The Taproot Podcast - 👻🧪The Ghost Lab: Pseudoscience Science and The Supernatural with Matt Hongoltz HetlingThe Ghost Lab: Science, Pseudoscience and the Supernatural with Matt Hongoltz Hetling

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Preorder the Book: https://amzn.to/3RzDcaH Checkout our episode with Matt from last year when you are done.  We sit down with Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and George Polk Award winner renowned for his incisive local reporting. As a reporter for the Valley News in New Hampshire, Matt brings unparalleled depth to every story he tackles. His bylines appear in Popular Science, Foreign Policy, USA Today, and Atavist Magazine, showcasing his versatility across major media outlets. Praised for immersive storytelling that transports listeners from Maine’s Governor’s Mansion to Ebola wards in Sierra Leone, his narrative features blend rigorous investigation with human-centered nuance. In This Episode We dive into Matt’s journey from exposing deplorable conditions in federally subsidized Section 8 housing—work that spurred state investigations and reforms—to his explorations of fringe medicine in his second book, If It Sounds Like a Quack…, published in April 2023. We also reflect on his debut book, A Libertarian Walks into a Bear (September 2020), which examines the collision of libertarian ideals and wildlife management in a small New Hampshire town. As a Pulitzer Center grantee, Matt’s long-form journalism has spotlighted flood insurance challenges for riverboat casinos in Missouri and maternal health crises during the Ebola outbreak. In 2019, he received the Distinguished Science Journalism award from the American Meteorological Association and was voted Maine Journalist of the Year. Throughout our conversation, we unpack the ethics of investigative storytelling, the role of narrative in driving public policy, and the craft of turning complex issues into compelling human stories. BUY THE BOOK! https://amzn.to/3RzDcaH If you enjoyed this deep dive with Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, hit the Like button, subscribe for new episodes every week, and ring the 🔔 to never miss an interview. Share your thoughts in the comments—what story angle intrigues you most?  more @ GetTherapyBirmingham.com 🎙️📚📰🕵️‍♂️ #MattHongoltzHetling #InvestigativeJournalism #supernatural #podcast #science #Storytelling #evidencebasedpractice #pseudoscience #HousingReform #PulitzerHopeful

We saw a ghost inside our house, a waltz of wishful thinking. Please send us a miracle so I know that there is meaning. Instead of think that it's a miracle just to be breathing. So live on, baby, live on. Just to be breathing so So We have one book about a duck and one book about a bear and one book Now about a ghost but all of them are about the dark and sad heart of the twisted animal That is man, Matt Hong Galtz Helling. Welcome back to the Taproot Therapy collective podcast excited Matt is the last journalist Hong-Golz Helling, welcome back to the Taproot Therapy collective podcast. Excited to get to your next book.

Matt is the last journalist working in America. How does it feel? Tell us about the before time. Oh, I left the field long ago. I'm not holding that bag. Well, we really enjoyed the Ghost Lab, which is, is that on sale now? When does it come out?

It comes out on May 20th. Okay. Thank you so much. You're actually one of only a handful of people who have read it, Joel. I bet you not, you know, 40 people in the world have gotten their hands on an advanced copy.

So I'm so, so gratified that you received one and took the time to read it and have been kind enough to give me some good feedback on it. So I really appreciate that. I think you do a great job. And I'm hoping that we can have a conversation about kind of like your subject selection

and thought process. You have a nuanced relationship to the subjects that's inherently kind of, I don't wanna say critical, but respectful and also inquiring that, that sits with a lot of stuff. But also, you know, you talk about your relationship to the subjects that they like the book, and, and then maybe a kind of a broader look at some of the things you suggest at the end that would improve our relationship to healthcare and institutions at a time where I think institutional credibility is really much on the decline in a way that, you know, whoever's fault it is,

