# Mind the Science: How the Wellness Industry is Scamming Us (with Dr. Jonathan Stea)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 27 Aug 2024, 40 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/60902483/podcast_757_jonathanstea.mp3

Dr. Jonathan Stea is a psychologist and author of the new book, "Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry." He joins us to talk about everything from detox to depression. Dr. Stea's website: https://www.jonathanstea.com/ Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists in this country is going.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Through the rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred.
[0:18] Speaker 1: If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because I put my hand on a book and
[0:24] Speaker 1: made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking, feels so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 2: Truth Beausian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast, hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 2: My special guest today has a delightful group of online
[1:01] Speaker 2: commenters who absolutely adore him. Just a few gems and
[1:05] Speaker 2: I made these notes. A few weeks ago. Someone said
[1:09] Speaker 2: you know less than an idiot and they could not
[1:12] Speaker 2: spell then correctly. There's another one who is saying, sheeple
[1:17] Speaker 2: bo narcissist, Bob, take the vaccine, Bob, go get another booster.
[1:23] Speaker 2: And then there were sheep emojis, so of course he
[1:26] Speaker 2: is one of the sheeple and he has blasted left
[1:30] Speaker 2: and right for everything from his I guess bogus scientific
[1:35] Speaker 2: background to his man butnt how does this guy deal
[1:39] Speaker 2: with it all? Doctor Jonathan Staya is a clinical psychologist
[1:43] Speaker 2: and adjunct Assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at
[1:47] Speaker 2: the University of Calgary. He specializes in addictive and psychiatric disorders.
[1:53] Speaker 2: He is a science and health communicator and he has
[1:56] Speaker 2: a new book called Mind, The Science Saving Your Mental
[2:00] Speaker 2: Health from the Wellness Industry. Doctor STEYA, it's good to
[2:05] Speaker 2: have your brother.
[2:06] Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Seth. I think that's the best intro
[2:09] Speaker 3: I've ever had on one of these.
[2:10] Speaker 2: Podcasts that I'm a gibber. I love your work anyway,
[2:15] Speaker 2: but I the base part of me does enjoy watching
[2:19] Speaker 2: how you respond to the haters. And they don't just
[2:23] Speaker 2: disagree with you. These people think you're the devil. This
[2:27] Speaker 2: is a daily, like an hour by hour occurrence.
[2:30] Speaker 3: Absolutely, they've named me the devil. They've called me the
[2:33] Speaker 3: face of evil, the devil's representative, just using a lot
[2:36] Speaker 3: of that mythological language. And yeah, I mean what you
[2:40] Speaker 3: named was a sample of probably what I've been dealing
[2:43] Speaker 3: with the past two years or so. A bit longer
[2:46] Speaker 3: than that, but i'd say the last two years, and
[2:48] Speaker 3: especially since Elon Musk took over Twitter. Now x I
[2:52] Speaker 3: literally receive about, on average, one hundred of those hateful,
[2:55] Speaker 3: abusive messages a day. I'm not exaggerating the number, probably
[2:59] Speaker 3: across the media platforms, but most specifically on X So yeah,
[3:03] Speaker 3: I'm well practiced it kind of managing that kind of vitriol.
[3:08] Speaker 2: Why the outrage, I mean, why are people so jacked
[3:11] Speaker 2: up over you and what you're saying? Are you there
[3:14] Speaker 2: being personally attacked? That's kind of how they're acting.
[3:17] Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe it is the man Bun and sort of
[3:19] Speaker 3: the devil Horn that have come out.
[3:21] Speaker 2: Well, they say, normally, when you resort to personal insults,
[3:24] Speaker 2: you've kind of already lost the discussion.
[3:26] Speaker 3: So absolutely, I've actually written on kind of the psychology
[3:30] Speaker 3: on trolling and the psychology of harassment. So there's actually
[3:33] Speaker 3: a number of factors that come together and interact that
[3:37] Speaker 3: I think kind of produces this. So Number one, I'd say, obviously,
[3:41] Speaker 3: the vast majority of these folks ninety nine percent of
[3:44] Speaker 3: them don't know who I am, or I certainly don't
[3:46] Speaker 3: know who they are, so they're attacking an image of
[3:48] Speaker 3: who they think I am or an idea that I represent.
[3:51] Speaker 3: So Number one, that's sort of happening. But when you
[3:53] Speaker 3: look at the literature on the psychology of trolling, you
[3:56] Speaker 3: see that it's sort of a number of these factors,
[3:58] Speaker 3: and I find it helpful for me to understand that
[4:01] Speaker 3: we can categorize them as sort of internal factors and
[4:04] Speaker 3: external factors, so things inside of us and outside of us.
[4:07] Speaker 3: So the things outside of us are things like the
[4:09] Speaker 3: online disinhibition effect, So just the idea that anyone behind
[4:13] Speaker 3: a computer screen somehow gets all of that liquid courage
[4:16] Speaker 3: that you know, something like alcohol may provide because it
[4:19] Speaker 3: sort of creates this illusion or this veil of invincibility
[4:24] Speaker 3: that's really an illusion. So there's this online inhibition effect.
[4:27] Speaker 3: I think when someone's anonymous that kind of puts the
[4:30] Speaker 3: online disinhibition effect on steroids that kind of amplifies it.
[4:34] Speaker 3: And of course there's just so much tribalism kind of
[4:36] Speaker 3: going on, so I kind of consider that to be
[4:38] Speaker 3: an external factor. Those things are interacting with other what
[4:42] Speaker 3: I call internal factors or things inside of us. So
[4:45] Speaker 3: we know from the scientific literature that there's a number
[4:48] Speaker 3: of personality traits that make people more likely to engage
[4:51] Speaker 3: in trolling and harassment, and the psychology world calls these
[4:55] Speaker 3: things the dark triad. Or the dark tetrad so specifically
[4:59] Speaker 3: things like narciss or sadism. And so when someone scores
[5:03] Speaker 3: high in these personality traits, they tend to go after people.
[5:06] Speaker 3: I think what accounts for a lot of my hate
[5:08] Speaker 3: is that there's another kind of factor, which is what
[5:11] Speaker 3: I call these ideologically possessed beliefs, so in other words,
[5:15] Speaker 3: marriage to a kind of ideology or pseudoscience. So you know,
[5:19] Speaker 3: a lot of my work is calling out things like
[5:21] Speaker 3: the anti vaccine movement or pseudoscience in alternative medicine and
[5:25] Speaker 3: the wellness industry. And I think that people can get
[5:28] Speaker 3: very threatened by that because when they tie their personal
[5:31] Speaker 3: identity to those beliefs, they can feel attacked. And then
[5:35] Speaker 3: if they already have personality traits like narcissism or sadism,
[5:38] Speaker 3: and this marriage to pseudoscience, say, I think that's sort
[5:42] Speaker 3: of the perfect storm for the stuff. And then of
[5:44] Speaker 3: course there's other psychological things happening, like people get conditioned
[5:47] Speaker 3: by it. If you do it a lot repeatedly and
[5:50] Speaker 3: you happen to have this statistic tendency or narcissistic tendency,
[5:54] Speaker 3: the brain gets rewarded over time by trolling and harassing people,
[5:57] Speaker 3: people that kind of develop this habit and be of
[6:00] Speaker 3: doing it, so I just happen to see them frequently.
