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Speaker 1: Welcome to two percent. I'm your host, Michael Eister. So,

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Speaker 1: Alan Levinovitz, he is not a health journalist, nor is

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Speaker 1: he a doctor. He is a religion scholar at James

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Speaker 1: Madison University. But that background that has allowed him to

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Speaker 1: figure out something really important, and that's the way most

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Speaker 1: of us think about health. It often functions like a religion.

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Speaker 1: Think about it. There are ideas of purity and contamination

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Speaker 1: and salvation, and there are also tribes that will turn

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Speaker 1: on you this second that you question the doctrine. Now,

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Speaker 1: once you see this pattern, you cannot unsee it. Arguments

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Speaker 1: we all have online and see out in the world

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Speaker 1: about science, diets, seed oils, longevity, raw milks, long covid.

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Speaker 1: There aren't disagreements about data. They're often disagre agreements about

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Speaker 1: who we are. Now, why are we bringing on Alan now? Well,

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Speaker 1: he recently wrote a piece for Wired magazine about long

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Speaker 1: COVID and the backlash this guy got it was vicious

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Speaker 1: and it was immediate. So we're going to start there,

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Speaker 1: not to reiterate the science, but because the backlash itself

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Speaker 1: is the cleanest demonstration of Alan's thesis that I have

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Speaker 1: seen in years of this interview. It can help you

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Speaker 1: think about your own health beliefs much better. I know

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Speaker 1: it helped me. So let's bring on Alan now after

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Speaker 1: a quick break. Well, Alan, thanks for coming on the show.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. All right.

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Speaker 1: So a new edition of Wired, you write an article

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Speaker 1: on long COVID, basically about brain retraining approaches, the role

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Speaker 1: of the brain and chronic illness, and why some of

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Speaker 1: these treatments seem to work for some patients, but they're

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Speaker 1: kind of seen as heretical among people who suffer from

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Speaker 1: long COVID, these patient advocacy groups, and the response it

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Speaker 1: was intense. What has it been like for you given

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Speaker 1: the response online.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's been it's been a little scary, to be honest.

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Speaker 3: I've said, you know, there's some people who have watched

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Speaker 3: every second of every video that's available of me online,

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Speaker 3: clicked it to make me look as bad as possible,

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Speaker 3: find every read every single post, every single piece of writing.

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Speaker 3: And again, I guess that's just the risk of being

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Speaker 3: out there. And I want to say upfront and center,

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Speaker 3: whatever I'm experiencing online, some kind of online pylon, it's

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Speaker 3: nothing like being debilitated by a severe chronic illness and

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Speaker 3: told by your family and friends that you're faking, that

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Speaker 3: it's all in your head, that it's fake, that long

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Speaker 3: COVID isn't real.

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Speaker 2: So I keep that in mind, you know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I get a little scared if there's you know,

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Speaker 3: I get an email that's cc to my department head,

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Speaker 3: or I get people coming.

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Speaker 2: Up with petitions calling for things to be changed, whatever.

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Speaker 3: But you know at the end of the day that

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Speaker 3: this is a group of people who have suffered something

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Speaker 3: far worse than I can imagine.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell us a little bit. I mean I

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Speaker 1: sort of touched on the article a little bit, but

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Speaker 1: tell us kind of in your words, what is the

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Speaker 1: article about, and then why was there such a backlash

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Speaker 1: to the article in the first place. Also, let me

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Speaker 1: say that we're focusing on the backlash, but there are

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Speaker 1: a ton of people who have said, this is a

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Speaker 1: wonderful article. And I will say from my own perspective

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Speaker 1: as a journalist, I thought it was exceedingly well reported

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Speaker 1: and generally fair and doing the job of journalism to

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Speaker 1: raise big questions that are I think are trying to

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Speaker 1: be helpful.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's tough to summarize the article. I mean

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Speaker 3: it is about long COVID basically, what's the state of

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Speaker 3: the science on long COVID and what explains that. And

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Speaker 3: in order to tell that story, I had to get

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Speaker 3: into the world of what's called myalgic and stephalomiolitis chronic

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Speaker 3: fatigue syndrome, which goes back many decades.

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Speaker 2: But long story short is.

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Speaker 3: This, no one really knows what causes long COVID other

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Speaker 3: than sort of by definition, it's triggered by a COVID infection,

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Speaker 3: and no one knows why some people's symptoms last longer.

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Speaker 3: There are biomarkers that have been proposed to show that

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Speaker 3: the symptoms are real, which they are, of course, but

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Speaker 3: we don't know whether those symptoms are caused by chronic stress,

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Speaker 3: by infection, by deconditioning, by some combination of.

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Speaker 2: All of those.

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Speaker 3: And the problem is that all of those things that

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Speaker 3: I've said, stress, deconditioning, some other kind of infection. These

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Speaker 3: are arguments that people in this world have heard many,

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Speaker 3: many times, and they've heard these arguments in the context

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Speaker 3: of people trying to dismiss their illness, so to tell

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Speaker 3: them that in fact they are manufacturing these symptoms through

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Speaker 3: having wrong beliefs and if only they could resolve what

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Speaker 3: is purely a psychiatric condition which they're choosing not to

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Speaker 3: do or something like that, then it would be healed.

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Speaker 3: And often those accusations even extend so far as to

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Speaker 3: say that they're malingering or faking. So millions of people

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Speaker 3: who are extremely sick have been told this. And what

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Speaker 3: I was trying to explore in the Wired piece was

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Speaker 3: how that patient advocacy community has become extremely powerful and

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Speaker 3: in my opinion, captured largely the journalistic and scientific establishment

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Speaker 3: when it comes to reporting on and researching this condition.

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Speaker 2: And it's more true in the United States.

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Speaker 3: There's a little bit less of that capture in Europe,

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Speaker 3: but overall, I think it's a pretty safe statement. And

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Speaker 3: what that boils down to is this, there is an

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Speaker 3: insistence that anything that involves the brain or nervous system

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Speaker 3: needs to be kind of bracketed unless it's attached to

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Speaker 3: a biological explanation.

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Speaker 2: And the reason for.

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Speaker 3: That is that biology is seen as legitimizing, whereas psychology

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Speaker 3: or the brain or mind is seen as delegitimizing or

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Speaker 3: gas lighting or blaming the patient.

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Speaker 1: It kind of becomes this, oh, it's all on your head.

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Speaker 1: That's exactly right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And.

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Speaker 3: What I try to point out in the article is

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Speaker 3: that there's pretty good evidence, or at least some promising evidence,

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Speaker 3: that some people's recoveries have to do with their ability

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Speaker 3: to calm their nervous system, and that nervous system dysregulation

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Speaker 3: seems like, at least in some people, to be a

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Speaker 3: promising avenue for healing. And also that the absence of

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Speaker 3: any clear biomarkers after over two billion dollars and five

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Speaker 3: years of research into this condition, tells us it's it's

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Speaker 3: likely that the dysfunction is happening somewhere that's difficult to study.

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Speaker 3: Hardest part of the human to studies is the brain

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Speaker 3: and the nervous system. So I think there's certainly a

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Speaker 3: lot of evidence that points to this area as promising research.

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Speaker 2: But you know, as the.

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Speaker 3: Backlash illustrates, it's very difficult to talk about it without

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Speaker 3: falling back into a kind of it's all in your head,

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Speaker 3: it's wrong beliefs, this is psychogenic, it's psychosomatic, it's your fall,

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Speaker 3: you're malingering sort of narrative.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so your background, you're not a doctor, you do

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Speaker 1: some health journalism or health anthropology. I don't know what

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Speaker 1: do you want to call it, but your main training

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Speaker 1: is that you are a religion scholar, right, and so

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Speaker 1: a lot of your work looks at how the way

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Speaker 1: people talk about health has some of the same patterns

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Speaker 1: and structures as religion. How did you see that play

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Speaker 1: out in the backlash you've received.

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Speaker 3: So throughout my whole career, which goes back more than

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Speaker 3: a decade, what I've really been interested in is how

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Speaker 3: you say religion. But you know my action my area

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Speaker 3: background is classical Chinese thought. I happened to you can

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Speaker 3: only study classical Chinese thought in religion departments, typically.

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Speaker 2: With some exceptions in Michigan and Hawaii.

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Speaker 3: But so what I'm really interested is how metaphysics, I

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Speaker 3: guess you could say, shapes the shapes our reality, shapes

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Speaker 3: our perception of reality, shapes our beliefs about ourselves about

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Speaker 3: and especially health and science. And so in this context,

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Speaker 3: what I saw so clearly was that a kind of

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Speaker 3: metaphysics was making it hard for people to talk about

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Speaker 3: these issues.

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Speaker 2: So words like real get thrown around all the time.

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Speaker 3: Many of the accusations that you'll see about my piece,

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Speaker 3: which if you read the piece of course, it's like

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Speaker 3: a lot of people will talk to you like, wait,

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Speaker 3: I don't think they've I don't think they're reading the piece.

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Speaker 3: But people say he's saying long COVID's not real. It's

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Speaker 3: very interesting, you know. It's sort of like when people

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Speaker 3: say this food isn't real, you need to eat real food.

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Speaker 3: So a lot of what I'm seeing coming out of

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Speaker 3: this world of philosophy and religion and metaphysics is that

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Speaker 3: behind what look like scientific arguments and really impassioned defenses

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Speaker 3: of in this case a sort of ideology of long covid,

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Speaker 3: but in my other work dietary interventions or certain kinds

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Speaker 3: of medical treatments, what's operative in the background is a

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Speaker 3: metaphysics that people feel very strongly about and need to

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Speaker 3: be able to defend using whatever the most powerful rhetoric

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Speaker 3: is of the day, which right now is science and

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Speaker 3: quantifiable research.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So in your book Natural that came out in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty, walk us through that, what prompted that and

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Speaker 1: kind of what is the argument of the book?

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Speaker 3: Really simply as I was working on dietary stuff for

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Speaker 3: the book before that, you know, looking at nonasse, that

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Speaker 3: gluten sensitivity, just looking at people's dietary patterns in general,

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Speaker 3: also looking at pseudoscience. So I would run into people

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Speaker 3: trying to heal their cancer with dietary interventions that sort

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Speaker 3: of thing, and then dying if they also abandoned chemo

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Speaker 3: and surgery. What I saw was the word natural came

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Speaker 3: up all the time. People say, what what your should

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Speaker 3: do is eat naturally, and that was used, though always

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Speaker 3: to defend whatever it was that they wanted to eat.

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Speaker 3: So vegetarians would often say, that's the natural diet of humans.

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Speaker 2: And this goes back historically for centuries.

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Speaker 3: And I started to realize that what natural was was

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Speaker 3: a stand in, a kind of scientific sounding or secular,

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Speaker 3: non religious stand in for holy or pure, and what

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Speaker 3: nature was was a scientific or secular stand in for

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Speaker 3: an all powerful organizing force that's on our side. And

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Speaker 3: if we align with nature, then we will be healthy

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Speaker 3: and happy. And if we don't align with nature, then

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Speaker 3: that explains all of our suffering. And so what I

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Speaker 3: do in Natural is I show how that plays out

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Speaker 3: in so many context not just health, but in economic

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Speaker 3: theories we should use natural markets.

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Speaker 2: For example, this idea.

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Speaker 3: That somehow there's a force that organizes everything harmoniously, if

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Speaker 3: only we didn't interfere with it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, where else where else did you say it?

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Speaker 2: So?

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Speaker 1: I think you say it a lot in diet. I

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Speaker 1: mean I think like clean eating, that's clearly there's some

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Speaker 1: implication natural. Where else have you seen it in the

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Speaker 1: health realm?

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Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, where does it not crop up? So

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Speaker 3: childbirth is a really good example. And I actually let

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Speaker 3: me assume it on childbirth because I think I went

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Speaker 3: into this really cynical about naturalness of.

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Speaker 2: Why why are people so into natural? But when I.

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Speaker 3: Interviewed many, many mothers who had opted for natural childbirth,

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Speaker 3: they would start by giving scientific reasons.

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Speaker 2: They'd talk about, you know, dangers in.

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Speaker 3: Hospitals or bonding with the child or whatever you name it,

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Speaker 3: and they would cite studies, because that's the currency of

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Speaker 3: truth right now. But when I continued to talk with them,

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Speaker 3: they would say things like, well, also, I just I

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Speaker 3: wanted to be at home. I wanted to feel in

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Speaker 3: control of my birth. I didn't want to give birth

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Speaker 3: in some sort of hospital where it feels like there's

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Speaker 3: nothing special or holy about this ritual of giving birth.

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Speaker 3: I was like, wow, yeah, that actually makes a lot

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Speaker 3: of sense. The problem is that in order to justify

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Speaker 3: choices like I wanted to do something that feels beautiful

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Speaker 3: or feels sacred to me, because those sorts of values.

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Speaker 2: Aren't allowed in the kind of public square.

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Speaker 3: People kept having to shift naturalness into a kind of

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Speaker 3: scientific argument. So I think part of the problem actually

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Speaker 3: is that people want to do things because it makes

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Speaker 3: them feel freer, or it makes them feel more empowered,

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Speaker 3: or they think it's beautiful, and because that kind of

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Speaker 3: argument is sort of disallowed or is weaker than scientific arguments,

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Speaker 3: they end up shifting to well, look at the study

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Speaker 3: that says natural births are better or something like that.

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Speaker 3: And I also see it in sports too, right, So

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Speaker 3: naturalness is a really important part of sports.

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Speaker 2: So I talk about that a lot, and that actually

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Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense. We want our athletes to be.

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Speaker 3: Natural why because otherwise people would be winning the sprint

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Speaker 3: using a motorcycle. I mean, you know, it's so the

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Speaker 3: sports itself is is actually built around a kind of

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Speaker 3: messy but important conception of naturalness.

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Speaker 2: Those are two examples.

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Speaker 1: What are some examples of the diet world. I feel

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Speaker 1: like those are the things that people probably will see

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Speaker 1: the most often.

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Speaker 2: Carnivore diet.

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Speaker 3: People will often say that what humans should naturally eat,

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Speaker 3: the natural ideal diet is all meat, and they'll point

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Speaker 3: to how indigenous Alaskans or something would when given the choice,

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Speaker 3: always for organ meat or marrow or something like that.

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Speaker 3: Or they will talk about how the low carb diet

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Speaker 3: is a natural diet. And then what they do, what

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Speaker 3: people do when they make these arguments is actually very religious.

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Speaker 3: They say, back in the day, when people hadn't been

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Speaker 3: corrupted by modernity, here's what they ate.

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Speaker 2: So they use semi.

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Speaker 3: Nomadic or nomadic hunter gatherers as the stand in for eden.

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Speaker 3: And then they take their diet, whether it's the carnivor

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Speaker 3: diet or the vegetarian you know, vegetarian diet or whatever

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Speaker 3: it is, they backfit it in general, those same truth

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Speaker 3: for organic food. So organic is just sort of you know,

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Speaker 3: kissing cousins with natural And they say, well, back in

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Speaker 3: the day when people didn't get sick, there weren't any

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Speaker 3: inorganic foods, or there weren't GMOs or whatever, So GMOs

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Speaker 3: another really good example of that. And interestingly, again to

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Speaker 3: focus a bit I know, as long a long answer

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Speaker 3: on GMOs in the diet world. I think part of

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Speaker 3: what's going on is also religious, which is that genetic

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Speaker 3: engineering is seen as playing God. And what I actually

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Speaker 3: don't get to talk about in the book, but which

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Speaker 3: is really important is the same kind of resistance to

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Speaker 3: nuclear energy happens as well. So in the naturalness world,

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Speaker 3: there's this idea that if we're splitting atoms or engineering genetics,

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Speaker 3: we're playing God, and that's necessarily.

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Speaker 2: Wrong and therefore extremely dangerous.

