Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
The Snarky Gherkin and Dave ask, Are coffee enemas really helping ?
What happens when wellness culture promises certainty that medicine can't? When soft lighting, gentle music, and a sympathetic ear replace scientific evidence? The consequences can be devastating.
Wellness CuratedWellness Curated is a go-to resource for anyone who wants to improve their quality of life
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You are listening to the why Smart Women podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones. From relationships, career choices, finances, to faux fur jackets and kale smoothies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make them good ones. I'm your host, annie McCubbin, and, as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own share of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't mean him, though I did go through some shockers to find him, and I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind.
Speaker 1:I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which I'm recording and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Well, hello smart women, and welcome back to the why Smart Women podcast. This week, I have two of my favourite disinformation fighters on the same call, so it's going to be a very, very exciting little episode today. So I have Dave from the vaccination station. Hey, dave.
Speaker 2:Hi Annie, Nice to be here.
Speaker 1:Very nice to have you and I have the snarky Gherkin. Hey, snarky.
Speaker 3:Hi Annie, nice, to bearky, hi Annie, nice, to be here, and hi, dave, nice, to meet you as well.
Speaker 1:Of course that's right, because even though there was some discussion that you were the same person, I guess this sort of blows that notion out of the water. Hey, snarky.
Speaker 3:That's it. I'm you apparently, dave, so it's a bit of a surreal um experience to to be on a call with myself, so um yes, here we are.
Speaker 2:Well, I think confusing me with you is a compliment to both of us, so let's take that and remember I was going to say the same.
Speaker 1:That's it likewise so I'll just explain to the listeners that what happened was the last time I interviewed Snarky. It lit a fire there in Cookerland. There was some notion that Snarky was Dave, who runs the vaccination station in fact in Adelaide. So it's all very confusing, I don't know. They thought they were the same person. So we just thought we'd do an episode just to confuse things further, to show that there's two voices to the one person.
Speaker 3:Yes, mind you, the paranoid mindset will just go straight to that. This is some sort of advanced AI recording and it's still me or Dave doing both our voices or something. We'll see what they come up with next, me or Dave doing both our voices or something.
Speaker 1:We'll see what they come up with next. Well, I am incredibly sophisticated with AI and tech. I mean, there's nothing that I can't do. So that wouldn't surprise the listeners at all that I have created this astonishing double doppelganger. Feel so what's been happening in snarky land.
Speaker 3:Oh, fair bits happened since we spoke last. Things just move really quickly. So after our previous discussion there was all sorts of ghosts and ghouls and things came out of the forest to present themselves on the page, had a few sort of angry sub stacks written about us and none of it of any substance or sort of debunking anything we spoke about or any sort of substantiation or evidence. They just attacked us as people. Um, I actually forget the person's name who was sort of writing them, but she was keen to set up a public debate and fly to a chosen place within the country and book out a venue, and it's like I'm just not interested in creating content, I think at first, originally she's like no, come over to my sub stack and reply to me there because she's wanting to drive traffic to their sort of dead platform by the looks of it. And so, as I've declined that, they were keen to do an in-person debate, but again, it's just a spectacle for them.
Speaker 1:I'll just explain to the listeners what happened was I interviewed Snarky about the amount of disinformation that comes out of the anti-vax community and how dangerous it is to public health. It's no joke the lies that are being told. It is no joke the effects that it has. I know there's been a death recently of a little girl from influenza B. Or was it A Snarky, do you know?
Speaker 3:I think it was influenza A actually. I recall because I had it last year. It's nasty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's nasty, I've had it too, but we were vaccinated. So this disinformation that swamps the internet is no joke. It's malicious and it's very, very dangerous. So Snarky and I had a discussion about that, and then there was a Substack article written about us which, interestingly enough to Snarky's point, did not debunk any of the health claims that we had made, but simply made attacks on us. So I have no empathy. I'm horrible. I think I'm really dumb, really really dumb. And what's your problem? You're malicious, are you something?
Speaker 3:You're a malicious person, I'm malicious, I stutter, I can't think, I say I'm too much, which is probably really fair critiques and something I should work on in terms of public speaking. But, as I've emphasised, this isn't about me. It's not about my personality. That's why I'm not the front and centre of this. It's the content that's king for a lot of what we post and what we discuss and what we delve into. So that sort of all kind of blew up and had weird and wonderful characters come out of the woodwork. A lot of them, I think, are probably just the same people under alt accounts.
