Ask Dr. Drew - FenBen Cancer Study RETRACTED By Publisher w/ Dr. Harvey Risch & Pseudoscience Expert Massimo Pigliucci + Naomi Wolf on Bizarre Geoengineered Cloud Formations – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 604

Episode Date: April 4, 2026

Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch digs into PubMed’s controversial retraction of a 2025 study of Fenbendazole (FenBen) for cancer treatment by Dr. William Makis. Naomi Wolf Ph.D. is concerned about bizarre cloud formations and the real threat of government geoengineering programs – and the exclusion of women from public prayer spaces. Evolutionary biologist and pseudoscience expert Massimo Pigliucci breaks down the ancient practices of Stoicism and Epicureanism, explaining the biological and societal forces that lock human beings into predictable routines. Naomi Wolf, Ph.D. is an independent journalist, co-founder, and CEO of DailyClout.io. She edits The Pfizer Papers and authored Facing the Beast and War Room / DailyClout Pfizer Documents Analysis Volunteers’ Reports eBook. More at https://x.com/naomirwolf and https://naomiwolf.substack.com⠀Massimo Pigliucci, PhD, is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His academic work is in evolutionary biology, philosophy of science, the nature of pseudoscience, and practical philosophy. He has a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee. He has published over 190 technical papers in science and philosophy and is the author or editor of 23 books. Learn more at https://massimopigliucci.net/⠀Dr. Harvey Risch is Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at Yale. He provided testimony to the US Senate regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and has spoken widely about his opposition to masking, vaccine mandates, and the reliability of PCR tests – along with his research on COVID prevention and treatment with existing drugs. In 2025, President Trump appointed him to chair the President’s Cancer Panel. Follow at https://x.com/DrHarveyRisch 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 • STRONG CELL – If you want to feel more like your younger self, go to https://strongcell.com/ and use code DREW for 20% off. • AUGUSTA PRECIOUS METALS – Thousands of Americans are moving portions of their retirement into physical gold & silver. Learn more in this 3-minute report from our friends at Augusta Precious Metals: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/gold⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or text DREW to 35052 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/fatty15⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/paleovalley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twc.health/drew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Executive Producers • Kaleb Nation - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://kalebnation.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • Susan Pinsky - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/firstladyoflove⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Content Producer • Emily Barsh - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/emilytvproducer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hosted By • Dr. Drew Pinsky - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/drdrew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of our favorite guest joins us again, Naomi Wolf. She's got a lot to discuss today, including public spaces for a prayer session that excludes women. Is this appropriate or not? I want to talk to a little bit about some of the research we've been doing. We're going to discuss with actually Dr. Harvey Reich, who is one of the lead authors in this article on Fibendazol and Ivermectin for cancer. And consistent with evaluating these sorts of studies, we're going to bring in Massimo Pulici, who is an evolutionary biologist. and a philosopher, and he has a very special interest in pseudoscience. How we can identify pseudoscience?

When is something meet a criteria that we can rely on as likely theory versus when is something just pseudoscience? All of that after this. Our laws as it pertain to substances are draconian and bizarre. The psychopaths start this fact. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction. Fentanyl and heroin. ridiculous. I'm a doctor for a

saying, where the hell you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals, but just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time, educate adolescents, and to prevent, and to treat. You have trouble, you can't stop, and you want to help stop it. I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say.

Dr. Naomi Wolf is an independent journalist, co-founder and CEO of DailyClout.io. She edited the Pfizer papers and authored Facing the Beast and War Room. A lot to get into. You can follow Naomi on X in Naomi Wolf, just one word, and Naomi wolf. com. Naomi, welcome back as always. Good to see you.

Thanks so much for having me. It's always wonderful to be with you all. Yeah. So tell me your thoughts on this. I have mixed thoughts on, and I'm curious on yours. You've got to straighten my brain out a little bit. There was this sort of takeover of, I believe it was Washington Square Park for a prayer session excluding women. Is that a constitutional problem?

Are we running into the issue of separation of church and state, which I've been reading a little bit about, I guess the way we think about it these days versus how the founding fathers thought about it are quite different? What do you think? So very timely question. And I always want to start by saying, you know, I don't have blanket criticism of any group, any religion, any ethnicity. Just there's that. But the issue is that in particular Islam, in New York City, is being kind of weaponized in a very territorial way. So the instance that you're referencing was thousands of people. people, mostly all men from what I was able to see in Washington Square Park, where incidentally, there's a mosque right there on Washington Square Park at NYU. I've been to it. I showed up to show my solidarity with the Muslim community when there were waves of anti-Islam feeling, and there's a giant mosque right behind those people.

And there was also a gathering in Brooklyn that Mayor Mamdani attended, which was also So overwhelmingly male with women cordoned off in a tiny section in the rear. So it raises a lot of questions right about public space and access and equality, especially because I just interviewed an activist from Britain, they're much further along in the weaponization of public space by imams, essentially. And we kind of have to wake up that this isn't just your ordinary diversity issue in a free civil society. So it's not right to ask about constitutional questions in this case, respectfully, because it's

not about the separation of church and state. You can have, you know, you can worship in public in our society. It's perfectly constitutional. The issues that it raises for me legally are EOC law and also the 1960. Civil Rights Act. So the 1964 Civil Rights Act, of course, was the law that did away with Jim Crow, with separate but equal accommodations. And it basically said in public accommodations, you can't keep a group of people out. So the question for me is, if I, as a Brooklyn night, you know, half the time, taxpayer in New York, were to walk into the middle of those men in that

public park, right? It's not a private space. It's taxpayer funded. that space, would I be allowed to use that space? And if I'm not allowed to use it, if they don't part to let me in, right, if they cordon me off or block me out, especially with my dog, right? But if I can't join, if I can't make use of that facility, that is violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act because I'm not equal in my use of that space. And in addition, I think Title IX and EEOC law are relevant because it's because of my gender that I'm being discriminated against in terms of access to that public space. So those are the questions that I would raise rather than constitutional ones. And is somebody doing so? Not to my knowledge. It's very

kind of icky, right? Like what the weaponization of Islam does and it's so cynical is that it it it forces nice people to make not nice arguments. Even saying you're using your religion in a weaponizing way, in a territorial way to create inequality or two-tier society, is kind of not the kind of argument we want to make. We want to say kumbaya, everyone's welcome. Let's all you worship there and I'll worship here. And then we'll have potluck together.

So to my knowledge, no one has. but you're seeing the beginning in New York of the establishment of two-tier access to facilities, two-tier policing, privileging Islam at the expense of other religions. And that worries me a lot, partly because I'm Jewish, of course, and I'm a New Yorker, but partly because I've seen how Britain is so much further along. The guy was interviewing an attorney named Gavin Boby was saying that there they're forced. where it starts with like public prayer, then it's like aggressive parking where, you know, parking is used territorially. Then it's harassment of the local British people. And then it's, you know, the whole, the whole neighborhood becomes a no-go area for non-Muslims, essentially. And you don't want to believe that's happening in an advanced secular, pluralistic society, but it really is.

