Factually! with Adam Conover - Medical Myths and How to Fight Them with Dr. Seema Yasmin

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

To stop a deadly disease, you need more than medicine -- you need to change people’s minds. Journalist and doctor Seema Yasmin joins Adam this week to discuss how to combat harmful medical myths. They discuss how much more powerful narratives are than statistics, the difference between being anti-vaxx and being vaccine-hesitant, and why you shouldn’t eat your placenta after giving birth no matter what the celebrities tell you. Dr. Seema Yasmin's book - Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall For Them - is out now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. And let's talk about the pandemic again. You know, the pandemic is killing a massive number of people on our planet and nowhere more than in our country, the United States. But there is a bright side because soon after the pandemic hit, we saw our massive, incredibly sophisticated medical research apparatus spin up in this brilliant, beautiful way. The U.S. federal government, the National Institutes of Health and our private pharmaceutical industry together created cutting edge mRNA vaccines, which is a technology that

until just a couple of years ago was theoretical. They use this technology to create vaccines in a fraction of the time that they took in the past. And these vaccines, now that they are done and they have been tested, many of them are about 95 percent effective. This is huge. I mean, this is space race stuff. It is truly incredible in terms of our technological and scientific sophistication. And even more incredibly, this all happened under a presidential administration that is avowedly anti-science. It required coordination between the government agencies and a variety of huge corporations. And it worked. I mean, you couldn't imagine a better scenario for how this would go on a scientific medical technology level. It's exactly the response

that we would want. But yeah, there's a big but unfortunately, because now that the vaccine is out, even though we know it is safe, people don't want to take it. Not everybody, but a significant proportion of people are hesitant to take this vaccine, including health workers. In the early stages of the vaccine rollout here in Los Angeles, between 20 and 40 percent of frontline medical workers who were offered the vaccine declined it. In Riverside County, just next door, that number was 50 percent. And a recent poll found that around 30 percent of Americans don't want to take a coronavirus vaccine.

And that's a problem because, according to Dr. Fauci, it could take as much as 90 percent of the population to be vaccinated before we've achieved herd immunity. So let's do some math. That means that that's 20 percent of Americans who need to be convinced to get this vaccine. Their concerns need to be allayed or we're all going to be fucked. That's a pretty stunning realization. stunning realization. And the conclusion that leads to and what today's interview helped me realize is that when you're fighting a pandemic or really any disease, it's not just a medical problem to solve. You're not going to be able to fix it just by employing science and technology in the best and brightest minds. It's also a social problem that you have to solve using human means. We literally, in order to fight the pandemic, we literally have to get an

idea into people's minds and have them believe it. We have to convince them of it. And in fact, again, this is not just this pandemic. A huge part of our increase in life expectancy in the last 120 years or so comes not from fancy medical interventions, but from convincing people to do really basic stuff like not smoking or using a seatbelt in the car. And the job is not yet done. For instance, right now around the world, 750 kids under the age of five die a day from diarrhea related to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene. The way to save all those lives is not to develop some fancy new mRNA vaccine or get Elon Musk to build some kind of hypermedical device. It's to build toilets and not just to give people access to toilets.

They also need to know about and want to use them. The point is, public health depends on convincing people to do or not do a thing. That's fundamentally part of it. Fighting diseases happens not just out in the world, but in our minds. And this is a problem because as our guest today found in her work fighting epidemics across the globe, wherever there's disease, there's also myths and misinformation. That is just part of what humans do. Medical misinformation is something that we all grapple with. And here's the problem. We have this impulse to deride anyone who believes medical misinformation, right? Say, oh, my God, they just don't have they don't know anything about science.

They're anti-vaxxers. They're anti this. They're ignoramuses. But that's not useful. That's not helpful to talk down to people that way, because fundamentally, if we want to protect their health and our own, we need to convince them to help us fight the disease. We need to be on the same side with them, let them know that we're all in it together and get them to act accordingly. We need to be on the same side with them, not enemies, because we fundamentally need

to affect their behavior. And if you read your Dale Carnegie, that's the only way to do that. This mission of changing minds through empathy and clear communication is just as important as figuring out the high tech serum that's going to help us fight the disease. And when it comes to doing that job, there is no question that America is kind of failing right now. And you know what? I think a lot of other countries in

the world are too. So here to talk to us today about medical myths, big and small, and how they affect not just the pandemic, but every medical issue under the sun. Our guest today is the incredible Dr. Seema Yasmin. She's a physician, journalist, and the director of research and education at the Stanford Communication Initiative. This was a fascinating conversation. It gave me so much to think about, and I know you're going to love it. Please welcome Dr. Seema Yasmin. Seema, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Adam. So tell me what made you study the issue of medical myths. How did you get into this topic? I never thought that this would be an area of focus for me. I started off as a hospital doctor in England, moved to America about 10 years ago

to serve as an officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service. And that's the group of doctors at the CDC who get deployed when there are different epidemics. I used to have to explain that a lot more. I think now people realize what the Epidemic Intelligence Service does. And when I was in that job, I'd get sent to different hot zones, right? Different areas where there were infectious disease outbreaks. And my sole focus was trying to stop the spread of a disease, stop the contagion of a virus. And really quickly, I realized this is very frustrating, that wherever I got sent, it was never just a disease that was spreading. At the same time, there were myths and hoaxes and misinformation and disinformation about the disease, about public

health, about treatments, about me and my role that was spreading alongside the pathogen. And it sometimes made my job kind of impossible because I would be saying one thing. And in these communities, folks had heard 10 other things that were completely the opposite of what I was saying. And so I got frustrated because in public health, it was like, no, your focus is on the pathogen. And I was like, hold on a minute, but the rumors are a threat to public health. And so after a few years at CDC, to cut a long story short, I left and went back to school, which I said I would never do after medical school. I was like, I am done with education. But I went to journalism school. It's enough for a few lifetimes, you know, let's be real. But I went to journalism school because I was like, we need to do a better job of communicating

the stories of public health. We need to do a better job at engaging people and, you know, like translating science and health stuff in a way that's accessible to everyone, not just to us who are already in the field. And so that's how I became interested in it. And then as a journalist covering Ebola, Zika, mass shootings, all these public health issues, I got really interested in looking at them from the other side. So I had that public health training. But as a journalist, you get really interested in how information is spreading, and it's your job to counter some of that. So then in 2017, I started studying it in a much more academic way.