Speaker 1:I think they are. I definitely think they are yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we had Rosemary Marshall's partner or husband approach the page. He's been quite vicious, or that account has been quite vicious. It's interesting because I've actually had some professional dealings with him in the past in terms of in relation to some maritime bits and pieces, and he's very eloquent, speaks well, quite a knowledgeable person. So I'm not convinced that's him behind that account. I think that's Interesting. I think Robert Dross needs to just double check his account details there or his login details. So just thought I'd drop that little one.
Speaker 1:I think the way this all evolved in the first place was I was down at DY having a perfectly nice walk with my husband and my dogs with my husband and my dogs and I chanced upon the Forest of the Fallen, which is the laminated pictures of people that are purportedly vaccine injured or dead, and I immediately sent pictures of them to Snarky, who then did his deep dive analysis and worked out that not only were half of them not dead, but the ones that actually had died, they'd been vaccinated in like March and then had a car accident and died in December, which is it's a long bow. It's a long bow to draw to call that vaccine injured right.
Speaker 3:That's it. So, bringing us back the Brains Trust of the Freedom Movement, or whatever they call themselves, they've done a deep dive. They've alleged that I've been about three people so far. The latest iteration that is myself being Dave. So you know, with with respect, I wasn't aware who Dave was before that, but I've looked into him and I've I'm thankful that they've. They've alleged that Cause it's I found someone like-minded and quite impressed with what they do.
Speaker 1:So Dave is awesome. Dave has been running the vaccination station, I think, since. Can you explain? I think it's like 2017, 2018, dave, is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just looking back at my records, which are difficult to date now because I've done so many backups and I've moved my, I've changed computers a couple of times, but yeah, it was around August 2019. So just before you know, like half a year before the pandemic really. So I sort of came onto the scene. Why did you? Just before you know, like half a year before the pandemic?
Speaker 1:really so I sort of came onto the scene at an opportune moment. Why did you? Why did you? What prompted you to come onto the scene and become a Provax communicator?
Speaker 2:Well, I've always been Provax myself, but there's one thing that always grates on me is the huge pipeline of misinformation that's constantly spewing from the internet, and when it's just general people having stupid opinions about UFOs and all other kind of paranormal stuff, it's not a big deal and I don't care.
Speaker 2:They can do what they like with it. But when it's stuff which has a serious and negative impact on the real world, particularly in areas of public health, to me that is a major concern and as a father with two fully vaccinated children and a wife, all of whom I love very much, I feel that is the responsibility of every decent citizen to contribute to public health. As I like to put it, public health is a public responsibility. If you want to opt out, you can buy a private island, but I just think, yeah, I've just been. So I got so tired of seeing it, I decided to start doing it, do something about it, and I thought I need to produce some resources so that I can have really made replies to common anti-vax claims and arguments and then I can share them with people, and then maybe I can find some other people who are doing the same kind of thing and take it from there.
Speaker 1:So can I just pause you for a second. So what are some of these claims that we see put out by the anti-vax community that you counter? What are some of these claims? Because we are very familiar with it, because we live and breathe it. But often we talk about things and there's like assumed knowledge, not everybody's following it. So what are some of these claims? So what are some of these claims.
Speaker 2:The main claims are one, that vaccines are toxic, that they contain toxic ingredients that actually do more harm than good. Two, that this is linked to a general conspiracy amongst big pharma and doctors to keep people sick so that they will keep coming back to doctors and therefore the doctors and big pharma can make more money. And three, that vaccines are responsible for the rise in chronic illness, for autism Myth obviously cooked up by disgraced ex-doctor.
Speaker 2:Andrew Wakefield or to give him his full medical title, Andrew Wakefield. And of course this is all snowballed. Those are the three most common ones, but the general idea is vaccines are bad and they will grab onto any argument that they can use to support that claim.
Speaker 1:So we've got the three top ones there, which are vaccines, are full of toxic substances. I read a lot about the aluminium in it.
Speaker 2:This appears to be triggering for people yeah, aluminium is probably their favorite go-to because, uh, they can classify. They like to talk about it as being a heavy metal. It is not of a heavy metal. They like to talk about it as being a metal in. It is not of a heavy metal. They like to talk about it as being a metal in vaccines. It's not. The aluminium in vaccines is there, in the form of aluminium salts, which is completely different from aluminium, the metal they either don't know or choose, not to mention the fact that aluminium is the third most common element in nature. It's around us all the time. We interact with it all the time without knowing. It's everywhere. We even, you know, eat stuff that's got a tiny, tiny, tiny trace of an ounce of aluminium in it. It's almost impossible to not to come into contact with the stuff on a daily basis. You'll even find it sitting in the bottom of rainwater if it's pulled in the ground and the aluminium has come up from the earth.
