their stacks. It's a commonly used phrase. But his penta stack, he's using this specifically to improve his ability to stream and engage socially.

Speaker 2:
[19:51] Sorry, I just got confused because he said he's using a penta stack. So can I just stack by hand? Do you have to have an implement to help him?

Speaker 3:
[19:58] So this, and he's, by his own account, is taking more than just these drugs. He's taking lots of drugs. But his penta stack that he's using specifically to improve his brain function, essentially, I think he calls it cognition maxing, is Adderall.

Speaker 2:
[20:15] Ironically, cognition maxing is evidence that you want cognition maxing. If you call it that, you are not maxing your cognition.

Speaker 3:
[20:22] So he's taking Adderall, which is obviously a stimulant, DXM, which is dextromethorphan, which is used recreationally. I think it's a cold medication, but recreationally, it's used to give euphoria or dissociation, ketamine, which is also used for dissociation, BDO, which is metabolized into GHB.

Speaker 2:
[20:42] Yikes.

Speaker 3:
[20:43] Which gives euphoria and lowered inhibitions and pregabalin, which is used recreational for relaxation, calmness and euphoria. Now he says he's autistic, he describes himself as an autist. He's not formally diagnosed, but he says he relies on these medications to manage specifically his social interaction, but social interaction for streaming in IRL streaming.

Speaker 2:
[21:06] Given that he goes by a pseudonym, he is the autist formerly known as Clavicular.

Speaker 3:
[21:13] And there's a bunch of other drugs that he has acknowledged taking. He says he used to take, and whether he still does is unclear, but he used to take meth to suppress his appetite to alter his appearance. And he takes a bunch of other medications specifically for lux maxing purposes, including melanotan-2, which is a peptide that biohackers take to make their skin appear more tanned.

Speaker 2:
[21:34] Right. I love that he must be the only person in all of recorded history who's taking meth for the aesthetic qualities. Like, I really want to look better. That's why I'm on meth.

Speaker 3:
[21:44] Yes. And I think I read a quote from him at some point earlier that said he's, if he would to list everything he was taking, it would take a really long time because he's taking loads of stuff for lux maxing purposes, but also to socially engage in a different way.

Speaker 1:
[22:00] He sounds, to be honest, to be a really unwell young man.

Speaker 3:
[22:03] I think he's an incredibly unwell young man.

Speaker 2:
[22:04] The internet is, it's hard in these instances because the internet is exploiting him, but he is also clearly very deeply engages stuff that itself is damaging and socially harmful.

Speaker 1:
[22:16] Is spreading that damage amongst other people. His viewers will be watching him as an aspirational figure and mimicking the stuff that he is doing. But he's clearly a very unwell person.

Speaker 3:
[22:28] A few hours, almost perfect example of this, a few hours after he was hospitalized, he posted on X a photo of his face saying, you might, if you've been on the internet, you might have seen this picture of him. So he's got a slightly bloodied face from having worn a mask. And he posted saying, just got home, that was brutal. All of the substances are just a cope, trying to feel neurotypical while being in public. But obviously that isn't a real solution. The worst part of tonight was my face descending from the life support mask. The worst part to him is that his face has lost its aesthetic appeal due to the oxygen that he was on.

Speaker 2:
[23:09] Yeah. I mean, if putting an oxygen mask on your face for a small amount of time can ruin the entire aesthetics of your face, then you aren't valuing the aesthetics of your face correctly.

Speaker 3:
[23:20] So it's serious. It's really amplified to quite a serious position, to the point that his publicist has-

Speaker 2:
[23:28] Of course he's got a publicist.

Speaker 3:
[23:29] Mitchell Jackson, apparently a more recent publicist of his, has said that he's no longer going to represent the streamer until Clavicular checks himself into some kind of treatment. He specifically said, we have given him an ultimatum. If he wants to get better, I'm happy to spend as much time as I need to help him get the help he needs. But he's doing this as a plea for his help. There's a world of adults begging Braden to take this seriously.