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Speaker 3: And so you get real problems with the actual ability

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Speaker 3: to assess, you know, is which foods are actually dangerous

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Speaker 3: for us, which there are obviously processed foods that are

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Speaker 3: extremely bad for our health for a variety of reasons.

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Speaker 3: There are forms of energy that are really bad. But

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Speaker 3: once you have that kind of religious slash metaphysical framework

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Speaker 3: in the background, it can be very difficult to actually

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Speaker 3: talk about what's driving people's arguments.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, what other elements of I'll use the term religious

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Speaker 1: do you see in the health world? As you were talking,

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Speaker 1: I was thinking, even like there's almost a rise of

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Speaker 1: kind of gurus we call them in the health world,

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Speaker 1: and that's like a turn taken specifically from religion.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. I mean, it's funny looking at the history

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Speaker 3: of this. I spent a lot of time look at

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Speaker 3: the history, especially of dietary things, but now also health

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Speaker 3: trends in general. You would be shocked or people who

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Speaker 3: aren't familiar with this history. There was this guy, Horas Fletcher.

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Speaker 3: He was popular in the early to mid twentieth century,

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Speaker 3: the great masticator.

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Speaker 2: So his theory was that you were supposed to chew food.

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Speaker 3: I forget exactly one hundred times two hundred times before

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Speaker 3: he swallowed it. He would mail envelopes of his shit

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Speaker 3: to other to people and he would say, look my shit. Literally,

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Speaker 3: my shit doesn't stink. That's what he would say, because

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Speaker 3: I chew my food like this. Can you imagine this?

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Speaker 3: He would go to colleges, he would do strength competitions

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Speaker 3: with people. He'd be like, they're famous. He bested Yale

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Speaker 3: Yale athletes in a strength competition.

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Speaker 2: Older guy, you know the same kind of things you

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Speaker 2: see today.

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Speaker 3: Right there is the RFK junior sort of approach to

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Speaker 3: a bunch of shirtless push ups with kid Rock to

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Speaker 3: prove that whatever your preferred health I don't know, intervention

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Speaker 3: is is the right one. And people loved it. People

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Speaker 3: loved the great masticator. Everyone was cheating their food one

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Speaker 3: hundred times. All these celebrities, Rockefeller, you know, authors think,

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Speaker 3: Henry James, I think I forget exactly who. But you

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Speaker 3: see the same thing again and again and again. And

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Speaker 3: to tie this back a little bit to the wired piece, understandably,

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Speaker 3: a lot of people in this world see the sorts

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Speaker 3: of people that I highlighted the brain retraining clinicians as

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Speaker 3: just another set of snake oil gurus.

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Speaker 2: And to be fair, some of.

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Speaker 3: Them are and they have that, they have that kind

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Speaker 3: of charisma, they have that sort of everyone will heal

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Speaker 3: themselves if they follow me.

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Speaker 2: And it's and that stuff's bad. It's it's bad, and

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Speaker 2: it makes it difficult to see things clearly.

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Speaker 1: Given that, how do you think about balancing So there's

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Speaker 1: these two tensions. On one hand, we want we want

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Speaker 1: to look at the broad base of evidence, what works

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Speaker 1: for most people most of the time. At the same time,

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Speaker 1: I do think the sort of end of one my

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Speaker 1: own personal experience can be useful. And in the case

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Speaker 1: of kind of what you wrote about with a long

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Speaker 1: COVID piece, it's like there's a lot of different things

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Speaker 1: that may or may not work. This brain training stuff

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Speaker 1: seems to work for at least some population and people

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Speaker 1: who have long COVID. At the same time, to your point,

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Speaker 1: there are snake oil salesmen and here's this other type

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Speaker 1: of evidence. So how the hell do you, like, wait,

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Speaker 1: how do you wade through that as a human being?

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Speaker 2: What a big question?

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Speaker 1: Sorry, I guess.

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Speaker 2: Well.

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Speaker 3: So, one thing I would say about the brain retraining

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Speaker 3: coaching world, whatever you want to call it, is that

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Speaker 3: there are some kinds of interventions and people don't I

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Speaker 3: didn't get to get into this a lot and the

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Speaker 3: wired piece, but I think it's really important. There's some

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Speaker 3: kinds of interventions that are just harder to test in

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Speaker 3: the way that our institutions of scientific inquirer are set

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Speaker 3: up than others that they're They're just more difficult to test.

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Speaker 2: So, for example, Biggest Loser.

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Speaker 3: The television show, as a year long weight loss intervention

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Speaker 3: is terrific. It works great, Like everyone who goes on

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Speaker 3: Biggest Loser loses a ton of weight. Like, how do

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Speaker 3: you do a randomized controlled trial of being on the

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Speaker 3: Biggest Loser as.

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Speaker 2: A year long weight loss intervention?

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Speaker 1: You can't.

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Speaker 3: What does the blinding look like? I mean, it doesn't

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Speaker 3: it wouldn't even make any sense.

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Speaker 2: And so I think a part of what gets lost

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Speaker 2: in these sorts of interventions.

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Speaker 3: At the risk of bringing up something that I know

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Speaker 3: you talk about, I want to stay away from this.

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Speaker 2: But addiction is similar to this. So addiction is a

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Speaker 2: physiological state. You become addicted to alcohol or drugs physiologically,

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Speaker 2: and then it's not magic. It's not that it's all

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Speaker 2: in it's not that the addiction is all in your head.

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Speaker 2: It's not that the symptoms of withdrawaler all in your head.

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Speaker 2: That would be absurd to say.

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Speaker 3: But some people kick their addictions through a combination of

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Speaker 3: community and think. I mean, I mean, it sounds sort

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Speaker 3: of bizarre to put it that way, but that's really

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Speaker 3: what happens.

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Speaker 2: As some people don't. For some people, it doesn't work.

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Speaker 3: Some people have to find the right community for them.

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Speaker 3: Some people try six times to kick their addiction until

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Speaker 3: they finally find, at the right time in their life,

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Speaker 3: the community that works right for them. None of that

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Speaker 3: is unscientific or woo woo. None of that implies that

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Speaker 3: if only addicts changed their minds, they would just heal,

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Speaker 3: even though there are, of course some cases of people

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Speaker 3: who after like a car accident with their kid in

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Speaker 3: the back or something just instantaneously kick their addiction.

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Speaker 2: So there's I think that's actually I mean, there's no

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Speaker 2: perfect parallel.

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Speaker 3: And when people hear addiction, they often think, well, that's

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Speaker 3: caused by choices you've made, as opposed to post viral

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Speaker 3: infections and whatever. That's not really the point in this analogy.

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Speaker 3: The point is there are physiological states, really entrenched ones

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Speaker 3: that cause physiological symptoms.

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Speaker 2: That we know can be resolved through.

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Speaker 3: Effort, full involvement in a community, and a set of

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Speaker 3: beliefs that often doesn't work the first time or the

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Speaker 3: second time or the third time, and often will work

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Speaker 3: for one person and be deeply alienating to someone else.

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Speaker 2: Again, I don't want to get into AA.

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Speaker 3: Or anything like that, but for some people, AA is

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Speaker 3: a nightmare. They hate the god talk, they hate the

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Speaker 3: higher power talk, and.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's messy. How do you navigate that? Well,

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Speaker 2: one thing I.

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Speaker 3: Think you need to do, and this is something I

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Speaker 3: think in the long COVID world it's just a disastro

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Speaker 3: is when when you have something dominated by biomedical science

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Speaker 3: sevens and nutrition science too, there's an endless churn of

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Speaker 3: studies that come out strawberries, this blah blah blah that whatever, right,

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Speaker 3: I mean, there's endless nutrition, This costs cancer, This cure's cancer.

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Speaker 1: Saves your life one week. In the next week you're

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Speaker 1: going to die from it.

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Speaker 2: Totally.

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Speaker 3: What people don't realize is long COVID and viral research

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Speaker 3: sounds more or something in the nutrition research. But in

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Speaker 3: a world where everyone for remember remember Michael the pandemic

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Speaker 3: twenty twenty. I know this from speaking with tons of scientists.

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Speaker 3: All these labs shut down. The only people that were

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Speaker 3: coming in were COVID patients.

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Speaker 2: So what do you do if you're a lab that

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Speaker 2: was studying one thing, but it's twenty twenty, You're like, well,

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Speaker 2: I guess we've got these patients coming in. We got some.

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Speaker 3: Samples in the fridge. I don't know runs. Let's turn

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Speaker 3: to COVID.

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Speaker 2: Let's study COVID, let's study long COVID.

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Speaker 3: So what you had was a ton of people churning

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Speaker 3: out COVID and long COVID studies and a public desperate

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Speaker 3: for answers.

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Speaker 2: And so, for example, I'm just going to take one example.

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Speaker 3: There was a twenty twenty six study and cell that

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Speaker 3: came out from a sort of prominent long COVID immunologist

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Speaker 3: named Aikiko Iwasaki. She's a Yale And people were tweeting

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Speaker 3: this at me and sending it to me, and they're like, oh,

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Speaker 3: you say long covid, it's faith. You say, we don't

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Speaker 3: know the mechanism. What about this study? So I'm looking

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Speaker 3: at the study and what Usaki sent its an interesting study.

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Speaker 3: They took antibodies that are statistically significantly more elevated in

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Speaker 3: people with long COVID, although it's not clear exactly how much,

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Speaker 3: and certainly nothing like you would see in like an

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Speaker 3: ms cohort. But these antibodies are slightly elevated, and they

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Speaker 3: injected them into mice and they seem to see similar

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Speaker 3: symptoms in the mice as to what you see.

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Speaker 2: In long COVID. This and another group replicated.

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Speaker 3: For people who are really want to prove that COVID

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Speaker 3: is real, and by real they mean the symptoms are

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Speaker 3: caused entirely by elevated auto antibodies, which in turn are

440
00:21:31,520 --> 00:21:33,359
Speaker 3: caused entirely by the COVID infection.

441
00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:36,159
Speaker 2: This study looked like proof.

442
00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:41,439
Speaker 3: But for any professional abienologist, this study looks like exactly what.

443
00:21:41,480 --> 00:21:41,800
Speaker 2: It is.

444
00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:48,840
Speaker 3: A very preliminary hypothesis generating study that has some promise,

445
00:21:49,080 --> 00:21:51,200
Speaker 3: but you know, there's all sorts of confound, there's all

446
00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:55,480
Speaker 3: sorts of variables that weren't controlled for. Doesn't matter to people.

447
00:21:55,800 --> 00:21:58,560
Speaker 3: That's the same as these studies about strawberries. Right, They're good,

448
00:21:58,560 --> 00:22:00,600
Speaker 3: they're important in certain ways. We need to be doing

449
00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:04,160
Speaker 3: research and all kinds of stuff, but they don't prove anything.

450
00:22:04,240 --> 00:22:05,840
Speaker 3: And yet every time a study comes out, you know

451
00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:08,080
Speaker 3: how it is, you drop the abstract in, you drop

452
00:22:08,119 --> 00:22:08,560
Speaker 3: the Lincoln.

453
00:22:08,720 --> 00:22:10,159
Speaker 2: You're like peace.

454
00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:11,159
Speaker 1: So I just proved it.

455
00:22:11,359 --> 00:22:13,400
Speaker 2: You know, science, the science is one. You know, it's

456
00:22:13,400 --> 00:22:15,120
Speaker 2: like those science. Science is real.

457
00:22:15,920 --> 00:22:18,399
Speaker 3: And I actually don't think Iwasaki would ever say anything

458
00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:20,480
Speaker 3: like what the people who are citing her.

459
00:22:20,320 --> 00:22:23,680
Speaker 2: Studies are saying. And that's part of the problem too.

460
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:25,399
Speaker 3: But she's not going to wait in and say stop

461
00:22:25,480 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 3: saying that my study is just barely a hypothesis generator,

462
00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:33,720
Speaker 3: because scientists are people, and this community sees her as

463
00:22:33,760 --> 00:22:37,199
Speaker 3: a savior, and she too is subject to death threats

464
00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:39,200
Speaker 3: in the same way that the other researchers I've talked

465
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:41,119
Speaker 3: about are, and so she's just kind of going to

466
00:22:41,160 --> 00:22:43,480
Speaker 3: stay out of it, and she's going to do her science,

467
00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:46,119
Speaker 3: which is great, she keeps doing science, but I don't

468
00:22:46,119 --> 00:22:51,720
Speaker 3: think she's willing or able to intervene and stop the

469
00:22:51,840 --> 00:22:57,520
Speaker 3: kind of disingenuous or deceptive framing of or exaggeration of

470
00:22:57,520 --> 00:22:59,520
Speaker 3: what it is that her studies do or don't show

471
00:22:59,600 --> 00:22:59,920
Speaker 3: or prove.

472
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:02,000
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break, and then Alan

473
00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:04,560
Speaker 1: is going to share why health beliefs become so entrenched.

474
00:23:13,520 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 1: Why do you think people get so vehement around their beliefs,

475
00:23:17,480 --> 00:23:22,280
Speaker 1: Whether it's the stuff that you've experienced with long COVID

476
00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:25,639
Speaker 1: patient advocacy groups, or whether it's if I go online

477
00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:28,119
Speaker 1: and I look up carnivore diet on Twitter, and I

478
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:31,439
Speaker 1: see people just tearing each other's heads off doing the

479
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:35,440
Speaker 1: thing with the abstracts, and you know, it just so embedded.

480
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:37,639
Speaker 3: Well with health and with diet, which is bound up

481
00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:40,800
Speaker 3: with health. I mean, it's so scary we die, we

482
00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:45,360
Speaker 3: suffer with food. It's the only time, really, other than breathing,

483
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:48,800
Speaker 3: that we take something from well and vaccines, which to

484
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:50,720
Speaker 3: the point that you're sort of asking about, where we

485
00:23:50,720 --> 00:23:53,119
Speaker 3: take something from outside of our body and put it

486
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:54,320
Speaker 3: inside of ourselves.

487
00:23:54,359 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 2: It's a very personal thing.

488
00:23:55,560 --> 00:23:59,120
Speaker 3: It's no surprise that every single religion and cultural tradition

489
00:23:59,520 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 3: has had around food, has food rituals, and so these

490
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:09,840
Speaker 3: are deeply personal features of our life. They're scary, they're vulnerable.

491
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:13,320
Speaker 3: We are vulnerable when we eat. We are vulnerable when

492
00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:17,679
Speaker 3: we go to the doctor. And especially if someone is

493
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:21,440
Speaker 3: sick and they've been accused of faking, or if they're

494
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:23,560
Speaker 3: sick and they've been told it's all in their head,

495
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:27,240
Speaker 3: or if they've been sick and they're experiencing extremely intense

496
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:31,919
Speaker 3: physiological symptoms and someone tells them that it's just their anxiety,

497
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:33,800
Speaker 3: but they know that this is nothing like their anxiety.

498
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:36,840
Speaker 3: Whatever happens to be. And then, of course there's the

499
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 3: flip side. And I know you're also familiar with this, Michael.

500
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:43,880
Speaker 2: But when people resolve something, So if someone's been struggling

501
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,199
Speaker 2: with their weight for years and then they go on

502
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 2: the Kedo diet and start doing CrossFit, and all of

503
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:50,520
Speaker 2: a sudden, they feel better than they ever have in

504
00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:53,119
Speaker 2: their entire life, and health conditions disappear, and it feels

505
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:56,960
Speaker 2: almost miraculously effortless. They're like, holy crap, this is incredible.