I completely agree with that mission. I think that is so critical, obviously. I mean, that's what I've devoted a lot of my career in large part to as well. But I really something really struck me about what you said. You saw this happen around the world. We normally think of, at least here in the U.S., I, you know, think of misinformation sometimes as being a uniquely American problem, or at least it seems like it is because of our particular media ecosystem that has so many problems. But this was, in your experience, a universal problem when it came to these diseases. Oh, yeah. It's worldwide, Adam. And even if you look at just

one example, like anti-vaccine movements, for example, those are growing in so many different parts of the world. It's not just in the US. And in fact, one of the kind of architects of the anti-vaccine movement, or at least someone that added a lot of fuel to the fire is Andrew Wakefield, who's a British doctor who did these fraudulent studies in the 90s, right? But even beyond that, it's a Brazilian problem. It's a problem in parts of Africa. It's an Eastern European problem. And I got really annoyed about this a few years ago, Adam, because there was a bad outbreak of measles in Eastern Europe. And World Health Organization tweeted something like, really bad measles outbreak. I think it was in Romania. Worst measles epidemic there in decades. But don't worry, WHO is disseminating pamphlets.

And I was like, really? Really? Like there's this contagious information that's spreading. You think like you can put out a little leaflet with like six bullet points on how vaccines are great. That doesn't do much to counter the viral YouTube videos of, say, a crying mother who's convincing you that her toddler became autistic after she was vaccinated. Right. So we need to be a lot better, a lot more savvy with this. Yeah, those pamphlets are really a 90s response. You know, back when the best way to get people information was sitting in their doctor's office and they get a little pamphlet. But the yeah, our media has gotten so intense and malignant since then. But it sounds like this is not just a media problem. This is

also just rumors spreading from person to person, people being suspicious or worried or perhaps prejudicial in some ways and spreading these ideas among each other. Like it's a very human thing to do to spread these myths. Oh, absolutely. And for sure, the media, and I say this as a journalist with my hands up, like the media plays a huge role in this. In fact, there was a study from like a couple of months ago where these researchers at Cornell University analyzed about 38 million English language articles about COVID-19. And they concluded that the single biggest driver of false information about the pandemic was Donald Trump.

So you can kind of say like this person played this role. But then there are studies that show, well, that person may like be the origin of some of this, but it's the media that helps accelerate and really spread a lot of that information too. So you can talk about like legacy media that doesn't always have like a good level of nuance when talking about science and talking about uncertainty in science. Then of course, there's social media. And then there's just things like WhatsApp groups. Like I am on a family WhatsApp group with my family because a lot of them are in the UK, Middle East, like all over the place. And the stuff that gets

sent on there, mind you, they know what I do for a living. And they still send on there. They still forward not even good conspiracy theory videos, Adam. They're like terribly made ones that look so fake. And I'm like, where did you see this? Oh, they're like, oh, it's going viral. Everyone is sharing it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a really gnarly and tricky problem because it's not just the formal media outlets. It's not just social media. But like you said, it's your neighbor telling you one thing. It's your family on the group chat telling you another. It gets really confusing. But let's talk about the group chat telling you another. It gets confusing. But let's talk about the, you know, the regular media as well. Like I remember, I think sometime this summer there was a, quote, study that was really widely reported about how different masks work differently and about how neck gaiters, that kind that, you know, runners use, sometimes they call them buffs, were worse than wearing nothing uh for protecting against covid19 and i saw this and i i actually retweeted it along with uh you

know many many other people that i saw and then like uh actually oh no you're part of the problem i a little bit a little bit um and but then a week later you you know, I saw some reporting by a science reporter who said, actually, this, you know, quote, study was done on one person using. I think it was by a company that wanted to test some kind of camera they had built. It was not a scientific study. And yet I have still seen people repeating this fact. And these are people who believe themselves to be following the best information. They believe science. And but this is a study they saw reported. who believe themselves to be following the best information and they believe science and and but

this is a study they saw reported um and they're repeating it even now when look i mean i would agree probably a neck gator is not as good as an n95 certainly but uh you know this particular these factoids from this particular piece were were not true and have achieved the status of rumor because of the media yeah absolutely and that that study was not done or designed in a way to tell you like what which mask was worked better. It was trying to figure something out altogether. But like you said, the fact that it didn't matter at some point, the fact that it was reported in that way in a few outlets as don't wear this kind of do wear that kind. That's the story. That's the version that got ahead. And then you had someone counter it, say, hey, I think we kind of missed the point with that one. And I don't think that one resonated

as much, which makes me think about this study that came out of MIT about three years ago. The researchers did this study, and you may remember the headlines, because the headlines were something like, false information travels faster and farther than the truth, which just sounds really depressing. And you're like, let's just give up because like, what is the point? But I think the interesting thing about that study was when they were trying to explain to us why false or inaccurate information travels farther and travels faster and seems to stick more. And often it's because it's almost like the lone voice or it's quite distinct from what the accurate information is. So you've got all

these studies or all these news reports saying wear some kind of cloth mask, you know, it's better than nothing. And then you have the one that stands out and it's like, no, the others are wrong, or at least that's how we read it. And what these MIT scientists were saying is that often false information comes across as really novel, really new. And so you kind of are triggered by it a little bit, you're more alert to it. You're like, oh, wait, hasn't heard that before. Seen 10 other things that say the opposite. And then they also talked about kind of like hierarchy points or status points where if you, Adam, are the one that's like, oh, this seems new. Haven't heard this about NetGators before. Let me share it widely almost because you're going to kind of get brownie points like, oh, Adam sent me something that no

one sent me before. So these are all these complicated factors that play into why the false stuff just seems to travel farther and stick more. Yeah. And it's it's when it's a good story. Right. A lot of the time that this is in contrast to, you know, we had one of the main folks who researches the backfire effect on the show many years ago and talked about how one of the most important ways to combat it is to provide a better story than the original story. You know, when you when the truth is more interesting than the lie, it'll stick with people better. But that can also work the other way, like when the lie sounds much more interesting than the boring truth. Right. Then it stands out similarly and sticks in people's minds. Yep, and exactly that. So sometimes when I'm teaching

health and science communication, whether it's to scientists or doctors or medical students, I'm often saying, let's learn some lessons from the anti-vaccine movement. Because honestly, they are so much better

at getting their message across than we are. And they do stuff like exactly what you said. And they do stuff like exactly what you said, like they have really understood the power of the story of the narrative. Whereas, you know, as scientists, especially as epidemiologists, we love big data sets, we love millions of data points. So when there's a measles outbreak going on somewhere, and people are like, Oh, I don't want to give my kid the MMR. We're like, but look, here's a study of 1 million