Speaker 1:
[23:51] I'll tell you what it reminds me of, is it reminds me of the Thinspo influencers and the pro-anar influencers in a very similar space of obviously being very unwell individuals, but spreading that misinformation to other people and trying to be an aspirational figure to those other people. It's very, very similar, masculinized, kind of hyper-ridiculous, masculinized version of that. It's a very similar situation.

Speaker 2:
[24:16] And you get similar things with the cancer patients who are out there telling people, don't take chemotherapy, take gerson therapy. And actually, just recently for Godawful Movies, watched House of Numbers, which is an AIDS denialist documentary, which includes people in the documents from 2009, includes people in the documentary who have AIDS, who are saying AIDS isn't real, don't take antiretroviral drugs. And they died before that film came out. They were leaving people to their deaths, but also were themselves victims of the misinformation. It gets really thorny when the misinformation is kind of reflexive in its quality that kind of way.

Speaker 3:
[24:51] Yeah. And without diagnosing somebody I've never met, I think it's very in that body, just more for your space that is really quite extreme. So one of those five medications that make up part of Clavicular's penta stack is progabalin.

Speaker 2:
[25:07] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[25:08] And so I wanted to talk a little bit about progabalin, partly because it seems like there's a potential that this is being used either in the lux maxing space or may start to be used in the kind of in cell and pick up artistry type spaces because it's being promoted certainly by Clavicular as something to help with social anxiety, something to help with social engagement. And it is also being increasingly used in wider society for lots of different reasons. So progabalin is a gabapentinoid, which is very similar to gabapentin, both used as painkillers, neuropathic pain medications, say, rather than specifically painkillers. It essentially downregulates the activity of neurotransmitters, which means it can also be used, and it was originally described as an anticonvulsant where it's used for certain types of epilepsy, where those neurotransmitters might be contributing to an increased activity of certain nerves. But it can, because it's affecting the nerves, also reduce neuropathic pain. And so it is very often given as a neuropathic pain medication. It is also used, and it's used quite a lot off label, and it has different label uses in different countries. But there's lots of off label use because it's also useful for things like generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder, which it seems like the reason Clavicular is using it. It's also occasionally used to treat opioid withdrawal, although there isn't very good evidence that it's great for that.

Speaker 2:
[26:37] That might be where I've heard of it. I think, I'd have to check, but I think this might come up occasionally on Joel Roggenshaw when it comes to treating opioids and things like that. I think that's one of the things that he's been pushing for the Maha movement to legalize. I'd have to check.

Speaker 3:
[26:51] To legalize progabalin.

Speaker 2:
[26:52] Or to explore its use in that kind of way. I know he was recently at the Oval Office for Ibergain, which was to deal with side effects of stuff, but I think that progabalin might be on the list as well.

Speaker 3:
[27:04] Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[27:05] I'd have to check.

Speaker 3:
[27:06] Yeah. Interesting. I'd be interested to know more about that. So it essentially works by... It's a depressant of the central nervous system. And it's generally considered a pretty safe neuropathic pain treatment. However, overdose is a risk with progabalin. But then there have also been recent headlines like, people can buy 150 pills for 20 pound on the street and it only takes one to kill you. And that the prescription drug has been described as valium on steroids and worse than heroin and crack cocaine when mixed with alcohol.

Speaker 2:
[27:39] Valium on steroids. I can't quite work out what that would do at that point.

Speaker 3:
[27:46] The ECCO, I've got a real thing for it. The Liverpool Echo. It's all over the Liverpool Echo.

Speaker 2:
[27:49] Really?

Speaker 3:
[27:50] Yeah. There have been reports that tablets are being sold illegally on the street for less than one pound each, with some users reportedly purchasing boxes of 150 capsules for as little as 20 pounds. And that use is particularly rising in homeless communities with specific reporting. I've seen mentioning those in Birkenhead, through the ECCO, and Manchester.