506
00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:00,040
Speaker 3: I'm going to evangelize this, and this goes for the

507
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:01,880
Speaker 3: people who are doing the mind body stuff with long

508
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:04,880
Speaker 3: COVID as well. They feel like that too. So there's

509
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:07,720
Speaker 3: just because someone's evangelizing some sort of intervention doesn't mean

510
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 3: it worked or didn't work or anything like that. I

511
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:12,399
Speaker 3: would say one thing though, and this is why I

512
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:14,760
Speaker 3: was drawn to the mind body stuff in long COVID

513
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:18,480
Speaker 3: with dietary interventions or with pharmaceutical interventions. Some people with

514
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:20,640
Speaker 3: long COVID claim they have great success with lotos stout

515
00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 3: Trekstone or met Foreman and things that have not been

516
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:23,200
Speaker 3: proven either.

517
00:25:24,720 --> 00:25:27,280
Speaker 2: But when you say the lotos and now Trekstone.

518
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:32,320
Speaker 3: Helped me, what you're saying is this pharmacological intervention helped me.

519
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:35,440
Speaker 3: So if it is so in some of these studies

520
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:39,600
Speaker 3: of met foreman or or retis amount I pronounced it,

521
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:42,280
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter. Some of the studies of pharmacological interventions

522
00:25:42,280 --> 00:25:45,359
Speaker 3: for long COVID, thirty to sixty percent of the placebo

523
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:49,480
Speaker 3: arm also recover. So the study is negative because the

524
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,239
Speaker 3: active arm is no better than the placebo arm. But

525
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:54,439
Speaker 3: in one of them there was even sustained recovery for

526
00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:58,560
Speaker 3: a year in the placebo arm. If you're testing a pharmaceutical,

527
00:25:58,640 --> 00:26:00,879
Speaker 3: that's a failure if you're test still a mind body

528
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:04,680
Speaker 3: trial or a mind body intervention. It is a failure

529
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:06,200
Speaker 3: for the specific intervention.

530
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 2: But it also tells you that people are recovering, either

531
00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 2: spontaneously or because they're in the trial, or because the

532
00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 2: treatment is usual.

533
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:18,640
Speaker 3: Arm of the trial was affected, and so in many

534
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 3: ways that's actually that's a positive result if you're not

535
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 3: looking to confirm a pharmaceutical, if all you're looking to

536
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:29,200
Speaker 3: do is see, hey, how can we get people's symptoms

537
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 3: to remit or how can we get people to recover

538
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:31,679
Speaker 3: partially or.

539
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:32,560
Speaker 2: Fully from this condition.

540
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 3: A study in which the placebo arm is remarkably successful

541
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:42,040
Speaker 3: tells you something. It doesn't tell you that the pharmaceutical worked,

542
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 3: but it tells you that something works right and so

543
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 3: so in a way, and so that's something I would

544
00:26:47,040 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 3: point out as well. That's a little bit different from

545
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 3: and which gets confused when people are like, we don't have.

546
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:54,000
Speaker 2: Any evidence of these interventions working, and then they.

547
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 3: Get mad about the Pacibo effect and they talk about

548
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:58,280
Speaker 3: which I understand too. People can exaggerate that often Placibo

549
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:01,960
Speaker 3: is confused with you know, regression to the mean you

550
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 3: come in when you're really sick, so you're likely to

551
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:06,920
Speaker 3: heal just over the course of time. But again, if

552
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 3: you can attribute all of these recoveries to natural remission,

553
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 3: we should be telling people who get long COVID, hey,

554
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,400
Speaker 3: don't worry. Most people naturally remit. That should be the

555
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 3: first thing clinicians say. But they don't they you know,

556
00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 3: they say other stuff, scary stuff like this is a

557
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:23,840
Speaker 3: chronic condition that for most peoples with them for the

558
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 3: rest of their lives.

559
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 1: Why do you think there's such a tension between these

560
00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:31,760
Speaker 1: two ideas of body and mind. We see them as

561
00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 1: like these separate, distinct things where they're not necessary, they're

562
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 1: not always that right, like one affects the other affects

563
00:27:38,359 --> 00:27:38,640
Speaker 1: the other.

564
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:46,399
Speaker 3: Because as embodied human beings, we feel our minds, and

565
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 3: we feel our minds as distinct from our bodies, and

566
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 3: sometimes we can change our minds. It's another version of

567
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:55,919
Speaker 3: the free will question. So body mind is just the

568
00:27:56,640 --> 00:27:58,920
Speaker 3: is a different version of one of the most intractable

569
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 3: questions in philosophy, and it comes up in all cultures.

570
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:04,920
Speaker 2: You have the soul in lots of cultures, you.

571
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 3: Have the idea of a person persisting in the afterlife

572
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:09,560
Speaker 3: or being reincarnated.

573
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:11,360
Speaker 2: I can't think, honestly.

574
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe there's some, but the vast majority of

575
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:19,320
Speaker 3: cultures that I've studied have some version of a ghost

576
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:25,960
Speaker 3: in the machine, and they also have explanations of causality

577
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:28,720
Speaker 3: that are neither physical nor.

578
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:30,719
Speaker 2: Mental.

579
00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:33,200
Speaker 3: This ghost to the book I'm currently working on, they

580
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,359
Speaker 3: call them supernatural. And again I've seen people sort of

581
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 3: clipping interviews that have and being like, he thinks it's

582
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:38,680
Speaker 3: just demons.

583
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:39,920
Speaker 2: But it's not actually what I'm saying.

584
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 3: Oh, but what we do have in a lot of

585
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 3: cultures is people saying, Okay, this is not caused by

586
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:45,760
Speaker 3: a broken limb.

587
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 2: This pain you're having, it's not a broken limb. It's

588
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:52,080
Speaker 2: also not you faking.

589
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:53,840
Speaker 1: So what is it?

590
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 2: They're like, what is it?

591
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:56,480
Speaker 3: You know, in all cultures of trying to figure out

592
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 3: what could be this thing that is not your choice,

593
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 3: that is not biological or physiological, and they come up

594
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 3: with all kinds of kookie answers. It's an angry deceased

595
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 3: ancestor it's a demon. And we're trying to do that

596
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 3: today because the words for the inner section between mind

597
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:18,840
Speaker 3: and body that dash or that hyphen that that's that's

598
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 3: a really mysterious place, but it exists. It's a real place.

599
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 3: As you said, you know, the mind is the brain.

600
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 3: Whenever I interview neurologists, they're always doing scare quotes the

601
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 3: whole time. They're like, well, blah blah blah. You know,

602
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 3: I'm like, why are you doing the scare quilts. They're like, well,

603
00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 3: you know, how do you even talk about any of

604
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:34,880
Speaker 3: this stuff?

605
00:29:34,960 --> 00:29:37,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, to get back to the idea of natural So

606
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:41,320
Speaker 1: when someone goes to the grocery store and there's you know,

607
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: the natural peanut butter versus the one that doesn't say

608
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:46,720
Speaker 1: natural on it, or I don't know, maybe they're drawn

609
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 1: to raw milk or something. Do you think that the

610
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:54,560
Speaker 1: part of the draw is that we have modernized so

611
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: much that maybe we feel removed from something in a way,

612
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 1: say it almost something sacred?

613
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 2: Absolutely so over.

614
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 3: One of my friends in history of technology calls this

615
00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 3: epistemic opacity, which I think is a really interesting phrase.

616
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 3: Is a fancy phrase, but what he basically means is

617
00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 3: more and more of what's around us is impossible for

618
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 3: us to.

619
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:19,480
Speaker 2: Understand, so or even feel like we understand.

620
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:21,280
Speaker 3: I have no idea what's happening in this computer. I

621
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 3: have no idea how to fix my computer. I have

622
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 3: no idea how any of this technology works. Don't know

623
00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 3: my microwave works.

624
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:26,760
Speaker 2: Even cars.

625
00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 3: It used to be able to fix a car. If

626
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 3: feel pretty good with cars in the nineteen fifties or sixties.

627
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 3: You just open an engine. Every engine is like basically

628
00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 3: the same.

629
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 2: You know, now you got to plug it into a computer.

630
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 2: Everything's very distant.

631
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 3: We don't know where our food comes from, say reason

632
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 3: people like farmer's markets, and so that's deeply disempowering. It

633
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:45,280
Speaker 3: makes us feel like we depend on experts and authorities

634
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:47,960
Speaker 3: that are beyond our control. We're sort of we just

635
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:49,640
Speaker 3: have to kind of take what we get. We can't

636
00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:53,160
Speaker 3: fix it ourselves. So yes, I absolutely think a part

637
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 3: of the appeal of natural and this is a part

638
00:30:55,520 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 3: of it that I actually really empathize with, is just

639
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 3: people being like, hey man, I don't like living in

640
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 3: a world where I don't know where stuff comes from

641
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 3: and I don't understand how.

642
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,040
Speaker 2: It was made. That makes me feel weird. It makes

643
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 2: me feel bad, It makes.

644
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:09,719
Speaker 3: Me feel powerless, and I reject that, and I'm going

645
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:11,720
Speaker 3: to do whatever I can to not feel that way.

646
00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:13,240
Speaker 2: I think that makes a lot of sense.

647
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:15,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, part of what I love about your work and

648
00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 1: writing is that you're kind of honest about where your

649
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:22,920
Speaker 1: mind changes and situations you've been in where you've seen

650
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 1: some of these same things in yourself. Tell us the

651
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 1: anecdote when you went to Peru to a hunter gathered

652
00:31:29,880 --> 00:31:32,760
Speaker 1: tribe who had just gotten solar liding.

653
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:34,560
Speaker 2: That was so funny.

654
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I went to So I went to Peru

655
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 3: to to meet with some much Agenga. So if you

656
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,640
Speaker 3: want to meet with a truly truly nomadic hunter gatherers,

657
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 3: it takes many, many, many many months. But to Macha

658
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:48,000
Speaker 3: Ganga in Peru are people who are semi nomatic hunter

659
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 3: gatherers you can meet with if you have the right contact.

660
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:51,800
Speaker 3: So I went to meet with them, and I wanted

661
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 3: to see what it was like to live as natural

662
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 3: a lifestyle as people could be living. And I went

663
00:31:57,360 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 3: into the people there speak sort of broke they speak.

664
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 3: Some of the people in village to speak Spanish. I just

665
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 3: communicating and broken Spanish. And there was this one guy

666
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 3: who I happened to be talking with, and I had

667
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:12,440
Speaker 3: seen that they had just gotten solar lighting for sort

668
00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:16,080
Speaker 3: of the central area of their village solar power light,

669
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 3: and I think about light pollution, and I like being

670
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:23,479
Speaker 3: able to see the stars when I go camping. I'm like, Oh,

671
00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:25,280
Speaker 3: it's so great. We're finally away from the lights. It

672
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 3: sucks when I can't see the stars. I'm in a

673
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 3: big city. And so I thought to myself, even though

674
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 3: I'm writing this book about natural bias, I think to myself,

675
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 3: Oh God, this must it must suck, like they can't

676
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 3: see the stars anymore. And I asked him what's it

677
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 3: like to have this light now in your in your village?

678
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 3: And he looks at me, like I'm nuts, and he

679
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 3: was like, it's great, It's really good. I was like why,

680
00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:45,960
Speaker 3: Like what is it like? I was so absurd at retro.

681
00:32:46,080 --> 00:32:47,280
Speaker 3: I was like, why, what's good about it? He looks

682
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:47,760
Speaker 3: at me, He's like, we.

683
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 2: Can we can see at night now like I was

684
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:52,120
Speaker 2: a child.

685
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yes, yes, yes, of course that

686
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:56,480
Speaker 3: would be very advantageous.

687
00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:57,520
Speaker 2: So get a lot of these.

688
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 3: A lot of what we're feeling now point which I

689
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 3: think is really important. Earlier, a lot of what we

690
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 3: feel about naturalness.

691
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 2: Is the product of a specific.

692
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 3: Cultural moment and a kind of alienation from the stuff

693
00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 3: around us. But obviously for this guy, like dude just

694
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 3: wants to see at nights, so it didn't stub his toe.

695
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:14,560
Speaker 2: It's great, there's lights. It's awesome. Right, He's in a

696
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:15,360
Speaker 2: very different place.

697
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:18,440
Speaker 1: And there's a good reason we have these advancements because

698
00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:20,840
Speaker 1: in the past we were stubbing our toes at night

699
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:23,680
Speaker 1: and going, well, maybe we should get some lights around here.

700
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:25,760
Speaker 1: And then you know, fast forward a hundred years now

701
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:27,560
Speaker 1: we're going there's too many damn lights in here. We

702
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 1: need to kill the lights.

703
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, like you talked about the peanut butter,

704
00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:33,480
Speaker 3: I mean, another reason you might opt for natural peanut

705
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 3: butter is there isn't as much sugar in it, so

706
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:41,480
Speaker 3: you feel seated more quickly, or it doesn't it doesn't

707
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 3: cause you to consume as many calories. To me, that's

708
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 3: really reasonable, And so it's it's hard to separate out

709
00:33:47,600 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 3: the kind of natural unnatural binary from actually really reasonable

710
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 3: claims like we now have extremely palatable, extremely cheap calories

711
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:04,680
Speaker 3: everywhere thanks to highly technological food processing, and that technology,

712
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:09,719
Speaker 3: which is very unnatural, has been used to exploit our

713
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:13,720
Speaker 3: appetites in a way that is profoundly unhealthy for many

714
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 3: many people, So that can be true, while it is

715
00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 3: also true that natural and unnatural are not kind of

716
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:25,320
Speaker 3: cosmic indicators of what's better or worse for us as human.

717
00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 1: Beings, and that takes work. Right, It's almost like you

718
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: need to as a person, you need to strip away

719
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 1: the nuance and go, Okay, where is this just sort

720
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: of an almost religious argument? But where does this thing

721
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:40,479
Speaker 1: have actual benefits that I could almost measure in a way,

722
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:43,239
Speaker 1: And that's actually hard. It takes more effort, whereas if

723
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:45,600
Speaker 1: you just put natural on it, it becomes I can just

724
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:47,479
Speaker 1: offload my decision making to this word.

725
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's a cognitive labor saving device. So we do

726
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 3: that all the time with all kinds of things. We

727
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:56,400
Speaker 3: believe all kinds of stuff just because it would be

728
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 3: too much effort to check it ourselves, which is honestly

729
00:34:58,680 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 3: Michael's as.

730
00:34:59,280 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 2: It should be.

731
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 3: There's there's a brilliant historian of science named Stephen Shappan

732
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:04,919
Speaker 3: who is I think a PhD in genetics or something

733
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:08,840
Speaker 3: like that, and he's talking about how he understands climate science,

734
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 3: and he says, what it is to understand climate science

735
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:15,920
Speaker 3: is not to actually understand climate science, to go and

736
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:18,400
Speaker 3: do all of the research, to look at everything yourself.

737
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:19,800
Speaker 2: That's what climate scientists do.

738
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 3: What he says is to understand climate science is to

739
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 3: know where knowledge lives. I love that phrase. So it's

740
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 3: a matter of knowing which institutions to trust, and a

741
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 3: matter of knowing how much emphasis to place on any

742
00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:37,160
Speaker 3: given conclusion that someone is saying, and which brings me

743
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:39,360
Speaker 3: to another thing, which goes to the wired piece and

744
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:40,480
Speaker 3: goes to the health stuff.

745
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 2: We are just flooded by information.

746
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:46,760
Speaker 3: We've got a million different gurus who, like processed food,

747
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 3: have been themselves hyper processed convince us that they're right.

748
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:54,759
Speaker 3: They've got bodies that would shame Sean Connery in his

749
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 3: prime or Marlon Brando in their prime.

750
00:35:57,200 --> 00:35:59,920
Speaker 2: You know, like they look absurd, that.

