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
Mind, Body, Wallet
A glittering festival of certainty met a table of questions. We took you inside Sydney’s Mind Body Spirit Festival with pharmacist Kate Thomas and skeptic investigator Richard Saunders to test the confidence, the charisma, and the sweeping claims—everything from tarot to “age reversal” stem cell patches. What we found wasn’t just crystals and calm; it was a sales engine where scientific words get borrowed, anecdotes become evidence, and vulnerable people are nudged toward costly detours.
Proudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting
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 pair of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't know him, but I did go through some shocks 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. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on 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 am, in fact, broadcasting from the Sydney Convention Centre, which is in Darling Harbour, in the center of the city of Sydney. And the reason that I am broadcasting from there as opposed to my usual Northern Beaches broadcast is because along with two of my skeptical friends, I have been attending the Mind Body Spirit Festival. So you may be asking, what is the Mind Body Spirit Festival? Well, it is an amalgamation of all things woo, um pseudoscientific, and alt med. So there are um psychics, for example. So when we walk through the um the aisles and aisles and aisles of woo practices and products, there must have been, I don't know, maybe 200 psychics. And let's just remember that you go and talk to a psychic who's going to read your tarot cards or look into your future or whatever, they're actually just taking signals um from you. Um it's called um cold reading. They're just looking at you, asking leading questions, making stuff up. But the thing is they've all got some sort of glittery headdress on, they sound certain and they're quite compassionate, and they look at you kindly, and then people go, Oh, that was amazing. This psychic knew exactly um about my past and had you know accurately projected into my future and told me what was going to be happening, but of course it's all bunk. Um, and they're not cheap, they were all like 60 bucks because one of my friends that was with me said, Why don't you go and talk to one? And I'm like, Because I don't want to spend 60 bucks on somebody who's going to scam me. So there were psychics, there was um, I don't know, really strange things like uh a place that was selling stem cell patches, and as with all of them, they make some really enormous claims. So this is a stem cell patch, um, supports nerve regeneration, improves lung tissue repair, improves memory and mental clarity, supports more restful sleep, promotes healthy stress responses. That's quite a lot, isn't it? Um improves hormone balance, improves wound healing, supports scar tissue remodeling, um increases glycine for inflammation, increases histidine for repair, and increases lysine for collagen. Um so as soon as you see something that does all that, you know just for starters that it's bunk. And apparently, this is not this particular one, I won't tell you the name of it in case they come after me and sue me, and I have to sell my house, and then where would the dogs go? And we'd all have to go and live in a caravan, that would be really bad. Um, so apparently it's not anti-aging, it's age reversal. How good is that? So, you know, and that's one patch a day that you wear on an acu point. Um, but if you look at the what they're saying to you, so I've got the thing in front of me here, I have the brochure. So in order to maximize the benefits from this patch that does all these things, you have to drink a hollow water every 30 minutes. I'm just looking at Harry because I'm like, every 30 minutes you have to drink four to five ounces of water, you have to consume proper electrolytes, you have to lessen processed sugar intake, lessen processed foods, eat more healthful foods, sweat-induced exercise daily, get 10 to 20 minutes of sunshine daily, take a plant-based multivitamin, take COQ10 or something in the morning and take the tumor before bed. So as you can see, the first one, two, three, you people are gonna put this patch on the back of their neck. Then what they're gonna do, or the practitioner is gonna say to them, right, on top of this, you're gonna drink water every 30 minutes, you're going to exercise, you're going to eat properly, and you're going to um get more sleep. And guess what makes you feel better? Those things. But and that's the lie. You're going to do all these things in addition to the patch, but then going to say the reason you feel better is because of the patch. So there was that, there was something called access your consciousness by some sort of bar across your head, don't ask me. Um, there was something called um you could go and do EMK certification training and become a kinesiologist and balance people's chakras. There was a lot of chakra balancing going on, let me tell you that. Um something called the alignment code, and something called some meditation that was going to rebalance and charge your life. So there was a lot. There was a lot there. And it was all pretty expensive, and there you have it. So I did that, and I guess the question is, um why why bother and what's the harm? You know, why can't people wander around and buy a few crystals and get a few