And it's very scary. Let me ask this. Isn't there a gigantic difference? And I guess I'm going to sort of frame it two ways. One, I believe there's a gigantic distance between somebody who practices Islam and Islamicism, right? And isn't this more a function of those in the sort of Islamicism group were motivating a lot of this stuff? I would say that I want to make that distinction too. Again, that's how we maintain our status as nice, non-racist, inclusive people. However, you would have thought that Zoran Mamdani, our mayor, was from the practicing Islam as opposed to Islamist group. But his funding comes from radical organizations like care, for instance, and all he's done since he took office is host people who overtly support terrorists.

Islamic terrorism. And his wife has been, you know, exposed as supporting Hamas, you know, approving of October 7th posts, you know, saying that the rape of women on October 7th was a hoax, not real. It's not one or two off color or bizarre comments. By now it's systematically supporters of radical terrorist Islam, you know, are being welcomed into Gracie Man. And it's definitely sending a message. And so, yes, I would want to believe that moderate Muslims who just want to live in peace in a pluralistic society would speak up and say, hey, that doesn't represent us. But unfortunately, there's so much backlash against moderate voices when they do try to pull back on some of this territoriality and extremism that you're not hearing them. I mean, I'm not hearing any moderate Muslim imams or leaders or business people saying, hey, what are you doing, entertaining a terrorist supporter in Gracie Mansion? You know, that's not what we're about. I wish I were hearing it, but I'm not.

Again, I think Mamdani is more just anti-Israel, anti-Zionist than pro-Islamicist, per se. I just think he has allies on that side. Look at this video we've got alongside you here. This was a guy, this in Canada, I think. Here's listen to this. You've made profilage racial, you've attended all the long, fucking parking. Firm Tried, you've seen out, you've got to return in the vulture, sallyn, de merd.

Sal put, fom your fucking gull fucking girl. I've got a fucking boy here two years. God, bad. Chian, la, la, sle put. Fucking bond of fish, de, dude, de, de, cuss. Amazing. I learned a new cuss word in France, too. Shien de Merd. I didn't know about that one. It's not son of a bitch. I'll tell you, it's translate. It's quite differently. So what's that, Caleb? Dr. Drew, you know, that horrific misogynist guy doesn't represent all Muslims, of course. However, I have kind of cry because I wrote an essay called It's Not Racist to be Culturist. And the truth is, we have to face this.

You know, deep rural Pakistani men treat women with absolute abusiveness as part, many of them as part of their culture. A lot of people have come to something. I did not expect to go here

with you today, but I'm going to throw down the gauntlet. You have always been such an important voice for women, and particularly feminism per se. It is time that Naomi Wolf clarify, navigate, I guess is the word. Maybe you're already doing it.

If I know you well enough, you probably already are writing this stuff somewhere. How do we navigate these people who defend movements and organizations and points of view that are explicitly misogynistic, anti-gay, all the things that feminism is supposed to stand for? how do you how what mental gymnastics are people doing to be able to do that and how can we lead them back to sanity or at least they stand with women so i've i mean this is such a sad thing to say but i've reached the conclusion that and a lot of sane tolerant people are reaching this conclusion that importing millions of people from cultures where 98% of the women have their clitorises and outer labia. cut off when they're children, which is literally all of sub-Saharan Africa, is not ever going to work. You know, importing millions of people from cultures that marry off girls against their will at nine years old. You know, it's not going to result in assimilation. You're bringing those cultures with you when you've got mass migration to the West. And I've reached the conclusion.

I don't think this is racist, that if you want to have a thriving, peaceful Western American, Western European culture in which gay people are equal, in which women are equal, you cannot have open borders, you can't have mass immigration from parts of the world where they just don't feel that way. And you've got to, I think it's almost racist to expect people to abandon their deeply held views about the status of women or homosexuals. just because they're physically on our soil. I think we have to face the fact that there are cultures that are literally incompatible with one another.

I've been to those parts of the world. Dr. Drew, NGOs spend millions of dollars. I'll never forget big billboards in Sierra Leone, basically telling men in general not to rape women in general, because in general, men were raping women. I'm not kidding. It's so culturally not extremist. Just this is not a good idea.

We're telling you're from America. Maybe you ought to rethink the whole raping thing. Well, but, but, but let's the, I'm laughing because it's so horrible. It's beyond. It's so horrible. And it's my, but why, what do we do to the young women that are supporting? It's, I think you've made the case that I think that they would defend. I think they would say, yes, that's right.

They're entitled to their points of view. They're entitled to their culture. But you as a woman don't have to play along with it. You don't have to be a part of it. You don't have to stand up to it. You're asking a horrible, tough question because I do see, you know, people pro-Palestine movement, you know, queers for Palestine. It's such a contradiction. It's a 10-year prison sentence in Gaza to be gay.

You know, people are tortured in Egypt for being male homosexuals. Currently, not 20 years ago, to this day. So I think liberals and leftists who think that they're being right on by supporting those cultures are incredibly ill-informed and naive, and they should get on a plane and go to those cultures and see what actually happens. You know, talk to people in NGOs. People are taking huge risks, being feminists in some very woman-hating society. communities, huge risks being gay rights activists in societies where gay people are thrown off of buildings or, you know, executed or sent to prison as in parts of Palestine or, you know, many parts of the Muslim world. It's not a joke. You know, I will never forget what I saw in Sierra Leone. It stayed with me for the whole rest of my life. You can spend millions of dollars trying to solve a problem, you know, problems that are so deeply cultural. You're never going to solve. of them. And in sub-Saharan Africa, it's women leading NGOs who are saying, you know, 11% of decision makers in sub-Saharan Africa are girls and women because of a culture that doesn't see it as

being appropriate for women to make decisions. You're not going to be able to, you know, import those civilizations wholesale into the West. And suddenly, the men in those cultures are going to be like, okay, fine, I was wrong this whole time. I've seen a Hollywood movie. I've seen a Western business woman. I've been wrong. That's not going to happen. So I think you've, honestly, Dr. Drew, what are we going to do to bring the fringe insane left into sanity? You know, we can keep talking to them, but it's a mass hallucination at this point. And I think we really just have to like, you know, support America first and Britain first

and the nationalist sovereign nation movements in Western Europe and stop being afraid of being called racists because we're not. and let people close their borders and reclaim their own cultures. That's, you know, we've got to save our own civilization. We need a Naomi Wolf book for women. I just feel it. Sorry. Sorry to lay that on you. But I just think the time is right.

I think that because people are so confused. And I'm thinking more and more that leadership of various types is sort of what's needed to help people. navigate through this. Like you said, it's sort of a brainwashing and whatnot. Well, listen, as always, I love having you here. Is there anything else you wanted to address?