751
00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 3: They're carefully cultivated to convince us of things. They tell

752
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 3: us that the government is hiding things from us, that

753
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,960
Speaker 3: scientists are corrupt, and all of these things are true narrowly,

754
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 3: but not necessarily broadly. And so it creates an environment

755
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:15,880
Speaker 3: in which, as you know, trust in science and medicine

756
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 3: and the government is way down, and people are cast

757
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 3: into a world where virtually anyone could be trusted, and

758
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 3: if you're vulnerable and if you're seeking answers, if you've

759
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:31,359
Speaker 3: been burned by a doctor or you specifically have been

760
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:36,239
Speaker 3: harmed by science that turned out to be inaccurate to

761
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:38,240
Speaker 3: be you're going to be ready and willing to believe

762
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:40,279
Speaker 3: some You're going to be ready and willing to use

763
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 3: Shappen's phrase to think that knowledge lives elsewhere.

764
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:46,840
Speaker 2: And that's really dangerous because there's a lot of caves

765
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 2: with a lot of trolls in them telling you that

766
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:51,280
Speaker 2: knowledge lives in their particular cave.

767
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing you kind of talked about the processing

768
00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:58,160
Speaker 1: of information, and it's almost like we live in a

769
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:01,880
Speaker 1: we're surrounded by ultra process Foodscole ultra process information. And

770
00:37:01,920 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: I feel like that that very much happened in a

771
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:09,240
Speaker 1: lot of cases with your wired piece, in the sense

772
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 1: that you know the piece is behind a paywall. It's

773
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,920
Speaker 1: seven thousand, five hundred words. How many sources did you

774
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:16,239
Speaker 1: talk to?

775
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:18,960
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I mean in this I don't even

776
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 3: know how many you're in the piece itself.

777
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:20,960
Speaker 2: I must have.

778
00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, seventy five hundred words. I talked to

779
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:25,520
Speaker 3: a lot of different people in piece. Probably, I say

780
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,719
Speaker 3: at least twenty or thirty people. I don't know, I've

781
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:31,800
Speaker 3: talked to researching it. I mean at least three hundred

782
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 3: sources between patients, scientists, you know.

783
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 2: Crazy.

784
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then on Twitter, it's like one thing gets

785
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 1: pulled out out of context, and then here's why this

786
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 1: is wrong, pile on and it's I mean, you could

787
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:48,600
Speaker 1: just tell after once I saw sort of what was

788
00:37:48,640 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: happening on the Twitter feed, so okay, and then I

789
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:55,400
Speaker 1: sat down and read seventy five hundred words go. Most

790
00:37:55,440 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: of what is out there that is so toxic is

791
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 1: completely to scope of the or the article covers it

792
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 1: in some nuanced way. But I just didn't get pulled on.

793
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:04,439
Speaker 2: Yeah.

794
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 3: I had a friend who had said he'd read the

795
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:08,279
Speaker 3: comments first, because you have to subscribe to read the article,

796
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 3: so you read the comments first on the article and online,

797
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 3: and then he subscribed and read the article and he

798
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:15,920
Speaker 3: was like, it was the strangest experience to him because

799
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:18,120
Speaker 3: each paragraph he was like, wait, isn't this one of

800
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 3: the things they said he didn't address or whatever, And

801
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 3: you're writ with ultra process information.

802
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 2: Actually.

803
00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:24,360
Speaker 3: So I wrote a piece for The Boston Globe a

804
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:27,920
Speaker 3: couple of years back about exactly that, about ultra process information.

805
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 3: So in the same way that our appetite for food

806
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 3: has been hijacked by a system designed to exploit it,

807
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:38,719
Speaker 3: our appetite for information has been hijacked by a system

808
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:39,799
Speaker 3: designed to exploit it.

809
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 2: So quick soundbites.

810
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 3: Really palatable, polarizing, telling you that this is salvation if

811
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:49,160
Speaker 3: you believe this, But this guy is actually trying to

812
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 3: kill you if you believe that.

813
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:51,080
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the.

814
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:53,200
Speaker 3: Things I found really interesting about people reading the article

815
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 3: is that they were determined to make it an article

816
00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:58,720
Speaker 3: about how brain retraining works.

817
00:38:59,200 --> 00:38:59,319
Speaker 2: Thing.

818
00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:02,120
Speaker 3: It's just not It's just not about that. I don't

819
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:04,799
Speaker 3: know what's going on with this brain retraining stuff. Personally,

820
00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:09,800
Speaker 3: I believe, having talked to GOT a dozen severely ill patients,

821
00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:14,240
Speaker 3: I believe that at least in some subset of patients

822
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 3: how big. I don't know these approaches are effective. I

823
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:21,759
Speaker 3: don't think they are all just placebo in the sense

824
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:26,440
Speaker 3: of any approach or belief in the approach, or natural remission.

825
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:29,319
Speaker 2: That's what I believe. But the article is not about that.

826
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 3: The article is about how we need to figure that

827
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:38,000
Speaker 3: out and the kinds of broader sociocultural forces at play,

828
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 3: whether it's how studies are designed, whether it's this idea

829
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 3: of real and fake disease, whether it's the capture of

830
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:49,120
Speaker 3: journalistic the journalists that are reporting on this and the

831
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 3: scientists that are researching it. All of that makes it

832
00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 3: just very very difficult to figure out what's going on.

833
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 3: But that doesn't fit into ultra process information. Even what

834
00:39:56,239 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 3: I just said just then is like too much, we

835
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 3: need sentence. Alan Levanitz believes long COVID is fake, right,

836
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:05,800
Speaker 3: and again I get it, but it's not a good environment.

837
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:06,760
Speaker 2: It's really unhealthy.

838
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:13,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it seems like even the researchers people working

839
00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:17,400
Speaker 1: on this, people who are seriously credential kind of dedicating

840
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: their lives to this, have even faced pushback because it

841
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 1: immediately gets boiled down to this person's trying to disprove

842
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:25,560
Speaker 1: that long COVID has a biological element or something like that.

843
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and also and again not to keep leaning on

844
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:30,759
Speaker 3: Shap and obviously Stephen Shapp, I just think this guy's brilliant.

845
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 2: He has a book. I forget what the subtitle is exactly.

846
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:35,880
Speaker 3: The title is never pure and the subtitle is something

847
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 3: like a history of science, as if it were conducted

848
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 3: by real people, living real lives with the desire to

849
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 3: actually become famous and make lots of money or something

850
00:40:43,560 --> 00:40:45,359
Speaker 3: like that. I forget, But basically he's like, hey, look man,

851
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:48,719
Speaker 3: scientists are real people. So imagine again, it's the long

852
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 3: COVID world. You have an extremely loud, really traumatized, severely

853
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:56,840
Speaker 3: ill population looking for scientists who are going to be

854
00:40:56,840 --> 00:41:00,200
Speaker 3: their saviors. You put out your study on immunology. It's

855
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 3: very preliminary. They're like, oh my god, this is finally it,

856
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:05,880
Speaker 3: this is the key. You feel really good about yourself.

857
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:08,439
Speaker 3: There are financial incentives, but I mean people talk about

858
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 3: like financial incentives built into the mind, body, alternative grou stuff,

859
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:14,920
Speaker 3: But of course there's financial incentives built into science. These

860
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:18,439
Speaker 3: people are getting giant, multimillion dollar grants to study things.

861
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 3: They are getting contracts with companies to produce potentially tests

862
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:25,880
Speaker 3: for long COVID, So they too are incentivized to believe

863
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 3: that their science proves more than it does and is

864
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:31,279
Speaker 3: more promising than it is.

865
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:32,799
Speaker 2: We know that these are just a normal side. They're

866
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 2: regular human beings.

867
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:37,239
Speaker 3: Like anyone else, and so I think it's also really

868
00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 3: important for us to understand that the scientific community does

869
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:43,000
Speaker 3: not exist in a bubble.

870
00:41:43,080 --> 00:41:47,760
Speaker 2: It too is influenced by sociocultural forces.

871
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 3: And you know that's important to see with something like

872
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 3: long COVID.

873
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 2: It's just very difficult to communicate.

874
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 3: That when we're in a world awash with ultra process information.

875
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:01,399
Speaker 1: Do you feel like one of the underlying things that

876
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:07,319
Speaker 1: leads something to take on a religious bent is the

877
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:11,839
Speaker 1: possibility of harm and also fear because for example, I

878
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:16,440
Speaker 1: don't see people arguing, you know, to the death about

879
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:20,800
Speaker 1: what suck is best or what you know T shirt?

880
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: Is it better to have a cotton T shirt or polyester?

881
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:25,800
Speaker 1: But I do you do see it in diet where

882
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:29,200
Speaker 1: someone can pull Okay, well, this study found x association

883
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 1: with cancer or long COVID obviously has you know, serious

884
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:36,319
Speaker 1: health implications. How does fear play into all this? And

885
00:42:36,360 --> 00:42:37,080
Speaker 1: also danger?

886
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 2: Yeah? Both really important.

887
00:42:39,160 --> 00:42:40,920
Speaker 3: So first I want to say, when people say this

888
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 3: is religious, I actually for what I want to So

889
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 3: just bracket something and say I think that when people

890
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:51,480
Speaker 3: say religious, and when I say religious in these context,

891
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:56,520
Speaker 3: what I really mean is deeply held metaphysical beliefs. Deeply

892
00:42:56,560 --> 00:43:00,840
Speaker 3: held metaphysical beliefs the glue that keeps our world view together,

893
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:03,920
Speaker 3: so that doesn't have to be religious in a traditional sense.

894
00:43:04,120 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 3: Free will in this sense is a kind of supernatural

895
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:08,960
Speaker 3: entity that is religious in the way I'm talking about.

896
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 3: So really, when I say religion, what I'm trying to

897
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:14,759
Speaker 3: call people's attention to is that what we see in

898
00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:19,759
Speaker 3: traditional religions is also present in everyone's lives. We have

899
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:25,760
Speaker 3: invisible metaphysical assumptions that govern how we perceive the world

900
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:27,520
Speaker 3: and how we make moral judgment. So that's first, say,

901
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:29,319
Speaker 3: I say, so, now back to the fear and danger thing.

902
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:35,239
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, good, Yes, that's right. So I think that the.

903
00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 3: More something seems like it threatens our either our identity

904
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:45,480
Speaker 3: sort of spiritually or whatever you want to call it,

905
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 3: as like how we perceive ourselves as a person or

906
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:51,920
Speaker 3: a moral being, and also physically how we perceive our safety,

907
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:57,880
Speaker 3: whenever something threatens those things, we activate a kind of

908
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 3: fight or flight response. Actually, right, really threatened, we get

909
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:05,760
Speaker 3: really angry. That's why when someone insults your family or your.

910
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 2: Kids, you get really really upset.

911
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 3: And I get that it would make it makes sense

912
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 3: humans should when they are threatened in a way that

913
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 3: could kill them, or in a way that threatens their

914
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 3: deeply held beliefs they're going to respond that way. But

915
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:25,600
Speaker 3: of course it makes it hard to think clearly. I mean,

916
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 3: I can't. I'll give you one example, Michael, I write

917
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:30,800
Speaker 3: about this in the Wired piece. A lot of people

918
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 3: with long COVID. If their kids get long COVID, child

919
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:42,879
Speaker 3: protective services will sometimes try to take their kids away.

920
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 3: It's hard to imagine what it would be like to

921
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:49,919
Speaker 3: be a person who's severely sick, whose kid is severely sick,

922
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 3: and then the government comes and tries to take your

923
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 3: kid away. I would be I would be sending angry

924
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:01,360
Speaker 3: emails to me all the time if I saw my article.

925
00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 3: How could I possibly read that in some kind of objective,

926
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:06,160
Speaker 3: dispassionate way.

927
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:07,520
Speaker 2: It would be impossible.

928
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:10,839
Speaker 3: And of course, when I say this, the people who

929
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 3: are in that situation are going to be like, he's saying,

930
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,719
Speaker 3: we're not objective because we've gone through this thing.

931
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:18,520
Speaker 2: That's just a way to gaslight us. So that's a

932
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 2: way to trap us. And I understand.

933
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 3: I understand that, and I understand that they have to

934
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 3: come from that perspective.

935
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:26,160
Speaker 2: They are coming from that perspective. But it remains the

936
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 2: case that if you've been.

937
00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 3: Horrifically traumatized by something, or if admitting in some kind

938
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:34,600
Speaker 3: of alternative worldview is happening in the context of having

939
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:36,400
Speaker 3: someone try to take your kids away and accusing you

940
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 3: of harming your children.

941
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:40,720
Speaker 1: The government think it might be munchausers, right.

942
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 3: They do, so, the government thinks it might be parents

943
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 3: deliberately harming their kids. Now, I will say that, like,

944
00:45:50,040 --> 00:45:53,279
Speaker 3: it is entirely possible this I'm not talking about long

945
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,600
Speaker 3: COVID now, but it is entirely possible for parents to

946
00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:00,960
Speaker 3: well meaningly harm their children through healthy You could be

947
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:03,680
Speaker 3: a parent that makes your kid neurotic about food.

948
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:06,040
Speaker 2: For example, see is all the time?

949
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:09,839
Speaker 3: Right, You are eating in a way that's super clean

950
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:12,239
Speaker 3: and super healthy, and your kids starts to become sort

951
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 3: of obsessed with being super clean or super healthy. So

952
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:17,520
Speaker 3: the idea that parents' beliefs and practices around health and

953
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 3: diet can't affect their kids is also is also ridiculous,

954
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:26,560
Speaker 3: but it's absolutely false. I believe that in any of

955
00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:31,760
Speaker 3: these chronic illness cases, parents are deliberately making their children

956
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:34,399
Speaker 3: ill for attention or to keep their kids around the house.

957
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:38,560
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just like a monstrous accusation to make,

958
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:39,879
Speaker 2: and I would be.

959
00:46:40,280 --> 00:46:41,920
Speaker 3: I can't even imagine how it would feel if someone

960
00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:44,759
Speaker 3: if someone said that to me, I would lose my mind.

961
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 1: And you talked to so many people who have long COVID.

962
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 1: What were those conversations like, like, what sort of stories

963
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: did you hear? I was shocked. I did not realize

964
00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 1: how debilitating it can be. I thought it just meant, oh,

965
00:46:57,440 --> 00:46:59,640
Speaker 1: your nose is stuff like. This was just something that

966
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:02,200
Speaker 1: was not my radar, luckily because I haven't had to

967
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 1: go through that or known anyone who has. But I

968
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:05,680
Speaker 1: was shocked at just how debilitating it is.

969
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, so okay, so it's worth it's worth pointing

970
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 3: out there's a huge spectrum of what is even defined

971
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:12,640
Speaker 3: as long COVID, and I talk about this in the

972
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 3: piece as well, because we don't we have no biomarkers

973
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:17,640
Speaker 3: for it, that is to say, biomarkers that are unique

974
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:18,320
Speaker 3: to this condition.

975
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 2: So it can range. It can range.

976
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 3: From I believe that this ongoing slight lack of tastes

977
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 3: that I have, or I believe that this ongoing slightly

978
00:47:28,719 --> 00:47:30,600
Speaker 3: elevated level of fatigue that I have is due to

979
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:33,680
Speaker 3: my COVID infection. That is one version of long COVID

980
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:39,120
Speaker 3: all the way over to I'm in bed. I can't move.

981
00:47:39,760 --> 00:47:42,400
Speaker 3: I'm in the dark because I cannot tolerate light, and

982
00:47:42,440 --> 00:47:46,560
Speaker 3: I have headphones on because I cannot tolerate sound. And

983
00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:50,000
Speaker 3: I have an IV for my food because I can't

984
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:55,000
Speaker 3: chew without experiencing immense crushing pain. So yeah, I talked

985
00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 3: to a dozen people who are in that situation. It's

986
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 3: it's terrifying that this exists. That same situation exists for

987
00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:05,360
Speaker 3: other what are called post acute infectious syndromes.

988
00:48:06,200 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 2: So this has been documented. Again, I talked about this

989
00:48:08,080 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 2: in the wire piece.

990
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:10,239
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think it's really important for people to

991
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:11,640
Speaker 3: realize that there are some people who are.