Speaker 2:
[28:09] Is it the new spice?

Speaker 3:
[28:10] It is being likened to spice. And I think I have seen some reporting that suggests in places it is overtaking spice. Now, whether that's because spice is also declining, I'm not clear on right now, but yeah, it's been likened to spice in that respect. It was made a Class C drug in 2019, at least partially due to deaths associated with the medication. And there's lots of different types of misuse when it comes to progabalin. So there's a lot of things to unpick because it is a useful medication for certain conditions. There are people who are just self-medicating. It's easy to get hold of now. You can buy it online. You can buy it through telegram drug groups. You can get it delivered through the post, as lots of drugs can be delivered through the post these days. And there are then people who self-medicate either because they are frustrated at the cost of the prescription and they can get it cheaper online, or because they think they should be prescribed it. They've got a condition that they think should allow prescription of this medication. And therefore they're going online to get hold of it. And usually they're not at major risk for overdosing or other risk factors of misuse of progabalin because they're taking it as they think a doctor would prescribe it to them. So they're taking it at normal doses and things. It's entirely possible that people like Clavicular might have started in that space. He's got social anxiety issues. He's read that progabalin is good for social anxiety. He started taking it for social anxiety off label and also off prescription, but then has ramped up his use of it. There's also people who are then swapping from one substance to another. So these are often people who are substance users in other ways and are associated with other drug kind of treatment services, and they're often switching from other opiates to progabalin. And particularly if they've been misusing heroin, they might switch over to things like progabalin, specifically because progabalin is cheaper and easy to get hold of. And then there seems to be a group of people who are using it as an alternative to alcohol or opiates, saying that it gives them more confidence that they feel more relaxed on it, but have this idea that it's less harmful than alcohol. Now, there are lots of issues around this recreational use, and there's a lot of data on it, but there's not enough data in some areas. So what's not clear is how people are getting on to things like progabalin. There was an article I read from a website called Talking Drugs, which talks about these three different groups of people. And specifically, I think it was a doctor, actually a practicing doctor in Teesside, who was talking about some of the local surveying they'd done in that area. And they said that only 5% of people taking it illicitly had previously been prescribed the progabalin. So while a lot of doctors have this perception that many people taking it illicitly are people who've been on it, and then the prescription has been stopped for whatever reason, and they are continuing to take it because they're now feel more dependent on it. The evidence, at least in T-Side suggests that that's possibly not the case, that people are getting hold of it from other routes. Anecdotally, it's considered an enhancer. So there was a study looking at drug use in Edinburgh and Sheffield, which reported, and I've seen this reported in a couple of places, this idea that progabalin decreases your tolerance of other drugs. And there is evidence now that it decreases your tolerance specifically of things like heroin. So there was a drug service user in either Edinburgh or Sheffield as part of this study who said, see, when you take the pregab and the crack and that they enhance it, that's an enhancer. Whatever you take, the pregab will enhance it. So if you take a pipe, it enhances the gabba, they enhance each other, they bounce off each other like they actually make it stronger. So people are taking it for that reason. There was an anecdotal report I read in a newspaper. So take it with a big pinch of salt where somebody had said that they had encountered homeless people taking it to make the harrowing go further because it reduces your tolerance. But then there's also people taking it. And again, anecdotally taking it if they can't get their drug of choice and they just want to keep the withdrawal effects off. There's obviously lots of issues with this. One is that there's major, potentially major batch variation across illicit progabalin. In particular, there was a study that looked at Saudi Arabia seized tablets and there was major batch variation. So you've got an increased risk of overdose. There isn't enough evidence yet. They haven't been able to look. I don't think there's been enough studies done on this yet, but there is obviously the potential of progabalin being caught with other things or other things being caught with progabalin. And the issue with that is, the major issue is that there are significant dangers associated with taking progabalin, which reduces your tolerance of some drugs and suppresses your central nervous system alongside other central nervous system depressants. That can cause respiratory depression and reduced heart rate. And it is that that seems to be fatal in users that are taking both progabalin and something else, especially alcohol and heroin, particularly because it reduces the tolerance of both of those things. We know, in addition to that context, that it is being seen on the streets in certain populations, quite a lot, and particularly in homeless populations. And we're also seeing that prescribing has increased globally between 2008 and 2018. And there's been studies across lots of different countries that have indicated that. And there's also an issue with