it's still kind of a damaging thing that's not good. And you propose some interesting solutions and kind of sit with a lot of nuance there. So if you, we can start with that and kind of go through that, that'd be great. Yeah, thank you very much for noting that. And yeah, it was sort of like a weird headspace for me to get into because I am sort of personally like a skeptic. I'm one of these

and I know you've written some really fascinating stuff about sort of like getting too married to quantifiable outcomes, right? Which doesn't mean it's not important. It's just, and I think that's two conversations too. Cause I mean, part of what I, my criticism is like, there's some things that should just be self evident in medicine that we should just let be self evident and not pretend like, Oh, well,

we need to research it because it threatens the profit motive. No, like, we know this stuff's real. Kind of go on and move on. And then secondly, I think psychology which is you know I'm doing therapy doesn't behave the same as cancer research in a way that we kind of pretend that it needs to Yeah, a lot of your like objective you looking at that stuff is really it was really fascinating And you know like you've got three books a libertarian walks into a bear if it walks like a quack and also libertarian walks into a bear, if it walks like a quack, and also the ghost lab now. And in all of them, you select a subject

that is kind of like a microcosm for a bigger thing, but you don't opine a ton. I mean, the focus of it is investigative journalism. And like, you're looking at these people who we don't know, but we feel like we know, because they're relevant to a larger conversation that you're trying to talk about. So could you talk about the process of kind of like subject selection and, you know, because they're relevant to a larger conversation that you're trying to talk about. So could you talk about the process

of kind of like subject selection and, you know, what put you in that? Absolutely. Yeah. So, um, yeah, so I kind of started off wanting to write about the lack of trust that that is sort of like blooming in America, right? And, and, you know, you can say, Oh, yeah, well, that's because government sucks. And that's why there's declining trust in government. But then there's also decline in hospitals. Okay, well, our healthcare system sucks. Okay. Health is trust in science is also declining. Well, that's because you know, science, you know, at some

point you start to say, like, are there something that's sort of tilting the playing field, right? Against trust. And people are trusting their neighbors less, people are trusting their churches less. People are just trusting everything less than they did as recently as 20 years ago, grammatically less. And so I was sort of like, looking at all this stuff and sort of casting about for reasons why this might be so. And what I found was that the trust in institutions, the ebb in that trust could be measured in people who were sort of opting out of some of these societal institutional systems that we've had in place for so long. Right?

So, so, and you know, to speak a little bit to your field, there's a segment of people who are saying, I can't trust the branch of psychology. I also can't trust, you know, therapy. Yeah. My worldview is, puts me in a place where that is all sus, right? And so they are turning to sort of other avenues. So I was like, okay, well, who's sort of inheriting that trust that institutions are losing. And what I found is that people are taking their problems of various sorts that used to be solved by institutions

or at least in the sort of like the golden age of institutions the last 80 years or so, and instead are putting their trust in the paranormal believer community, right? So they are So anyhow So as soon as I kind of like cotton to the the paranormal thing that folks are seeking Services from you know, alien abduction support groups appear groups That people are seeking support from their mediums and psychics. People are looking for

explanations for their feelings of unease from ghost hunters and so on. And they're looking for their answers in these other places. And so then I really wanted to find a sort of representative group of these sorts of, you know, industry is probably too strong a word, but these sorts of communities and belief systems. And I landed on a really interesting, small, colorful group of folks in New Hampshire's seacoast region who, you know, among them, you know, there were five or six principal players, and they were like, yeah, there's a ghost hunter. There was an alien abductee who was also a big foot hunter. There was an empath. There was a psychic medium and so on. And so they, they just really reflected sort of like the spectrum of beliefs that

are united under the broader umbrella of paranormal beliefs. And so I, I spent a couple of years, you know, talking to these folks. Um, and when I said earlier that it put me into a weird headspace, um, you know, I'm, I'm the numbers guy, right? I am, uh, you know, my, my wife sent me a video, uh, yesterday that said, this makes me sad. And the video was of kids running like a school shooting drill in school. Right.