992
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 2: Just incredibly sick.

993
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the main people I showcase in

994
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:18,879
Speaker 3: the piece was anonymized because he was afraid of having

995
00:48:18,960 --> 00:48:20,359
Speaker 3: this insurance taken away from him.

996
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:22,600
Speaker 2: Another thing that long COVID patient's face.

997
00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:28,759
Speaker 3: Larson was was so sick that that even while he

998
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 3: was talking to me, he was recovering so before he

999
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:31,719
Speaker 3: couldn't talk at all, but he.

1000
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:32,800
Speaker 2: Had to, he had to, he had to.

1001
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:35,879
Speaker 3: He could only talk for for maybe like forty five

1002
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 3: minutes at a time. It got better and better actually,

1003
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:40,879
Speaker 3: as we were going, but you know, he's still very,

1004
00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 3: very sick.

1005
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's horrible. I hope to raise awareness of that.

1006
00:48:46,040 --> 00:48:48,400
Speaker 3: And and while people in the long COVID community already

1007
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:51,680
Speaker 3: know this, I also take comfort that hearing from someone

1008
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 3: like you, Hey, whoa I didn't realize how sick people

1009
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:59,319
Speaker 3: could get from these conditions, then I've done something right

1010
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:02,160
Speaker 3: in the article is raising awareness of just how debilitating

1011
00:49:02,160 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 3: these conditions can be for some people.

1012
00:49:04,160 --> 00:49:06,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think, and you pointed this out in

1013
00:49:06,160 --> 00:49:08,279
Speaker 1: the article, there's a lot of people who say it's

1014
00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:10,960
Speaker 1: just completely made up. It's like, Okay, try telling that

1015
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:13,239
Speaker 1: to someone who's in bed in the dark with headphones on,

1016
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:14,040
Speaker 1: Like that's.

1017
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:18,839
Speaker 2: Cool, right, It's just it's so obviously not made up.

1018
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 3: And the other thing again, I just I cannot keep

1019
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:22,279
Speaker 3: emphasizing this enough.

1020
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:25,920
Speaker 2: It is not the product of false beliefs.

1021
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:26,560
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1022
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:28,880
Speaker 3: I don't know which analogies to use because they are

1023
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 3: all imperfect. But here again, I think the addiction analogy

1024
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:37,239
Speaker 3: can be helpful. You're not addicted to whatever the substances

1025
00:49:37,239 --> 00:49:37,960
Speaker 3: that you're addicted to.

1026
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:41,120
Speaker 2: Because you believe you need it. Like, it's just like

1027
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:45,360
Speaker 2: a ridiculous position to take and so in that sense,

1028
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:52,719
Speaker 2: what these people are experiencing, the symptoms they're experiencing, they're physiological,

1029
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:56,799
Speaker 2: they are debilitating, and you can't just change your mind

1030
00:49:56,800 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 2: about it. So I think a lot of people believe

1031
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:05,480
Speaker 2: that if only these people could just think differently, they

1032
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:09,360
Speaker 2: would magically be healed, because it is a belief state

1033
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:11,640
Speaker 2: that is creating their symptoms that could not be further

1034
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 2: from the truth. What the brain retraining people say, and

1035
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:16,160
Speaker 2: I hate that term because it sounds very woo woo

1036
00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:19,479
Speaker 2: and it's kind of bullshitty, But what these folks say

1037
00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 2: is actually much more like what an addiction specialists might say,

1038
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:26,640
Speaker 2: which is, you have a physiological state that is going

1039
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:29,840
Speaker 2: to take a long time to recover from. Right now,

1040
00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 2: we don't have a lot of good interventions for it,

1041
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:35,520
Speaker 2: but we've seen a lot of success with slow, steady

1042
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 2: progress in communities that share stories that are positive and

1043
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:46,200
Speaker 2: help people stick to certain plans and sometimes people relax,

1044
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:48,840
Speaker 2: and sometimes these plans don't work, And no one is

1045
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 2: saying that you are choosing to experience these.

1046
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:56,360
Speaker 3: Symptoms, but why not give it a shut That I

1047
00:50:56,400 --> 00:50:59,440
Speaker 3: think is a lot a lot more like what's happening here.

1048
00:50:59,480 --> 00:51:02,600
Speaker 3: The only difference. And again I don't have to talk

1049
00:51:02,640 --> 00:51:06,480
Speaker 3: to you about this, obviously, but the only people would say, well,

1050
00:51:06,520 --> 00:51:09,560
Speaker 3: that there's a big difference. These post acute infection syndromes

1051
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:10,920
Speaker 3: aren't caused by choices I.

1052
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:11,560
Speaker 2: Made in the past.

1053
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 3: And it's like, whatever, man, are you blaming addicts for

1054
00:51:15,160 --> 00:51:17,799
Speaker 3: their state and you're saying you're different from them fundamentally

1055
00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:20,280
Speaker 3: because you didn't choose to get infected by a virus.

1056
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:23,279
Speaker 3: But that's also cruel, and that's also misguided. So I

1057
00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:25,720
Speaker 3: would push back hard on that objection to the analogy

1058
00:51:25,719 --> 00:51:31,160
Speaker 3: I'm making here. Either way, the broader physiological point remains,

1059
00:51:31,560 --> 00:51:33,359
Speaker 3: and I just think it's really important that people see

1060
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:35,800
Speaker 3: that these are people super sick, they're desperate.

1061
00:51:35,880 --> 00:51:38,000
Speaker 2: There's no good intervention to help them. What do we do.

1062
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:40,280
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break, and then Alan

1063
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:43,440
Speaker 1: is going to explain why being interested in raw milk,

1064
00:51:43,680 --> 00:51:47,200
Speaker 1: or being anti vax or even being really into scientific

1065
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:59,080
Speaker 1: studies can become part of someone's identity. You mentioned a

1066
00:51:59,120 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 1: word earlier, identity. I thought that was interesting. I was

1067
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:06,680
Speaker 1: talking to my producer here, Robbie Heiser, and he pointed

1068
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:10,839
Speaker 1: out that when people adopt sort of and buy into

1069
00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 1: one health practice. Let's say it's raw milk. It tends

1070
00:52:15,120 --> 00:52:17,960
Speaker 1: to not just be that. There becomes like, well, if

1071
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:22,200
Speaker 1: raw milk also, then anti vax also, then xyz, why

1072
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:22,799
Speaker 1: do you think that is?

1073
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:23,040
Speaker 2: Is that?

1074
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:25,800
Speaker 1: Because yeah, why do you think that is? That's the question.

1075
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:30,799
Speaker 3: So okay, So here's why there's another Again, I hate

1076
00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 3: getting new the weeds of the philosophy stuff. But there's

1077
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:35,120
Speaker 3: this philosopher named Kwine WV.

1078
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:35,439
Speaker 2: Quine.

1079
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:35,680
Speaker 1: I don't know.

1080
00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:37,480
Speaker 2: They all had like initials for their first names for

1081
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:40,040
Speaker 2: a while. C. S. Lewis, G. Kitch or whatever, so WV.

1082
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:43,040
Speaker 3: Quine. And he had this idea of what he called

1083
00:52:43,040 --> 00:52:46,040
Speaker 3: the web of belief And what he said is basically,

1084
00:52:46,040 --> 00:52:47,719
Speaker 3: we don't have just a bunch of different beliefs that

1085
00:52:47,719 --> 00:52:48,719
Speaker 3: are independent of each other.

1086
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:49,560
Speaker 2: We have a web of.

1087
00:52:49,520 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 3: Beliefs that all hang together. And let's take raw milk

1088
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:57,440
Speaker 3: as an example. So if if you end up believing

1089
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:01,520
Speaker 3: that raw milk is some kind of life saving, life

1090
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:05,080
Speaker 3: saving the nutritional thing, and that this has been hidden

1091
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:08,080
Speaker 3: from you by the dietary establishment, that's not a belief

1092
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:09,520
Speaker 3: that's independent of other beliefs.

1093
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:11,440
Speaker 2: Instead, it's part of a web of beliefs.

1094
00:53:11,640 --> 00:53:15,240
Speaker 3: In order to believe that, you have to now distrust

1095
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:17,759
Speaker 3: the medical establishment more generally, and you have to.

1096
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:19,120
Speaker 2: Distrust the government more generally.

1097
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:21,720
Speaker 3: Those kinds of beliefs are at the center of the web,

1098
00:53:22,080 --> 00:53:25,040
Speaker 3: and as soon as those more central beliefs start changing,

1099
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:29,280
Speaker 3: they open the rest of the web up to other changes.

1100
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:33,000
Speaker 3: So it's a kind of feedback loop where once you've

1101
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:40,960
Speaker 3: bought into one belief that entails suspicion of sort of

1102
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:44,080
Speaker 3: traditional institutions of knowledge making or something.

1103
00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:46,799
Speaker 2: Like that, Well now the whole web is vulnerable. Now

1104
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:47,520
Speaker 2: people can move in.

1105
00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:49,640
Speaker 3: And say, in the same way that people deceived you

1106
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:52,480
Speaker 3: about raw milk, they deceived you about vaccines, and in

1107
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 3: the same way that they deceived you about vaccines, they

1108
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 3: deceived you about insert whatever. So that's why I think

1109
00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:01,399
Speaker 3: there's these cat skate effects, is that the web would

1110
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:05,520
Speaker 3: belief itself gets shaken, an external belief changes, and that

1111
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 3: reverberates all the way back to the center.

1112
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:07,840
Speaker 2: Of the web.

1113
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would I would point out that I

1114
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:12,120
Speaker 1: use the example of you know, raw milk and anti

1115
00:54:12,200 --> 00:54:14,839
Speaker 1: vax but that also works just for someone who's say,

1116
00:54:14,960 --> 00:54:18,880
Speaker 1: quote unquote very evidence based, where if there's not an

1117
00:54:19,040 --> 00:54:22,719
Speaker 1: XYZ study proving this, then no one benefited from it.

1118
00:54:22,760 --> 00:54:24,399
Speaker 1: You're just full of shit, you're making it up.

1119
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:27,839
Speaker 2: Yep, absolutely, yep, that's absolutely right.

1120
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:30,960
Speaker 1: So I just had Melissa Urban on the podcast. She

1121
00:54:31,040 --> 00:54:36,200
Speaker 1: founded the Whole thirty Diet, and initially this diet said

1122
00:54:36,239 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 1: no seed oils, that was their thinking when they started it.

1123
00:54:38,960 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 1: And then she had a team of researchers really look

1124
00:54:41,640 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 1: at the evidence and they reversed their position on that.

1125
00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:46,360
Speaker 1: They said, you know what, we were wrong. Seed oils

1126
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:48,240
Speaker 1: are fine. We don't think they're a big deal anymore.

1127
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:51,080
Speaker 1: Go ahead. What do you think it takes for people

1128
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:54,400
Speaker 1: to reverse their own ideas in the space.

1129
00:54:54,920 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 3: The thing I found that is most powerful this is

1130
00:54:59,160 --> 00:55:00,480
Speaker 3: this is going to be it has nothing to do

1131
00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:01,080
Speaker 3: with research at all.

1132
00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:03,120
Speaker 2: Which is kind of interesting, is betrayal.

1133
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:07,319
Speaker 3: So in these spaces I've found, so if someone's really

1134
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,200
Speaker 3: into holistic medicine, for example, and they work for a

1135
00:55:10,239 --> 00:55:12,680
Speaker 3: clinic that claims to tear cancer with whak grass shots,

1136
00:55:13,120 --> 00:55:15,960
Speaker 3: no amount of research is going to disconfirm that person's beliefs,

1137
00:55:16,000 --> 00:55:17,960
Speaker 3: especially if their job and their identity is bound up

1138
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:20,640
Speaker 3: in it. But if someone in that clinic betrays them,

1139
00:55:20,760 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 3: if they discover that someone was lying to them, if

1140
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:25,200
Speaker 3: they discover that someone was cheating on their taxes, even

1141
00:55:25,239 --> 00:55:29,839
Speaker 3: I mean something like that, That, in my experience, is

1142
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:35,560
Speaker 3: the most effective way to start the chain reaction of

1143
00:55:35,640 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 3: changing your mind, because at the end of the day,

1144
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:41,719
Speaker 3: the person is not their beliefs are not just about

1145
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:44,279
Speaker 3: whether they make sense or what the evidence is.

1146
00:55:44,680 --> 00:55:46,960
Speaker 2: It's about something much bigger. So that's the first thing

1147
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:47,520
Speaker 2: I would.

1148
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:52,000
Speaker 3: Say if though you're trying to convince someone of something

1149
00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:53,719
Speaker 3: or you're wondering, you know, I mean, it depends at

1150
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,600
Speaker 3: what level of a culture and who the person is.

1151
00:55:56,640 --> 00:55:59,759
Speaker 3: So individuals gosh, like what would change their mind.

1152
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:01,440
Speaker 2: For example, a.

1153
00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:04,920
Speaker 3: Woman I feature in my Wired piece, Georgia Loopy, she

1154
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:08,839
Speaker 3: had heard about these techniques for helping people recover from

1155
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:10,879
Speaker 3: long COVID, but she'd always heard about them from people

1156
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:13,320
Speaker 3: who seemed to have a financial interest or a professional

1157
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:18,719
Speaker 3: interest in promoting them. Eventually, a friend of hers reached out,

1158
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:20,440
Speaker 3: I want to get this exactly right. I believe it

1159
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:22,040
Speaker 3: was a friend of hers, someone she knew on Instagram,

1160
00:56:22,120 --> 00:56:24,000
Speaker 3: who had who she known for a long time and

1161
00:56:24,040 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 3: had absolutely no connection to these people. That was really

1162
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:29,400
Speaker 3: helpful to her. She was like, oh wait, okay, so

1163
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:31,520
Speaker 3: this is a friend of mine. This isn't just someone

1164
00:56:32,160 --> 00:56:34,279
Speaker 3: trying to promote something they have no connection to it.

1165
00:56:34,320 --> 00:56:38,440
Speaker 2: I trust this person. So a trusted person in.

1166
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 3: Your life who clearly has no conflicts of interest related

1167
00:56:41,120 --> 00:56:43,640
Speaker 3: to something. I think that can also be helpful too,

1168
00:56:45,520 --> 00:56:47,480
Speaker 3: with something like seed oils and whether seed oils are

1169
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:48,279
Speaker 3: dangerous or not.

1170
00:56:48,440 --> 00:56:50,440
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know, man.

1171
00:56:51,120 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 3: I cut my teeth on gluten free diets way back

1172
00:56:53,680 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 3: in the day. And let me tell you a short story. Yeah,

1173
00:56:58,080 --> 00:57:01,239
Speaker 3: I went and did a talk. I was invited to

1174
00:57:01,239 --> 00:57:02,600
Speaker 3: give a talk on these diets, and at the end

1175
00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:04,719
Speaker 3: of the talk, this woman comes up to me. She says,

1176
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:06,200
Speaker 3: you know, I've been doing a gluten free diet for

1177
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:09,000
Speaker 3: my ibs. But I was really, I really find you're

1178
00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:11,880
Speaker 3: talking interesting. I'm convinced that actually, if I'm honest with myself,

1179
00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:14,759
Speaker 3: it's not really helping that much. It just makes me

1180
00:57:14,800 --> 00:57:17,040
Speaker 3: feel sort of empowered. I was like, oh, wow, great,

1181
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 3: I'm glad that you know. I'm glad to talk it.

1182
00:57:18,480 --> 00:57:20,400
Speaker 3: She's like, well, so now what do I do for

1183
00:57:20,480 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 3: my ibs? And I just kind of sat there. I

1184
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:26,160
Speaker 3: was like, jeez, I walked into this woman's church, I

1185
00:57:26,160 --> 00:57:28,320
Speaker 3: destroyed her rituals that were actually helping.