I understand you've been very worried on X about geoengineering. I don't know if I was feeling about it, but what are your thoughts? Yeah, I've been reporting on geoengineering since 2017. Too much mockery. Like there's a whole mockery industry

that the geoengineering interests appears subsidized. But I've been, you know, right since 2017. Harvard has a whole geoengineering program. Dr. David Keith runs it. And they do illegal experiments on Native American land so that they can be outside of U.S. law and they spray sulfur dioxide over Arizona. That dates back nearly a decade now. The Carnegie Foundation funds geoengineering. There's various forms of geoengineering. There's cloud seeding in many Western states that has a role in the fires, unfortunately, in California. It desiccates the foliage, makes it more flammable. There's something called marine cloud brightening.

There's solar radiation management, which is what we see a lot in the northeast, where you see kind of emissions from planes that spread out and cover the sky and block the sun. We have a day like this here in upstate New York. And, you know, obviously, and many interests are doing it. I traced one of the programs to the Department of Energy. And we, you know, people do notice that when there's a government shutdown, the skies are really clear. And during the lockdowns, the skies were really clear. So, you know, clearly there are some government programs, military programs, no doubt, involved in various forms of geoengineering.

It's just very dangerous for a lot of reasons. You know, one is that, as you know better than I, humans need sunshine. and vitamin D. You know, animals do. Foliage and crops need sun. But another reason is asthma allergies, you know, we're breathing particulates. Sulfur dioxide is a pollutant, right? And they're spraying it as part of solar radiation management.

And lastly, I think it's just, I think humans evolved to have a very intimate relationship with the sky and weather. and we know we feel when something's human is interfering with it, and I think it demoralizes us and depresses us. Sometimes I think that's one of the purposes of so much geoengineering is to lead us to give up. We've certainly lived through years in which decision makers were trying to encourage us to give up and not ask questions. So there's a lot more reporting to be done.

We don't know a lot of things about geoengineering, but it is thoroughly confirmed that it's a thoroughly, you know, a thoroughly funded industry and many players are funding it for very nefarious reasons of their own. Naomi, where do you want people to go to find you? Come to Naomi R. Wolf on X. Come over to Substack. My substack is called Outspoken or come to Daily Clout. My platform.

You there and look forward to you joining us again very soon. Thanks, Naomi. Thanks so much for having me, doctor. true. You bet. All right. Coming up, I'm going to speak to Massimo Pulici.

He is someone I found years ago, actually, and I really enjoy his thinking because he comes from a scientific perspective, but he is also philosopher, a stoicist. We have a call-in number. I'm not sure when I'm going to take calls, but I promise you I will take them at some point today.

The number is, Caleb, I don't have it in front of me. see. 1-33-3. There you go. 3, Dr. Drew. So it's 1-833-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3. Wait, let me tell.

I'll say it. I'll say it. It's 1-833-3-3-3-3-Drew, which is 1-833-33-7-37-39. Or if you didn't hear me say it, you can just go to Dr.drew.com slash call. And you could actually even call in from your browser or just find the phone numbers right there. Dr.dru.com slash call. All right. Let me give you some places you can find Mosin, which I do strongly recommend you follow him on X.

I don't see his X thing here. His substack is what's dot what dash what, excuse me, what's dash wrong dash with dash metrics. That is figs, oh boy, figs in wintertime. Substack.com. That's his substack on Darwinism. We're going to talk all about this. I don't see a... Caleb, I need a next handle for it.

When we're going to take their questions because they're calling and they're waiting and they're hanging up. And we just want to make sure that people understand... So we'll take calls, especially if they're relevant to the guest. But then if we don't take calls throughout the show, then Drew's going to take some calls at the end, for sure. So if people are still waiting by then, we're just going to answer questions. And this is our first day back to having the call-in number. So I'm just trying to make sure everything runs smoothly. All right, back with Massimo Pudici.

I've spent most of my career dealing with illnesses that shorten life. And now we have ways to extend it and extend wellness. I've been working with the team over at B Shred to develop a product that has everything I want in a longevity supplement. NR boost has nicotinamide riboside. You know how metal can rust? Well, your body behaves in a similar way. It's mediated through something called NAD. NAD falls as we age, so we're less able to fall.

fight off that oxidative process. We oxidize much like that metal. And NAD fights it, but nicotinamide riboside elevates NAD so we can push back on those oxidative stressors. Improving health, improving longevity. The other product is Ceno Sink, has ficotin, one of the key molecules to fight off zombie cells. And we've added resveratrol to that, which is a well-known anti-aging antioxidant again. I don't like supplements that have a ton of ingredients. To me, it suggests that None of it's working. When I prescribe a medication, I prescribe that medicine because I expect that to work. That is exactly what I've done with these products.

And I want you to go to Dr. Drew.com slash v. shred MD for 10% off. Again, that is Dr. Drew.com slash V shred MD. Something our audience knows well is that what's good for our health can also be good for the environment. Paleo Valley makes snacks, drinks, oils, and more that are nutrient dance, delicious, and impeccably sourced. Co-founder Autumn Smith, Champions Regenerative Farming. It's a level beyond organic. When you go to the grocery store, 90% of the animal products you're going to buy are from factory farms.

And we obviously know factory farms work against nature. They work against animal health and in many ways against human health. Regenerative farms work on taking the landscape or the ecosystem from a degraded state, which the environment right now needs a lot of rehabilitation. And we have lower nutrient levels in our soil than ever before. We found that animal products from regenerative systems have nutritional benefits. benefits above and beyond other types of animal products. Paley Valley's beef sticks and bone broth protein powder are my favorites and they come from

regenerative farms. And the sticks also come in pasture raised chicken as well. We actually just went and visited one of our chicken farmers and we work with a lot of co-ops and people all over the country. We are such fans of autumn, her work and her extraordinary small business. Go to Dr.do.com slash paleo valley for a 15% discount on your first order or get 20% off when you subscribe. Dr. Drew said the best way to quit drinking is by going cold turkey, and he's a doctor.

So why would you question doctors? Dr. Drew called me unfixable. All right. I finally got to the particulars here. It's Massimo Pulici.net, spelled my S-S-I-M-O-P-I-G-L-U-C-C-I.net. Figgs in Wintertime is the substack. On X, he is Y-E-E-E-T-B-L-L-M, I believe. he said it's not active there, but there's a lot of little posts there. And his books are phenomenal.

Beyond Stoicism, the quest for character with the story of Socrates and Alcibiades. Hang on, I lost it again. I don't know my computer's doing this. Tells us about our search for good leaders and nonsense on stilts. How to tell us science from bunk. How to be a happy skeptic. That's another one.

Massimo, thank you so much for being here. I mean, I'm overwhelmed by your work and your thinking and what you produce. And it just occurred to me that there's so much confusion out there in the world. And, you know, you used to talk about skepticism when, I would dare say, people almost knew the difference between science and pseudoscience. Now it's all over the place. How do people tell the difference? Yeah, thank you for having me, first of all. It's a very good question.