[6:03] Speaker 3: But I think that explains that this combination of things.
[6:06] Speaker 2: It's like, you know, the anti vax or flat Earth
[6:09] Speaker 2: crowd or whatever. The more attacked they are, the more
[6:12] Speaker 2: persecuted they are, then the more they are essentially like
[6:16] Speaker 2: David versus Goliath, and then fight or flight kicks in right,
[6:20] Speaker 2: and they often retreat back to a pod where they
[6:23] Speaker 2: are validated by like minded people and they all pat
[6:27] Speaker 2: each other on the back and say, Wow, good thing,
[6:29] Speaker 2: we're smarter than everybody else. I call them identity beliefs,
[6:34] Speaker 2: would you. I mean, was that a good term for it?
[6:36] Speaker 3: I like that term. Yeah, I think that's really well said.
[6:39] Speaker 3: And yeah, it plays into this kind of hero mythology
[6:42] Speaker 3: that they're playing into. Like you said, they go out
[6:45] Speaker 3: into the world, they're a martyr or a hero, and
[6:47] Speaker 3: then they get to go back to the community and
[6:49] Speaker 3: be praised for that. Even though it's sort of a
[6:51] Speaker 3: you know, reality is much more sobering.
[6:53] Speaker 2: Which segues me into the title of your book, Mind,
[6:57] Speaker 2: The Science Saving your Mental Health from the wellness industry.
[7:02] Speaker 2: Doctor Stea. That book title is just the kind of
[7:05] Speaker 2: thing i'd expect a big pharma shill to say. You know,
[7:10] Speaker 2: you're taking your shillionaire bucks. You're in the pocket of
[7:13] Speaker 2: the big drug companies, and that's why you should be
[7:16] Speaker 2: distrusted at all costs. You've heard this.
[7:19] Speaker 4: One every day absolutely, which it's greatly ironic too, because
[7:25] Speaker 4: I'm a clinical psychologist, and so the vast majority of
[7:28] Speaker 4: clinical psychologists don't actually prescribe medication.
[7:31] Speaker 3: I'm not. I don't have prescribing authority, So it's hilarious
[7:34] Speaker 3: when people call me a big pharma show because I'm big.
[7:37] Speaker 3: Farma doesn't care about me at all. I don't prescribe drugs.
[7:40] Speaker 3: I can't make the money.
[7:42] Speaker 2: Okay, well this is it doesn't fit in a box.
[7:44] Speaker 2: But I rely on pharmaceutical companies. We all do, or
[7:48] Speaker 2: most of us do, for science based solutions. But it's
[7:53] Speaker 2: also I think crazy that Feiser has a market value
[7:56] Speaker 2: of one hundred and seventy billion dollars while some people
[7:59] Speaker 2: are to pay one thousand dollars a month for diabetes medication.
[8:03] Speaker 2: And so it's easy for us to distrust these major
[8:07] Speaker 2: pharmaceutical companies because they do seem to be holding so
[8:11] Speaker 2: many of the cards. How would you approach big Pharma
[8:14] Speaker 2: from that perspective, I would agree.
[8:17] Speaker 3: I mean, I think that we need to be skeptical
[8:19] Speaker 3: of big pharma and conflicts of interest in science, and
[8:23] Speaker 3: the distrust and the mistrust towards Big Pharma has been
[8:26] Speaker 3: well earned because of their history, and so that is true.
[8:30] Speaker 3: A case that I make in my book, however, is
[8:33] Speaker 3: that we also have a five point six trillion dollar
[8:36] Speaker 3: wellness industry that is largely unregulated for safety and effectiveness.
[8:41] Speaker 3: So big pharma, yes, it does have a lot of
[8:44] Speaker 3: well earned perils to its credit, it at least tries
[8:47] Speaker 3: to be regulated for safety and effectiveness, unlike the wellness industry,
[8:52] Speaker 3: and so it sort of goes to another huge I
[8:55] Speaker 3: guess message of my book is that just because Big
[8:58] Speaker 3: Pharma doesn't necesscessarily we can't put all of our trust
[9:01] Speaker 3: in Big Pharma, that doesn't mean that the wellness industry
[9:04] Speaker 3: is now our knight and shining armor that's going to
[9:06] Speaker 3: come to the rescue and somehow cure all of our
[9:09] Speaker 3: health ailments.
[9:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's the pitch. They're robinhood, They're circumventing the system,
[9:15] Speaker 2: They're going up against the man. They're going to beat
[9:18] Speaker 2: him in his own game kind of thing. And most
[9:21] Speaker 2: people who are going to the apocecary shops for I
[9:24] Speaker 2: don't know, shark cartilage and lawn clippings or whatever, they
[9:28] Speaker 2: feel like that they've kind of stuck it to the
[9:30] Speaker 2: system when in trigued, they're supporting an industry that is
[9:33] Speaker 2: a massive money maker.
[9:36] Speaker 3: Seth, you nailed it, because a lot of people don't
[9:39] Speaker 3: really see that idea. It's that again. I make the
[9:42] Speaker 3: cases that alternative medicine and the wellness industry more generally,
[9:46] Speaker 3: but alternative medicine is not just a set of unsupported
[9:49] Speaker 3: treatments or a set of pseudoscientific treatments like energy healing
[9:53] Speaker 3: or homeopathy. It's more than that. It's an entire narrative
[9:56] Speaker 3: and an ideology with its own theat of ideas behind it,
[10:00] Speaker 3: its own repeated tropes or repeated ideas and phrases, its
[10:04] Speaker 3: own propaganda tactics. To further sow that distrust in mainstream healthcare,
[10:10] Speaker 3: it needs that narrative to succeed and to grift, And
[10:14] Speaker 3: what I'm trying to do is trying to help people
[10:17] Speaker 3: see that narrative for their own eyes. So, for example,
[10:20] Speaker 3: if they went to a local alternative medicine clinic by
[10:23] Speaker 3: googling it, they could see some of these tropes and
[10:26] Speaker 3: see some of these ideas that get repeated with things
[10:29] Speaker 3: like unlike mainstream mental healthcare, who they don't know what
[10:32] Speaker 3: they're doing, and they only mask the symptoms. We treat
[10:35] Speaker 3: the root cause we know how to cure your health.