Danish children. And it shows that the MMR vaccine was're like, but look, here's a study of 1 million Danish children. And it shows that the MMR vaccine was really good for them. Meanwhile, those who are spreading anti-vaccine messages are like, here's the story of one toddler and here's her mother weeping to the camera because the MMR vaccine hurt this toddler. As a scientist, we're like, oh, a single data point, that's an anecdote. That could be an outlier. So when I'm teaching like communication to these scientists and docs, I'm having to say, I know we love our data sets. I know we love millions of data points.

But the human brain just doesn't connect with that as much as the singular story. So we need to do better at that. And I think because it feels unscientific to us, we're like moving away from it, but it's what works. So we have to lean into that. And we need to, so for instance, we need to tell the story of the kid who wasn't vaccinated because, you know, their parents wouldn't let them be. And then they contracted a previously eradicated disease and died. Like, I know that's a sad story to tell, but that really happens. It's so sad. No, but it does.

It happens in America. Like I moved here 10 years ago, Adam, to join the Epidemic Intelligence Service thinking, oh, this is going to be such a wild job. I'm going to be like researching this novel virus and this exotic pathogen. And there was some of that for sure. But so much of my work,

the bane of my life was whooping cough, measles, mumps, stuff that as a doctor who's in my 30s, and back then I was in my 20s, I hadn't even seen that stuff in real life because we didn't have those diseases, right? So when I was in medical school, you learned about measles by looking at the rash of measles in a freaking textbook. We didn't have patience with that. And now all of a sudden, here I was. And again, not a problem just of America. This is the UK, too, as well now and many other places.

But as an officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service, I was investigating outbreak after outbreak of whooping cough. And kids in America were dying from this infection. And you're looking at their parents like we could have given them the vaccine. But I'll tell you what's complicated, Adam. There's a couple of studies that show how tricky this is and how careful you have to be with communication. Because in science and in public health, I hate that we do this, but we seem to love a one size fits all message. Whereas if you talk to six different parents who are on the fence about vaccinating their kid, they may give you six very different reasons for being vaccine hesitant. So you think, you know, you need to engage with them based on what they're worried about. And

there was a study a few years ago where they took some parents, showed them photos, really sad photos of kids who were like in the NICU, you know, kids all hooked up to wires and stuff because they had diseases like measles and whooping cough. And they showed it to the parents and some of the parents in the study were like, this is awful. I'm going to vaccinate my kid. Like I now see what can happen. The researchers at a different university a little while later used the exact same photos, showed parents and the parents were like, oh, I'm not going to vaccinate my child. So you have to, right. And you're like, wait, what, how, but it's to do with their preexisting beliefs. So unless you're like understanding where someone is coming from, you can mess up if you don't communicate appropriately. So where, let's just stay on

vaccines for a moment. First of all, let me just say your book, which you're very kind of send me a PDF of is full of it. Like it's my favorite type of book where it's full of short chapters about different medical myths. I wish to God we had had this book when we when we had been writing Adam Roots everything, because this is like exactly the sort of story we love to tell. It's like perfect source material for us. So I want to go through some of those. But I want to let's stay on vaccines for one more moment. You say we need to meet parents where they're at. Where do you think that they are at? Where where do you and I know you just said there's many different stories, but yeah, it's a it's a you know, it's coming from a place of deep emotion, I think, with many parents. Like there's a sincerity at the core of it.

And I think we do wrong when we scoff at it. And so I'd like to ask you. Yeah. What? Where do you think it comes from? Well, first off, I think there's a lot of focus nowadays on the anti-vaccine movement. And I study that. I find it really important and interesting.

But I have to, like, remind people that's a fringe movement. It's small isish growing for sure. But the vast majority of people say nowadays who are like, oh, I don't know if I want to get the COVID-19 vaccine or not. I don't know. I don't understand. Those folks aren't necessarily anti-vaccine. They're vaccine hesitant. And so there is a big difference. And I think you can sway those people. So like I said, you know, you talk to six different people. They may have six different reasons for being hesitant, for example, about the COVID-19 vaccine. And a lot of what I teach our medical faculty is that as doctors, don't assume that you just have all the information because you need to know where that, people of color, disabled people, Jewish people, there's not that distant history of really unethical medical experimentation. People are aware, people remember, and also because medical racism still happens now, right? Black people's

pain still goes ignored and undertreated. People have legit reasons for looking at us in our white coats and being like, no, I don't trust you. You know, so we have to think about that part, too. Yeah. I mean, not to get into too much detail, but the history of the Tuskegee experiment, you know, is a horrific experiment that the United States government conducted on Black Americans, which resulted in many dying of syphilis. And that specifically, I believe there's studies on this, that experiment specifically resulted in distrust of medical authorities in that community, which why why wouldn't there be? I mean, it's the most natural thing for that to exist. Right. Based just on that, you know, Tuskegee's in the book.

We don't have to go into the details, but you see like the ramifications of it now, because just a couple of years ago, there was a really bad tuberculosis outbreak in Alabama. And public health folks were like, oh, we don't understand. It's like the worst TB outbreak in decades in America. And people aren't coming forward to get tested. And they were like, we're offering cash incentives. People were incentivizing them coming into the clinic. They're not coming. And I'm like, if you just look on Google Maps where the TB outbreak is, it's like a one or two hour drive from where the Tuskegee experiments happened.