misprescribing or what could potentially be seen as misprescribing. Although there aren't any major drug interactions between progabalin, it's becoming increasingly clear that taking progabalin with other opioids is a risk, particularly things like heroin, but other, any other opioids is a significant risk. And prescribing progabalin concurrently with opioid pain medications was also rising between 2006 and 2018. So we're seeing that that's happening generally. And we're therefore seeing progabalin listed on death certificates in substance abuse deaths. And in particular, the National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths did a study across deaths from 2004 to 2020. There were 3051 deaths reported across that time. 2,322 of those cases had progabalin detected in those cases. So that's over two thirds of the instances. Opioids were co-detected in 92 percent of those cases. And in fact, only two of the cases that they looked at was agabapentinoid. So either progabalin or gabapentin attributed singly, and isolated that toxicity to the death in only two cases of those 3,000. So almost always, the issue is it's taken with something else, usually another opioid. There was then a recent study from University College London, who were looking specifically at people who were prescribed or exposed to gabapentinoids and had all caused drug poisoning. And they found a couple of things, but one of the findings that they suggest from the data that they looked at was that gabapentinoids are often started when a person is already vulnerable to drug poisoning. So in the 90 days preceding them starting a gabapentinoid of any kind, they were at an increased risk of drug poisoning. It then stayed high while they were taking the gabapentinoid. And when taken concurrently with opioids or benzodiazepines, there was an increased risk of drug toxicity. So there's something going on there that says that while progabalin on its own isn't massively unsafe to take as a medication, there are probably a whole host of other drugs, including alcohol and other opioids, which may be prescribed with progabalin that increase your risk for drug toxicity. So let's go back to the Lux Maxes. And why is it concerning that prominent Lux Maxes like Clavicular are taking progabalin as part of their stack? I think there's a whole range of issues here. One is the term stack. Because it's progressed out of this supplement stacking, I think it's really worrying that it's such a... People have become desensitized to the idea that they're taking drugs now in some of these communities, particularly the biohacker and Lux Maxing communities, where everybody, and we see it, we've talked about it on the show with Joe Rogan taking a whole stack of medications. This idea that it's increasingly hard to distinguish between supplement drug and peptide and the safety and risk factors of all of those things are hard to discern. But it's also then really hard to identify the risk of overlapping those things because, well, I'm just taking the supplement stack and everybody else is taking it, and therefore it must be safe without the consideration that something like progabalin in particular, you need to be carefully considering what other medications you take it with because actually that's when the risk of harm increases. Ultimately, it seems to me that Clavicular is a deeply unwell young man struggling with some form of extreme body dysmorphia and having significant difficulties with social engagement. He is just 20 years old. He is so young and taking a whole concoction of medications, including really serious medications. His behavior is ramping up, facilitated by a platform which promotes the stripping of particularly egregious or shocking behavior to increase views and therefore income. He also talks about the time when he was kicked out of university because a forum that he frequents, the luxmax.org, which is something weird going on there. I can't figure out who owns that company. He claims they had written to the university to say that he had drugs on site. And so they kicked him out. And he had to work a job. He had to wait on, and I think he called it like wage something. What did he call it? Anyway, he got kicked out of university and had to work a job. And apparently this is an absolutely terrible thing to have to do to work for your money. But clearly it's fine now because he must be making a killing streaming. The latest reporting I saw says that he's going to stop taking the drugs, at least for a little while, hopefully forever. But he does say that this means he will have to stop IRL streaming, streaming while out and about in public already, if he's unable to take the drugs because he believes those drugs are what makes it possible for him to interact with people in public. He said that and then there are reports that he was out club opening the night after he'd been hospitalized in a place where by his own admission, he maybe would prefer to have the help of drugs. So who knows how things are going to go. But I do think it's one to keep an eye on. Progabalin reporting is starting to get a bit scaremongering, I think, especially with some of those headlines that we talked about. And I don't want to contribute to any of that because it is clearly a helpful neuropathic pain medication for people with certain types of pain and other conditions. And by all accounts, it's a reasonably safe medication to take in isolation. There are some considerations to have about other risk factors, but it does seem like it's increasing and has been increasing for the last several years on the streets, just generally, for recreational use and is maybe going to start increasing in some of those kind of in-cell picopartistry looks maxi types spaces because of that perceived improvement of social anxiety and difficulties with social interaction.