[10:38] Speaker 3: They don't. That's part of the narrative that I think
[10:41] Speaker 3: people just I think they're on autopilot and they don't
[10:43] Speaker 3: necessarily see that.
[10:45] Speaker 2: I'm interested too in the massaging of the data or
[10:48] Speaker 2: the lack of sourcing. My wife works in healthcare, and
[10:51] Speaker 2: so these stories kind of filter back to me. Someone's
[10:54] Speaker 2: diagnosed with cancer. They don't trust big pharma or big
[10:59] Speaker 2: chemo or big radiation hospitals, and so they end up
[11:04] Speaker 2: getting suckered in by these little coffee animal places down
[11:08] Speaker 2: in freaking Tijuana, and I go down and spend tens
[11:11] Speaker 2: and tens of thousands of dollars for those treatmentsine, and
[11:14] Speaker 2: those places will often say, oh, we've got a major
[11:17] Speaker 2: success rate, but few people have been able to track
[11:20] Speaker 2: down any real numbers. I don't know. Do you talk
[11:22] Speaker 2: at all about that kind of thing I do.
[11:24] Speaker 3: I think that's part of the propaganda tacks is that,
[11:27] Speaker 3: you know, a lot of it's part of the marketing
[11:29] Speaker 3: speel of alternative medicine. So yeah, they'll you know, they'll
[11:32] Speaker 3: pitch some some number or some study, and it can
[11:35] Speaker 3: be massaged, as you say, in the number of different ways.
[11:37] Speaker 3: So number one, it could be taken grossly out of context,
[11:41] Speaker 3: maybe derived from one animal study and using rats that
[11:44] Speaker 3: doesn't extend or generalize to humans at all. That's one
[11:48] Speaker 3: kind of scenario. Most often we see just a lot
[11:50] Speaker 3: of anecdotal evidence or testimonials, which we know as a
[11:54] Speaker 3: pseudo scientific warning sign. So they'll say, you know, it
[11:56] Speaker 3: worked for Bob going to Tijuana, it's going to work
[11:59] Speaker 3: for you when you see testimonials plastered all over alternative
[12:02] Speaker 3: medicine websites. So that's a propaganda tactic. The most insiduous one,
[12:07] Speaker 3: in my opinion, is there's an entire industry of pseudoscientific journals,
[12:13] Speaker 3: so things like the Journal of Alternative Medicine or the
[12:16] Speaker 3: Journal of Evidence Based Alternative Medicine, or there's one called Explore.
[12:20] Speaker 3: There's a number of these things out there. Of these
[12:22] Speaker 3: journals which They look and feel like regular peer reviewed
[12:27] Speaker 3: scientific journals. They have a method section and introduction and
[12:31] Speaker 3: results and findings. But what makes them pseudoscientific is that
[12:35] Speaker 3: they're publishing on unequivocal pseudoscientific topics. So for example, using
[12:40] Speaker 3: prayer to treat cancer, or entertaining the idea that demonic
[12:44] Speaker 3: possession is a causal factor in schizophrenia, or the idea
[12:50] Speaker 3: that you can use a randomized control trial and if
[12:52] Speaker 3: you send positive vibes to water, it's going to make
[12:55] Speaker 3: its ice crystals look more beautiful. These topics are scientifically obsurd,
[13:00] Speaker 3: but they're dressed up in science and published in pseudoscientific journals.
[13:04] Speaker 3: And I think what grifters alternative medicine practitioners can do
[13:08] Speaker 3: is they can then point to those journals and say, look,
[13:10] Speaker 3: whatever treatment, my pseudo scientific treatment is actually supported in
[13:14] Speaker 3: these journals. I think that's a very insiduous propaganda tactic.
[13:17] Speaker 3: And it's insiduous because it's hard for experts in their
[13:21] Speaker 3: fields to identify such things. And so when we put
[13:24] Speaker 3: the onus on the general public to be buy or
[13:26] Speaker 3: beware when they're trying to shop for care, it's hard
[13:29] Speaker 3: to be able to spot if a grifter is telling
[13:31] Speaker 3: them my treatment works because of this study. How are
[13:35] Speaker 3: they going to know how to analyze that study or
[13:37] Speaker 3: that it is published in a pseudoscientific journal. That's a
[13:40] Speaker 3: science literacy skill, and it's a hard thing for the
[13:42] Speaker 3: general public to navigate.
[13:44] Speaker 2: It's the same thing we see with evolution deniers. If
[13:47] Speaker 2: you go when you type in evolution into a Google
[13:49] Speaker 2: search engine, I think one of the results that comes
[13:52] Speaker 2: up is evolutionnews dot com or dot org or whatever,
[13:56] Speaker 2: which is an intelligent design site. It you know, it
[14:00] Speaker 2: doesn't throw religious terms out there, and it's loaded with
[14:04] Speaker 2: scientific jargon. The layperson might look at that and go, wow,
[14:08] Speaker 2: this is really impressive, incredible.
[14:10] Speaker 3: Exactly, it's the exact same tactic, and it's dangerous. And
[14:14] Speaker 3: there's two parts. So that one is that, yeah, it
[14:16] Speaker 3: happens on websites Like I talk in the book about
[14:19] Speaker 3: the anti psychiatry movement, and there's websites about that, and
[14:22] Speaker 3: so one, for example, is called mad in America. So
[14:25] Speaker 3: they'll publish blogs and opinion pieces, and you have books
[14:29] Speaker 3: basically that are evading peer review entirely, and people can
[14:32] Speaker 3: get their opinions out there and pretend that it's science.
[14:35] Speaker 3: So there's that aspect where there's these kinds of websites
[14:38] Speaker 3: out there that will promote their treatments or their grip,
[14:41] Speaker 3: so to speak. And then there's also these pseudo scientific
[14:44] Speaker 3: journals which are actually like published and you can find
[14:47] Speaker 3: them in data repositories like PubMed alongside other peer reviewed
[14:52] Speaker 3: scientific journals that are legitimate. And I think that's very
[14:55] Speaker 3: dangerous as well, because people can't tell the difference between
[14:58] Speaker 3: an article published in Nature or the Anset, which is
[15:00] Speaker 3: a top medical journal, and then something published in Explore,
[15:04] Speaker 3: which is a garbage pseudoscientific journal.