And when I wrote my first book about pseudoscience nonsense on stills a number of years ago, I actually had a hard time convincing the editor that this was something relevant because the typical response was, well, what's the harm? You know, people are believing stuff that it's not quite real. So what's the worst thing that can happen? Well, we're seeing it now. We have major branches of the American government that subscribe to pseudoscientific notions. So, and that literally kills people.

And if it doesn't kill them, it certainly doesn't make them feel any. better. Now, how do we tell the difference between the two? Oh, that's a million-dollar question, actually, probably more than a million-dollar actually worth of a question. It's a philosophical question that has been around for a long time. The first one to raise it in modern times was a guy named Carl Popper at the beginning of the 20th century. He was a major influential philosopher of science. And he asked himself, you know, how do we tell the difference between, you know, what is good science, sound science and what is not. And he made also an additional distinction.

The question is not just what's the difference between science and pseudoscience. The question is also what's the difference between good science and science that can be wrong. You know, scientists are human beings. I think I think that is the fine point. I think we need to put on this conversation today because a lot of science flies around, but my God, is it not good science? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but the scientific method itself has been, say, undermined, has been properly taught. I mean, it's a delicate instrument to query the physical environment, and it's turned into all kinds of permutations.

In my world, it was always come up with a hypothesis, ask the simplest question you possibly can, create an experiment that, either that the null hypothesis becomes informative or non-conformative, non-informative, rather, do a statistical analysis to back that up, and there's your scientific method. I almost never see papers that are constructed that way now. Right. I mean, and very few people, especially outside of course of professional scientists, know anything at all about the scientific method, how science works as a process. The important point, I think, to understand in the context of this discussion is that

Science is a human activity. So, yes, scientists can go wrong. Arguably, that's a feature, a major feature of the scientific method, is precisely that is a method to figure out eventually, given enough time and resources, where we go wrong so that we can correct it. So it's not about getting everything right. It's about figuring out when things go wrong, what is a good way to fix them. As opposed to a pseudoscience, where there is no effort of correcting anything,

there is an effort either to believe in something, you know, I want to believe, you know, I don't know, that astrology works, for instance, and I don't want to hear about evidence. I don't want to hear about anything from astronomers or psychologists or anything like that, or it's a way to sell something to people, right? So I can tell you this thing

because this is really going to solve your life. This is really going to be making a difference in your life. Those are, that's the problem. How do ordinary people outside of somebody who is not trained in science, tell the difference if it's true that sometimes even scientists themselves can't tell the difference, or at least it's not that obvious. To some extent, I think the answer to that question is, well, pretty much the way you would tell the difference between, let's say, a good dentist and a bad dentist or a good carb mechanic and a bad carb mechanic. What do you do?

Well, first of all, you check their credentials. Now, is this guy actually a dentist? where did it go through dentistry school? Does it have an actual diploma? In other words, he's somebody that at least at first sight, I can say, yeah, this person probably knows what they're doing.

Second, that's not enough, however, right? Because lots of people can get a degree or can be certified in this or that or that or the other, and that doesn't necessarily mean that you can trust them. Second, does this person know what he's talking about? Now, that's a tricky part, right? Because unless you're yourself, a dentist or a car mechanic, let's say,

you might not be able to tell if a particular individual is telling you things that make sense or not. So you rely on their track record. Have they been able to fix fires in the past? Are the people that go to this guy as a dentist actually satisfied or, you know, what is my own experience with the same people?

Did I get satisfactory answers? Answers that actually solved problems. They actually made progress. So there is a number of ways in which even though you're not an expert, you can start assessing the alleged expertise of people based on what they say, who they say they are, whether you can verify that or not, whether they have a track record, what other experts in that area believe or think about that particular topic. If my dentist tells me that I have a very unusual problem, that he's never seen before, it needs to be fixing a very strange way. The first thing I'm going to do is to go to a second dentist for a second opinion. And then it may turn out that he's right, in which case, fine, but not necessarily. And to me, there's a, there's a couple other issues here that are coming to bear on all this is a grotesque lack of understanding of biological systems and how spectacularly complicated

they are and how probabilistic they are. And this, you know, people want, you know, X plus Y equals Z and that's not biology. I always tell people it's more like predicting cloud behavior. It's much more, it's much more difficult than even physics, you know, these basic physics. And the other thing is that I think it sort of underpins all of this. People are not good at assessing their cognitive faculties. and I don't mean intelligence.

I mean things like memory. They rely too much on memory and their ability to be persuaded or diluted by all the nonsense that's flying around and how they behave. Just look at their own behavior when information is incomplete and how they fill it with all kinds

of paranoid nonsense. Do you agree with me that that's a major issue and what do we do about that? Yeah, it is a major issue and it's a really difficult one to address. People tend to, people, and by people, I mean everybody, including myself. We tend to overestimate, you know, we suffer from a number of well-documented cognitive biases, which translate when we try to reason about things in what philosophers call, you know,

logical fallacies. So we engage in all sorts of fallacious behavior and thinking because we think they're immune. Oh, yeah, other people certainly have biases. and commit logical about, but I know better. I'm not that stupid. Well, it turns out this is a universal phenomenon, even very smart people. In fact, you can argue,

and there is a significant amount of evidence about this, that particularly smart and educated people are prone to biases and selection of evidence and all that sort of stuff, precisely because they're smart. They can come up with all sorts of ways to fool themselves, in a sense, to justify what they want to do.

There is no silver bullet there, but certainly one thing to do is to engage with other people as honestly as we can. That is, before making any important decision in your life that concerns your health or the concerns, you know, what your stance is on major issues, for instance, when it's time to go to vote for this politician or that other politician, not only inform yourself, but debate with other people. Debate not in a confrontation way, just talk to other people. Talk to people of different opinions, especially if these are themselves people who actually know quite a bit about what they're talking about. Exposing ourselves to different opinions, especially from friends and people who we trust, is actually a good way to double-check what we ourselves are thinking. We tend not to trust people who have a different opinion unless we can trust them for other reasons.

So if we already have a good relationship with somebody, then it's more likely that we're actually going to pay attention to what they're saying. They're going to get past our immediate first response, which tends to be, no, no, I don't believe this, or, you know, what I think I know is already correct. But there is no universal cure. I mean, you might have noticed, that's a universal problem that we have in society. It's very, very easy to convince people of certain things that are convenient that, you know, that make their lives easier or better and so on. And it's very difficult to convince them of things that are hard, that require work and they might not be welcome.