Speaker 1:It's sort of like the issue with fluoride in water, whereas fluoride is an actually occurring substance.
Speaker 1:And, if you don't mind, I wouldn't mind crossing back just for that second point you made, which is that vaccines are manufactured by big pharma in order to make you sick, in order that you have to keep going back to the doctor and then getting treated. So I'd just like to go back to snarky for a minute. So this notion about big pharma being corrupt I know that you've done some really good analysis. Snarky on the notion of big vitamin and big supplement and the amount that goes into those sort of industries.
Speaker 3:Well, that's right. I mean just. First of all, I think the projection is fabulous because it's like they look. Some of these cookers look at these industries and it's almost as if that's what they think they do, if they're in that position of power and some do do, when they sell these nonsense things, these, you know, I have a bit of a running meme at the moment the turmeric enemas it's. You know, the whole premise is to convince their followers that they're full of toxins, and they're full of. You know this and that.
Speaker 1:Hang on, hang on. Are you telling me, are you actually telling me, that there is such a thing as a turmeric enema?
Speaker 3:I think there might be. There's a coffee enema, I think there might be a coffee one that's it.
Speaker 3:That's it I've. I probably need to steer away from the, the bum references I've. I think I've gotten a bit too too cozy with with that. But, um, yeah, I mean, I mean we touched on the other day, uh, on a few posts here and there. It's like, like, and you know it's difficult to quantify exactly because, like, how are we drawing? But it's we're talking like pharmaceutical. Global pharmaceutical industry is worth. I think it's like one point please don't quote me on this, but it's 1.3 trillion.
Speaker 3:The pharmaceutical industry, let's just say, is $1.3 trillion Say $1.3 trillion, and I'm happy to be corrected on that. I'm not a spokesperson for Big Pharma and looking into the wellness industry, it's worth almost $6.5 trillion. So it's mammoth. There's a lot of people making a lot of money out of this. And when you say the wellness mind you a little yeah when you say the wellness industry, what?
Speaker 1:so? It's worth maybe six. What does that encompass for people that are listening, like what are they buying?
Speaker 3:so yeah oh it, this. This is where it does get very informs a part of that sort of wellness industry, so, but it's yeah. So when I was looking into it, it was mainly supplements that are essentially just fibre that promise all sorts of bits and pieces. It'd be herbal tea that promises yeah, I'm not knocking herbal teas by the way, but it's just it's. The alternative. Wellness industry is estimated to be worth more than six times the entirety of Big Pharma.
Speaker 1:Yes, so we're looking at supplements.
Speaker 3:Supplements yes, placebos. Talking like you've got people, you've got hucksters, snake oil type stuff. I probably should have been a little bit more prepared. That's okay, that's okay.
Speaker 1:I might cross to Dave. We're just unpacking when we talk about $6 trillion being earned by the wellness products, what do you think, dave? What are we talking about?
Speaker 2:Well, I actually looked into this because I wanted to break it down into something that was more accessible to people. So people would say, well, how can it possibly be worth that much? So I got some information. I made an infographic on it. The wellness industry actually encompasses 11 sectors. It's very broad. It's one of the reasons it's so big, because almost anything can be classified under wellness. The sub-industries it covers are extensive, so it's mental wellness, physical activity wellness, real estate, workplace wellness, wellness, tourism, spa economy, thermal and mineral springs, healthy eating, nutrition and weight loss, personal care and beauty, and preventative and personalized medicine and public health. It's huge. As you can see, a lot of this simply blends into the recreation and cosmetics field.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I might hop on a plane and go to a wellness retreat and when I get to the wellness retreat, I'll be having supplements. I'll be drinking teas. I'll be having breathwork sessions yes, supplements, I'll be drinking teas. I'll be having breathwork sessions. Yes, Maybe I'll be having some dodgy psychological intervention that's going to cure my depression or my anxiety. So we're going to put all of that into the wellness bucket. Yeah, yeah, all of that comes out under wellness. I'll come back to you, Snuggie.
Speaker 2:Even the real estate, because they've they found a nice location that's very you know, very restful and and quiet, uh, and it generates a huge amount of money. All of these things are interconnected and because they can class just about anything as wellness, because the term is enormously flexible. It's not the same as talking about medical treatment, which is a far more specific and difficult term to be loose with. When you use the word wellness, well, you could mean just about anything. This is one of the reasons they do it. The easiest way to practice medicine while avoiding the legal consequences of practicing medicine without a license is to slap the label wellness on it.