[15:07] Speaker 2: I'm reminded of this claim or this idea that only
[15:10] Speaker 2: idiots fall for this stuff, And I think of Steve Jobs,
[15:14] Speaker 2: co founder of Apple. As I understand it, he was
[15:18] Speaker 2: diagnosed with cancer, but at first he rejected science based
[15:23] Speaker 2: medicine and he ended up doing a bunch of wooy stuff,
[15:26] Speaker 2: totally unproven wellness industry cures, and by the time he
[15:30] Speaker 2: went back for science based treatment, it was too late.
[15:34] Speaker 2: But I guess let's talk about intelligence and deception.
[15:38] Speaker 3: With Steve Jobs. It's a very tragic case and unfortunately
[15:42] Speaker 3: not an uncommon one. People fall for misinformation. They fall
[15:46] Speaker 3: for pseudoscience, and they fall for alternative medicine for again
[15:50] Speaker 3: a variety of interacting reasons. Even intelligent people they do
[15:55] Speaker 3: it all the time. There's a number of again reasons
[15:57] Speaker 3: that people fall for it, both internally and externally. So
[16:01] Speaker 3: there's reasons inside of us. There's a number of what
[16:04] Speaker 3: we call individual variables, So how high does someone score
[16:08] Speaker 3: on particular variables called conspiracy mentality, which is kind of
[16:12] Speaker 3: our proclivity or our inclination to fall for conspiracies. There's
[16:16] Speaker 3: personality traits like openness to experience, which is a dimension
[16:20] Speaker 3: of our personality, which kind of speaks to how creative
[16:23] Speaker 3: or how out of the box thinking a person is.
[16:25] Speaker 3: People that score higher on these personality traits tend to,
[16:29] Speaker 3: on average, also be more susceptible to misinformation. A reliance
[16:34] Speaker 3: on intuitive thinking styles versus kind of sitting down and
[16:38] Speaker 3: analyzing and using the analytic thinking styles to break down
[16:42] Speaker 3: information that leaves people more susceptible to misinformation. So there's
[16:46] Speaker 3: that thing, that kind of set of ideas that's happening
[16:50] Speaker 3: to us on an individual level that makes us more
[16:53] Speaker 3: likely to fall for this. Then, of course, there's kind
[16:55] Speaker 3: of broader, more group or social processes happening. So we're
[16:59] Speaker 3: targeted by mis information by, like we said, the wellness
[17:02] Speaker 3: industry itself, whether it's particular influencers with huge Instagram platforms,
[17:07] Speaker 3: or whether it's kind of more organized kinds of groups
[17:10] Speaker 3: like the anti vaccine movement and Robert F. Kennedy Junior's
[17:13] Speaker 3: Children's Health Defense who are pitching ideas that vaccines cause
[17:17] Speaker 3: autism and that we need to detox from things like vaccines.
[17:21] Speaker 3: So there's that level where people are likely to fall
[17:26] Speaker 3: from misinformation generally. Then when we go back to someone
[17:29] Speaker 3: like Steve Jobs, there's also reasons why people fall for
[17:33] Speaker 3: alternative medicine kind of specifically, which are the same reasons
[17:37] Speaker 3: that I mentioned, but there's a bit more so. For example,
[17:40] Speaker 3: the fact that our mainstream mental healthcare systems are imperfect.
[17:44] Speaker 3: We can't help everyone, So people are dissatisfied with mainstream
[17:47] Speaker 3: mental health care and for good reason, because we have
[17:50] Speaker 3: gaps in our knowledge. We don't know how to treat
[17:52] Speaker 3: everyone and everything, and there's gaps in our systemic healthcare systems.
[17:56] Speaker 3: And then if we just ask people why they turn
[17:58] Speaker 3: to alternative medicine, they'll tell us feel like they're not
[18:00] Speaker 3: being treated as a whole person, or that there's not
[18:04] Speaker 3: a holistic approach to them, and they want to avoid
[18:06] Speaker 3: the side effects of medications, and they want to avoid
[18:09] Speaker 3: the profit driven evils of big pharma. So again, there's
[18:13] Speaker 3: a lot of good reasons why intelligent people do fall
[18:17] Speaker 3: from misinformation in alternative medicine. And at the same time,
[18:21] Speaker 3: just because we have these gaps in our knowledge and
[18:24] Speaker 3: our treatments are imperfect, doesn't mean that pseudoscientific treatments and
[18:29] Speaker 3: alternative medicine and the wellness industry is the answer by
[18:32] Speaker 3: exploiting people's financial vulnerabilities and emotional vulnerabilities.
[18:37] Speaker 2: There is an evil I'm gonna call it evil documentary,
[18:41] Speaker 2: anti vaxed documentary released a few years ago, and it's
[18:45] Speaker 2: still making waves out there. I'm going to talk to
[18:47] Speaker 2: my guests about Died Suddenly. Coming up next. I'm speaking
[18:59] Speaker 2: here with doctor Jonathan stay Up, clinical psychologist, educator, science communicator,
[19:05] Speaker 2: and author of the new book Mind the Science Saving
[19:08] Speaker 2: Your Mental Health from the wellness Industry. Here's an insidious one.
[19:13] Speaker 2: It was a couple of years ago the anti COVID
[19:15] Speaker 2: vaccine propaganda film Died Suddenly was released, and the claim
[19:21] Speaker 2: was that people who got the vaccine would just keel over,
[19:25] Speaker 2: and they made a whole movie about it and released
[19:27] Speaker 2: it and promoted the hell out of it. I can't
[19:30] Speaker 2: remember the last time I've seen deception on that level.
[19:34] Speaker 2: I mean, some of the people they said keeled over
[19:37] Speaker 2: dead are still out there like their public figures. Did
[19:40] Speaker 2: you get into died suddenly at all?
[19:43] Speaker 3: I certainly saw it. Yeah, it was.
[19:45] Speaker 2: I was the vain about to pop out of your
[19:48] Speaker 2: forehead the whole time.
[19:49] Speaker 3: I had a lot of headache medication in hand.
[19:52] Speaker 2: It was.
[19:53] Speaker 3: It was driving knee bonkers and a lot of people bunkers,
[19:56] Speaker 3: just because, like you said, it was there was so
[19:59] Speaker 3: much expl propaganda and just blatant lies, like people were
[20:03] Speaker 3: caught in these lies. And that's what a lot of
[20:05] Speaker 3: these anti science movements do, whether it's the anti vaccine
[20:08] Speaker 3: movement or closer to my profession, is the anti psychiatry movement.
[20:13] Speaker 3: They do a similar kind of propaganda takes.
[20:18] Speaker 2: What do you mean, I mean, let's get into that
[20:20] Speaker 2: there's a war on psychiatry. You talked about this in
[20:22] Speaker 2: the book. Is it that they don't trust people with
[20:26] Speaker 2: degrees in mental health?