We are still paying the price for that. And we haven't done that work of like apologizing and atoning and kind of, you know, it took so long for any of that discussion to even happen. The government tried to sweep it all under the rug for a long time. Yeah. And when it comes to folks who are just hesitant, I mean, you know, we've had Derek Lowe on the show who writes about vaccines and, you know, told us about how incredible, for example, these new vaccines, the COVID-19 vaccines are. These are mRNA vaccines. That's a brand new type of vaccine that has never existed before. existed before. It was theoretical just a couple of years ago. And it uses this new technique, which is now that I fully understand it, took an hour of talking to him and then me reading about it on Wikipedia for another hour to understand how it works. And now I'm amazed by it. Wow, this is so cool, but it is so cutting edge. Right. And so when people say it is, I've heard people

say the, you know, the myth that I've heard the most is it, it changes your DNA. People are worried about, and you know, I know that's not true, but instead of laughing at those people, right. I, who say that, Oh, that's stupid. Well, actually it, what it does, it's non-trivial to explain how it works in a way that explains it doesn't change your DNA. Right. Because like, you know, RNA is part of the DNA process. It's complex to understand how it works. I barely understand it myself. And, you know, it's actually not that wild of a question to have is what effect does this have on DNA? And it's a hard question to answer. So in many ways, I think it's understandable. Totally. Yeah, I do. And I do. I totally appreciate that. And I think, you know, I start the book Viral BS with an introduction.

That's me putting my hands up and saying, hey, I was raised a conspiracy theorist. I believed a ton of conspiracy theories growing up. Here's why they were believable to me. But it's also that I have a lot of empathy now for people who believe things that are strange, because guess what? Strange things have actually happened in real life. And you know, coming back to the vaccine, it has RNA in the name of the vaccine, right? And so I don't think it's that much of a reach for somebody to think, well, does it impact my DNA? And so everyone deserves that explanation that it doesn't. DNA lives inside a bubble in your cell, in the nucleus. This mRNA vaccine, it can't get in there.

It only goes into your cell, not into your nucleus. And even then, you know, we've heard all these complaints. The palaver is to store these mRNA vaccines, that Pfizer-BioNTech one. You have to store it at the same temperature as winter in Antarctica. It's a pain in the butt to store and to transport. That's because mRNA is actually a pretty fragile molecule, meaning once they've defrosted it and given it to you, your body uses it to make those proteins, but the mRNA does not stick around for very long. But unless someone

tells you that, of course, your mind is probably thinking, RNA, wait, what? Wouldn't that impact my own genes? So people need to know it doesn't. Yeah, the comparison I use, I did a Twitch stream about this a couple of weeks ago. And once I finally understood it, the comparison I used is like, if you imagine a restaurant and, you know, there's a bunch of cooks and, you know, they're looking in the back in the cookbooks to see, you know, what they want to make today. And what the vaccine does is the vaccine puts in new order slips and it says, hey, instead of making the normal recipe, why don't you make some vaccine today? And the recipe is this, you know, a little bit, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

But the vaccine isn't going back and changing what's in the original cookbooks. You know what I mean? Right. I like that. And I'm always looking for different ways to explain things. That's a really cool analogy. And I think, yeah, people learn differently or take in information differently. Right. I'm really visual. Others need things written down. So we just need to make sure that information is there for everyone. And it hasn't been because, you know, last year, we spent a large chunk of the year accelerating the development of these vaccines. And all the time I was saying to folks, like, it's not going to be enough to have vaccine that won't end the pandemic. People need to get vaccinated to end the pandemic.

And if we're not doing that communication and explanation part, the vaccine could just sit in vials inside freezers. And even the name of this whole thing, Operation Warp Speed, does that inspire trust in you? It sounds like they're just throwing caution to the wind and like screw safety, warp speed ahead. It's like even that was thoughtless and dangerous. warp speed ahead. It's like even that was thoughtless and dangerous. Here's what you're making me think of. And this is blowing my mind because what you're making me realize is that when you're talking about public health, like as important as the viral pieces of it, the vaccine pieces of it, the medicine, the, you know, the sanitation, all those issues, what people think in their minds about the disease is as important a factor in combating it, whether you're talking about teaching people better sanitation practices to avoid a cholera outbreak or something like that, to what you're talking about when diseases that affects their behavior. And if we want to stop an epidemic, we need to address that as well. And yeah, we made the same mistake here that we put all this work into developing the

vaccine and almost no work into, uh, educating the public to understand, uh, what the vaccine is and what their expectations should be and why it's safe and and all these other issues like half of the epidemic is in our behavior and therefore in our minds. Exactly. And I'm like, hello, the first word in public health is public. So like, can we do more public engagement work? And, you know, like what happened last year in terms of

vaccine development was amazing. It gives you so much hope, right, about what can happen when you have collaboration and you give the right amount of resources to scientists and go let them do their thing. But at the same time, if you're not communicating it to people about what's happening and how, then folks are doing what they're doing now, which is saying to me, but didn't you say on average, it takes 10 years to develop a vaccine? Then I don't want to take one that's developed in 10 months. And I'm like, you know what, good point. But here's why you need to rethink it. And then unless you're giving people that context that, hey, point number one, the people working on this vaccine have actually been working on a situation like this for about 10 years for a situation where what they call

disease X suddenly shows its ugly face. And they've been trying to work on a vaccine where you can be nine steps ahead so that when this thing happens, all you need is that final piece of information, you know, about the new virus. So January of last year was not day one for them. It was like day 1,000 or 10,000 because they've been working on it for years. But also the work from the SARS epidemic of 2002, because this virus is so similar. The fact that scientists had worked on a vaccine for that one, even though they hadn't finished it, it really helped them accelerate their work now. But unless you tell someone that it just sounds weird, it sounds dangerous, right? That it normally takes 10 years, but you're telling me it's safe to take something that was made in 10 months. And I'm like, yes, but here's

why. And I don't expect you to believe it unless I explain that to you. Yeah, but how do you expect, can we have that conversation with every single person who's vaccine hesitant? Like when we're looking at, we need to vaccinate here in America, 300 million people and X number, millions of people are hesitant in this way. And I love the

word hesitant that they're just a little bit. I don't know about this. I'm not really sure. I'm a little on the fence. You know, I mean, here in at least this is a couple of weeks ago, but, you know, here in California, in Riverside County, half of care providers, half of the nurses were turning down the vaccine. And these are folks who presumably would understand it and who are most at risk of contracting COVID-19. So, yeah, is it a matter of having individual conversations with each of those people? Because that seems, I mean, very time intensive and difficult. Or is there a way to do it on a more public basis, in your view? I think we need to do both in that even though it sounds like a lot of individual encounters,

the truth is people are having one-on-one encounters, either with their primary care doc, primary care nurse, with their pharmacist, for example. They may already have a reason to be picking up their kid's inhaler or something from a chemist and to have these interactions. So all of those folks, everyone kind of who's able to engage people one-on-one needs to have the interactions. So all of those folks, everyone kind of who's able

to engage people one on one needs to have the right level of training. Like you said earlier, don't scoff at someone who says to you, isn't it true that the vaccine contains microchips that were sponsored by Bill Gates? That's not true.