1186
00:57:28,080 --> 00:57:28,880
Speaker 2: Her feel empowered.

1187
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:31,479
Speaker 3: You know, is what's going to take to change someone's

1188
00:57:31,480 --> 00:57:32,720
Speaker 3: mind about seed oils or gluten?

1189
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:35,400
Speaker 2: Well, the truth is, I'm not sure I should be.

1190
00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:37,280
Speaker 3: In the business of changing someone's mind about if someone

1191
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:38,880
Speaker 3: has gone on a seed oil free diet and that

1192
00:57:38,960 --> 00:57:41,240
Speaker 3: has caused them to change their dietary patterns and they

1193
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:45,080
Speaker 3: feel better and they're eating more healthily and they feel empowered, Like.

1194
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:48,080
Speaker 2: Like, what reason would there ever be for them.

1195
00:57:48,360 --> 00:57:50,880
Speaker 3: To change their belief about sea doois do nothing but

1196
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:55,040
Speaker 3: good to them to have this belief. Like, I don't know,

1197
00:57:55,040 --> 00:57:56,320
Speaker 3: I don't know what it would take to convince them,

1198
00:57:56,320 --> 00:57:58,000
Speaker 3: and I'm not really sure that we should be convincing

1199
00:57:58,000 --> 00:57:58,960
Speaker 3: them to change their minds.

1200
00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:03,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll often say, given that there's always going to

1201
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:06,720
Speaker 1: be pushed back against ideas, a lot of what I'll

1202
00:58:06,760 --> 00:58:09,200
Speaker 1: do on my sub stack is I'll just say, you know,

1203
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:11,920
Speaker 1: do more of what helps you and do less of

1204
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 1: what hurts you. Interpret that as you will and be

1205
00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:16,920
Speaker 1: clear on Okay, what is the benefit I'm getting from this?

1206
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 1: Is this thing harming me? I'm going to try and

1207
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:21,800
Speaker 1: do less of that, and that just feels pretty pretty

1208
00:58:21,800 --> 00:58:23,400
Speaker 1: solid ground to me to stand on.

1209
00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm glad I'm not a medical professional.

1210
00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:29,120
Speaker 3: This stuff is really tricky, especially because as you know,

1211
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:30,960
Speaker 3: of the diet world, someone will do something, or the

1212
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:33,320
Speaker 3: child rearing world or whatever, any of these worlds where

1213
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:36,000
Speaker 3: we're desperate for answers and we see connections, like the

1214
00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:39,520
Speaker 3: nutritional world. Your stomach curts, you change your diet, you

1215
00:58:39,560 --> 00:58:41,440
Speaker 3: feel better for three days. You're like, oh my god,

1216
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:43,800
Speaker 3: I finally figured it out. I'm feeling better. I'm never

1217
00:58:43,880 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 3: adding that food back in. So now now it's working

1218
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:49,360
Speaker 3: for you. But you're also scared. So what is what

1219
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:51,880
Speaker 3: is fear and anxiety do? It creates precisely the same

1220
00:58:52,160 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 3: symptoms that you know, gas or intentional symptoms that you're

1221
00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:57,920
Speaker 3: afraid of in the first place. So you can end up,

1222
00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 3: I think, especially with diet, but all in any area

1223
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:07,120
Speaker 3: of your life, trapping yourself in a world of correlations

1224
00:59:07,440 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 3: that make you feel safe and seem to have.

1225
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 2: Worked for you. You know.

1226
00:59:11,720 --> 00:59:13,640
Speaker 3: Again, in the Wired piece, I don't get into this,

1227
00:59:14,120 --> 00:59:17,360
Speaker 3: but I also talk to a lot of severely ill

1228
00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:23,120
Speaker 3: patients who had terrifyingly complicated biomedical protocols. They were taking

1229
00:59:23,960 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 3: five different prescription medicines, they were taking a slew of supplements,

1230
00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:30,600
Speaker 3: some of them were on IVY supplementation. I would send

1231
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:32,520
Speaker 3: I would take these, I would send them to experts.

1232
00:59:32,520 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 3: I would say, look at this sort of proto call.

1233
00:59:35,640 --> 00:59:36,360
Speaker 2: What do you make of this?

1234
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:40,040
Speaker 3: And they were like, we have we have cancer patients

1235
00:59:40,080 --> 00:59:44,200
Speaker 3: and stage cancer patients who are not on anything close

1236
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:44,480
Speaker 3: to this.

1237
00:59:44,520 --> 00:59:46,840
Speaker 2: How did they possibly come up with this proto call?

1238
00:59:47,040 --> 00:59:47,240
Speaker 2: You know?

1239
00:59:47,320 --> 00:59:51,280
Speaker 3: And the answer is, when you're treating these conditions, you

1240
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:54,360
Speaker 3: end up with protocols that are as byzantine as the

1241
00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:58,360
Speaker 3: dietary prohibitions that you see over in the diet space.

1242
00:59:58,400 --> 00:59:58,960
Speaker 2: It's it's no.

1243
00:59:58,920 --> 01:00:01,600
Speaker 3: Different and except the the only difference is that these

1244
01:00:01,600 --> 01:00:05,120
Speaker 3: protocols are being put together by lime literate doctors or

1245
01:00:05,120 --> 01:00:08,400
Speaker 3: by you know, long COVID literate doctors who are in

1246
01:00:08,440 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 3: certain ways doing the same thing what nutrition people are doing.

1247
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:11,800
Speaker 2: They're looking at the science.

1248
01:00:11,960 --> 01:00:15,080
Speaker 3: They're taking very preliminary studies and considering them to be

1249
01:00:15,720 --> 01:00:18,600
Speaker 3: something will you know worth trial? This looks like you know,

1250
01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:21,480
Speaker 3: this this case control trial or this case study seems

1251
01:00:21,520 --> 01:00:23,840
Speaker 3: to say that you know, I V I G therapy

1252
01:00:23,920 --> 01:00:27,440
Speaker 3: works let's put this person on it, so you end

1253
01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:29,760
Speaker 3: up with the same kind of phenomenon, except in the

1254
01:00:29,800 --> 01:00:33,240
Speaker 3: diet world it's a super restrictive or or really bespoke diet,

1255
01:00:33,400 --> 01:00:37,480
Speaker 3: and in the chronic illness world, it's an extremely complicated

1256
01:00:37,880 --> 01:00:41,160
Speaker 3: protocol meant to address all of the different horrible symptoms

1257
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:41,680
Speaker 3: that people.

1258
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:45,440
Speaker 1: Are experiencing, which I imagine could have some side effects.

1259
01:00:45,440 --> 01:00:46,880
Speaker 1: Why didn't you put that in the piece? Why to

1260
01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:47,640
Speaker 1: get edited out?

1261
01:00:48,960 --> 01:00:55,439
Speaker 3: Well, seventy five hundred word piece and so much paper. Yeah, yeah, people,

1262
01:00:55,440 --> 01:00:57,200
Speaker 3: I mean people were asking me, why didn't I include

1263
01:00:57,240 --> 01:01:01,160
Speaker 3: the stories of patients who have done these mind body therapies,

1264
01:01:01,520 --> 01:01:03,640
Speaker 3: been failed by them, and feel they've been.

1265
01:01:03,600 --> 01:01:04,280
Speaker 2: Harmed by them.

1266
01:01:04,360 --> 01:01:06,400
Speaker 3: I mean the answer is, this is not a piece

1267
01:01:06,560 --> 01:01:10,720
Speaker 3: about all of the failed therapeutic interventions that are out

1268
01:01:10,720 --> 01:01:12,480
Speaker 3: there and the way that people have been harmed by them.

1269
01:01:12,520 --> 01:01:15,200
Speaker 3: I mean, that's those are both important stories, people harmed

1270
01:01:15,200 --> 01:01:18,680
Speaker 3: by mind body therapies, people on crazy protocols that could

1271
01:01:18,680 --> 01:01:20,920
Speaker 3: have all sorts of health side effects. I mean, for me,

1272
01:01:21,000 --> 01:01:24,800
Speaker 3: this is not about boosting mind body therapies or boosting

1273
01:01:25,000 --> 01:01:27,160
Speaker 3: mine you know, biomedical or what are you going to

1274
01:01:27,200 --> 01:01:30,200
Speaker 3: call it? Protocols that's just a different story. Someone should

1275
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:30,600
Speaker 3: write it.

1276
01:01:30,600 --> 01:01:35,080
Speaker 2: It's not gonna be me. I'll say, I'm not writing.

1277
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:38,120
Speaker 3: The hip piece on on the unevidenced biomedical protocols that

1278
01:01:38,160 --> 01:01:41,520
Speaker 3: are happening at like long COVID clinics, that that someone else,

1279
01:01:41,560 --> 01:01:43,040
Speaker 3: if they want to step in there, can do that.

1280
01:01:43,120 --> 01:01:44,560
Speaker 2: I think I'm gonna I'm going to move on a

1281
01:01:44,600 --> 01:01:45,360
Speaker 2: bit from this topic.

1282
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:47,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might, you might want. You might need a

1283
01:01:47,360 --> 01:01:49,760
Speaker 1: break from the Twitter mobs for a little while after

1284
01:01:49,840 --> 01:01:50,360
Speaker 1: this one.

1285
01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:52,720
Speaker 2: Where does where do.

1286
01:01:52,680 --> 01:01:54,959
Speaker 1: You think the longevity movement fits into your work?

1287
01:01:55,800 --> 01:01:59,400
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, talk about a talk about a movement with

1288
01:01:59,400 --> 01:02:03,400
Speaker 3: a long history. As I said, my original area of

1289
01:02:03,440 --> 01:02:06,919
Speaker 3: expertise is classical Chinese thought. Daoist bunks have all kinds

1290
01:02:06,960 --> 01:02:10,520
Speaker 3: of longevity protocols, and those typically involve avoiding whatever it

1291
01:02:10,600 --> 01:02:13,840
Speaker 3: is the masses are eating, combined with some sort of

1292
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:18,280
Speaker 3: proprietary supplement regimens, some magic spells, et cetera, et cetera.

1293
01:02:18,880 --> 01:02:23,320
Speaker 3: I think the longevity movement is just our culture's version

1294
01:02:23,920 --> 01:02:28,120
Speaker 3: of a timeless search, which is the way to get

1295
01:02:28,160 --> 01:02:29,520
Speaker 3: outside of mortality.

1296
01:02:29,600 --> 01:02:30,800
Speaker 2: Of gurus like Brian.

1297
01:02:30,600 --> 01:02:33,959
Speaker 3: Johnson, they do the same thing that a lot of

1298
01:02:33,960 --> 01:02:36,520
Speaker 3: these long COVID protocols do they go to the science,

1299
01:02:36,560 --> 01:02:38,360
Speaker 3: They mine it for stuff that looks promising, but it's

1300
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:41,480
Speaker 3: actually very preliminary or sketchy. They build it into some

1301
01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:46,360
Speaker 3: kind of proto call successful gurus like him also put

1302
01:02:46,440 --> 01:02:50,479
Speaker 3: out the external trappings of what people believe to be health.

1303
01:02:50,600 --> 01:02:51,680
Speaker 2: I mean, this is something I think is.

1304
01:02:51,640 --> 01:02:55,600
Speaker 3: Really interesting, which is that being shredded is not the

1305
01:02:55,640 --> 01:03:00,800
Speaker 3: same as being extremely healthy. Everyone knows that you cannot

1306
01:03:00,840 --> 01:03:05,000
Speaker 3: become a guru without being shredded and hairless. You know,

1307
01:03:05,120 --> 01:03:06,600
Speaker 3: a base, I mean not all of them, but like,

1308
01:03:06,840 --> 01:03:10,240
Speaker 3: there's this look, right, and that look wouldn't have commanded

1309
01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:12,240
Speaker 3: respect in nineteen twenty.

1310
01:03:12,240 --> 01:03:14,120
Speaker 2: You would have looked like a freak. I mean, people

1311
01:03:14,120 --> 01:03:16,200
Speaker 2: would be like, what is wrong with this person? Look?

1312
01:03:16,280 --> 01:03:19,480
Speaker 2: They look so scary. So you combine all of these

1313
01:03:19,520 --> 01:03:22,440
Speaker 2: things and you get people to believe that maybe, just

1314
01:03:22,480 --> 01:03:25,720
Speaker 2: maybe the scariest thing in the world, death is something

1315
01:03:25,760 --> 01:03:29,960
Speaker 2: that you might not have to face. I would caution.

1316
01:03:30,760 --> 01:03:35,160
Speaker 3: I also do comparative folklore, and there's always folk tales

1317
01:03:35,360 --> 01:03:39,160
Speaker 3: about the people seeking to cheat death, and Michael spoiler alert,

1318
01:03:39,400 --> 01:03:41,760
Speaker 3: there is not a folk tale I've read in which

1319
01:03:41,800 --> 01:03:44,800
Speaker 3: those people succeed there's not a folk tale I've read

1320
01:03:44,800 --> 01:03:47,560
Speaker 3: in which those people have normal, happy lives. It is

1321
01:03:47,600 --> 01:03:50,320
Speaker 3: ever an always a cautionary tale.

1322
01:03:50,680 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 2: Yeah. Always.

1323
01:03:51,480 --> 01:03:56,800
Speaker 1: It's this sort of meaningless quest that ends in sort

1324
01:03:56,800 --> 01:03:59,680
Speaker 1: of insanity. Is that what you tend to find in those.

1325
01:04:00,360 --> 01:04:03,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, insanity, or or eventually making some kind of bargain

1326
01:04:05,120 --> 01:04:08,680
Speaker 3: with with some sort of malevolent entity.

1327
01:04:08,760 --> 01:04:09,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right.

1328
01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:12,640
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know, man, I again, I hesitate,

1329
01:04:12,720 --> 01:04:15,720
Speaker 3: you know all one thing I've sort of learned way

1330
01:04:15,760 --> 01:04:17,280
Speaker 3: back from when I was sort of laying into I

1331
01:04:17,280 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 3: don't know if you remember, I mean maybe you know.

1332
01:04:19,160 --> 01:04:23,760
Speaker 3: I'm I'm old enough to remember the Grain Brain bestseller.

1333
01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:24,400
Speaker 2: David pearl Mutter.

1334
01:04:24,680 --> 01:04:28,040
Speaker 3: There was a not listic I forget the other guy,

1335
01:04:28,080 --> 01:04:31,440
Speaker 3: Week Belly, all these folks, and and I ended up

1336
01:04:31,440 --> 01:04:33,480
Speaker 3: looking at David pearl Mutter for New York Magazine way

1337
01:04:33,480 --> 01:04:35,640
Speaker 3: back in the day, and I wrote basically a takedown

1338
01:04:35,640 --> 01:04:38,560
Speaker 3: at the s guy. He's he he is, He's he's

1339
01:04:38,600 --> 01:04:41,320
Speaker 3: just not reputable. He's been changing his mind all the time.

1340
01:04:41,360 --> 01:04:43,120
Speaker 3: He's just he's really the sort of embodiment of a

1341
01:04:43,160 --> 01:04:46,360
Speaker 3: guru Charlatan. But what I didn't realize is that there's

1342
01:04:46,360 --> 01:04:47,680
Speaker 3: a lot of people that believe in this guy, and

1343
01:04:47,720 --> 01:04:50,200
Speaker 3: he helped them by by scaring the crap out of

1344
01:04:50,240 --> 01:04:54,200
Speaker 3: them about gluten. He actually also scared them into just

1345
01:04:54,360 --> 01:04:58,320
Speaker 3: paying attention to their diet. They got better, and and

1346
01:04:58,320 --> 01:05:03,520
Speaker 3: and and sort of trying to take him down, is

1347
01:05:04,200 --> 01:05:06,840
Speaker 3: I guess ironically also trying to take down the.