[20:29] Speaker 3: That's part of it. It goes a bit deeper. So
[20:32] Speaker 3: the anti psychiatry movement started. It can trace its roots
[20:36] Speaker 3: back to about the nineteen sixties, and at that time
[20:39] Speaker 3: it was actually a good movement. It actually helped because
[20:42] Speaker 3: it was pushing back against psychiatry's various missteps. So there
[20:46] Speaker 3: was inappropriate pathologizing of minority groups. There was complaints about
[20:51] Speaker 3: the arbitrariness of how we define and diagnose mental illness.
[20:56] Speaker 3: There was inhumane treatment of patients in asylum care and
[21:00] Speaker 3: kind of psychiatric hospitals, and so there was this sort
[21:03] Speaker 3: of movement pushing against these missteps, and so you know,
[21:06] Speaker 3: it was pioneered by I think the term anti psychiatry
[21:10] Speaker 3: was coined in nineteen sixty seven by David Cooper. Thomas
[21:14] Speaker 3: sass is one of he's a disgruntled psychiatrist, which is
[21:17] Speaker 3: one of the founders of the anti psychiatry movement. He
[21:19] Speaker 3: was joined in his efforts by other self identified disgruntled psychiatrists,
[21:24] Speaker 3: by another kind of journalists, So there's R. D.
[21:26] Speaker 1: Lang.
[21:27] Speaker 3: Michelle Fucot was one of its intellectual pillars because they
[21:30] Speaker 3: bring kind of this critical theory approach to it, which
[21:33] Speaker 3: is critical theory is just sort of this philosophical orientation
[21:36] Speaker 3: that everything's kind of just to dub it down, everything's
[21:38] Speaker 3: kind of subjective, and it really points to it wants
[21:41] Speaker 3: us to use a lens of examining cultural assumptions and
[21:45] Speaker 3: power dynamics, and so it really pushed back against the
[21:47] Speaker 3: medical model is kind of having this power dynamic that
[21:50] Speaker 3: was unhelpful for patients. So all that said, it had
[21:54] Speaker 3: a good reason to develop this movement. What happened over
[21:58] Speaker 3: time is that it worked. It actually helped psychiatry get
[22:00] Speaker 3: its act together. Psychiatry moved patients out of these insane
[22:05] Speaker 3: asylums as they're called. They were moved into regular hospitals,
[22:08] Speaker 3: into the community. Psychiatry got its act together kind of
[22:12] Speaker 3: conceptually by focusing on more of what we call a
[22:15] Speaker 3: biopsychosocial model of care, so meaning focusing on the interaction
[22:20] Speaker 3: between biological factors, psychological factors, and social contributions to mental illness.
[22:26] Speaker 3: And so by the nineteen eighties or so, the anti
[22:29] Speaker 3: psychiatry movement had really greatly diminished because psychiatry learned from it,
[22:33] Speaker 3: as any rightful scientific discipline does, it learns and it
[22:37] Speaker 3: grows from that. The problem is that the movement didn't die.
[22:41] Speaker 3: It just sort of transformed and outlived its cause, and
[22:44] Speaker 3: so now we see it. It's given breath by a
[22:47] Speaker 3: few different lifelines, so to speak. So we see it
[22:51] Speaker 3: online and on social media and various blogs and websites
[22:55] Speaker 3: that are dedicated to flaming psychiatry in a way that
[22:58] Speaker 3: dodges scientific critique. We see it on social media all
[23:01] Speaker 3: the time by people sharing its various tropes or repeated
[23:05] Speaker 3: ideas and phrases. People that are, you know, mainstream influencers
[23:11] Speaker 3: are sharing these ideas. For example, Elon Musk tweeting something
[23:14] Speaker 3: like adderall or SSRIs do more harm than good, or
[23:19] Speaker 3: Andrew Tate saying something like depression doesn't exist at all.
[23:23] Speaker 3: These guys aren't part of the anti psychiatry movement per se,
[23:26] Speaker 3: but they're parroting these tropes they don't I don't even
[23:29] Speaker 3: think they recognize. And so the anti psychiatry movement is
[23:32] Speaker 3: a pushback against psychiatry. It aims to tear down the
[23:35] Speaker 3: discipline and deter treatment seeking because it doesn't believe in
[23:39] Speaker 3: psychiatry as a whole, and it does vast harm to
[23:43] Speaker 3: people by stigmatizing mental illness and stigmatizing psychiatric treatments. And
[23:49] Speaker 3: one of the reasons that I talk about it in
[23:50] Speaker 3: my book is because it's part of mental health misinformation
[23:54] Speaker 3: more generally. But it's also a bedfellow with the wellness
[23:57] Speaker 3: industry at large, because both kind of serve as a
[24:01] Speaker 3: foil to mainstream medicine. Because, as you were saying, both
[24:05] Speaker 3: of them are they share in the narrative that mainstream
[24:08] Speaker 3: medicine is bad and the man is bad, and they
[24:12] Speaker 3: take this sort of fringe alternative view and they both
[24:15] Speaker 3: play into that narrative. So psychiatry is bad. They don't
[24:18] Speaker 3: know what they're doing. They don't know how to treat you.
[24:20] Speaker 3: Come by our supplements and take our detoxes and do
[24:23] Speaker 3: our unnecessary protocols and testing. We can treat you. We
[24:27] Speaker 3: know how to do it. And that's why. Much like
[24:29] Speaker 3: the alternative medicine industry is in bed with the anti
[24:32] Speaker 3: vaccine movement that has a long history, the same is
[24:35] Speaker 3: the case with the anti psychiatry movement. All of these
[24:38] Speaker 3: fringe movements serve as a foil to the mainstream healthcare
[24:41] Speaker 3: system at large.
[24:42] Speaker 2: I used to buy into the Elon musk Boy genius myth,
[24:47] Speaker 2: and then he spoke, and all of those cards came
[24:52] Speaker 2: down just literally just cow And I'm struck by the
[24:56] Speaker 2: influencers that our culture has rewarded. Elon Joe Rogan, does
[25:02] Speaker 2: he have the most popular podcast in the United States
[25:05] Speaker 2: at least? And the guy's got every crack pot known
[25:08] Speaker 2: to man on the freaking show, And it just hurts
[25:11] Speaker 2: my heart a little bit. So, I don't know, do
[25:14] Speaker 2: you ever have that kind of despair? You know, the scientists,
[25:17] Speaker 2: the Peter Hotezes of this world are fighting to be heard.
[25:21] Speaker 2: While we watched the Kardashians. Do you ever have that conversation?