Speaker 1:I was in my, because I've written two books and in my first one, why Smart Women Make Bad Decisions, I talked about the fact that all wellness retreats are always set in somewhere that has the word hinterlands in it. You know, right If?
Speaker 1:you're going to be well, you've got to be in a hinterland, I think You've got to fly up there and then you've got to do some yoga and again we're looking at some very dangerous practices. I'm an asthmatic and I've been recommended to do the pateko, to go off my meds which is my preventer, and my um and my Ventolin, and just to attempt to do it through um, through breath work and um. I'd be dead, um like for sure, if it wasn't for modern medicine. So these things are dangerous. Were you going to say something Snarky?
Speaker 3:I was just going to say. I mean, all these things sound fantastic as well, it sounds lovely. I'd like to come to that retreat and and do the breath work etc. Welcome it, it's. It's just a strange like um, the way that a lot of the cookers pose this. It's one or the other and so there's no reason why and they're certainly not able to replace modern medicine. There's a reason why people from all over the world are keen to come to Western countries to seek that medical treatment over alternative, you know, sort of treatments.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? It's either one or the other. What do you mean?
Speaker 3:Well, I think from the perspective of a lot of the anti-vaxxers is that they will insist well, no, no, you, you don't. And even just the example you provided, like no, no, you don't need to have your asthma medication anymore. Here's an alternative list of things that you can do. That would be just as good. And so I think what normal people do, what the majority of us do, is we actually really enjoy those wellness things, although, but they're not to replace conventional medicine and so that's the premise.
Speaker 3:It's not necessarily knocking the wellness industry, but it's certainly. There's essentially two premises. A lot of the anti-vaxxers come at this as the big pharma is so giant in the world that they're so bad. They're so big and they control governments, they bring governments to heel and it's just so influential. It's actually not the case. It's not a, it's big, but it's, you know, it's probably the equivalent of a small country's GDP, if you added it. In that sense, it's not a, you know, astronomical um, it's not an industry that's worth an astronomical amount.
Speaker 3:There are alternative industries worth far more, and so I think that that's where, um people were drawn into these multi-level marketing schemes and absolutely yeah, that's, that's it, so I don't, hence just just the premise of the meme was that, um, yeah, big farmers big, but actually there's, there's a lot bigger industries that are far more influential and less proven, probably more damaging if not treated with the purpose that they'll set out to be treated with, and I think it's.
Speaker 1:I think and I've said this before but I'll say it again is that when you go to a doctor that's actually been trained and you have a condition, they will say we will try this or we will try that. They're not definitive and they can't be certain because they understand, um, that illness is a complex illnesses are complicated unlike if you go to an alternate um alt-med practitioner, they're totally certain it's going to fix it. It's like you're right, this is totally done, we're there, you just have to take the ashwagandha and your anxiety is going to totally go. And there's that certainty that is very appealing for people because they want to be fixed right.
Speaker 3:That's right. They'll wheel out some dear old love that will have a testimony that she did this 30 years ago. She was given six months to live, that's right, or there'll be a video of you know someone in Bosnia or something that you know. Hey, I took this turmeric enema. Yeah, fall back.
Speaker 1:Can you stop talking about turmeric enemas? I will, I think I probably need to.
Speaker 3:I think I'm becoming so obsessed.
Speaker 1:I probably need to try it because I'm yeah, I feel like it's, it's, it's the return of the repressed coming out I keep talking about it snarky gherkins chimric enema, I like it that's it. Dave, did you want to say something?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, going back to the appeal of alternative medicine and alternative practices, my son actually a few weeks ago said to me would they sorry he didn't call me david, called me dad. He said that why do people go to alternative uh options, these alternative options, if they don't actually work? I said well, the big thing that a wellness practitioner is selling is not primarily a treatment, because their treatments are largely worthless. They are selling an experience. And here's how it works If you go to your local GP, you'll go to a large or small medical center that's very professional but also very clinical, very cold and not very warm and inviting, and you'll see a very busy GP who has to get through at least a certain number of patients every day to make this whole business worth his while, because he's running his own small business and he's attached to the healthcare center and whatever, and he might have another place that he works at too.