And my wife's a teacher. So, you know, I'm a social worker, married to a teacher. So we're very much like in the world of watching the decline of these institutions that are, you know, public institutions and you privatize them. I don't know what our role is or what our thing is. And, um, when you look at, um, yeah, the effects that the decline of this stuff, Yeah, the effects that the decline of this stuff has. I mean, my wife had like when she was trained, the cops go through and they shoot like huge assault rifles

and show you the noise and all this stuff. And it's like, that's a school training is horrifying. Yeah, and I think when my wife said that to me, I thought like, is this really necessary? Because clearly this has some downsides. And so then, so for me, for my math brain, I'm like, okay, what's the quantifiable risk? Like what are the odds that a child will be killed

in a school shooting? It's like one in a million. And when I'm thinking about safety for my own children, my ears really start to perk up around the one in 10,000 mark, right? Like risks that are significantly greater than one in 10,000, I am very attuned to. But if I find that a risk is much less than one in 10,000, if it's one in 100,000, you know, I start to think like, you know, possibly the barriers that we put up to protect that child from that risk are themselves creating more harm than they are they are worth.

I'm thinking of like, during a lot of the like Bush years terrorism scare, you know, they would compare your risk of dying of a heart attack with like your risk of being killed by a terrorist or something. And, you know, people are like eating the Baconator and then, you know, people are like eating the Baconator and then, you know, protect me from Al Qaeda. And I'm more of kind of like, what is the most likely outcome? You know, not, how do I keep my emotions out of this and look at like, what is actually likely to be the threat to public health? And, you know, I don't know that it is 9-11, you know? Yeah, yeah. I, I agree entirely. Yeah. Like we, we, we've, um, uh, changed a lot of've changed a lot of systems, right? In response to 9-11, and it's not at all clear that those systems truly keep us safe.

And it seems like there are many other disadvantageous aspects to those changes. It's a very sort of like reactionary position that we would never build from the ground up if we were building our society from scratch. Yeah, when you're inherently reactionary and you can never really have a vision of the future, which I think is where we are now, you your own, you're you don't, there's no plan for where you end up. Like everything is like, yeah, I mean, we're kind of here because this happened 10 years ago and then we did that.

And it's like, yeah, but why are we doing all of this together? Like why can we have like a, can we admit the things that don't work, don't work? And I think like a lot of your book is pretty bipartisan in the issues it talks about, you know, liberals are more likely to cling to institutions. But I mean, I think some of these institutions have lost credibility for a reason that has to be solved if you want credibility to come back.

And the kind of blind fate thing of vote blue no matter who or whatever when you're not really being offered a solution is just not an answer, any more than the kind of right-wing reactionary grievance stuff that, you know, it changes every, you know, the enemy changes every two years and a lot of what you talk about is is like It contains the the the respectful seed of like a greater Vision, you know for society which is you know, it's a book about a ghost lab. It's a book about paranormal researchers I mean even like when I'm getting to like you talking about the flock of dodo stuff with the threat to Science that was predicted predicted you know decades back when people kind of saw this stuff I'm like yeah I'm like

really admiring how all these threads come together and like where you go where you go because you know it doesn't leave it doesn't jump topics but it pretty naturally just contains a lot of creativity and insight. I'm really grateful to hear you say that and to hear that some of those aspects are landing with at least one reader. Now, if I can just scale that up, I'll be a very happy man. And yeah, no, you're absolutely correct. Political partisanship drives people into forms of dogmatic expressions that are really unhelpful.