[25:25] Speaker 3: Absolutely, I've had it with Peter Hotez, who's a friend
[25:28] Speaker 3: of mine, and I feel so bad for him because
[25:30] Speaker 3: he got chased over talking about harassment before. And this
[25:32] Speaker 3: guy receives so much harassment for championing public health and
[25:37] Speaker 3: developing brand new vaccines without the influence of big pharmac.
[25:40] Speaker 3: So this guy just really people were showing up at
[25:42] Speaker 3: his house harassing him. And you know, I'm getting one
[25:45] Speaker 3: hundreds of message hateful messages a day, He's getting thousands.
[25:48] Speaker 3: It's terrible that someone like him is being chastised in
[25:51] Speaker 3: our culture, and, like you said, not rewarded as someone
[25:54] Speaker 3: like Andrew Tatter. Elon Musker, just random wellness influencers on
[25:57] Speaker 3: Instagram with millions of followers artening on the one hand,
[26:02] Speaker 3: and I'm pessimistic at that reality. And on the other hand,
[26:06] Speaker 3: one of my missions and what I'm trying to really
[26:08] Speaker 3: do is as a clinical psychologist, I work on the
[26:11] Speaker 3: individual level. So I'm not a policy analyst. I'm not
[26:14] Speaker 3: a political scientist. I don't know the solutions at the
[26:16] Speaker 3: social level, the broader level. What I'm trying to focus
[26:19] Speaker 3: on is helping the individual protect themselves from all the
[26:22] Speaker 3: crap that is out there, so to speak, by trying
[26:25] Speaker 3: to arm them with science literacy skills, trying to help
[26:28] Speaker 3: them with mental health literacy skills, help them identify and
[26:32] Speaker 3: learn the language of pseudoscience, learn the language of these
[26:35] Speaker 3: wellness and alternative medicine narratives and anti psychiatry narratives, so
[26:39] Speaker 3: that they can see it, be unable to unsee it,
[26:41] Speaker 3: and better protect themselves. Because again I don't think it's
[26:45] Speaker 3: necessarily going anywhere. Pseudoscience and wellness grift has kind of
[26:48] Speaker 3: always been with us, so to speak, and so I
[26:51] Speaker 3: think it's actually getting worse with the advents of social media.
[26:54] Speaker 3: But at least we can try to affect it's demand
[26:57] Speaker 3: by arming people on the ground level, so to speak.
[27:00] Speaker 2: So let's bounce around your book. What are some of
[27:03] Speaker 2: the greatest or worst hits? Well, what's some of the
[27:06] Speaker 2: craziest shit you have been seeing and hearing out there? Wow?
[27:11] Speaker 3: Where do I? Where do I start?
[27:13] Speaker 2: That in a strong field? He begins, he starts.
[27:19] Speaker 3: Good thing, this is audio. Because you don't want to
[27:21] Speaker 3: be bashing my head against the wall right now. I
[27:23] Speaker 3: would say that I think it's the anti psychiatry tropes
[27:27] Speaker 3: that drive me the most bonkers. And so what I
[27:29] Speaker 3: mean by that is you will, like I mentioned earlier,
[27:32] Speaker 3: Andrew Tate, will flat out deny that depression exists, or
[27:35] Speaker 3: if you go on social media or in popular culture,
[27:38] Speaker 3: you'll see absurd claims like schizophrenia doesn't exist, or mental
[27:42] Speaker 3: illness more broadly doesn't even exist, or that all psychiatric
[27:47] Speaker 3: medications don't work, or that they're harmful, and these ideas
[27:50] Speaker 3: they're simply not true, and there's good reasons for that,
[27:53] Speaker 3: but they also do tremendous damage. And what bothers me
[27:56] Speaker 3: is they're so again insiduous, or they me at our
[28:00] Speaker 3: culture to such an extent. I've seen it show up
[28:02] Speaker 3: to our clinic, Like I work in a hospital setting
[28:05] Speaker 3: where we specialize in treating people with what we call
[28:08] Speaker 3: concurrent addiction and mental disorders, So people that have severe
[28:11] Speaker 3: addiction and mental disorders, and so they'll come to our
[28:14] Speaker 3: clinic and they've often had a history of treatment and
[28:17] Speaker 3: it hasn't really worked. And so I work on a
[28:20] Speaker 3: great multi interdisciplinary team with other psychologists and psychiatrists, social
[28:25] Speaker 3: workers and nurses, and we're trying to help folks and they,
[28:29] Speaker 3: through no fault of their own on a patient level,
[28:32] Speaker 3: They'll come and they'll say, well, I'm scared of medications
[28:35] Speaker 3: because I read this online. Or is bipolar really a thing?
[28:39] Speaker 3: Does that exist? Or what is obsessive compulsive disorder? Is
[28:41] Speaker 3: that a thing? I mean, I'm having these kinds of symptoms,
[28:44] Speaker 3: but I'm hearing that doesn't exist at all, and it
[28:47] Speaker 3: can really deter people and confuse the hell out of people.
[28:50] Speaker 3: And so, you know, I'm not battling misinformation in treatment
[28:54] Speaker 3: sessions or in therapy sessions per se, but we do
[28:56] Speaker 3: have to kind of correct those on some level. And
[28:59] Speaker 3: one of the reasons I wrote the book in the
[29:00] Speaker 3: first place was to try to put on a different
[29:03] Speaker 3: role than I have as a clinician and try to
[29:04] Speaker 3: battle this misinformation at a different aim, at a different audience,
[29:07] Speaker 3: a wide audience, so that they so that I don't
[29:10] Speaker 3: have to I don't have to have people come to
[29:12] Speaker 3: the clinic with these kinds of misinformed ideas about what
[29:15] Speaker 3: mental illness means and kind of the nature of treatment.
[29:18] Speaker 3: So to answer your question, it's the anti psychiatry tropes
[29:20] Speaker 3: that make me want to do unhelpful things.
[29:23] Speaker 2: Well, some of that I think links back to it.
[29:25] Speaker 2: Was it twenty some years ago there was a film
[29:28] Speaker 2: called Prozac Nation. I think it may have been based
[29:31] Speaker 2: on a book that was like, we're all just essentially
[29:34] Speaker 2: treating symptoms with chemicals. I think it was a way
[29:37] Speaker 2: of dismissing being able to treat people with mental illness
[29:41] Speaker 2: using chemistry, addressing brain chemistry, et cetera. On a related note,
[29:47] Speaker 2: by the way, and this takes me back to your
[29:48] Speaker 2: comments section, speaking of things that don't exist, I was
[29:51] Speaker 2: amused that someone said you could treat rabies with garlic juice,
[29:58] Speaker 2: and then someone else jumped in and whenever you had
[30:01] Speaker 2: said rabies, thanks you for this declaration, they said, hey,
[30:05] Speaker 2: can you just post any date where a proven case
[30:09] Speaker 2: of rabies was recorded. So now we've got a Rabi's denier.