But do not scoff at them because they have reasons to worry about the way that governments. But you know what I mean? I mean, it kind of is funny and it isn't funny. And like I said, I start off the book with the conspiracy theories I grew up believing. So you can laugh at me too.

It's all good. There are absurd things that are just not true. There are absurd things that actually are true. And you're like, wait, did that really happen? So first off, don't scoff. Engage with people in really respectful, empathic ways. Understand what their particular fears and concerns are, and then use that as a starting point for your conversation. But then more broadly,

we need to have different communication programs for different communities. Like I said, people have their own specific like historical context and cultural context, religious context. You know, I come from a very devout Muslim family in the UK. And so people need different information, they need it packaged different way. And so people need different information. They need it packaged different way. And so we need to be doing all of the above. It's not like a communication on this. It's not like a one and done thing. It's not one single person's responsibility. It really is a team effort. Yeah. And let's just say, I feel like I hear a lot of interviews with folks such as yourself who are very smart and they say, you know, what we need to be doing

is X, right? And then I think, OK, this is great for me to hear this on NPR or on this podcast or whatever, but I can't do that. And I don't know if anyone else listening to this is going to be able to do it either. Right. So I just want to ask, who do you think should be doing that and how do we make them do it? Does that make sense? It does. But I go back to this idea that it's everyone's responsibility so some of what i try and do in the family group chat right i'm the only doctor in my family but i'm saying to my folks like this is why what you sent me is a terrible conspiracy theory like i don't even know why you believe it and i try not to be too judgmental but it's funny because when i teach

these classes to medical faculty like doctors and nurses and people who've been doing this for years I teach them all the right ways to have the conversation with someone who disagrees with you. And then in my family group chat, I kind of like lose my ish sometimes because I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe that you believe this. But what I do try and do nicely through every encounter is empower people so that they don't become spreaders of false information. Right. And so in that case, one of the simplest things you can do, and I worked with the United Nations on this campaign last year, is pledge to pause. That was their hashtag, pledge to pause. Before you retweet, before you forward on WhatsApp,

before you just like start mouthing it off, just take a second. Like, is the thing that you're about to send, is it legit? Is it believable? Can you just spend 30 seconds or maybe a minute of your busy day to do a bit of due diligence? Even that Adam can start to squash some of the false information that goes viral. Yeah, and I don't mean to

discount. This is something that we can all do individually. And I know there are folks listening who have that relative that they want to talk to. And I think you're really helping them out with resources for doing that. But I also want to know is there should the government be doing this differently um in terms of its communication to people massively and in

what way and who can we yell at about this to be doing a better job i mean yes the government could have done so many things different like where do we even start first off the government right think about trump himself and others were spreading false information about injecting bleach or hydroxychloroquine so first off don't do that very obvious what you can have is you you know you know who thought we'd be here in 2021 saying don't inject bleach but um what we needed was someone in charge who knew what they were doing, someone who, like a Dr. Fauci, but not being under attack like him or, you know, being discredited like he was by the president. What we need is what was actually kind of what happened during the Ebola epidemic of 2014 to 2016. At the time, the CDC director was Tom Frieden. And however you might

feel about him, one of the great things that he did was a daily press conference, daily press conference, talking to everyone, the press, the public. And because it was every day and because it was brief, he could literally say, you know, I said something yesterday on Monday, and that wasn't accurate, or that was a mistake, or it didn't go well. Here's how we're going to remedy it now. And that way you're really saying communication isn't a one and done thing. It's a relationship. We're in this together throughout the course of this crisis.

I'm your point of contact and I'll be giving you honest answers, even when that means that I have to say I don't know because there's so much uncertainty. So I think that just would have been a good start. Yeah. I mean, again, just getting back to the point of communication is as important as treating the virus itself. Like when you, if you are spreading bad information on a wide scale, either because you're doing it malignantly or ignorantly, or if you just make a, make an error, that's like, that's a super spreader event yourself, right? If you're spreading bad information, that's going to impact people's health. And you need to take that seriously and make up for it,

correct it and strive to communicate in a better way. And myself and others who've been studying this for a few years, it's been such an uphill struggle because so many public health agencies here in the U.S. and also around the world were like, well, we don't think the misinformation and disinformation is a public health threat. And you're like, no, it really is. Like, it's not enough to have the treatments. It's not enough to have the vaccines. If people are outright refusing it and spreading lies about it, that's going to come and kick us in the ass, as we would say in England. And then eventually, they did start to take it seriously. And then now I think people are like, oh, whoops, yeah. Oh, communication is important.

But even then I've had conversations with like government people in different countries where they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Communication is really important. Just let us deal with the pandemic and then we'll do the communication. I'm like, oh, you don't get it. You so don't get it.

There are chances of ending the pandemic are so contingent on having effective communication like that can make or break the whole thing. Yeah, they're the same thing. I mean, communication is the vaccine. There's no vaccine without communication. Right. But we get taught such a little about that in medical school or, you know, scientific education. know, scientific education. Yeah. Yeah. That man, this is this is to me has looked like a sea change in I've noticed this as well in science communication that more and more scientists are saying, you know, beyond just doing the research, we need to communicate it better to the public. And I see the same thing is happening in the medical world. It's an encouraging trend, but I think one that needs to happen a lot more quickly.