And when I was approaching the book and the paranormal, I was a diehard skeptic. As I said, I'm a numbers guy. And I want this. If the guys in I'm a numbers guy and I want this, if the guys in the white coats don't say it's true, I am very, very leery to say that's true. And I sort of like went in with this attitude that all of this stuff is BS, right? But I also sort of knew that I had to respect the worldview of the folks that I was speaking to because as I told them early in the process, you're not criminals, you're not politicians

who are being held up for transparency and public inspection. You are someone with what to me amounts to sort of an interesting hobby or pastime. And so the fact that they were willing to speak with me reflected a certain amount of trust on their part. And I really wanted to sort of honor that. And that sort of led me into building relationships with these people and their worldviews that really made me sort of appreciate that while I remain skeptical, I don't necessarily think that shifts to what

I call in the book a post-institutional world have to be bad outcomes. You know, we can have weaker institutions. Psychics can provide some of these services, but, you know, we have to build a bridge to get there if that's where we're deciding to go. We can't debunk ghosts out of existence. It's a belief that goes back to the Bronze Age. You know, I don't know that you're going to get your religion in that way. I think you have to reconcile with it. I'm a Jungian leading therapist and I think the transcendent function is pretty inherent

in how we make meaning and that we kind of create a cosmology. It maybe is healthier to engage with that in a symbolic or a metaphorical way. But I don't know that everyone always will. And, you know, if a patient came into therapy or to the doctor and they were a religion that the provider is not, you know, you wouldn't just discount everything and try. I mean, it's built into the code of ethics now that you have to take these religious beliefs seriously. That doesn't mean that you have to take them literally, or you have to recommend behavior that's destructive. I mean, you point out where that isn't helpful, or where there's an abuse of power structure that somebody's participating in, just because they believe in a God or gods that I

don't, or a way of relating to that, or definition of any of that stuff. I mean to me. It's like why fight about these things anyway you know, I don't people have a metaphorical and a symbolic sense of Reality that that science and health care have to make room for in order to treat people because we don't treat them in a lab We don't treat them in a research study. We treat them in life Yeah, I bumped into a therapist just yesterday, sort of like on the playground, our kids were playing together. And I started sort of like talking to her and asking her about these things when I found out what her field was.

And she said, oh, yes, you know, in our office, in our practice, which is focused on sort of like substance abuse and addiction issues. in our office, in our practice, which is focused on sort of like substance abuse and addiction issues. You know, we really are mindful not to challenge these delusions. And so like, I walked away from the conversation thinking like, Oh, isn't that great? She's not challenging the delusions. But then, you know, I think really well, where I've ultimately landed through the course of writing this book is that to even think of them as delusions is sort of like pejorative, right? It's a sort of patronizing position. Yeah. I think a lot of patients are going to smell and sort of like get away from going.

And you talked about the need to respect other other religions and I think that's absolutely true The folks that I focus on in the book are you know sort of like the 22% of Americans who are you know? Spiritual but not religious is how they they categorize. I think there's something there, but they don't think church has the answers and They are You know a lot of times those expressions are, you know, hey, I think that I've been abducted by an alien. And a therapist does not have the same training necessarily to sort of like get into that headspace in a way, it can't necessarily speak

in a language that the purported alien abductee will respect and understand and feel heard in. Yeah. Well, and I started my career working with some of the worst cases of schizophrenia comorbid with other illnesses in the state. And a lot of those patients, so I mean, one, anti-psychotics don't treat delusion, they treat hallucinations. So the hallucinations can stop. But that doesn't mean that the belief goes away. A lot of times the delusion stays. And when you do that, I mean, the least effective social workers that I saw went in and were like, this isn't true. This can't be true. Here's all the reasons. And coming from this place of hostility that is debate

club, like it's completely ineffective, I think, therapeutically or politically just getting lost in a debate about logic is the worst thing you can do. You follow emotion. I mean, same thing I do now. And the way that I was affected with people was, I'm not talking about the dragon that lives in your basement.

I'm gonna say, oh my God, you must be so scared. And I can see that your back is tired. I can see that you haven't eaten and you're just dealing with a lot of stress. And all of a sudden we're on the same page and we're talking about the dragon because the dragon is a metaphor for the sexual abuse that I experienced or whatever. I'm not going to have insight into this maybe in the way that I... I'm not going to have insight into this the way that you or I would, but I'm still treating this with respect and

it also has a symbolic truth even though I don't believe that there literally is a dragon in their basement. You know, I had somebody one time, a long time ago, and it was, you know, pretty classic paranoid schizophrenia before I ever, this is, this is when I first started my career. And I was like, you know, you used to say that you were getting this information from books or from these online communities or you're getting it on the internet. But now you are in your house and you have all the aluminum foil and the traps for the government and all this stuff.