1348
01:05:06,760 --> 01:05:08,400
Speaker 2: Thing that worked for them.

1349
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:10,520
Speaker 3: I mean, again, just a short story, but when I

1350
01:05:10,560 --> 01:05:12,880
Speaker 3: was in Divinity School, we used to make fun of

1351
01:05:12,880 --> 01:05:16,080
Speaker 3: prosperity gospel guys. There's this guy, Joel Austin. Oh yeah,

1352
01:05:16,160 --> 01:05:19,320
Speaker 3: he's this just slimiest prosperity gospel guy. You could imagine,

1353
01:05:19,440 --> 01:05:21,920
Speaker 3: huge megachurch, he's super rich, he's bringing in all this world.

1354
01:05:21,920 --> 01:05:23,200
Speaker 2: Mocking and blah blah blah.

1355
01:05:23,400 --> 01:05:26,440
Speaker 3: One of my friends, who was from rural Kentucky, was like, yeah,

1356
01:05:26,480 --> 01:05:28,160
Speaker 3: I get it, man, I know you guys are mocking

1357
01:05:28,200 --> 01:05:30,920
Speaker 3: this guy. But you know, my parents were abusive, they

1358
01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:33,240
Speaker 3: didn't pay attention to my education. And in high school,

1359
01:05:33,400 --> 01:05:37,280
Speaker 3: Joel Austin made me believe that I could go to college.

1360
01:05:37,720 --> 01:05:39,760
Speaker 2: Wow, he made me believe that with enough faith.

1361
01:05:39,960 --> 01:05:41,760
Speaker 3: I watched him every day, he said to us, and

1362
01:05:42,800 --> 01:05:44,240
Speaker 3: so I know why you guys are mocking him.

1363
01:05:44,240 --> 01:05:46,040
Speaker 2: And I know he's a slimeball.

1364
01:05:46,120 --> 01:05:48,680
Speaker 3: But like he Without him, I wouldn't be here, And

1365
01:05:48,720 --> 01:05:50,720
Speaker 3: that really hit me hard too. You know, they maybe

1366
01:05:50,760 --> 01:05:54,000
Speaker 3: gurus and maybe slimeballs, but also sadly they're also helping people.

1367
01:05:54,080 --> 01:05:55,280
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't know what to do with this stuff.

1368
01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:56,440
Speaker 2: It's very complicated.

1369
01:05:56,720 --> 01:05:58,800
Speaker 1: How do you square it? Or are you just like

1370
01:05:58,840 --> 01:05:59,280
Speaker 1: I don't know?

1371
01:06:00,120 --> 01:06:03,120
Speaker 3: It's Yeah, how do I square it? I change my

1372
01:06:03,200 --> 01:06:05,800
Speaker 3: mind in public. I try as much as possible to

1373
01:06:05,800 --> 01:06:08,960
Speaker 3: admit when I'm wrong. When I'm wrong, I try to

1374
01:06:09,200 --> 01:06:11,760
Speaker 3: hold space for uncertainty and nuanced At the end of

1375
01:06:11,800 --> 01:06:14,920
Speaker 3: the day, I think that the best tools we have

1376
01:06:15,040 --> 01:06:20,000
Speaker 3: to fight against guruves and ultra process information is our

1377
01:06:20,200 --> 01:06:24,120
Speaker 3: abilities to be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty, And so

1378
01:06:24,240 --> 01:06:26,960
Speaker 3: as much as I can, that's what I model.

1379
01:06:27,120 --> 01:06:28,480
Speaker 2: I guess that's how I fight against it.

1380
01:06:28,640 --> 01:06:32,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, Once, once a person has that lesson, if they

1381
01:06:32,960 --> 01:06:36,160
Speaker 1: find themselves you know, they've listened to this point and

1382
01:06:36,160 --> 01:06:38,080
Speaker 1: they're going, you know, I maybe I have some beliefs

1383
01:06:38,080 --> 01:06:42,520
Speaker 1: that kind of fall into this. What's the move after that? Like,

1384
01:06:42,560 --> 01:06:43,640
Speaker 1: what do you tell people to do?

1385
01:06:44,400 --> 01:06:51,160
Speaker 3: Be gentle with yourself, realize that not not being dogmatic

1386
01:06:51,200 --> 01:06:54,520
Speaker 3: about something is not the same as not doing it

1387
01:06:54,960 --> 01:06:58,480
Speaker 3: or not holding it lightly. So there's you don't have

1388
01:06:58,560 --> 01:07:01,000
Speaker 3: to this is the all or nothing sort of approach.

1389
01:07:01,000 --> 01:07:02,200
Speaker 3: It's like, well, if it's not this, then it must

1390
01:07:02,200 --> 01:07:04,720
Speaker 3: be that. Or if it's not, if there's not good

1391
01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:06,720
Speaker 3: evidence of gluten like I've changed my mind now, so

1392
01:07:06,720 --> 01:07:07,880
Speaker 3: I just need to change my diet.

1393
01:07:07,920 --> 01:07:09,920
Speaker 2: That it doesn't have to be so extreme.

1394
01:07:10,240 --> 01:07:13,120
Speaker 3: So just I would say if people have listened to

1395
01:07:13,120 --> 01:07:14,920
Speaker 3: this point they're wondering about their own lives, is like

1396
01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:18,400
Speaker 3: you can just you can loosen your grip on some

1397
01:07:18,480 --> 01:07:21,200
Speaker 3: of the beliefs that you feel like are keeping you alive.

1398
01:07:22,240 --> 01:07:24,320
Speaker 3: Just loosen your grip on them. It doesn't mean changing

1399
01:07:24,360 --> 01:07:26,800
Speaker 3: your life. It doesn't mean believing me. I'm not really

1400
01:07:26,800 --> 01:07:29,560
Speaker 3: saying anything actually is the truth. It just means, like,

1401
01:07:29,880 --> 01:07:34,120
Speaker 3: hold a little bit more lightly. And I think that

1402
01:07:34,560 --> 01:07:38,160
Speaker 3: even in the act of loosening your grip, like it

1403
01:07:38,240 --> 01:07:43,960
Speaker 3: metaphorically physically, you relax a little, things don't seem quite

1404
01:07:44,040 --> 01:07:45,240
Speaker 3: so all or nothing.

1405
01:07:45,400 --> 01:07:46,680
Speaker 2: And so just by.

1406
01:07:46,520 --> 01:07:49,000
Speaker 3: Loosening your grip a little on the beliefs that are

1407
01:07:49,000 --> 01:07:51,240
Speaker 3: important to you, I think you can find that your

1408
01:07:51,600 --> 01:07:55,280
Speaker 3: sort of your soul relaxes in the same way that

1409
01:07:55,280 --> 01:07:57,600
Speaker 3: your body relaxes when you loosen your grip a little

1410
01:07:57,600 --> 01:07:58,560
Speaker 3: bit on what you're holding on to.

1411
01:07:59,160 --> 01:08:02,200
Speaker 1: I'll take a break, then Alan will explain how writing

1412
01:08:02,240 --> 01:08:05,600
Speaker 1: this article on long Covid shaped his thinking and changed

1413
01:08:05,640 --> 01:08:16,160
Speaker 1: his mind in some areas. What have you learned from

1414
01:08:16,720 --> 01:08:19,200
Speaker 1: doing this piece and everything after?

1415
01:08:19,640 --> 01:08:20,960
Speaker 2: Well, I guess a couple of things.

1416
01:08:21,200 --> 01:08:24,280
Speaker 3: One thing is that language is even more important than

1417
01:08:24,280 --> 01:08:26,760
Speaker 3: I thought, and that when it comes to words like

1418
01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:29,120
Speaker 3: mind and body are real and fake, that are just

1419
01:08:29,360 --> 01:08:32,840
Speaker 3: that are absolutely foundational parts of how we perceive the world.

1420
01:08:34,479 --> 01:08:38,879
Speaker 3: It's just harder than I thought to overcome the words

1421
01:08:38,920 --> 01:08:40,960
Speaker 3: that we use to describe reality.

1422
01:08:41,120 --> 01:08:42,479
Speaker 2: So that's one thing I've learned. So I need to

1423
01:08:42,479 --> 01:08:44,400
Speaker 2: think harder about how to.

1424
01:08:45,920 --> 01:08:49,120
Speaker 3: Talk about things in a way that doesn't allow people

1425
01:08:49,240 --> 01:08:52,360
Speaker 3: or myself to fall back into the very categories that

1426
01:08:52,880 --> 01:08:56,040
Speaker 3: I'm trying to transcend. That's one thing I've learned. The

1427
01:08:56,080 --> 01:09:02,600
Speaker 3: other thing I've learned from writing this piece is that

1428
01:09:04,000 --> 01:09:06,519
Speaker 3: the innet I mean, I may sound like an idiot,

1429
01:09:06,560 --> 01:09:09,360
Speaker 3: it's like, really, Alan, you didn't know this, but my Lord,

1430
01:09:09,800 --> 01:09:12,519
Speaker 3: the Internet and social media is a place that allows

1431
01:09:12,600 --> 01:09:17,240
Speaker 3: people to find groups of other people who are exactly

1432
01:09:17,360 --> 01:09:20,120
Speaker 3: like them and are and are super upset about the

1433
01:09:20,160 --> 01:09:22,720
Speaker 3: exact same things and agree with them on everything.

1434
01:09:23,200 --> 01:09:25,000
Speaker 2: And it's really.

1435
01:09:24,880 --> 01:09:28,320
Speaker 3: Unhealthy, I think intellectually, I said to someone, and I

1436
01:09:28,320 --> 01:09:33,080
Speaker 3: think this is true. The Internet is like it allows

1437
01:09:33,080 --> 01:09:35,000
Speaker 3: you to create a bunch of other people who function

1438
01:09:35,160 --> 01:09:39,240
Speaker 3: like a mirror. And you look at this mirror and

1439
01:09:39,320 --> 01:09:41,519
Speaker 3: you think that what you're looking at is a window

1440
01:09:41,560 --> 01:09:44,719
Speaker 3: onto the world. But a mirror is not a window

1441
01:09:44,720 --> 01:09:48,840
Speaker 3: onto the world. And the Internet tricks us into thinking

1442
01:09:48,880 --> 01:09:52,639
Speaker 3: that these screens are windows onto the world, when in

1443
01:09:52,680 --> 01:09:57,040
Speaker 3: fact we're just looking at ourselves. And that's tremendously dangerous.

1444
01:09:57,120 --> 01:09:59,479
Speaker 3: In religious terms, that's a form of idolatry. You begin

1445
01:09:59,520 --> 01:10:05,040
Speaker 3: to worship your own image in a way that's deeply problematic.

1446
01:10:05,080 --> 01:10:05,759
Speaker 2: But it's not your.

1447
01:10:05,600 --> 01:10:09,479
Speaker 3: Fault, because what you're being told is that the screen

1448
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:12,680
Speaker 3: through which you're getting your information is actually providing you

1449
01:10:13,000 --> 01:10:15,799
Speaker 3: with a view of the world itself.

1450
01:10:16,160 --> 01:10:17,800
Speaker 2: And that's that's really dangerous as well.

1451
01:10:17,840 --> 01:10:19,479
Speaker 3: So a lot of people are looking into their screens

1452
01:10:19,479 --> 01:10:21,839
Speaker 3: and thinking these are windows, and in fact they are mirrors.

1453
01:10:23,320 --> 01:10:26,280
Speaker 1: You have a new book that you're working on, right, Yep,

1454
01:10:26,400 --> 01:10:28,559
Speaker 1: what's that called tell us a little bit about it.

1455
01:10:28,560 --> 01:10:29,759
Speaker 2: Well, so I've learned.

1456
01:10:30,040 --> 01:10:33,320
Speaker 3: I've learned from people selectively editing clips of interviews like

1457
01:10:33,360 --> 01:10:35,400
Speaker 3: these that I need to work on the subtitle, which,

1458
01:10:35,400 --> 01:10:37,800
Speaker 3: as you know, headlines and book titles are chosen in

1459
01:10:37,840 --> 01:10:41,519
Speaker 3: collaboration with other people, yeah, editors, agents.

1460
01:10:41,680 --> 01:10:44,400
Speaker 1: And when you say collaboration, it means the publisher gives

1461
01:10:44,400 --> 01:10:47,439
Speaker 1: you three options and you say thanks, I don't know

1462
01:10:47,439 --> 01:10:49,080
Speaker 1: if I love any of them, and they go yeah,

1463
01:10:49,160 --> 01:10:51,080
Speaker 1: but keywords on Amazon or whatever the hell.

1464
01:10:51,200 --> 01:10:53,200
Speaker 3: I'm working on a book called Demons by Another Name,

1465
01:10:53,760 --> 01:10:57,640
Speaker 3: and the subtitle used to be Biology Belief and the

1466
01:10:57,680 --> 01:11:01,000
Speaker 3: Stories that Make Us Sick, And that is a catchy subtitle,

1467
01:11:01,040 --> 01:11:03,559
Speaker 3: but make us Sick makes it sound as if the

1468
01:11:03,640 --> 01:11:07,479
Speaker 3: stories themselves are the cause of the suffering, which is

1469
01:11:07,520 --> 01:11:08,320
Speaker 3: actually not true.

1470
01:11:08,960 --> 01:11:11,000
Speaker 2: It can be in some cases, but it is not always.

1471
01:11:11,280 --> 01:11:14,360
Speaker 3: And so I would like to change that to Demons

1472
01:11:14,400 --> 01:11:18,559
Speaker 3: by another Name, Biology Belief and the Stories that shape

1473
01:11:18,560 --> 01:11:19,240
Speaker 3: are Suffering.

1474
01:11:19,520 --> 01:11:21,680
Speaker 2: I think that's a better way to think about it.

1475
01:11:21,800 --> 01:11:24,200
Speaker 3: And what that book is going to go into is

1476
01:11:24,240 --> 01:11:29,240
Speaker 3: a variety of different examples of how cultural or personal

1477
01:11:29,400 --> 01:11:34,360
Speaker 3: perspectives on what is causing one's physical and mental suffering

1478
01:11:34,880 --> 01:11:38,320
Speaker 3: end up shaping that suffering through feedback loops. And I

1479
01:11:38,400 --> 01:11:42,200
Speaker 3: call it demons by another name, because in other cultural

1480
01:11:42,240 --> 01:11:46,840
Speaker 3: contexts people have had different names for these forces. They

1481
01:11:46,920 --> 01:11:50,360
Speaker 3: call them demons, they call it witchcraft, they call it

1482
01:11:50,760 --> 01:11:53,720
Speaker 3: well in our coach would call it stress or loneliness.

1483
01:11:54,280 --> 01:11:59,120
Speaker 3: These are forces that are not physical forces but have

1484
01:12:00,080 --> 01:12:03,639
Speaker 3: that harm us. And then our belief about what causes

1485
01:12:03,640 --> 01:12:05,920
Speaker 3: our own suffering in relation to these forces and the

1486
01:12:05,960 --> 01:12:07,320
Speaker 3: cultural context we're in.

1487
01:12:07,760 --> 01:12:09,200
Speaker 2: Shapes our suffering.

1488
01:12:09,320 --> 01:12:12,760
Speaker 3: So if you imagine suffering in certain ways as a

1489
01:12:12,840 --> 01:12:16,519
Speaker 3: kind of i don't know, like a substance that takes

1490
01:12:16,680 --> 01:12:18,439
Speaker 3: shape in a particular culture.

1491
01:12:18,520 --> 01:12:19,640
Speaker 2: Not all diseases are like this.

1492
01:12:19,760 --> 01:12:22,559
Speaker 3: Obviously, not all illnesses like this, But in many cases,

1493
01:12:23,320 --> 01:12:26,519
Speaker 3: the stories that we swim in that are invisible to

1494
01:12:26,600 --> 01:12:29,960
Speaker 3: us sometimes that are built into our language itself, give

1495
01:12:30,160 --> 01:12:32,280
Speaker 3: shape to our suffering.