Speaker 2:
[40:43] So I was in a gig in Manchester on Friday. Had no idea about, Nicola does this sometimes. Nicola books tickets to a thing, and I've no idea what the thing is, and she doesn't tell me in advance that this thing, it just gets to Tuesday, when she goes, Marsh, have you got any plans for about 48 hours from now? If not, we're driving to Manchester, you take me to this gig. I had no idea what this was. This has gone badly for me in the past. She wants to see a band, I don't give a fuck about that band. I've got to see them. It's been interminably boring. This time she was saying, there's a guy called Joshua Idehen, which I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Joshua Idehen.

Speaker 3:
[41:21] Well, I have because Nicholas told me about him.

Speaker 2:
[41:22] Yeah, I knew nothing at all.

Speaker 1:
[41:24] She said, oh, you should listen, I think you'd really like him.

Speaker 2:
[41:26] When you've said it in the past, not enjoyed it. So Joshua Idehen is like, he's more of a poet than a rapper, but it's done to essentially dance music. And we went to his gig at Guerrilla Manchester, and he was genuinely excellent. But what was interesting about him was, now I understand the appeal of those African style churches, because he very clearly came from, he talked about how he grew up in Nigeria at a Roman Catholic church, is not a believer anymore. I think he might be gay. He certainly had a lot of gay vibes going on in the stuff that he was talking about, being at like gay clubs and stuff. But he had all of the presentation styles of a Nigerian pastor while delivering quite humanist rap messages about how we should love each other and come together and be there for everyone else and look after each other. And genuinely, it was a really uplifting experience of, ah, that is what that Nigerian, African style, evangelism is good for. You can at least train someone to do this, which is actually genuinely really nice.

Speaker 3:
[42:28] I can tell you what it's absolutely not good for though. Because Nicola messaged me, I have to go. Well, she messaged me before to see if I would go with her, and I already had plans. So she messaged me afterwards saying she had a great time and that she thought I would really like him.

Speaker 2:
[42:40] I think I really like him.

Speaker 3:
[42:41] She put him on while we were playing Marvel Champions. And I can tell you exactly when you don't want to be listening to spoken words slash rapping over repetitive dance, electro music is when other people are talking about their moves in a board game.

Speaker 2:
[42:55] In a very complex board game.

Speaker 3:
[42:56] It was interminable.

Speaker 2:
[42:59] Well, if you get the chance to see him, I'd recommend it. Excellent. I think the sort of the humanist, the atheist in our audience would really gel with his stuff.

Speaker 1:
[43:14] So I've got a talk coming up. I don't do a lot of talks, but I've got a talk coming up.

Speaker 2:
[43:17] Have you?

Speaker 1:
[43:18] And not a talk at a web software conference.

Speaker 3:
[43:21] Those are usually the ones you advertise.

Speaker 1:
[43:22] For a fricking change this time. No, I'm going to be talking at Bristol Skeptics.