And there's no access information. Like you don't have internet anymore. You don't have books you don't leave. So how are you figuring out what the government is doing with these lasers and satellites to put the words in your head? And he said, that's a good question. You get the feeling that you have

when you're wondering if something's true, but then you just know that it is. Which is a really amazing description of a delusion. Because the ability to reality test with a dopamine disorder like that, it's just not there. And fighting about that deficit is just kind of pointless. And you probably get somewhere interesting. I mean, you do get somewhere interesting with these people.

Could you tell us? I mean, I don't want to spoil anything, but could you tell us about the major characters, how you met them, how they present, and then the ultimate disagreements that they have, or the differing conditions they had within their own community? Yeah, yeah. The book sort of like nicely sort of locked

into this really fascinating sort of central narrative, where you had a guy named Andy Kitt, who is very much, he's a ghost hunter. He was motivated to sort of enter the field of ghost hunting from a strong personal experience that he had in the wake of his father's death, where he was kind of coming to terms with grief, almost. Yeah, coming to grieving, part of grieving. Absolutely. And you know, and he and his whole family sort of like experiences

had a set of experiences that they believed were indicative of their father speaking from beyond the grave. And Andy got into ghost hunting and he's by nature sort of like a combative conservative, you know, a crank for lack of a better word. He he wants proof for things and he is, you know, sort of like happy to offend and And he is sort of happy to offend and will not work nonsense. And so he sort of took this attitude into ghost hunting and essentially felt like most of the ghost hunters were jokes and most of the psychics were jokes.

And so he started to experiment with it. He made for TV, so like reality TV that gives everybody a bad name. Yeah, reality TV that, you know, gives everybody a bad name. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He called him fluffy donuts, which was a term he seemed very comfortable with. I'd never heard it before I spoke to him, but it's evocative. So he he sort of like assembled this team that included Bo Esby, who was a psychic included Bo Esby, who was a psychic whose sort of like ability to communicate with spirits and at times foretell the future. Andy really found to be authentic and resonated with him.

And they sort of picked up this guy, Mike Stevens, who was the alien abductee who made contact with them while trying to get petitions to honor a famous alien abduction site in the state of New Hampshire. He wanted recognition from the state, sort of like a state monument or historical marker there. And Mike is a very sort of traumatized guy by his alien abduction experiences, which have plagued him since childhood. And then they picked up a couple

of other central characters along the way, Val LoFaso, who is a psychic slash aspiring fiction writer, or I should say published fiction writer, and Ange Bourdages, but she, uh, sort of like primary, uh, primarily identifies with her, her job as a, a, uh, legal assistant. And yeah, so she's all about the paperwork and managing risk and that sort of stuff. And so they, they sort of like come together under this, this sort of noble shared dream of we're going to bring science to these fields and we're going

to sort out the week from the chaff and we're going to bring science to these fields and we're going to sort out the wheat from the chaff and we're going to tell them they have systems of getting objective data that were in place. Yeah. They wanted to get it. Not just I saw this and wrote it down, but actually get quantified data of the supernatural essentially. Absolutely. Absolutely. And Andy him in particular was very sort of well-versed in what constitutes a blind study and those sorts of things. So Andy was the one who could spearhead drafting protocols that would maintain some integrity of their investigations and results.