And they have a tendency for whatever reason in recent times to hunker down sort of defensively in beliefs that have a sort of the emotional cognitive mechanisms are similar to how people protect religious views. it's just it's somehow an attack on their very being in all those functional mechanisms the brain fire out similar to if they're being physically assaulted which is this is not good for thinking and by the way I'm noticing it happening amongst my peers

where we used to collaborate and have a good natured discourse and even fight now it's it's violent it's like you dismissive well I think you put the finger on the problem when you talk about essentially personal identity. We got into a point in society where notions that you would think had nothing to do with personal beliefs, religious beliefs and stuff like that have actually come to identify people. So I think of myself as a, you name it, progressive or conservative or Christian or non-Christian or whatever it is. Therefore, this means that I automatically accept a certain number of notions because my tribe,

has come to accept those notions and sees them as identifying the group as opposed to and differentiating from the outgroup. It wasn't always like that. I mean, this is to some extent the in-group, out-group dynamic is universal. It's a product probably

of evolution, but it wasn't as bad in recent times as it is now. There's evidence from studies in political and social science that the polarization of discourse and public discourse has gone much worse in the United States over the last 20 to 30 years. And that's unfortunate. And it's going to be really difficult to reverse this trend because once it's entrenched,

it takes a lot of effort and a lot of education to undo it. Yeah. Were you ever interviewed by the guy that does that podcast, you are not so smart? He's sort of looking at all these cognitive biases and things. You ever come across that? I'm sorry, cognitive biases. No, no, this is a podcast called You Were Not So Smart. I would imagine he would have interviewed you over the years.

Right, right, right, yes. Yeah. But the point is, I lost what my point was, a matter of fact. Oh, I know. That was the fact that in order to change people's mind, the two things, you have to also change their worldview and their view of their peers and everybody they trust. All that is sort of a

scaffolding. And I heard a woman, yeah, and I heard a woman the other day, she said, we used to be a climate, a climate, like, extreme activists. And she said during COVID, when entire economies were shut down,

she looked at the CO2 output and had gone down 17%. She thought, wait a minute, what are we doing here? We have to, even if we shut the world down, it will not have the kind of We were going for zero CO2. That's impossible. And so she started looking around at all the things,

and she realized there'd been a lot of distortion. And she said, look, I was in college, and I was told I was a white colonialist privileged, and I thought, I'm a good person. I'm not part of that. What can I, ah, I know what I'll do. I'll save the world. I'll save the world by dealing with the climate crisis.

And so her sense of herself got tied into all of this. And I'm sure stuff like that is very much involved in many of these belief ideologies, belief systems that are so highly defended? Well, we know, there is actually research on how people change their mind. And it broadly speaking, I'm simplifying a bit,

but broadly speaking, it falls into two categories. Either we change our mind as a result of a single, highly emotionally impacting event. 9-11 happens. People become religious or the opposite. They become A-Tist as a result of that single event because it has such a high impact

from an emotional perspective that completely forces people instantaneously basically to reassess their worldview. Or the other way is it happens very slowly over a period of many years as a result of multiple exposures to certain ideas from different sources. And it depends on whether you trust those sources or not. Now, psychologists would tell, The second way is far better because it's more deliberate.

You have more time to actually think things over to reassess your entire worldview if need be to figure out ways in which the new opinion, the new notion is going to fit with the rest of what you believe. If you change your mind instantaneously or very quickly as a result of an emotional reaction, you're just as likely to change it back if something else. else happened down the line. The problem, of course, is that, you know, try to pay to put an entire population through years of multiple exposure from, you know, reliable sources and so on and so forth. It takes a lot of, it takes what we call critical thinking, education, and so on and so forth. And that is, that costs money and takes time. Those are things that people don't want to do. And unfortunately. And then finally, I feel like it is time. your book character may have come out too soon on character.

And it is time for people to begin to examine character. By the way, is your accent Hungarian? Is that what I'm hearing? No, it's Italian. Italian, okay, that's right. I should have known with the last name. But talk to us about what you, what we could learn from that book that might be,

I don't know, I know why, because they are so resistant to exactly what you just described, right? Educate yourself, pay attention. to reassess your thinking, be a scientist. Maybe character is more where we should be focusing our attention, and is that a possible solution as well? It is a possible solution, I believe.

That's why I wrote the quest for character, which you may be right, came out a little too early. But it does take also a lot of effort, and we're coming down to the same problem that most of us just don't want to make the effort. Nevertheless, it's a different kind of... Let me interrupt you. Let me interrupt you, Massimo.

I'll interrupt you one. Aristotle, I've read your book, but I would like to. Aristotle essentially spelled it out and said, it's as simple as this, good habits. That's essentially what he said. Do it again and again and again, and pretty soon it'll become part of your character. That's right.

Yeah, that is correct. With an important caveat, you have to not only do it over and over, but you have to do it mindfully over and over. That is, road repetition doesn't do it. If you just do things, you know, it's like, imagine as an analogy, this analogy actually is very old. It comes from Socrates. Imagine that you want to, you decide that you want to learn to play a musical instrument.

What do you do? First of all, of course, you get the instrument. You get, hopefully, a good teacher. And good teacher is not somebody who can play for you. You are the one that has to play. But the teacher can give you pointers on, you know, how to improve. And especially can tell you, now, look, this is not. the right way to do it,

they can correct mistakes from the beginning. But mostly, it's about practice. You just had to pick up the instrument every day, arguably four hours a day, and then little by little you improve. However, you don't want to play always the same little tune or a little simple scale, because otherwise, you're not going to get anywhere.

You're going to get very good at doing that, and that's about it. You have to push yourself. Little by little, you increase the complexity, of the scale, you increase the complexity of the tune, and that's how you make, you improve over time. Essentially, that's what Aristotle says we should do our character. We should try to stay away from two opposite extremes. On the one hand, you don't want to make things too easy for yourself, because then you get bored and you don't make any progress. But you also, importantly,

don't want to make things too difficult for yourself, otherwise you get frustrated and you give up. And that's actually what a lot of people do in my experience. They say, set the bar so high, and then they tell themselves, oh, I can't get there. It's a little bit like, to use another analogy, it's a little bit like going to the gym. If you decide to go to the gym because it's good for your health and your muscles and aerobic capacity, I'm going to be improving. Great. But if you set an Olympic standard for your satisfaction with the gym, then most of us are not going to get there and you're going to get frustrated and give up.

I gave a lecture, a graduation lecture once, where I used. this exact model for physicians. And what I was advocating for, and I would argue that this is important for character as well, is look at the musicians and how they do it. This is a perfect model for learning high-level professional performance, but that we should all seek eventually to seek virtuosity. Not that virtuosity is going to be something you develop in the first few months, but much the way a musician can work for years at this,

That's their goal. And that should be each of our goals with these things. I can talk to you all day, but I got to wrap it up. Where do you want people to find you? On Substock at Figs in Wintertime, that is my newsletter where I write about science, pseudoscience, philosophy, and so on and so forth. Or at my website, Massimo Piuluchi.net. So my first and last name is one thing.net. Great.

Thank you for joining. I hope to talk to you again soon. It was a pleasure. All right. So we're going to, now we sort of set this up today now to bring in my friend Harvey Reisch. He, I know in the banner for this show, we were talking about Dr. Mackas' study that was pulled that is different than Dr. Rees in my study, which is affirming the possibility that these medication might have some utility.