[30:14] Speaker 2: Does rabies exist, doctor Stea.
[30:17] Speaker 3: I'm no medical doctor, but I'm pretty sure it does.
[30:22] Speaker 3: And what also exists is this whole idea of germ
[30:26] Speaker 3: theory denialism, or denying that viruses exist, or denying that
[30:31] Speaker 3: bacteria even exists. And it's a symptom of a larger problem.
[30:35] Speaker 3: We have germ theory denialism, we have evolution denialism, as
[30:39] Speaker 3: you said, we have mental illness denialism, all of these ideas. Again,
[30:44] Speaker 3: it's almost like whack a mole. You can have scientific
[30:47] Speaker 3: consensus on a variety of topics and you'll still get
[30:50] Speaker 3: people denying that the Earth isn't flat. And so we know,
[30:55] Speaker 3: we know a lot of the factors that contribute to
[30:56] Speaker 3: people falling for these ideas. I think that you know,
[31:00] Speaker 3: as science communicators, we know that debunking works at a
[31:04] Speaker 3: population level, meaning when we debunk claims and we say
[31:07] Speaker 3: that no, that the Earth isn't flat. And here's why
[31:10] Speaker 3: that helps on a population level or on a level
[31:14] Speaker 3: on average, because the audience of a science communicator is
[31:16] Speaker 3: the general public. But when we're dealing with deniers say,
[31:20] Speaker 3: it's a much more of an uphill battle. It's not impossible.
[31:24] Speaker 3: People have come back from it self identifying as conspiracy
[31:27] Speaker 3: theorists and kind of buying into that stuff, but it's
[31:30] Speaker 3: I think it's much more challenging.
[31:32] Speaker 2: That's interesting because we tend to think they're unreachable. You're
[31:35] Speaker 2: saying that we can go out and debunk the bunk
[31:38] Speaker 2: and it actually works.
[31:40] Speaker 3: Yeah, we have data for that at the population level.
[31:42] Speaker 3: So Timothy Kawfield is a friend of mine and he's
[31:45] Speaker 3: a professor of health and law at the University of Alberta.
[31:48] Speaker 3: He's been doing this work for decades on kind of
[31:50] Speaker 3: misinformation and how can we prevent it or mitigate it
[31:54] Speaker 3: and do the best we can with it. And there's
[31:56] Speaker 3: a whole body of research that says that when we
[31:58] Speaker 3: target the general public we see shifts and that people
[32:02] Speaker 3: can be less likely to fall for misinformation. That said,
[32:05] Speaker 3: in an individual level, I think we know less about it,
[32:08] Speaker 3: there's less of that literature. But yeah, we see these
[32:12] Speaker 3: stories all the time, We see people coming back from it.
[32:14] Speaker 3: It can happen. People can fall for Q and on,
[32:17] Speaker 3: and they can be flat earthers, and they can deny
[32:20] Speaker 3: that germs exist and they'll come back with the vengeance.
[32:25] Speaker 3: We see a similar thing with as you were saying,
[32:27] Speaker 3: or even there's other people who have fallen for the
[32:30] Speaker 3: wellness industry, saying they were kind of in the wellness community.
[32:34] Speaker 3: They were part of that culture. They were anti big pharma,
[32:38] Speaker 3: they were pro natural quote unquote natural treatments. And I've
[32:42] Speaker 3: met a lot of people in the space that is
[32:45] Speaker 3: debunking wellness where they've come back from that culture.
[32:48] Speaker 2: Even it's possible to be rescued from bad ideas. I
[32:52] Speaker 2: am living, breathing, walking, talking proof, but this leans me
[32:57] Speaker 2: into natural good, synthetic bad, right, All natural is a
[33:03] Speaker 2: great brand. It's a great way to sell breakfast, cereal
[33:06] Speaker 2: and medicine and tease and tonics. Natural is always good,
[33:11] Speaker 2: Synthetic is always bad. How do you approach that one.
[33:15] Speaker 3: It's a fallacy. It's the appeal to nature fallacy. It's
[33:18] Speaker 3: one of the fallacies of which again alternative medicine uses
[33:22] Speaker 3: as part of their narrative. I think it's one of
[33:24] Speaker 3: the propaganda tactics. I list a whole bunch of these
[33:27] Speaker 3: in my book that alternative medicine uses to kind of
[33:30] Speaker 3: cajole audiences and kind of influence people. So, yeah, the
[33:34] Speaker 3: fact that something is quote unquote all natural. First of all,
[33:37] Speaker 3: we have to define what does natural even mean. We're
[33:39] Speaker 3: all made from chemicals, we're all made from the how
[33:42] Speaker 3: far back we want to go to? The Big Bang?
[33:44] Speaker 3: Like everything is sort of natural? COVID nineteen is natural,
[33:47] Speaker 3: Rabi's is natural. Viruses aren't natural, they're not necessarily good.
[33:51] Speaker 3: So all that to say, it's a fallacy, but it's
[33:53] Speaker 3: a powerful one because our brains are kind of wired
[33:56] Speaker 3: to buy into these rhetorical tricks, so to speak. So
[33:59] Speaker 3: it's an intuitive idea that I prefer a natural treatment
[34:02] Speaker 3: that a man made synthetic one. But it's a fallacy
[34:06] Speaker 3: because it's erroneous. It doesn't it logically doesn't make sense
[34:09] Speaker 3: when we kind of break it down. And so I
[34:11] Speaker 3: think that we want to encourage critical thinking. We want
[34:13] Speaker 3: to encourage people to be aware of these kinds of
[34:16] Speaker 3: logical fallacies so that they don't fall for misinformation. Another
[34:20] Speaker 3: popular one is the appeal to tradition fallacy. Right, this
[34:24] Speaker 3: treatment has been used for thousands of years, therefore it's
[34:27] Speaker 3: more effective. Well, do we really want to go back
[34:30] Speaker 3: thousands of years and adopt the systems of medicine that
[34:33] Speaker 3: we're used then probably not.
[34:36] Speaker 2: Coming up with my guest. I want to talk about detoxing.
[34:40] Speaker 2: I got toxins in my system. I got to get
[34:43] Speaker 2: rid of those. Wait a minute, is that a thing
[34:45] Speaker 2: I'm going to ask doctor Jonathan Steya next. Speaking here
[34:56] Speaker 2: with psychologist and author doctor Jonathan Staya. There is a
[35:01] Speaker 2: phenomenon known as the reiteration effect or the reiteration fallacy.