And so then over the course of about nine years, they set about trying really hard to document science and to sort of like maintain their integrity in this field and sort of try to establish a brand that would mean something within this very sort of like squishy, topsy-turvy landscape of paranormal beliefs. And then, you know, over the course of time, they find that within their group, some of their members prioritize the hard search for evidence, which is sort of like the institutional view of ghost hunting. Like, let's prove it. Let's get those numbers. Let's find that evidence that suggests that we all live in a shared reality, even though that shared reality may

be far different from what we have put into mainstream science. And that priority sort of butted heads against another priority of let's be inclusive. Let's accept everyone's word at face value and let's sort of like honor those individual experiences even if they don't seem to be, you know, true or compatible with other beliefs that we've also sanctioned and center, uh, to be, um, honored. And that is sort of like the, the, the fight that's going on in the paranormal community.

That's a, a diversity of thought. There's some people who feel like just to clarify for the audience, like there's some people who feel like you can just sort of subjectively contact the something and receive a subjective download of information and that's enough. And then there are other people who want to have, you know, objective proof that those things are real or some way of validating them in order to maintain that through science, the study of that.

Exactly right. It's in personal experience. Someone gets up, the study of that experience and personal experience. Exactly right. So someone gets up at the UFO support group and says, I was abducted by an alien who looked like Mel Gibson in my bedroom and whatever sort of outlandish tale that you might come up with. And they would think, oh, geez, OK, so that guy is off base.

Yeah, what he is saying did not objectively happen. But so do you do you drum that guy out of the group and say, you know, this is not consistent with our search for evidence or do you say, oh, you know, this guy's had an experience sort of like that more therapeutic approach that you were talking about, Joel? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you have a couple people in the book that are the main characters. And then ultimately, they kind of have conflict and the ghost lab doesn't continue in the way that it is kind of set up in the beginning. Could you talk about that process and maybe its relationship to broader institution? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, um, you're right.

The sort of like competing priorities of, do we honor the individual experience versus do we prioritize the search for agreed upon evidence? Uh, those tensions sorted, sort of, um, started to manifest in some pretty sharp personality differences, where some people were very intent on being nice and other people were intent on being correct. And over the course of time, that led to all sorts of problems. And within the group, they had sort of like spiritual and supernatural explanations for a lot of the problems that happened. Andy in particular, one of the ways that this organization hoped to make money was by establishing a retail center, where they could sell their books and whatever supernatural ghost hunting gear and

that sort of thing. Andy was sort of like renovating a space. Andy had some carpentry skills and he's like building a counter and all that. He wound up renovating the space for like two years like building a counter and all that. He wound up renovating the space for like two years and not really making significant progress. But it was also like the only thing that he was giving his attention to. So the whole organization is sort of like suffering for his lack of attention.

He is focused on the retail space. And at some point while he's building it, he realizes that when he's done, they will not be able to sell some of it because they don't have the money to sort of like buy inventory and stock the shelves and staff it. And so he's in this really sort of like odd place where he's just building and building and building and not getting anywhere. And they eventually sort of conclude that he is being victimized by a spiritual non-human entity, like an emotional parasite that is sort of creating this conflict within him and feeding off of it. And yeah, so eventually those sort of broader tensions

And yeah, so eventually those sort of broader tensions started to have the group fighting among themselves. This idea of objectivity versus individual experience, I think, is sort of like the disagreement that pour at the group. And it's also the disagreement that really has some implications for society because if the if the science guys within the paranormal community win you know if they are really dedicated to searching for evidence they can work within the confines and contexts of institutions that that honor You know, like they have to get funding for some outlandish ideas,

but they can devise watertight experience and sort of like eventually in their worldview prove that ghosts are real or that, you know, certain psychic effects are real. Freud and Jung had that same fight, which I think in a dangerous method, he glamor, uh, glamorizes it, but it's the exact same.