Well, look, I want to move off the pandemic and I want to get to all the other fascinating medical myths that you have written about and, you know, ask you to debunk some things for us. But we got to take a really quick break. So we'll be right back with more Dr. Seema Yasmin. All right, we're back with Dr. Seema Yasmin. You were just saying in the break, you think you know which of these myths I'm going to ask about? I absolutely know that you are curious about whether you should eat placenta pills oh okay you've been doing a lot of interviews and all the interviewers have been running right for that one because that's the funnest one is that what's been happening to you I know what it's like to be on press tour no no no actually not everyone asked about that one but I was just thinking you know Adam this book it's got questions about is there lead in your lipstick does diet soda cause Alzheimer's are e-cigarettes

helpful or harmful can your cat's poop make you better at business that's all in the book but then I was like I'm sure Adam's curious about both placenta pills and maybe also about quote-unquote detox teas and the flat tummy teas that are sold on Instagram. Have you ever tried to sell one of those teas on Instagram? Adam, are you an influencer? No, well, I guess I don't know if I'm an influencer or not. I mean, I got followers and all that, but I generally don't sell my access to them

for money for the most part. Although, you know, I mean, do check out Falcon Northwest Gamingcs for building me the wonderful gaming pc i record this podcast on as i say at the end of every show i do i'll see look see look you can't you can't escape it totally but you know uh uh yeah let's talk let's talk about the you brought it up and now i'm sure people are are dying to know uh this is one of the weirdest health trends because it's become this big thing. Yeah. Right, except it's become this really big thing because a lot of celebrities who've had babies

swear that you should eat your placenta after you've had the baby. And then they claim all these things about how it's good for your skin, for your mood, for milk production. And none of it is true. And actually, your placenta is an organ that your body grew while you were pregnant

for their baby. And after you deliver the baby, you deliver the placenta, an organ that your body grew while you were pregnant for their baby. And after you deliver the baby, you deliver the placenta and then it should go away. But what some folks are doing is having somebody come into the maternity suite, take the placenta away, not necessarily look for any infection. Because, you know, it can have all kinds of bugs on it. And that's the problem. And then they go and turn it into like either. Yeah, it can have really serious bacteria on it and that's the problem and then they go and turn it into like either yeah it can have really serious bacteria on it and there's been instances of moms doing that where someone takes

that placenta freeze dries it into these little gelatin capsules the mom takes it thinking she's going to get some woo health benefit from it and she passes a bacterial infection onto the baby and there have been babies that have gotten very very sick and doctors have been like we don't get it like what's happening? And then finally, when they realize about the placenta thing, they're like, okay, now it makes sense. The bacteria quite likely came from there. Sorry, how do they pass it on to the baby?

Through breast milk after that or? Yes, likely. Yeah, it's likely that's the way. But when I was researching this book, I'm like, I was saying all the questions and the chapters in here from things that I get asked a lot. And the book started off as a newspaper column I used to write.

People would send me like, do vaccines cause autism? Are the chemtrails in the sky toxic? And stuff like that. But I would get asked questions about the placenta things. As I was researching, and I lived in Texas at the time. That's where I worked at the Dallas Morning News as a reporter. I found recipes for like barbecue placenta, placenta lasagna, placenta smoothies. And if you have a sweet tooth, you can turn your placenta into truffles.

Like what is what is happening here? Like, can we not eat human organs? Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I mean, human organs, especially that. I mean, let's let's leave off whether or not that's even apart from the idea of that. Maybe not being a good idea. These aren't being these are not food grade. These are not being evaluated by a food by a health inspector. These are not being sanitized in any particular way. No. Yeah.

Not at all. particular way. No, not at all. And it can put you at risk and can put your baby at risk and also these so-called, you know, wonder effects that no one, no study has found that it helps. And in fact, some lactation experts say that eating the placenta, whether it's through barbecue or truffles or whatever, can actually make it more difficult for you to produce milk. So I just, I get really worried about like the influence that some celebrities can have where they're just chatting nonsense. But it feels really believable because you're like, oh, but her skin looks great. Let me pop some placenta pills as well.

And then before you know it, you have an infection. Your child has an infection. And one of the arguments I used to hear a lot is, but it's natural because monkeys do it and animals in nature do it. I'm like, yeah, but we're not monkeys. And also they're doing it in the wild because they're getting rid of what would attract predators. You know, I don't think that's an issue for us. So like, maybe let's not do what the animals are doing. I don't know. I sound a bit judgmental now, but no judgment. Just don't eat your placenta. Yeah. Well, let me just ask, why do you know, I know, hey, when when an influencer, when a big celebrity, when a Kim Kardashian says, hey, I do this, I'm sure that that helps spread it.

But just getting back to the way that you were talking about vaccines, there must be some deeper down reason that people find this believable or that people are drawn to this idea. And, yeah, you know, the idea, oh, animals do it, et cetera. That can be another one of those things. But what is it that people find intuitive about this idea or what need are they trying to fulfill? You know, like when people are suspicious of vaccines, they're suspicious of the government and maybe they have good reason to be suspicious of the government. Even though it's coming out in this way that's bad for their health. Is there something similar going on here? health. Is there something similar going on here? I think what often happens is it's us being human, trying to exert some element of control and power. So much of what happens in the world is out of our control. And so much of what happens to our bodies too. So someone saying, hey, here's a thing that

you can do. By the way, everyone's saying you shouldn't do it. Don't listen to them. That act, whether it's putting lemon oil in your water because someone told you it aids digestion or taking a placenta pill or drinking a flat tummy tea makes you feel like you are doing something. And sometimes just that act can make you feel a bit empowered, a bit more in control in a world where there's so much uncertainty and so much is out of our control. Yeah. I also, you know, I was, when I was reading your book, I came across the fact that, you know, a lot of people feel that this is a cure for postpartum depression or that at least it'll help alleviate postpartum depression. And it strikes me that, you know, postpartum depression is a far too little talked about symptom that many women experience after they give birth.