essential oils and I don't know, have a nice day among the woo. Um well, as I've just read to you from this stem cell patch, um, among the crystals and the essential oils and the aura rebalancing, there's actually a dangerous undercurrent. So at least three salespeople either inferred or told me outright that the product that they were touting could cure cancer. Now this is all communicated with a bit of a wink and a, you know, a hand to the side of the mouth, because in Australia it is illegal to claim that these products will cure cancer. So they just come at it from a sort of a sneaky um sidebar. That's how they do it. Um but they do make these claims. And we had a lot of discussion on whether or not people believe the things they're saying, and I would say there was a mixture. Some people believed it, and some are just were just regurgitating what they've been told. But in at the end of the day, vulnerable people and desperate people um die. Scientific research is really hard and takes years, and science tries to prove itself wrong, and that is the point of it. It's it science methodology is really stringent. But what happens with these alternate med pseudoscientific purveyors is that they just use scientific sounding words and sort of hint at some research. So, look, if you find yourself in one of these places or you walk past a shop and it says, um, come in, you know, we've got all these health foods and we're going to sell you some bone broth and we've got something else that supports your immune system, you know, just be really, really careful because if something, if a product says it can, you know, remove heavy metals from your body, detox you, kill the parasites, and rebalance your hormones and heal cancer, they're lying. They're lying to you. And yet we're more likely to believe it because the people that sell these things often have a fervent belief that they're right, and certainty really does cut across our critical thinking skills. Certainty and charisma. So if someone really charismatic with a certain sound in their voice is saying to you, listen, this product's going to heal your life, you're more likely to believe it. So the two people I went with to the Mind Body Spirit Festival were Kate Thomas, who is a pharmacist, married to an oncologist, and Richard Saunders, who is the chief investigator for the Australian Skeptics. So what we did when we walked out of the Mind Body Spirit Festival was we recorded a little bit of an ep, a podcast ep, and here it is.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to the Why Smart Women Skeptic Zone crossover podcast with Annie McCubbin.
SPEAKER_03:Oh Richard, I like that. It's the amalgamation that everything is of everything that is good in podcast land, right?
SPEAKER_01:It is, it is. We're here also with our uh relatively new reporter, Kate Thomas. Hello, Kate.
SPEAKER_02:Hi, Richard.
SPEAKER_01:You two look like you're fried, both of you. We've just come out of Mind Body Wallet. And for the f and it was both exhausted. And for the uh both of you, it was your first experience. Now we've had time to what we're doing now is we're about to have a coffee. We're detoxing from Mind Body Spirit, aren't we?
SPEAKER_03:I'm getting rid of the parasites that that that seemed to accumulate uh in me while I wandered through it. I've never been to the Mind Body Body Spirit Festival before, and I was stunned to learn that's up every six months. Um I I could not go every six months. That's going to take me six months to recover from the shock of that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it does take you six months to recover, then you go back, you see.
SPEAKER_03:We also discovered the very sad news that Kate Thomas has no stem cells, and I feel bad about that. Kate, tell us about that. Kate, what's the story?
SPEAKER_02:I was in the process of being spiritually cleansed and healed and reborn, and asked a gentleman to explain to me uh the patch that he was selling, and he said it was because I had no stem cells. This is so mean. I really feel like I have great stem cells. Anyway, but I can wear his patch and my own body's ultraviolet light will activate the cell the matrix that it was a it was a crystal matrix in the patch, which gets activated by my internal body's light.
SPEAKER_01:And that helicopter.
SPEAKER_02:And that helicopter. Yeah. And it will then regenerate my stem cells, which I need because I I don't have any.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And I sensed you didn't have any, and I've been concerned about you. But now that he's confirmed, I can see what the problem has been, but you're gonna get a patch. So just to explain to our dual listeners what we were doing, why would a bunch of sceptics be at the Mind Body Spirit Festival, uh, which Richard calls the Mind Body Wallet Festival, and for very good reasons, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Did you vote for did did you I I I fell for the Mind Body Wallet. I've I've I've come away with some lovely yoga pants.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Ca Kate actually came away with quite a a lot of stuff, didn't you? Really? Richard and I were, I thought, were quite frugal. No, Richard bought a t-shirt that says Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Mind Body Spirit Festival. So back to my original question, which is why would we bother going to something which is fairly antithetical to our beliefs systems? I'll let Richard answer that.