The dialogue is the same that they both recount happens where credibility. You can't go in this place. And Jung is like, I haven't ruled out that it's paranormal yet. I don't know if it's psychological or paranormal. I'm not gonna, I'm not, I want to, and Freud is like, no, I'm the scientist because I won't consider that. And Jung is like, well, I'm the scientist because I will't consider that. And Jung is like, well, I'm the scientist because I will. Um, and then I think, you know, you follow Jung, he does kind of rule out most of

the broad strokes of the paranormal stuff. And he starts to see it more as a kind of the brainstem and a depth, you know, psychology connection to the older self. He doesn't really rule that out. And there's a lot of cranks now in the Jungian world and then grifters that borrow from that, but there's a lot of cranks now in the Jungian world and then grifters that borrow from that But it's an old fight Yeah, and Joe, you know so much about the sort of like history of psychology and one of my sort of like

Takes from the book is that we might be seeing Sort of like the development of new professional a new professional class within the paranormal sort of like worldview that parallels the original development of psychology. Yeah, like it started off in a weird place, right? Or early psychologists, there was no clear definition of what that was. And one then technology makes us reconsider those assumptions again. I mean, in the 70s, you have which I'd like to talk at the end about how I think a lot of where we are now is the same place we were in the 70s, where people are just considering all this wild stuff. And technology has kind of changed our metaphor that helps us understand ourselves because that's always kind of we try to understand ourselves through the technology of the time. So it's like a watch is invented and people are like, maybe God is a watchmaker. Building is invented earlier and they're like, maybe God is an architect. And then now they're like, maybe God is an LLM,

you know, or whatever. But like, in the seventies, there's all this new stuff. I mean, there's that Jungian current, but I mean, the CIA basically with like John C. Lilly and the Monroe Institute and people like that, they were like, we don't know that identical twins can't send pictures in each other's minds from the other room.

Maybe that would be helpful to fight Russia. Here's a million dollars. We don't know that you can't kill a goat by thinking really hard about it or burst clouds like Wilhelm Reich. John C. Lilly, here's a million dollars. Build a facility and feed LSD to dolphins. Maybe you can teach them to talk.

Maybe the reason dolphins don't talk is just no one fed them LSD and tried to yet. You know, they really did the experiment because they didn't know. And I mean, that was rolled out. It turns out that didn't work. But no one knew that, you know, Yeah, that that's absolutely true. Yeah. And science, yeah, they have like continue to sort of like take it up.

And there's a there's a researcher in Arizona who built a lab that is still looking for some of these effects. And I think that's good. The public has a great interest in the paranormal. And for science to just sort of have retreated into a corner of skepticism, as justified as that may be, shows sort of like such a break and a disconnect from where the public space is. And scientists, I think they used to sort of like be able to coast on correctness, right? I used to be that a scientist, all they had to be was right.

And I don't think that's the world we live in anymore. You know, I think they need to sort of like, have a they have to worry about a trust with the public. And then you should have a perspective, you know, and not the right answer, maybe, because science is always looking for the next right answer. It should be sort of a mode of being that makes sure that people don't get hurt. Like, and we can talk about some of your conclusions at the end. I'd like to stay with the characters for a minute. But I'm struck by like how much the evidence based practice because I mean, I write about

that all the time. But like you're saying the same thing in the book, you know, I'm assuming you're not reading my writing, and there's like this idea of evidence-based practice making something true or false, that I think there need to be more layers than that. Like if you're a medical provider and you say, hey, you've got stage four cancer, but we're not going to do chemo, we're not going to do surgery, I want you to do Reiki, I want you to do crystals. I want you to do, um, you know, prayer circles. I think that you shouldn't have a medical license. I mean, like, I don't think you should have one, but Reiki is evidence

based to make outcomes better. You know, the Catholic church had this huge discussion because they're like, you're doing Reiki in the hospitals and you're doing it because it's an evidence based practice, like, you know, most we've shown that this makes outcomes better. There's some research like that about prayer. It's not really as strong, but the prayer circles make outcomes more. And if that's true that it does, who cares why, right?