Speaker 2:
[43:27] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[43:27] That is going to be on the 28th of this month in the Wardrobe Theatre.

Speaker 3:
[43:32] Good group, and it is a great venue. It is a really great venue. I recommend people in the area try and get into, like, it's a fun, it makes the talk even more enjoyable when it's in such a nice venue.

Speaker 2:
[43:44] See, this is how you plug a talk, because you're plugging the talk today, as of recording the 20th, as of broadcast the 23rd, the talks on the 28th. I'm giving the talk tomorrow, the 21st of April in Glasgow.

Speaker 3:
[43:56] Okay, two days ago.

Speaker 2:
[43:57] Two days ago.

Speaker 1:
[43:59] That's good. That works.

Speaker 2:
[44:01] You can have come along and possibly have seen me two days ago. If you did come along and see me two days ago, let me know, is what I'm suffering with now, is this just allergies or has it developed into a cold by then? You can let me know if we do that.

Speaker 3:
[44:15] How many times have we live recorded you getting sick?

Speaker 2:
[44:18] Oh God, it's all the time. We also live recorded me not being sick, like sounding like I might be getting sick, but not getting sick. So it could go all the way.

Speaker 3:
[44:26] I don't think that's true.

Speaker 2:
[44:27] My allergies flare up all the time.

Speaker 3:
[44:29] They do, but I think every time we've mentioned it on air, you've ended up getting sick.

Speaker 2:
[44:32] That's your fault then. Because I quite often have allergic symptoms that don't turn into an illness, and I'm not seeing you guys at those times. So what's the common fact here?

Speaker 1:
[44:43] So anyway, that's the Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol, 7:30 PM. And I'm going to be talking about the placebo effect. It's going to be a standard. I sent my talk title through to Bristol Skeptics, and I titled it what is the draft title for my book, which is Much Ado About Nothing.

Speaker 2:
[44:59] You're welcome.

Speaker 1:
[44:59] The placebo effect. And they've taken the Much Ado About Nothing off it, because it happens in a theatre and would be confused if it was doing a bit of Shakespeare.

Speaker 2:
[45:10] That is true. That's a very good point.

Speaker 3:
[45:13] Just read some Shakespeare instead.

Speaker 2:
[45:15] Just go for it.

Speaker 1:
[45:16] Just read some Shakespeare. Just do a dramatic reading of Shakespeare. But yeah, so if you're in the Bristol area, come along to that. Come and say hello. That'll be a lovely time. We should also do a quick plug for Liverpool Skeptics in the pub. So we've got an event. Our next event is our social event. That's going to be Dr. Duncan's. That's going to be in two weeks today, because we have a phantom Thursday this month. So it's going to be two weeks today, and that's on the 7th of May. That's going to be in Dr. Duncan's on St. John's Lane. And that's going to be a fantastic time as well. I don't know. I'm going to be at that one because I am going to be in Leeds at a web conference on that day. So I might miss that.

Speaker 2:
[45:55] I'll probably be there. I'll have been back from Florence for two days by then. I'm going to Florence for a few days, but I'll be back and I'll go to that, I'm sure.

Speaker 1:
[46:01] Alice, are you going to be around for that one?

Speaker 3:
[46:03] Undecided as yet. I'll be, I will be just getting back from a conference in Munich. So it depends how broken I am.

Speaker 1:
[46:11] Yeah. Aside from that, I think that's all we have time for. I think it is. All that remains then is to thank Marsh for coming along today.

Speaker 3:
[46:19] Cheers.

Speaker 1:
[46:19] Thank you to Alice.

Speaker 3:
[46:20] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[46:20] We have been Skeptics with a K and we will see you next time.

Speaker 2:
[46:23] Bye now. Bye.

Speaker 1:
[46:30] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptics Society. For questions or comments, email podcasts at skepticswithak.org, and you can find out more about Merseyside Skeptics at merseysideskeptics.org.uk.