1496
01:12:32,680 --> 01:12:34,120
Speaker 2: And so one I'm just.

1497
01:12:34,040 --> 01:12:35,880
Speaker 1: Going to give one example of this, please do.

1498
01:12:36,280 --> 01:12:38,520
Speaker 3: There was New York Times piece recently was super fascinating

1499
01:12:39,120 --> 01:12:44,040
Speaker 3: about a twenty first responders went to a house in

1500
01:12:44,080 --> 01:12:47,320
Speaker 3: New Mexico where people had called in.

1501
01:12:47,200 --> 01:12:48,080
Speaker 2: About an overdose.

1502
01:12:48,120 --> 01:12:49,960
Speaker 3: When they arrived at the house, I think I'm getting

1503
01:12:49,960 --> 01:12:53,200
Speaker 3: the numbers kind of wrong, but five people were unconscious,

1504
01:12:53,360 --> 01:12:57,840
Speaker 3: three of them were dead, so terrifying situation, and this

1505
01:12:57,960 --> 01:12:59,280
Speaker 3: was a fentanyl overdose.

1506
01:13:00,479 --> 01:13:02,760
Speaker 2: So after that, twenty.

1507
01:13:02,400 --> 01:13:06,760
Speaker 3: Of the healthcare workers also became sick with symptoms of

1508
01:13:06,920 --> 01:13:09,920
Speaker 3: overdose and they were rushed to the hospital and they

1509
01:13:09,920 --> 01:13:12,960
Speaker 3: were decontaminated. And the story was reported on this really

1510
01:13:13,120 --> 01:13:15,600
Speaker 3: crazy story, and there was one paragraph where it was like,

1511
01:13:15,640 --> 01:13:19,200
Speaker 3: pharmacologists seem to agree that it's very unlikely that you

1512
01:13:19,280 --> 01:13:21,559
Speaker 3: can overdose on fentanyl from contact with it.

1513
01:13:21,680 --> 01:13:22,479
Speaker 2: So one of the.

1514
01:13:22,360 --> 01:13:25,439
Speaker 3: Theories was that health these first responders had gotten it

1515
01:13:25,439 --> 01:13:30,679
Speaker 3: from offering first aid to people, but pharmacologically there's pretty

1516
01:13:30,720 --> 01:13:32,840
Speaker 3: unanimous agreement that it doesn't work like that. And what

1517
01:13:32,880 --> 01:13:35,960
Speaker 3: turns out is that contact fentanyl poisoning is something that

1518
01:13:36,000 --> 01:13:38,800
Speaker 3: has been around in our culture, especially in law enforcement,

1519
01:13:38,960 --> 01:13:41,920
Speaker 3: since about twenty fifteen, when a PSA went out to

1520
01:13:41,920 --> 01:13:44,280
Speaker 3: all police officers about how dangerous fentanyl was and like

1521
01:13:44,360 --> 01:13:45,559
Speaker 3: just touching it could kill you.

1522
01:13:46,560 --> 01:13:50,439
Speaker 2: And so we have lots of law enforcement and.

1523
01:13:50,360 --> 01:13:53,160
Speaker 3: Healthcare workers who are going out every year there are

1524
01:13:53,160 --> 01:13:56,000
Speaker 3: stories like this of contact fentanyl overdoses and people saved

1525
01:13:56,080 --> 01:14:01,759
Speaker 3: by narcan, and there's a real taboo around acknowledging even

1526
01:14:01,800 --> 01:14:05,000
Speaker 3: the possibility that what's happening is that you walk into

1527
01:14:05,000 --> 01:14:06,840
Speaker 3: a house with three dead people on the ground, and

1528
01:14:06,880 --> 01:14:09,679
Speaker 3: it's stuffy, and it smells horrible, and it's a terrifying place,

1529
01:14:09,920 --> 01:14:13,000
Speaker 3: and you've heard stories about how fentanyl can kill you

1530
01:14:13,080 --> 01:14:13,800
Speaker 3: if you touch it.

1531
01:14:14,800 --> 01:14:16,760
Speaker 2: Your heart's already racing. You're in there.

1532
01:14:16,880 --> 01:14:19,280
Speaker 3: You're like a first responder, and there's three dead people.

1533
01:14:19,320 --> 01:14:22,599
Speaker 3: Your nervous system is on red alert. And then now

1534
01:14:22,680 --> 01:14:27,559
Speaker 3: something trips that and there's a cascade effect and you

1535
01:14:27,680 --> 01:14:30,960
Speaker 3: start experiencing physiological symptoms that look a lot like but

1536
01:14:31,040 --> 01:14:34,080
Speaker 3: not exactly like. As many overdose experts point out these

1537
01:14:34,120 --> 01:14:35,960
Speaker 3: overdoses when we have that on camera, and we have

1538
01:14:36,000 --> 01:14:39,799
Speaker 3: some don't look like overdoses, typical overdoses, they.

1539
01:14:39,640 --> 01:14:40,599
Speaker 2: Look at panic attacks.

1540
01:14:41,200 --> 01:14:41,519
Speaker 1: Wow.

1541
01:14:41,600 --> 01:14:46,360
Speaker 3: But reporting on that, honestly, is almost impossible. And I

1542
01:14:46,400 --> 01:14:49,599
Speaker 3: actually went to Maine to talk with this burly police

1543
01:14:49,640 --> 01:14:51,880
Speaker 3: office it tattoos all over his arms, super nice guy.

1544
01:14:52,040 --> 01:14:53,519
Speaker 3: He was one of the people who had his life

1545
01:14:53,560 --> 01:14:55,839
Speaker 3: saved after a contact fentanyl overdose.

1546
01:14:56,120 --> 01:14:58,160
Speaker 2: And he was like, look, man, I cut myself.

1547
01:14:58,200 --> 01:15:00,200
Speaker 3: I cut my leg with a chainsaw and I drove

1548
01:15:00,240 --> 01:15:01,240
Speaker 3: myself to the hospital.

1549
01:15:01,520 --> 01:15:04,680
Speaker 2: There is no way that what I had was a

1550
01:15:04,680 --> 01:15:05,280
Speaker 2: panic attack.

1551
01:15:05,280 --> 01:15:08,000
Speaker 3: I've been in a million different situations way worse than this,

1552
01:15:08,080 --> 01:15:11,120
Speaker 3: And again, I don't know what happened to him as

1553
01:15:11,120 --> 01:15:11,840
Speaker 3: an individual.

1554
01:15:12,120 --> 01:15:14,040
Speaker 2: What my book is about is not what happened to him.

1555
01:15:14,080 --> 01:15:15,800
Speaker 2: What my book is about is.

1556
01:15:15,760 --> 01:15:20,920
Speaker 3: How our current cultural context makes it almost impossible to

1557
01:15:21,040 --> 01:15:26,280
Speaker 3: discuss things like contact fetanol poisoning because of the implications

1558
01:15:26,360 --> 01:15:32,120
Speaker 3: of a psychogenic or psychological element of what happens to

1559
01:15:32,160 --> 01:15:32,719
Speaker 3: those people.

1560
01:15:33,600 --> 01:15:34,960
Speaker 2: And one of the things I was.

1561
01:15:34,960 --> 01:15:36,800
Speaker 3: Saying to you before is that even in saying the

1562
01:15:36,840 --> 01:15:40,200
Speaker 3: words psychogenic or psychological, someone's going to clip this and

1563
01:15:40,200 --> 01:15:41,920
Speaker 3: be like, look, Levin, if it's thinks that like it's

1564
01:15:41,960 --> 01:15:42,760
Speaker 3: all in our heads, right.

1565
01:15:42,800 --> 01:15:45,040
Speaker 2: This goes back to the Wired article at the very beginning.

1566
01:15:46,600 --> 01:15:48,960
Speaker 3: It's almost as if I'm going to have to invent

1567
01:15:49,960 --> 01:15:53,080
Speaker 3: new language to discuss these things in a way that

1568
01:15:53,160 --> 01:15:57,360
Speaker 3: doesn't drag us back into the binaries that are making

1569
01:15:57,360 --> 01:15:59,559
Speaker 3: it impossible for us to understand what's really happening.

1570
01:16:00,040 --> 01:16:02,120
Speaker 1: Why do you think we're so against the idea that

1571
01:16:02,240 --> 01:16:03,960
Speaker 1: things have a psychogenic element.

1572
01:16:05,120 --> 01:16:08,400
Speaker 2: Forget psychogetic Let's look at diety.

1573
01:16:08,600 --> 01:16:12,120
Speaker 3: People who gained a lot of weight or gained a

1574
01:16:12,120 --> 01:16:13,920
Speaker 3: lot of weight and then had difficulty losing it. Were

1575
01:16:13,960 --> 01:16:16,680
Speaker 3: called lazy, They were told they were slobs. They were

1576
01:16:16,720 --> 01:16:18,479
Speaker 3: told that it was their fault. I mean Oprah, right,

1577
01:16:18,560 --> 01:16:21,639
Speaker 3: the least lazy woman in the world, right, Like, people

1578
01:16:21,680 --> 01:16:26,120
Speaker 3: were blamed for being obese, and they were blamed for

1579
01:16:26,200 --> 01:16:26,639
Speaker 3: not being.

1580
01:16:26,520 --> 01:16:27,519
Speaker 2: Able to lose their weight.

1581
01:16:28,640 --> 01:16:31,559
Speaker 3: I think that being blamed, feeling like something is your

1582
01:16:31,600 --> 01:16:33,800
Speaker 3: fault is one of the worst things you can possibly feel.

1583
01:16:34,000 --> 01:16:36,160
Speaker 2: So and it was false. It was false in the

1584
01:16:36,200 --> 01:16:36,799
Speaker 2: case of obese.

1585
01:16:36,960 --> 01:16:38,920
Speaker 3: Is not true that all of a sudden a bunch

1586
01:16:38,920 --> 01:16:42,439
Speaker 3: of people got lazier right when processed foods hit America, Like,

1587
01:16:42,479 --> 01:16:46,640
Speaker 3: it's just ridiculous, right, So, but what happened, and you

1588
01:16:46,720 --> 01:16:49,120
Speaker 3: know this is that there was this whole weird not weird.

1589
01:16:49,240 --> 01:16:53,240
Speaker 3: There was this whole reaction understandable but misguided where they

1590
01:16:53,240 --> 01:16:55,960
Speaker 3: would say things like, well, actually it's not this isn't

1591
01:16:55,960 --> 01:16:58,160
Speaker 3: about how much food you eat. It's not calories in

1592
01:16:58,200 --> 01:17:00,800
Speaker 3: people would say things like I eat no more food than.

1593
01:17:00,720 --> 01:17:02,160
Speaker 2: Anyone else, and I'm still really fat.

1594
01:17:02,160 --> 01:17:05,320
Speaker 3: There were all these other theories about what's caused weight

1595
01:17:05,400 --> 01:17:09,280
Speaker 3: gain or what stopped people from losing weight it's your metabolism,

1596
01:17:09,479 --> 01:17:11,320
Speaker 3: it's you know, I don't know, it's the drugs that

1597
01:17:11,360 --> 01:17:14,719
Speaker 3: you're on. And of course these are marginally true. Sometimes

1598
01:17:14,720 --> 01:17:17,839
Speaker 3: you can take a drug that causes weight gain, sometimes,

1599
01:17:17,920 --> 01:17:20,880
Speaker 3: you know, often significant weight gain. But at the end

1600
01:17:20,920 --> 01:17:24,280
Speaker 3: of the day, it was always true that weight gain

1601
01:17:24,360 --> 01:17:26,960
Speaker 3: was caused by eating too much and weight could be

1602
01:17:27,080 --> 01:17:29,120
Speaker 3: lost by eating less. And now that we have GLP ones,

1603
01:17:29,160 --> 01:17:33,920
Speaker 3: of course the blame element disappears.

1604
01:17:33,360 --> 01:17:36,000
Speaker 2: And so we can go back to sort of observing.

1605
01:17:35,479 --> 01:17:38,679
Speaker 3: What was obviously true the whole time, but it couldn't

1606
01:17:38,840 --> 01:17:42,720
Speaker 3: be true without people also being blamed, and so what

1607
01:17:42,800 --> 01:17:45,559
Speaker 3: ended up happening was a defensive reaction against a kind

1608
01:17:45,600 --> 01:17:52,720
Speaker 3: of scientific truth that was oriented towards exculpating people for

1609
01:17:52,800 --> 01:17:55,800
Speaker 3: situations that really weren't their fault but looked like to

1610
01:17:55,840 --> 01:17:56,680
Speaker 3: the public.

1611
01:17:56,360 --> 01:17:59,559
Speaker 2: It was their fault. So I would say, that's that's what's.

1612
01:17:59,439 --> 01:18:03,400
Speaker 3: Going on over in the world of what appears to

1613
01:18:03,479 --> 01:18:06,280
Speaker 3: be suffering that's mediated by beliefs.

1614
01:18:06,600 --> 01:18:09,880
Speaker 1: That makes sense. ALAN appreciate you coming on your book

1615
01:18:09,920 --> 01:18:13,160
Speaker 1: is natural. Everyone please read it. It's a fantastic book.

1616
01:18:13,160 --> 01:18:15,720
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it, and I appreciate you doing the

1617
01:18:15,720 --> 01:18:17,519
Speaker 1: wired piece as well. I thought you did a really

1618
01:18:17,600 --> 01:18:20,920
Speaker 1: nice job with that, and I appreciate you having to

1619
01:18:20,920 --> 01:18:22,240
Speaker 1: be in the trenches afterwards.

1620
01:18:22,720 --> 01:18:27,080
Speaker 3: Someone, I'm really grateful to you for those words and

1621
01:18:27,120 --> 01:18:30,080
Speaker 3: for having me on. You know, it's been tough, not

1622
01:18:30,160 --> 01:18:32,000
Speaker 3: as tough as people who are sick of.

1623
01:18:31,880 --> 01:18:33,679
Speaker 2: It, but you know it was tough.

1624
01:18:33,720 --> 01:18:35,640
Speaker 3: So hearing that sort of thing and having that kind

1625
01:18:35,680 --> 01:18:36,880
Speaker 3: of feedback really means a lot to me.

1626
01:18:36,920 --> 01:18:37,599
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.

1627
01:18:39,080 --> 01:18:41,280
Speaker 1: That's a wrap. Thanks for checking out the show, and

1628
01:18:41,280 --> 01:18:43,400
Speaker 1: thanks to Alan for coming on to talk about his

1629
01:18:43,600 --> 01:18:46,280
Speaker 1: Wired piece and his book Natural and all his other

1630
01:18:46,520 --> 01:18:49,800
Speaker 1: highly useful ideas. As a reminder, we are in your

1631
01:18:49,840 --> 01:18:52,840
Speaker 1: feed twice a week, so please subscribe so you will

1632
01:18:52,880 --> 01:18:55,080
Speaker 1: get those updates. If you want to watch the show

1633
01:18:55,120 --> 01:18:58,440
Speaker 1: on video, the free iHeart app has all the episodes

1634
01:18:58,479 --> 01:19:02,320
Speaker 1: on video. If you got questions for Ask Michael Anything section,

1635
01:19:02,840 --> 01:19:05,360
Speaker 1: drop them into comments or send them to media at

1636
01:19:05,360 --> 01:19:07,960
Speaker 1: two pct dot com. We'll try and answer as many

1637
01:19:07,960 --> 01:19:11,400
Speaker 1: of your questions as we can, and in closing, as

1638
01:19:11,439 --> 01:19:14,679
Speaker 1: we always do, as we always will, have fun, don't

1639
01:19:14,720 --> 01:19:14,920
Speaker 1: die