And it's something that is only recently coming to the forefront. A lot of people struggle with it. It's not taken seriously enough by the medical establishment. And so that really jumped out to me that this, you know, this fake cure is addressing a real problem that is maybe not getting addressed through more traditional means. And I wonder if you feel that way about it. Absolutely. And actually, that's like a unifying theme that comes up throughout the book so much. I think that's a really good point. And also this point that, you know, people take this want to try and take their life into their own hands and take charge. And that can end up hurting them in ways where they also don't want to tell their doctor

what they're doing. So like I had an uncle who would go from England to India and he had diabetes. And so he wanted to get, you know, the Indian natural medicines that we call Ayurvedic medicines. And he started taking those in England alongside his diabetes medicines that he gets from his GP. And I was like, you know, you need to tell your GP what you take because some of those things that you got from India, yeah, they're natural, but natural things have an effect on your body too. And they could interact with your medicine. And he was like, no, the GP is going to tell me off, say I shouldn't take it. So he wouldn't. And in the end, he ended up having a really bad hypo, like his blood sugar dropped too much because he was taking the medicine from the doctor and the natural medicine and it was lowering his blood sugar. So that also plays into it. Like people want to take control, but then they don't want to tell

the medical practitioners in their life because they kind of fear some kind of judgment or being told off. Yeah. And that's really interesting because something else I've talked about on our show, Adam Ruins Everything, and on a previous edition of this podcast when it was called the Adam Ruins Everything podcast, we had Dr. Catherine Hall on who researches the placebo effect. And the placebo effect has a really powerful effect on your body, not just because, oh, the simple version of, oh, you think it'll work, so it works a little bit. because, oh, the simple version of, oh, you think it'll work, so it works a little bit. It's when you work with a traditional medicine practitioner and they really listen to you carefully and you're in a soothing environment and they are talking about your issues in a caring way. Maybe they touch you in a caring way. Those can really, truly, I mean, we know from research, activate your own body's own healing abilities, which do exist. And that when combined with regular medicine,

that can have a really large effect. And that a lot of traditional medicines, sorry, a lot of, you know, quote, scientific medicine also employs the placebo effect. And so it's often quite beneficial to use these things together. You know, if you, you know, if acupuncture is helping you with an issue, do acupuncture as long as you're still going to the regular doctor as well. But it's yeah, it's when people are not telling their doctor about it or doing it in the absence of traditional medicine or sorry, scientifically proven medicine that it can be problematic. That's exactly it. And like kind of going back to that postpartum depression example, mental health is still a taboo. You know, there's still so much stigma. Somebody may not feel comfortable talking about it. You may end up with a doctor or a practitioner who's not great

at addressing mental health issues. You know, it happens. And yet, like you said, you may end up with somebody who not only is listening and really compassionate, but then saying, hey, if you take these pills or drink these teas and tinctures, it will make you feel better. And it probably will, like you said, because that placebo effect, that psychological part of it is so strong. But then what if the danger is that there's something toxic in those or there's something dangerous in the pills or the tinctures? Even if there's not, though, what if that intervention just stops you from seeking out medical care in a way that could eventually really really help you so that's where i worry

about people it's not so much like don't drink licorice tea it's more so that drink that but then please still go see your doctor please still find a doctor that you know listens to you and um i don't know isn't homophobic or racist or fatphobic, because those are real barriers to people getting good care. Literally, I get messages about those all the time. So let's do all of the above. But I just want people to feel savvier and more empowered and just, you know, kind of not fall for this idea that natural means good. In the book, there's that chapter, a whole chapter I wrote about the flat tummy teeth on Instagram and how women have ended up in hospital, because what looks like a natural herb still has an effect on your body and can be toxic to your liver and your kidney. So not everything that just sounds

natural is healthy. Right. Right. I mean, yeah. So just not to put too fine, not dwell on this too long, but yeah, these alternative medicines or the sort of more goopy world of it, like a lot of time, those practitioners, the person who's giving you the placenta pills is also treating you in a little bit more of a perhaps caring way or sensitive way than, you know, the person down at the hospital would be. And, and that might be something that you actually need. They actually fulfilling a deficiency that's, that's in our medical modern medical system. But it has its own it has its own downsides that can be really dangerous. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about these about these detox teas and the idea of detoxing in general.

Well, it's January. So I wonder if a lot of people are thinking about those kinds of like New Year's resolutions around detoxes and cleanses they're all a con because your body does that anyway you know if you drink water and you eat kind of well and you do some exercise get some movement your lymphatic system your kidneys your liver if they're all functioning they are detoxing you so it's really like a multi-billion dollar industry at this point adam people are making so much money off of our self-hatred or our desire to lose weight or our desire to just feel clean, whatever that means. And so you end up with these scams on Instagram that have been really well investigated. And I talk about some of them in the book where these women, and they're not often, they're not always celebrities rather. Some of them are like really regular moms, but they get

kind of targeted by the companies as you're a person that we think can sell this product oftentimes they haven't even taken the product but they're posing a good angle kind of sideways doing the pow on instagram and people will end up buying it and then there have been these horrific stories of people ending up in icu because a lot of these weight loss teas and the detox teas, yeah, they make you lose weight because they're making you pee and poo a lot. So you will lose weight, but of course it will come back on when you stop. And in the meantime, you could end up dangerously dehydrated. Yeah. And so this is, this is an example of, I know I was talking about the placebo effect with, with some therapies a moment ago, but this is an example where the alternative product that you're taking

really does have a serious effect on your body that can be dangerous. Yeah, they've got medical grade laxatives in them, which is fine for short term use if you're constipated, but you don't want to lose weight by pooing constantly and being really gassy and not being able to go out because you're on the toilet with explosive diarrhea. That's no way to live. And it's also not a sustainable way of getting healthier and losing weight.

Well, and also, I mean, we did an episode of our show about this, the whole idea that about explosive diarrhea. I need to listen to that one. Yeah, I missed out. We did about 30 minutes on explosive diarrhea and how it's all a scam. No, it was no, it was about the idea of toxins and how this idea that, you know, every medical malady is caused by toxins. need to do is detox, detox, detox all the time has become this way of talking about our bodies that is completely not just unscientific, but almost like a fantasy of how our bodies work. Can you speak to that at all? Yeah. You know, funnily enough, you made me think I used to teach

a toxicology class years ago. And like the first rule of toxicology is everything is a toxin, but for its dose. And so the first story that I will tell students was about this woman who called into a radio station to win a Nintendo Wii. Have I got that name right? Because I haven't thought about it for a long time. Oh yeah, that's what it's called. Yeah, Nintendo Wii, right? And the radio station's competition was that you won a Wii if you could hold your Wii and if you drank as much water as possible without peeing. And so this woman won because she drank such an obscene amount of water. And then she died from a coma because, you know, water will kill you if you drink.

Adam, it's not funny. I know, it's not, but I'm laughing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, you're heartless, Adam. Heartless. Absolutely heartless. But that's to make the point that you can die from drinking clean water. Like if you drink too much of it. Yeah. Are you still laughing?