SPEAKER_01:It's um from my point of view, it's very important to go to this thing as often as possible. I mean, we're all skeptics, we all should know what we're dealing with and talking about. It's no good, uh, you know, a lot of the times the skeptics are accused. Thank you. This is my coffee, uh, quite throw away line saying, Oh, you armchair skeptics, you don't know anything. Right, where we're the ones going out and investigating and discovering. So every six months, time permitting, or if I'm, you know, I can make it, I'll go. And I will ask questions. And that's exactly what you were doing today.
SPEAKER_03:We did go and we did ask questions, and I think it's good having Kate come along because Kate actually knows science things, don't you?
SPEAKER_02:I I know some science things. Um, I mean, I know I I know that yeast isn't bacteria, um, so so I know that much. And um, but I I was saying to Richard, I was trying to approach it with the right, um, with the right attitude, and not from um higher than thou kind of holier than thou, thank you, many, uh, kind of approach. And there was a lot of good, there was some good vibes in there. You know, there are some there are some good vibes, but the the problem with the good vibes is that amongst the good vibes, there's some pseudoscience health issues, you know, like the the patch that I was talking about before, which um which will regenerate my scent my stem cells, but will also then cure my cancer. I mean that's that's not okay. That's that's not alright. It's one thing for yoga pants, but that's not okay.
SPEAKER_01:But I think you two might agree with me that most of the people we stop to talk to who selling these things, be they patches or miracle water or or whatever, um, seem to be genuinely believing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and this is the question is what are people true believers or are they scamming the public? And it's a fairly interesting and important distinction to make, isn't it? And I would say that the the um the one that we stopped at near the end that was selling the probiotics from Japanese people, I have my doubts as to whether or not they believed it or whether that is just a scam. I don't know, and you can't tell. I can't climb inside their head, but it's dangerous nonsense. And if we can go back to the patches that are in, there's a lovely picture of people enthusiastically standing on a beach with these white patches on their backs, and when um, because my daughter was she doesn't want to be identified, but she was there, and we we asked some questions, as did Kate, and I said to her, with this patch that's meant to do pretty much everything, what about cancer? And she said, with quite a I don't know, I thought of a high degree of certainty, she said yes. And I said, Yes, what? And she said, Well, yes, I mean it uses your own something in your infrared something, whatever it was, but then she said, All you'd have to do is take the patch off on the day you I said, Would you not need chemotherapy? She said, Well, you would just take the day patch off on the day of the chemotherapy, I think, because it might do something to the patch, I don't know, and then put it back on. But the thing is, to make these wild generic claims, which with such serv certainty, now she doesn't know why I was saying what about cancer. For all she knows, I could have it, and in fact, a member of my family at the moment does have it, right? So she doesn't know why, but she was very certain, and that's very dangerous because to Richard's point, it's what it's not cheap.
SPEAKER_01:No, and it again we get back to this point. Are the people there that they know what they're talking about? No, you know, from many points of view. Now, the people selling the patches and the other things, mostly they're just regurgitating what they've been told, right? They don't know science and biology. Yeast is a what?
SPEAKER_02:Yeast is a bacteria. I think um the patch people to me certainly seemed like true believers. He was showing me video of his dog that he had put the patches on his dog, and there was there was video of the dog's uh old dogs, you know, walking around arthritically, and then another picture of what appeared to be the same dog with 17 of these patches on its um back, just on the hair. I said, have you shaved have you shaved that to get it to the skin? No, no, no, they just go on the hair. Um of this dog bounding through a field of daisies. Daisies, I think it I think I think it was a field of just grass. Yeah. Um slow motion, was it the golden retriever? Because they Yes, no, it wasn't a golden retriever, sadly, but that would have been perfect. You know, and and he said, you know, you people people can say what they like, but but animals don't lie, as if I could of course animals lie.
SPEAKER_01:My cats lie every morning. They say they haven't had breakfast after after I fed them, you know. But okay, first time going. What did you expect versus what you found?
SPEAKER_02:I didn't expect there to be uh so many products. I think I expected there to be m more. I guess I'm I was coming from a pharmacy conference. I expected there to be a room of posters where people would stand by their poster and then talk about their research, and then I expected there to be sort of a lecture series. I didn't really think it would be stalls of people sprooking. Um so that was interesting because there was uh you mean you wouldn't you wouldn't be without a crystal um or a deck of tarot cards, would you?
SPEAKER_01:No, no. Well if you are you can buy them there, you see.