But I want to dig in with Dr. Reach exactly what these studies suggest. and how to interpret these things and how not to get, as Dr. Pulichi was just saying, not to get swept into pseudoscience or overthinking or being ideological and how you approach these things has to be done carefully and systematically. So, Harvey Reich, who is a Yale epidemiologist, we've talked to him here before many times

during all the nonsense of COVID. And he's here with me now after this. More of our audience is taking health and wellness into their own hands and they're doing it with the wellness company. For a discount on the best-selling products and everything on their website, for that matter, go to Dr. Drew.com slash TWC. The medical emergency kits are among the most popular items. There are eight different kits, each depending on your individual needs.

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real deal. No pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, steroids, gluten, grain, soy, GMOs, no added sugar. They have vanilla, salted caramel, chocolate. I love the chocolate. Sweetness is from monk fruit. It's a natural sweetener. Susan used chocolate to make a Frappuccino today, and I could not save it for the show. I ate it. It was so good. I'm going to have her get on the mic at the end of this and tell us what was in there. So whatever else you're doing, if it's stressful, your body might want this for recovery. Go to doctor.com slash payload for 15% off your first time and 20% off when you subscribe. This was, Susan, this was seriously, I could not stop. It's the best rapuchina I ever had and knowing all the while it was protein, not sugar. I was shocked. I just

used one scoop of paleo valley chocolate. You could use a vanilla or the salted caramel. This was chocolate though, right? Yes. One teaspoon of instant coffee. I used Ely, which I love. I have a cup of whipping cream, like out of the container whipping cream. Not like. Just a little shh whipping cream. No, no. Like your whipping cream. Like you're using your coffee. Oh, there's a little bit that. Okay, heavy cream. Like heavy cream. Got it. And then water and ice. It was D. I, what a great meal replacement, frankly. It is. Good dietary, good dietary. It's like going to Starbucks and getting a Frappuccino without all the sugar. Frippuccino is loaded with sugar and all kinds of crap. This is like, this is like pure. This is, you know, ought to make sure of it.

Andrews a lot. All right. Harvey Reach, you can follow it on X. Can you move that that screen there, Susan. Dr. Harvey Reish, his last name is spelled R-I-S-C-H-D-R-H-R-V-R-B-R-B-R-Beech. A book is Toxic Shot Facing the dangers of the COVID vaccine. Harvey, thank you, and as always, appreciate your work. Welcome. It's great to be with you. So help people, first of all, distinguish between what the TWC data and medical service team, Medical Board did with our recent, I guess, pre-print. It's not published yet, as far as I know,

versus say, what Dr. Maccas did where he studied three cases that seemed to have a positive response. Well, case reports and small case series reports do show instances of events, medical events, that may or may not be generalizable. In our case, we were more interested. in studying whether there was a systematic benefit of the medication that we TWC cells. This is the combination of ivermectin and abendazole.

It's a combined antiparacetic medications that may also have usage for treating cancer. And we learned recently that there's in fact some universities have patents on use of these medications for treating cancer. So this is not out of the blue. In any event, it's not widely used. used, Dr. Maccas has been using it in his clinical practice, and because we at the wellness company have been providing this to people who have have cancer and have come to us to see about whether they could add this to their treatment regimens. So they do a telemedicine visit with our clinicians. You need to make sure that this is okay health-wise for them to try. And then they

purchase these medications. And so what we decided to do was to do with. initial survey and a follow-up survey to see just how they were doing. And so what we did is earlier mid-last year, we set up a survey and identified 200 sequential customers who had bought this medication and directed them to a web-based survey to fill out questions about their disease that they have and which organs and what stage it was and various other demographic information. And then after approximately six months, we contacted them to see whether their cancers had spread or declined,

what their health status was, how much of the medications did they use, whether they had any adverse reactions to these medications. And we got approximately 62% of the initial survey respondents to reply to the second survey. and what we found is in the second survey, the respondents, about half of them, reported that their cancers had either completely gone away or had regressed, had declined. In addition, another third said that their cancers had stayed about the same. So overall, some 83, 84% of people had obtained benefit from using these medications after an interval of about six months.

Now, this is not proof that the medications treat cancer by any means, but it does provide some evidence that basically suggests here's a signal that these medications can be providing benefit and we need to conduct randomized trials or some kind of more aggressive definitive studies to determine whether this medication has a role in an adjunctive role in adding to whatever treatment regimens people are taking for their cancers. to see whether it improves things and might help them. We need to know this definitively because these are not very expensive compared to the cost of chemotherapy. And if they help, cancer patients in general at something they can buy from us or from somewhere else, and why wouldn't they want to add these things that have very low levels of adverse effects on them?

Yeah. Yeah, it's insane that the scientific community, the clinical community wouldn't want us at least asking this question. I was very skeptical that we would have a positive result, but I read the study very carefully. And I, too, as one of the authors, I went back to Nick. I said, look, you've got to state everywhere. This isn't treat, we're not saying anything except that there's a signal here that warrants for the study.

And it was a bit of a club, you know what I mean? There was all kinds of cancers, and we would sort of categorize them and sort of the way people were answering their questionnaires were a little inaccurate, but there was still something there. And the study was done very well, and I know you were on top of it the whole way. Because I have no way of knowing our questionnaires giving us anything, right? How do we determine that the questions we're asking are really giving us what we want to know? And then people are dropping out, as you point out, and what is a relevant sample size,

and then what is relevant within that sample size in terms of a positive result? I was convinced from the analysis we did that it was, I was, surprised. I was actually pleasantly surprised that there may be something here. And so then my initial, my next thought is, well, why not? It doesn't hurt anything. It's harmless. Well, by and large, people had only slight bits of gastrointestinal discomforts that were transient. Very, very few people changed their dosing. Almost nobody stopped taking it. People, many people took more than the initial amount. It was up to them to decide how they wanted to use the product. I also was quite pleasantly surprised that this seems to be providing some benefit.

And the company is planning on repeating the survey with larger numbers to see if this is systematic. At least we'll have the same kind of additional data. And let's be a thousand percent clear. This wasn't instead of traditional treatment. This was in addition to or when late stages when nothing else was available to them. This is, this is an, it was called an adjunctive treatment. And my God, my, and I'm seeing many oncologists go, you want to try it? Sure, go ahead.

Why not? You know, there's a right to try out there. And this one drug, because people have had this weird bias against it, that there, I've been taking crap on X just for just raising awareness about this study and going, look, this is something interesting. I actually didn't even do it. Somebody put it on my thread for me. Well, we're not treating cancer in horses. that's the ivermectin thing and yeah it's the weirdest thing as this it's that there's so much energy around this thing to me i i'm just generally you know skeptical and i want to ask

questions and if there's a repurpose drug this is the same stuff that this same kind of headwind that steve hirsch ran steve uh... kersh ran into when he was repurposing fluvoxamine which personally i found very useful for my long covid very useful and he's had some very positive results. Well, you know, I wasn't involved in that research, so I can't really speak to that. I helped design and carry out this study for the wellness company, and I think we did a good job with it insofar as the response rates are justifiable. They're not pristine, but, you know, typically in epidemiological kinds of studies, this is how

what you do, and it's within the acceptability range for our response rates. I think that we really are saying this needs to be studied in much more depth, in much more definitively, and why not? You know, I mean, we're not replacing chemotherapy. We're not replacing surgery. We're not replacing anything of which there's some kind of pharma or other economic interest. We're adding to all of that. And so there should be no conflict of interest. for somebody saying not to do it. You know, and you use the word chemotherapy, and unfortunately that has a,

has a, talking to Mosimo about cognitive biases. This has an emotional bias to it. When people think of chemotherapy, they really talk about cytotoxic chemotherapy, which is not used today very often. Even when it is used, it's very targeted. It's a monoclonal antibody is attached. The cytotoxic agent is attached to monoclone antibody.