Speaker 2:He can give you maybe 10 minutes tops. That's all he's got. And he's got to ration his time because he sees a lot of people and it's a very clinical, ordinary experience and unless you know this person well, you're not going to be chatting with them very much. And it's just in now. Thank you very much. And that's, that's done. And you feel like a number and you feel like you've been processed and you feel like, oh, you know, was that was that on? He just wrote me a script and I've got the pills and that's it. I don't know, somehow that's not enough for me. Then you go to the wellness practitioner. They have a nice pleasant practice, perhaps at a private residence Candles burning Candles yes.
Speaker 2:There'll be incense, there'll be candles, there'll be soft lighting, there'll be nice mood music, you you might be taken to a private back room for your consultation, where everything is beautiful and pleasant. The wellness practitioner is charging you an absolute fortune, but they're also giving you a lot of time. Oh, you want 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes to talk about what's wrong with you? Absolutely no problem. For 200 bucks an hour, the wellness practitioner will happily listen to all your boring, irrelevant problems and pretend to care about them. Then they will come back to what they're offering, somehow make that relevant and they will give you an experience that makes you feel something has been changed. You have experienced something, you have felt something. It's not this and they might give you some you know, ginkgo and and whatever else to take home and that kind of thing, but because you've had this experience, it feels like something has been done, something's been changed, something's been achieved that you won't get from seeing the doctor and actually getting the treatment that you need, and that experience counts for a lot.
Speaker 1:It does count for a lot, and I know I was listening to ABC yesterday and they were talking about the loneliness epidemic and there's some really good evidence on why loneliness is actually as bad as smoking. And of course it's to do that with the um inflammatory response in the body. You know, you're sort of hyper vigilant all the time and of you know, and they were saying that gps are now recommending um, a dose of socializing, so that it's actually sort of like a prescription for it. And what you're saying fits into that perfectly. Because if I'm, you know I'm feeling lonely, I'm frightened by what's going on with me and what I'm looking for is connection and reassurance and certainty.
Speaker 1:I'm more likely to find it in a studio that has soft lighting, soft music and a soft-voiced person that will probably hold your hand for a minute and say, look, I know this is really scary, but the ashwagandha or the black cohosh or the whatever else, the turmeric enema sorry, snarky is actually going to fix you. So it sort of makes sense in a way, doesn't it, that we are drawn to it and the only way we can combat that is find our sense of connection elsewhere and just try and school people in some critical thinking that this is not the area that you want a soft-handed approach. What you need is someone who's clinical and is going to do some proper medical analysis and maybe you won't feel great when you walk out, but you actually might have some impact on the condition that you have.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree. I mean this is in the wake of, in the UK, that poor young girl that died of what is considered to be a pretty treatable cancer success rate, and she, you know her mother, um being a prominent sort of alternative wellness, sort of anti-vax personality, followed whatever protocols that she was pushing and it yeah, it's had had disastrous consequences on on that young woman she was having six coffee enemas a day and I'm like, didn't they watch, um, apple cider vinegar, the story of bell gibson?
Speaker 1:that's exactly what happened. They were having coffee enemas, it's just. It does my head in the coffee enemas like who? Who made that up? What even is that? Why would?
Speaker 3:that do anything it might go back to that other point, though that from you know, from from a layman's perspective it's, it's a little bit of a technical Process as a machine there's some pipes, I don't know. It's just sad to see.
Speaker 2:What awful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is, and that's the human consequence behind a lot of these and the tragic consequence behind a lot of these. And there's just no accountability either. That mother will just double down in denial and her followers will insist that no, no, no, it wasn't hers, it wasn't her fault, it was for other reasons. And yeah, you just see the same playbook over and over again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, their capacity to post-rationalize is, um is, outstanding, right, absolutely outstanding. And what was the third point that we talked about, dave, when you were talking about, uh, what it is that you fight?
Speaker 3:uh, so the first one remember now.
Speaker 2:The first one was the whole toxins and things.
Speaker 1:Then there was Big Pharma.
Speaker 2:Big Pharma and collaborating with doctors to keep you sick, so you'll keep coming back. And I think the third one was I wish I'd written it down. What's the third reason? I don't recall, I'm afraid.
Speaker 1:Was it. We don't have to go back to it, it doesn't matter, we've covered a lot. We've covered a lot of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually, I was going to make another point about the whole experience thing. From my observation, there's two aspects to wellness. There's the people who have ailments that are either imaginary, like chronic Ly and and Morgellons and stuff like that. What is Morgellons? I've never heard of it. Morgellons is a fake medical condition, largely conjured out of the air by conspiracy theorists, in which people believe they have weird fibers growing out of their bodies and they ended up picking up, picking at them and doing quite a lot of damage to themselves in the process and, and it's closely associated with mental illness, particularly schizophrenia, as you would expect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so people go to the wellness person for either imaginary ailments that they can be persuaded have been dealt with, or at least treated.
