Hey everyone... Matthew and Julian here with a more relaxed format. We'll be periodically checking in on feedback going forward, starting with a look at some shade thrown by Lissa Rankin at the pod. We're not entirely buying what she's selling, but it does give us pause to reflect on communication styles, satire, and empathy.
Here's what Rankin had to say: https://www.facebook.com/lissarankin/posts/521303766024162.
And here's how Matthew responded: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.remski/posts/10166401550575602
(Apologies about Matthew's sound quality. Kittens knocked over the mic stand and snapped the connectors. Derek is shipping out a hand-me-down for Thursday!)
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Thank you.
So we're doing Feedback Monday today, and so I've got a couple of things.
We were talking on Slack a while back about how You know, the guys at Decoding the Gurus do this really great, and I think sometimes long-winded, you know, survey of all of the reviews they get on iTunes.
So they very meticulously go over their feedback.
And then they assess, you know, is that fair?
Is that not fair?
We don't really do that.
I think the energy of our reporting is pretty forward-moving, but there have been a number of instances in which We've gotten really interesting feedback that I don't think the news cycle has really slowed down for long enough for us to go, oh, let's sit back and take a look at that.
I mean, sometimes we did that episode called Snark Tank when we got a bunch of feedback about how we were so mean.
But there are sort of these issues hanging in the air, and so I wanted to bring a bit of Facebook spectacle to this episode by pointing everyone to a very long and, I would say, Well-intentioned and rich post by Dr. Lissa Rankin, friend of the pod.
And then I thought it would be good to just sort of like take a look at what she has to say because I think it's actually really interesting, and there's a lot to it, and then there's a lot of comments as well.
So, Dr. Rankin, if you're listening, hello, thank you for your post, and we're going to try to make a little bit of sense of it.
We'll put it into the show notes, but Um, she does sort of two main things in it.
She juxtaposes the tone of what we do from week to week against the tone and the kind of intentionality, I guess, of another podcast called A Little Bit Culty, which is run by Sarah Edmondson and, uh, and Nippy, I forget his last name.
I'm sorry, Nippy.
Um, and Go ahead, Julian.
No, I was going to say I don't know either.
You don't know either?
Yeah, Sarah and Nippy, they are survivors of the NXIVM.
I've been on it.
I had a good time being a guest on it.
There's a lot of crossover between our two pods.
We've interviewed some of the same experts.
podcast.
I've been on it.
I had a good time being a guest on it.
There's a lot of crossover between our two pods.
We've, we've interviewed some of the same experts.
And so she is saying, Dr. Rankin is saying that they have a very sort of light touch that allows people to share their cult dynamics stories and, And then, somewhat relatedly, she's saying, but the guys at Conspiratuality Podcast, they're kind of
They're kind of mean, and they have some misinformed views about alternative medicine.
So I'll just read a little bit here.
She says that, given that the wellness, mind, body, yoga, and energy healing world I've been a part of went a little bit culty crazy during the pandemic, I've already listened to every episode of the Conspirituality Podcast, and I was a guest on one episode, and I learned so much listening to them, and I'm so grateful for all they do.
Serious kudos and high fives.
Yes, high fives back, thank you.
But, it's a small but, but necessary, in my opinion, they have a tendency to demonize and diminish some things in the realm of healing outside conventional medicine, and with all due respect, and given all they say about staying in their lane, they are not doctors, scientists, or healers, and I think they're just wrong about some of what they say about alternative medicine.
And it irritates me that they're so smug and self-righteous in the way they tend to punch down on some alternative medicine practitioners and the modalities they practice, and to speak in a way that feels belittling, condescending, and insensitive to those who have benefited from alternative medicine, even as they call out those who punch down.
And so I guess we can start there.
How does that all strike you?
Fair comment in terms of just trying to, what I hear her doing is orienting herself in relationship to what we do and then in relationship to what a little bit culty does and talking about some concerns that she has.
Sounds like about some lack of nuance.
Right away, part of me, which is maybe defensive, says, well, I think we really try to be quite nuanced and empathetic and we share personal stories of the different things that we've been involved with, the different alternative treatments we've tried, the things I think we share about positive experience we've had and things that we think are legit in certain ways.
And I think that we try to Make a distinction between overgeneralizing and specific criticisms.
So yeah, I'm just not, I don't think the characterization of punching down and just demonizing and all of that is accurate, although I have my own thoughts about why it makes sense that it might seem that way to someone.
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts that way too, but let's come back to those, but I'll go on a little bit.
She says, I've spent the past 10 years studying the stuff the Conspiratuality Podcast hosts swipe away with a snarky laugh and an air of contempt towards those who might claim to have benefited from an acupuncturist, for example.
I know they think it's all placebo, but I don't think they understand that those of us who study such things have learned about the subjective aspects of healing, like the therapeutic relationship, the empathy extended, The healing environment that helps settle the nervous system and the way with good healers at least trauma may come to the surface for healing when a good healer helps someone finally feel safe, especially when people have been harmed by abuses of power and conventional medicine and are terrified of doctors.
When I get there, I'm like, whenever we do discuss placebo, I think we do talk about all of those things, about how there are intersubjective experiences that attend a therapeutic space, whether it's regulated or evidence-based or not.
I think we talk about You know, the feeling of empathy contrasted with the sort of short-cycle visit structure that we get in most clinical spaces in conventional medicine or hospital circumstances.
It's interesting that, like, Do you feel that when you speak about placebo, you are dismissing something, or are you talking about something that's kind of mysterious and fucking amazing to consider?
I think that placebo is not something that we've returned to again and again.
we have talked about it once or twice, but the whole piece about, you know, institutional issues, issues with the medical model, issues with how people have been treated, issues of discrimination and, you know, women being patronized, et cetera, issues of discrimination and, you know, women being patronized, et cetera, that run through the history of medicine in the It's, I feel like we've touched on that multiple times
We've made empathic sort of attempts to put ourselves in the shoes of why someone might be vulnerable to certain kinds of medical conspiracy theories and to buying into certain pseudoscience or poorly evidenced cures or approaches precisely because of those more societal and structural problems.
Right.
Yeah, and with placebo, you know, I think Derek and I have even disagreed a few times because Derek is a little more on the side of like, there's really something going on with placebo that's pretty remarkable, you know, in terms of the brain and in terms of healing power and all the rest of it.
And I'm a lot more skeptical about that.
But none of this is because we haven't done our homework.
This is all stuff I've also been interested in for decades and have looked into.
And my opinion on it has shifted over time based on both experiences I've had and things that I've studied, both as a practitioner and as just someone who's interested in a business.