SPEAKER_03:I just didn't um think there'd be such a lot. It was just a lot. Yeah, I mean I I kept wanting to go, and Richard kept saying, No, you're doing very well. He praised me for my resilience in in the in the face of going to the dark side, and I think I deserved that praise. Um but I didn't think there'd be so much, and so much repetition, like there's so many psychics, and so many tarot card readers, and so many crystals, and so many essential oils. Um and and and before I went, I was telling my gym friends I was going today, and they're like, What's the harm? And there's the question, it's always the question, what's the harm? And of course, as we know, from the moderate to the extreme, you start to get into that sort of thinking. Somebody falls ill, and instead of actually going down the rational route, it's the alluring route because it's simplistic, it's certain, it lacks evidence, but it's it's got it'll cover everything, so you can take there was that one thing we saw. What was it? It was like um, I can't remember there were so many of them, but it covered tumours, parasites, heavy heavy metals.
SPEAKER_00:It's the uridologist who had those signs of it. Oh yes, yes. I don't know what he was selling, but he was an iridologist.
SPEAKER_03:But he had there was there was drops or creams or something.
SPEAKER_00:I I didn't see that too clearly.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that one. I mean, we were standing and and and that we you said, oh look the heavy metals, because as we know, Alton Med is obsessed with heavy metals, parasites, detox, and detoxing, and man. So it comes back to this notion of what's the harm. Well, if you start believing anodot anecdote over evidence, then you're on a dangerous slippery slope if you happen to come across a genuine health issue.
SPEAKER_02:I agree, I would also add to that that the harm can be you you perhaps are pursuing um a traditional Western medicine-style treatment for your health concern. And you are also exploring perhaps a a heavy metal detox or whatever, you know, whatever it is these products are in fact claiming to be, you don't feel like you can tell your physician that you are doing this, but but they're not harmless. Just because they're herbal doesn't make them harmless, and they can have interactions and they can have effects that aren't that that you don't want, but then if the person treating you doesn't know about it, then you know, then you can run into real trouble.
SPEAKER_03:Um, well, I think that was um a very interesting experience for all of us. I'm personally exhausted. What about you, Kate?
SPEAKER_02:No, I'm rejuvenated. I I don't know how you can be exhausted. I'm rejuvenated because I now know how to regrow my stem cells and balance my parasites. No, align my parasites? No, I can't remember.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I think I think what's happened to you is you've discovered this lack of stem cells and now they've been rejuvenated. Um I've I've just been healed by being in the general atmosphere of it, I feel, just by sort of moving through the space. I just feel I could almost feel the parasites just dropping away from me as I walked. Just dropping out of me. And you were telling me that kinesiology is a real thing and it's only applied kinesiology, which is nonsense.
SPEAKER_01:What's kinesian? Kinesiology is the science, yes.
SPEAKER_03:Did you know this?
SPEAKER_02:I didn't know this. Did you know this, Lily? I thought they were the same thing.
SPEAKER_03:They're not. Look at them. No. So I think it's it's the beginning of a beautiful new friendship that we've got six monthly. Yeah, yeah. Remeeting to see what we can discover and how and I'm hoping in the next six months that we see some real improvement in your stem cells. Well, you wouldn't share any of yours with me, so I will have to regenerate using patch. It's a boundary issue, Kate. They're my stem cells, and I've worked really hard on maintaining them. I detoxed, I got rid of the parasites. They're mine. My stem cells. Back off. That's all I've got to say to you. Anyway, uh that'll be over and out from the combined, what are we calling it?
SPEAKER_01:The Y Smart Zone Women's Zone or something.
SPEAKER_03:So the Y Smart Women's Zone. So thank you so much, listeners. Thank you for tuning in. Stay smart, stay well, keep your critical thinking hats on. See you soon. Bye. So I hope you enjoyed that. I'm sorry about you couldn't sometimes hear all three of us that we were working from one mic and drinking coffee and preparing ourselves to drink wine at the same time, just to get over the shock of the whole thing. I hope you enjoyed that. And as always, the point of this podcast is to try and arm us against the misinformation and disinformation that is aimed at us daily. So I hope you enjoyed it. And as always, stay safe, stay well, keep your critical thinking hat on. See you soon. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to Why Smart Women with me, Annie McCubbin. 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 a painter, 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, work, 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. And don't forget to subscribe, 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 White Smart Women. See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, Annie McCubbin.