Speaker 1:Oh, like adrenal fatigue.
Speaker 2:Adrenal fatigue, yes, yeah, have been dealt with or at least treated, um, oh, like adrenal fatigue. Adrenal fatigue, yes, yeah. So people, the practitioner will keep them coming back for that as much as possible, or for just minor, minor stuff that's vague and as could be easily settled with a paracetamol or whatever, but in their minds is bigger than it really is. Oh, I've I've had a lot of brain fog lately.
Speaker 2:Oh, go and pay someone 200 bucks an hour for, for brain fog. Oh, but I've got bloating as well. Well then, check your diet and maybe take a paracetamol, drink some mineral water, burp it out. I mean, some people just aren't using their brains, but but so there's that aspect. But then there is the people with who either do have something seriously wrong with them, like they genuinely do have cancer or something serious, or they think they do, and they want to see some results, and a coffee enema will give you results that are tangible. They'll make you feel like, oh, I flashed the toxins out, I can, I feel different. Now I flush stuff out.
Speaker 2:All people actually go and look at their stool and they say, oh, look, I can see, I can identify the parasites in there that have come out of me.
Speaker 2:You know there's a whole subgroups on facebook for people sharing photos of their stool and claiming that these are the parasites they've managed to cleanse out of themselves, and some of them, with the more aggressive treatments that they're taking, it's actually parts of their stomach lining that they are stripping away that they don't realize. So there are the people who want to see something tangible coming out, so they will do the more drastic treatments that actually produce some kind of reaction. So all of this, obviously it broadly falls under the placebo effect, because you're getting results which you or you think you're getting results when you're actually simply getting unrelated side effects or just peace of mind. But those are both sides of the wellness coin. You're either going with something that isn't really a problem and simply being given stuff to reassure you that it's now no longer a problem, or at least manageable, or you do have a problem and you're being given a false treatment that produces results that make you think something has been fixed.
Speaker 1:And it's such a good point you make because there is such an elevation of the importance of the way I am feeling. And it's this elevation of feelings and this intuitive, instinctual response that is so elevated and so deeply incorrect. Because sometimes your intuitions are perfect, sometimes your instincts are perfect and sometimes you're just post-rationalising something that you want to believe. And especially, this marketing is sold to women of trust your gut, trust your intuition. You know. Trust your gut, trust your intuition, you know. Trust your boat bloated gut. Right. This idea of elevating the way you feel as opposed to using genuine, genuine critical thinking is, is is dangerous, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely. And the worst part is that there are plenty of qualified doctors who've gone rogue and become quacks who feed into this and feed off it. So, for example um, it might have been oh, I don't want to mention the name in case I get it wrong. There's a couple of of names it could be, but here's a quote, an actual quote I found from one of these qualified doctors who panders to this kind of stuff. He says I just listen to my patients and believe what they tell me. That is a direct quote. Now, the problems with that should be obvious. As a trained physician, that is not his job. His job is to listen to his patients and then find out what the actual issue is yeah listening to your patients and believing what they tell you.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not how you diagnose someone. You check first, you confirm, you find out if they are the correct or not and you find out if what they are telling you matches the evidence. And if, then, what they're telling you does not match the evidence with the evidence, you need to dig a little further and find out whether or not this is actually a real disorder or a factitious disorder.
Speaker 1:And did you want to say something about that Snarky?
Speaker 3:I was just going to say could you imagine playing that scenario in any other situation? So you take your car to a mechanic and the mechanic says well, I believe what you tell me is wrong with that car. You know it just doesn't stack up and you know the human body is arguably a thousand times more complicated than the average car and it's just yeah. I was just sort of running that in my head. Imagine a mechanic sort of running that line. They'd be out of business pretty quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. Well, that was part one of my conversation with the snarky Gherkin and Dave from the vaccination station. Tune in to part two to hear how the neo-Nazis are infiltrating the anti-vax freedom movement. It's all a bit scary. See you next week. Bye, Thanks for tuning in to why Smart Women with me, Annie McCubbin.
Speaker 1:I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day. Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut, if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, in a car park, in a bar or in your own home, please, please, respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that.
Speaker 1:And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together, we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from why Smart Women. See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, Annie McCubbin.