So it goes to each individual cancerous there, not poisoning the whole body. Now, do we use those cytotoxic agents? Yes, sometimes. But when people talk about cancer treatment, they're talking about their carty cells, checkpoint inhibitors, jack inhibitors, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, things that are not at all like the old notion of chemo. And we're usually stacking things.

We're adding things where we can. This is something that could potentially be added. But I just want to be careful that we're really, I'm not encouraging people, not, you know, oncology has made massive progress the last 10 years in particular, and you should be taking advantage of that. And hopefully this observation will add to some of that progress. Could you explain, Harvey, what your career was over at Yale also?

Well, I started out as a cancer researcher. After medical school, I went and got a PhD, which is actually in mathematical modeling of infectious epidemics. and then I did a postdoctoral fellowship in epidemiology at the University of Washington and started doing cancer research and spent almost 40 years doing research in the causation of different kinds of cancers, published approximately 400 peer-reviewed papers in medical journals, and then COVID hit and got sidetracked into dealing with the pandemic and was early on, very involved in early outpatient treatment that the late Dr. Zelenko had pioneered in the U.S.

following on South Korean and Chinese knowledge of the use of hydroxychloroquine for the early treatment of COVID, which turned out to be very, very useful as when it was used during the first year by some doctors across the U.S. in treating maybe 3 or 400,000 people with COVID. that was very strongly pushed against. And my job in the pandemic was basically just to say, well, you know, I've been a scientist my whole academic career. Why would I not be a scientist now? I'm just going to look at things and try to use critical thinking and understand everything that's been going on. And that's how I've approached it.

Have you, do you have a feeling reality is reasserting itself a bit that people are assessing the excesses of that time? and acknowledging that a lot of what you were saying was correct? Well, yes and no. I think there's some of that, that the Overton window for speaking about those excesses and misrepresentations is now a lot more open. But at the same time, we become scientifically a Wild West where nobody can tell what's actually true.

Even scientists have a hard time reading papers and deciding whether they're true or not. So both things are, I think, operative. know. No, it's fine. I don't know if you heard the interview I had with Masimo Puli. That's how I opened that conversation with him. He's a, you know, evolutionary biologist and a, and a stoic philosopher and interested in pseudoscience and things. And I said to him, I go, forget how the, you know, how do we know what's real and what's, how's the public ever figure this out? I think that's why they're sort of falling into these belief buckets where they're ideologically, religiously,

protecting their sense of what is real, but it has no basis in any kind of scientific reality necessarily. Well, maybe two decades ago, you know, in the epidemiologic literature, every week, a new study would come out saying the opposite of the previous week and on and on and on. And my wife asked me, well, how do you know what's actually true? And I said, well, you read the papers carefully, you read between the lines, you read the method section, you think of address whether it's all consistent and scientifically up and up as far as you can tell. And then you have to know the investigators. You have to know their own standards of the quality of science that they do. And that's an important component that you can't really know when you're not in the field. And even for people in the field, new people come in all the time and haven't established themselves.

And so you don't really know. And basically, it's a track record that you only learn about over the longer term. You know, it's funny. Massimo said almost the exact same thing. And it's like, it's who's saying it, and what circumstances? as my dad used to say, whose ox is being gored? In other words, do they have any priorities outside of the scientific scrutiny? Let's take a quick call.

Do you mind? You up for one? Sure. Sure. All right. This is Dan, I believe. Yeah, Dan, I'm going to get to you right here. There you are.

I believe you are on the air. You're my first caller since we put in this new system. So thank you for being here. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate everything you've been doing the last few years and all the guests you have on have been very helpful. Yeah, I kind of tied into what you just discussed earlier with the psychology of it, I guess, too,

but I have a story where three of my sisters unfortunately passed away. But what I want to say is too is tied to that psychology of it is I was in pharmaceutical sales for 12 years. I was a virus pandemic rep promo seven, and I was in the 2009 pandemic. And what was interesting is when this was all happening started in January of 2020, not one of my siblings asked me. Like they didn't say, well, what do you think? What is your experience?

You know what I mean? They really were captivated by the TV and the news and all of them got vaccinated except for me. And I had read Moderna's trial in May 2020. That's kind of led me first to kind of hesitate. But that's all I want to comment on is just the psychology of it was so strong and the fear factor. And people, I don't think people went to other people. to ask. You know what I mean?

No, they, they, yeah, Dan, well, I'm going to put you back in the queue and we'll keep talking by this because it's a fascinating question. And I'm so sorry about your sisters because one of the things Harvey I'm worried about is that we're going to see some evidence that I don't know if it's just that spike protein, whether it's from COVID or from Vax, which hence as the potential of overproducing spike, is going to cause some sort of progressive neurological problem, immune suppression, like a slow building AIDS type thing. And there's some evidence that something like that is happening.

Have you said any of that? Yes. I've seen some anecdotal evidence. Nick Holshar reported today that in the military, there has been some, about half of vaccinated soldiers had measurable abnormalities in their heart muscle that is maybe not clinically so significant, but it's still anxiety-producing.

He suggested everybody should use methods to reduce their circulating spike. I've also seen some data that I can't really talk about yet. The increases in cancer, unexplainable, after the pandemic, starting in 2021 and especially into 2022 and continuing. We've been worrying about this, although I've been very hesitant to. say this because we have no population data yet in that time period because our cancer registries, the U.S. registry and the Canadian registries only have data going up through 2023, and they take a long time before they put out their data. And so we don't really know yet what's going

on. But I've seen other insurance company data suggesting that this is a real effect for some cancers. And so when we vet that and determine it's truth or validity, that, that's, you know, and we'll have something more to say about it. And Dan asked us to address the psychology. I am firmly of the belief that this was a mass formation. I didn't realize how prone humans are to this phenomenon. I thought it was something they did under extreme distress or, you know, under an ideological wind that blows through the middle of 20th century that we learned not to do again.