No, I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'm so sorry. Sorry. It's a funny, it's a sad story. It's a really sad story. It's not funny. It's so sad, Adam.

She died. I think she was in LA as well. I'll have to look it up again. That sounds right. She died from drinking too much water. So that's the whole thing with the toxin. What is a toxin? And you know,

like people obviously look up the ingredients of the mRNA vaccines or the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, by all means be informed. But some of the people that I've seen that are like, Oh, I would never, I'm like, you snort cocaine with laundry detergent on Saturday nights.

Like why? Like, you know, like let's be a little bit real here. So by all means, be empowered and look up what's in stuff. But bear in mind that there are many things that we're exposed to. And like I said, you know, trying to win a Nintendo Wii by holding in your Wii. The water can be deathly too.

Well, how do we, man, I could ask you about millions of these. Your book has, let me see, 46 different stories that are this good in it about different medical myths. But I got to ask, like, why do we fall for them and how do we stop ourselves individually from falling for them i mean there's there's things in this in your book that are are you know things i've i've believed or at least even though i know they're not true i have trouble not acting that way right myself yeah um all of us yeah so so why is that i think i think it's because there's so much uncertainty in the world there's just even science is amazing but science isn't a bunch of facts. Science is a process by which you ask the question, you do experiments, you try and find an answer and you change your mind. And at any time, you can always pick holes in scientific studies and the data. And I think what happens with

stories and with people telling us things with certainty and conviction, even if those things aren't true, it can make you feel like you're closing the circle, like you have a complete understanding of something. You know, you talk to a scientist and say, ask them anything. And they'll always talk about the uncertainty that's in something. And we're quite comfortable with that. But you talk to some scamsters, some like people trying to sell you snake oil, and they're like 100% if you gargle with this mouthwash, it will protect you from COVID-19. Like they just give you certainty. And isn't there something lovely about that in a world that you just can't predict anything and there's an impeachment and an attempted coup and a pandemic and an economic

crisis? Like it's a lot. And sometimes those folks prey especially on our fear and our anxiety. We're really vulnerable right now. And we're deluged with information too. A lot of it accurate and a lot of it inaccurate, hard to make sense between the two, but I think it can help us when we realize, oh, you know what? I am vulnerable. I need to be careful. I wrote a New York Times op-ed a couple of months ago about doctors who were falling for COVID hoaxes and saying things like, but I saw it on Facebook. I'm like, are we, are we losing our minds? Like what is happening? But of course we're human. Of course we don't live in a vacuum. We're all impacted by these things. And people often think that, you know, we talk about cognitive biases, like confirmation bias, assimilation bias. There's such an elitist assumption that the more educated you are, the more fair and the less

biased you are. Actually, the opposite is true. The more education you have, the more set in your ways and your beliefs you can be and the more biased you can be as well. So it's super complicated, but it's also very interesting. Yeah, I've talked about that many times on this show. And I try to get a hold of my own biases as best I can for that reason. But it's very, very difficult to do i mean it's it's hard to the the truth about those deep-rooted biases is you can't just escape them by knowing more about them um or sometimes you can sometimes you can't it's um yeah it's difficult i want to come back to that point that you said about uh that scamsters are often offering certainty uh Is it that, and that strikes me about how,

even people who wanna discredit what the medical authorities say about the pandemic, say, oh, you know, at the beginning, they told us not to wear masks or they weren't sure they worked and now they're all telling us to wear masks. And I look at that and I go, oh, that's how science works,

is that it was a new pandemic and it took us a month to do the research. And then we found out. And so that uncertainty. But also, but also that science doesn't operate in a vacuum, right? So yes, Dr. Fauci changed his mind. We changed our mind from one month to another because there was better, more rigorous evidence about wearing a mask.

But because we don't work in a vacuum, there was also political issues at play in that America, the greatest nation in the world, had a mass shortage of masks. So if we had said to everyone in February, March, early April, go wear a mask, and people had gone out to run out and buy the N95s and the surgical masks, there wouldn't have been enough for doctors and nurses and those on the front lines, right? So that plays into it too. So I think we often try and be like, here's the science, here's everything else. And it's like, no, science is right up in the mix of this very messy world that we live in. Yeah. And so kind of part of staying, to me, it sometimes feels like part of staying

more faithful to science and less liable to be tricked is to maintain uncertainty. Like the less sure you are, maybe the better off you are. Do you feel that way? Yeah, to the sense that you can still sleep at night and you're not like pulling out your hair and, you know, crying because you're so like, I don't, who am I? Am I alive? You know, like you don't want to get that existential about it, but to be like a savvy skeptic, you know, where you're just taking the time to do your due diligence, even if it's about where is this information coming from? Is this information coming from a credible source before I start to engage in it? And so yes, this problem seems so huge and so

intractable, but there actually are little things that we each can do, even if it's the pausing, even if it's the doing a little bit of fact checking, even if it's taking something off social media and having a conversation in real life about it. Because there are studies that show the people that just see a thing on Twitter that said, don't get the COVID vaccine. It's got aluminum in it or aluminum, as you would say. The people who take that conversation offline and say, hey, did you see this thing? I read that the COVID vaccine has got aluminum in it.

Actually, those people were better protected against believing the false words because they had real life conversations about it. So there are things that we can do, and there is hope in this problem. Well, Seema, I thank you so much for writing about this, for fighting the good fight on it, for coming on the show to talk to us about it. The book is called Viral BS, and it's on sale now. Is that right? It's on sale now. Yes. Thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you once again to Dr. Seema Yasmin for coming on the show. That is it for us this week on Factually.

If you enjoyed the episode, my God, please leave us a rating or review wherever you subscribe. It honestly does help us out so much. And if you have a question that you would like me to answer on the show, on our new Stitcher Premium special episodes, please send an email to factually at adamconover.net, and I will reply to it with a special comedian guest on the show. I want to thank our producers, Kimmy Lucas and Sam Roundman, our engineer, Andrew Carson, Andrew WK for our theme song, the incredible folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the custom gaming PC that I am recording this episode on and that I use to stream games on Twitch at twitch.tv slash adamconover.

And hey, thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time on Factually. And please stay curious. that was a hate gun podcast