[35:07] Speaker 2: I've heard it so long that it must be true.
[35:10] Speaker 2: It's intuitive that it's true. I got into it recently
[35:14] Speaker 2: with somebody about how MSG is not bad for you.
[35:18] Speaker 2: I also took it in the teeth for saying that
[35:21] Speaker 2: sugar does not make kids hyperactive. There's no scientific proof
[35:26] Speaker 2: of that, it's just something we've always believed. And then
[35:29] Speaker 2: there's detox. You wrote about this in your book Our
[35:33] Speaker 2: Dtox Diets Legit.
[35:36] Speaker 3: Detox is a scam. It's a wellness buzzword that is
[35:41] Speaker 3: used to instill fear in our population. Fear meaning there's
[35:47] Speaker 3: something bad in us, often heavy metals or toxins that
[35:51] Speaker 3: are floating around in the environment, and that the wellness
[35:54] Speaker 3: industry can gift us a product, a detox product that
[35:58] Speaker 3: will get rid of those toxins that are causing X, Y,
[36:02] Speaker 3: and Z, various health ailments, cancer, aids, mental illness, whatever
[36:07] Speaker 3: it is. And whenever anyone I would urge caution. If
[36:11] Speaker 3: anyone is claiming that they have a detox product that
[36:13] Speaker 3: they want to sell you, it's almost certainly a scam.
[36:16] Speaker 3: It's a hijacked medical term, and we actually use it.
[36:19] Speaker 3: I work in the addiction world, and detoxification centers are
[36:22] Speaker 3: actual thing. I mean, people have the detox from drug
[36:25] Speaker 3: addiction like alcohol. If they've been drinking alcohol every day
[36:29] Speaker 3: for copious amounts every day for a month, their body
[36:32] Speaker 3: will withdraw from it and you need a medically assisted
[36:35] Speaker 3: detox to help with that. Same with other drugs of
[36:38] Speaker 3: abuse or other substance of abuse. That's not what detox
[36:42] Speaker 3: products are. It has nothing to do with that. Again,
[36:44] Speaker 3: it's a hijacked notion and it's a wellness industry buzz
[36:47] Speaker 3: term that instills a lot of fear. And again again
[36:50] Speaker 3: it's part of the narrative. If you go and google
[36:52] Speaker 3: a detox product, you'll see that narrative. You'll see that
[36:55] Speaker 3: they say toxins are in the environment, they're hurting us,
[36:58] Speaker 3: They don't specify what the talk and are because if
[37:01] Speaker 3: you ask them, they won't even be able to tell you,
[37:03] Speaker 3: or they'll tell you a chemical or two, and then
[37:05] Speaker 3: if you ask a further question, they won't be able
[37:07] Speaker 3: to tell you why that's harmful. It's just part of
[37:09] Speaker 3: the narrative.
[37:11] Speaker 2: Anything else in the book that you want to highlight
[37:12] Speaker 2: real fast that my listeners can then go take the
[37:15] Speaker 2: deeper dive. The book is called mind the Science Saving
[37:18] Speaker 2: Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry. What else can
[37:21] Speaker 2: we expect to see in there?
[37:23] Speaker 3: The overarching goal of the book is to help empower
[37:26] Speaker 3: and embolden people to take their mental health into their
[37:29] Speaker 3: own hands, because I think at the end of the day,
[37:31] Speaker 3: everyone's mental health is precious, and I think that the
[37:34] Speaker 3: reality is that mental health care is a very much
[37:37] Speaker 3: caveat emptor buyer beware. So we need to be mindful
[37:40] Speaker 3: of how to improve our mental health and how to
[37:42] Speaker 3: address mental disorders. So it's for anyone that's wanting to
[37:46] Speaker 3: protect themselves from mental health scams, and it's for anyone
[37:49] Speaker 3: that is curious about the link between science and mental
[37:53] Speaker 3: health and science and mental disorders, and to increase their
[37:57] Speaker 3: knowledge about science Literacy Skills and men Health Literacy Skills.
[38:01] Speaker 2: I will link to that book in the description box.
[38:05] Speaker 2: And do you have a website, like a main website
[38:07] Speaker 2: of your own where I can send people?
[38:09] Speaker 3: My main website is probably the best place to purchase
[38:11] Speaker 3: the book, as it depends on location. If you're in Canada,
[38:13] Speaker 3: you want to go to a particular link, and if
[38:15] Speaker 3: you're in other parts of the world you do want
[38:17] Speaker 3: to go to a particular link. It's available on any
[38:19] Speaker 3: major book retailer websites, so you can google it on Amazon.
[38:23] Speaker 3: But my main website is my name Jonathan Stea jo
[38:26] Speaker 3: n at h a n STA dot com.
[38:31] Speaker 2: I'll include that link as well. What is it with
[38:33] Speaker 2: you freaking Canadians? I got you, I got Tim Caufield,
[38:36] Speaker 2: I got some of my fellow activists up there. How
[38:38] Speaker 2: come you guys are such good debunkers. I am this
[38:41] Speaker 2: close by the way to asking for asylum. I'm sure
[38:45] Speaker 2: you look down here south of you and go, what
[38:49] Speaker 2: the actual hell is going on? I mean, do you
[38:51] Speaker 2: have those thoughts?
[38:53] Speaker 3: I do well, Tim and I Tim Coffee and I
[38:55] Speaker 3: both live in Alberta, and Alberta is affectionately known as
[38:59] Speaker 3: the Texas of Canada, so we have a lot of
[39:02] Speaker 3: very uh uh right leaning, like far far right leaning ideas,
[39:09] Speaker 3: and so maybe I'll leave it at that.
[39:11] Speaker 2: All right, all right, well, it's it's always good to
[39:14] Speaker 2: watch your content, you know. Honestly, I appreciate the depth
[39:18] Speaker 2: of what you post and how rich it is with data.
[39:21] Speaker 2: But I also appreciate your good humor considering what people
[39:24] Speaker 2: are throwing out you on an hour by hour basis.
[39:27] Speaker 2: The fact that you can, you know, keep the chin up,
[39:29] Speaker 2: shoulder square and keep kicking is pretty remarkable. So I
[39:32] Speaker 2: remain a fan. I'm going to try to send everybody
[39:35] Speaker 2: to go and pick up a copy of your book
[39:37] Speaker 2: and let's talk again down the road.
[39:38] Speaker 3: Okay, I would love to set thank you so much
[39:41] Speaker 3: for your time, and I appreciate you and your support.
[39:44] Speaker 1: Follow The Thanking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[39:48] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
[39:51] Speaker 1: t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
[39:55] Speaker 1: pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
[39:59] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log on to our website, Thethinkingatheist dot com.

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