Turns out it's something more intrinsic in us as large societies. where 20% of us become true believers? We didn't learn not to do that. We were on pause, but we didn't learn not to do that. We did it in COVID, and we're doing it again now. What are we doing it for now? We're doing it now for an existential war against the United States that a radical fringe, religious fanatical group

wants to destroy the whole Western world, and especially us as a leader of it, and was on the verge of having the technology to do so, and people are just cannot see that our very existence was at risk. So, and let me just explain people the construct is 20% become true believers, one way or the other. And True Believers is a great book out there called True Believers. I recommend it. He just did an observational review of how True Believers behave, and I think he absolutely nailed it.

true believers are dangerous. 10% of the population says, hey, what the hell's going on here? It's saying, hang on, stop, stop, stop. And those people who, of course, are crushed by the true believers. And 70% are just wanting to be left alone to live their life. And it's that 70% that we really must get mobilized again to bring us back to some sort of sanity. Harvey, I've got to wrap this up. Finish up.

Go ahead. Say that again? So this is what Sharanski said about life under the Soviet Union. He put it as 30% true believers, 30% scoffers and 40% in the middle. Yeah. But that was when the evidence was more apparent that things were horrible. And so it was easy to be a not true, easier to be a not true believer, to be a scoffer, so to speak. And by the way, calls, hold on.

I'm going to go back to more calls in a minute. Do not, do not leave because I'm. saying goodbye to Dr. Reish. Where should we look for you, Harvey? If you just Google me, my Yale website page comes up, and from there it lists my Twitter and telegram channels, which I comment periodically, not all that often. And that's probably the best place. And are we going to put this paper up as a preprint as people be able to read it? As soon as it gets mounted on a preprint server, I look today, I haven't seen it yet. But as soon as it comes up, then it'll be public.

Fair enough. Thank you so much, sir. Great to be with you. You as always, I appreciate your participation here. Okay, let me go quickly to our callers. Oh, no, did I, here we go. This was Anthony had a question about recovery. I want to deal with that kind of stuff too here today.

Anthony, are you there? Dr. Drew, how are you? Good. How are you? I'm very good. I've been a long time listener. I used to tune in to Loveline in my bedroom when I was 14 years old, and I've learned a lot from you over the decades. Good. Excellent. And I'd like a little bit more.

Do you have a question today? Yes, I'm approaching my one-year medallion program. one year medallion date and a program and uh working the steps i'm on my fourth step doing my inventory and i'm just kind of curious if you can explain from a scientific medical emotional psychological standpoint why the 12 step program is effective and why you think there has to be a spiritual component to the program and why that that's the hard part that's a particularly effective intervention yeah yeah yeah the the spiritual part is is the toughest thing for me to speak to because you asked for it as a psychological scientific

perspective. I know that it's essential. I've seen it work. It's empirically really important, but I'll try. So there's a guy named John Kelly. He runs the Harvard Addiction Program at the medical school at Harvard. He wrote a very important paper, a meta-analysis of all available data on the utility and efficacy of what he called mutual aid or 12-step. And he showed very clearly, the mutual aid worked as well as any professionally managed services. So in other words, seeing a psychologist on a regular basis or being in a hospital, 12-step, it was an essential part and worked as well as any of the professionally managed services and worked better when abstinence was the goal, which of course it always should be if you have this disease called addiction.

I don't want to get into that topic, but believe me, that's a empiric fact. And what he discovered was that the 12th step has all of the elements that we usually use in professionally managed treatment. It's being honest with yourself. It's disclosing. It's creating, you know, looking at resentments, building an inventory of character flaws and sort of examining it with other person. And then I think a really critical piece is sharing this intimate contact, this difficult

material with another person who can look back at you and say, me too. or I understand because I've been there. And that kind of safety of intimacy and regulating with another person becomes critically important. Closeness with another. Your brains heal other brains. And your sponsor is going to help you heal your brain.

Theoretically, the higher power is yet another element in that. But most importantly, it's getting you out of your brain into something greater than yourself. Because as you know, with addiction, you can be very self-preoccupied, you can be very controlling, you can sort of not be able to see past your nose and to have a sense of things bigger than yourself, whatever that means for you, whether it's attaching yourself to some concept of God or religious, whatever it is, getting out of your head because your head and your thinking will lead you right back to your addiction, right? So it is all of these elements and many others. And back to Dr. Kelly's sort of important research, he showed that people don't always all do everything in the 12th step, but they always do get out of them what they need.

In other words, there's a lot there for people to get. And you can get what you need. And you go back around and do it again. And here's what I always tell everybody. It's free. It's free. It's effective. And so now with Zoom, it's available 24-7.

And oh, did I say it's free? We worry about the cost of health care. Here's an effective treatment that is free. And the fact that anybody assails that is insane. So at your liberty to find other means to sobriety and other means to treatment, for sure. But this one's free. It stands up to scientific scrutiny. Does the same thing as professionally managed services, only better when you're trying to stay completely sober.

So there's my pitch. All right, Anthony. Thanks, Dr. Drew. I appreciate that. You're the reason I'm in recovery, and I am very grateful. God bless you. And look to Dr. Kelly's work. I think I'm going to wrap up at this point, which is take a couple calls.

I want to warn everybody that I'm going to take calls, hopefully every show. We will have shows where I dedicate to calls, but most of the shows calls, I think the way we're going to do this is kind of sprinkling things in. Now, obviously, if we have a very controversial guest and you guys want to get in here with them, I'm going to let more people in. But please be patient with us as we build our approach here. But I loved Dan and Anthony's calls. And I'm going to leave it at that today.

We were sort of out of time. Let's bring up our, yeah. True. It's just amazing to watch because the moment a caller came on the show, it's like you had a huge energy boost. It's like you're right back in your natural habitat. which is exactly what I was hoping for as a producer. So the more times you have people on the air,

more people who are going to call in with interesting stuff. So it was, that was really fun to watch. It like threw me back to Loveline days. It is Loveline stuff. And it's also what I do clinically all the time. And so it's right in my zone. It's in my zone of expertise, I guess. Thank you guys.

I'm looking at, let me look quick at the restream. While Caleb puts the upcoming guests on the screen there. Yes, cognitive reprogramming is very concerning. Thank you guys. There's coming up. Uncle Cliff is a guy I found on the internet. I just want to hear his philosophy.

I want, I want, like, every man philosophers. I want some input from the street. He's going to give me that. We have also Sean Spicer coming in. We have Patricia Heaton coming in. Dr. Kelly Victory's coming back. Brianna Wu. You guys like that. Nick Fratos. And

that is who's in the bottom? Dr. Ryan Cole. We haven't talked to him in a long time. And Aaron Siri. And we have, where did I see that? With Dr. Ryan Cole on the 15th. Brandon Straca's coming in. Ah, the camera's right in front of that, so I can't see that. Interesting. So listen, we appreciate you all being here. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for those. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Scott. For the call in. Yes, thank you, Scott. For the nice shot out. We saw that. Let me look at you, the rants. I've looked here yet really quickly. Susan, anything going on the rants?

I know you spent all the time there. No. I mean, everybody liked the conversations. Okay, good. Interesting guests. We appreciate them, and we appreciate you all for being here with us. We'll be here again tomorrow at 4 o'clock Pacific Time. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky.

Emily Barsh is our content producer. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future.

Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at doctordrew.com slash help.