So I think the actual mechanism of healing, the primary thing, like yeah, you have to do chemotherapy. You have to tell people the outcome if they don't get chemotherapy or surgery. But if we know that like a diet that is low in sugar makes cancer tumors grow less, and that's a supplemental thing, like that shouldn't come first, you know, you don't want to be the characters in your last book that are treating cancer with baking soda. But if that helps, why are we not telling

every cancer patient that, you know, if someone says I want Reiki, and we know that once you do chemo, Reiki helps you feel better, why is that not allowed? You know, even if we, and I think there's a fighting about we want science to work on our own terms, that liberals are very, it's, you know, that I fucking love science movement and stuff. You know, a lot of those people, when you show actual science to them, they get angry

because they want it to be like what they understand it to be and not what the evidence says. I mean, that isn't the scientific method either. You know, I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe understanding things that, you know, are the primary cause and effect that we understand. And then the one where the cause and effect is a little bit more murky, but the outcome is there and it's researched and randomized control trial proved it. So who are you to say that this isn't allowed? You know? Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. Yeah, we do all sort of like, adopt a shorthand understanding because we're not experts, right? Most of us are sort of looking to signs other than the actual research to understand what the scientific consensus is, right?

And those markers of scientific consensus are themselves flawed and fuzzy. But then if you try to go the other way and actually read the research and wrap your head around it, you're much more likely to chase your own, you know, reinforce your own incorrect beliefs that then you are to actually get to the heart of the matter. But because you're, it's so difficult to sort of like way opposing viewpoints within the field properly. Well, it's like you talk about Mesmer in the book, who is the origin of hypnosis, or as it was called in Mesmerism, who it's Ben Franklin that ends up getting debunked and thrown out.

And Mesmer thought that hypnosis worked because of something called animal magnetism that is wrong, right? But the outcome was working. Like he got the mechanism incorrect. But there's a ton of medical hypnosis now that is evidence-based And so I think if you don't allow it to be like it works, but we don't know why Yeah, it's a question of like research. You know, how are you gonna know? Yeah, it's a question of like practicality versus sort of like certainty, right and you're you're saying and I agree um, if there is a practical benefit to be had from doing something, then by all means, let's do it. And if you don't understand why that's working,

continue to study. We don't understand why Ozenthic works fully, right? We just have to make people lose. The Nathaniel Banderas B voice at the very end, you know I'm talking about, Taneo Banderas, be voice at the very end, you know, after you know, I'm talking about the nation, excellent. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. At the very end, like one of the things in the flavor text is like, we do not know exactly why these next works. That's that's one of the things in there. Yeah, yeah. And so like, yeah, like if we can

sort of like, you know, accept that when it's something that's sort of like Centrally located within the dominant paradigm. Why can't we? offer the same sort of like tacit support to something that is Coming from a more left field Place Well, I think you're always working with metaphors anyway coming from a more left field place. Well, I think you're always working with metaphors anyway, whether or not you want to be,

and it doesn't really matter how literally you take them. I mean, when you look at the amount of people that are religious or something that are using that to make meaning out of life, or I mean, even science, look at how science functions when you go to eighth grade and they tell you, well, there, if there's two electrons on the shell on the outside and there's two protons in the middle,

then the atom's happy. Well, not only is the atom like not actually happy, that's wrong. Like that's the way you teach science to an eighth grader because you can't sell, hey, there's particles popping in and out of existence, we think, and there's subshells and there's like 50 shapes and like these are the more efficient and they wanna be be in this subshell but like they titrate down.

Like, like the little circle, all the things that you learn about actual science aren't real either. They're metaphors and symbols to understand a greater reality that is too overwhelming to help you make sense and start to, you know, I don't know if that directly applies, but it's like, we're always kind of working with these, these things that help us understand a reality that is more complex than we can understand anyway. And I think comfort with that makes us rely on certainty. And in my mind, the opposite of truth is not lies. It's certainty, you know, the zealot that, that, that doesn't, that thinks that they have figured out the perfect way to be and they're not willing to modify that Yeah, that's really interesting And didn't you write at one point that um You know sort of like physicists are much less beholden to quantifiable results Yeah that for them. It's almost more like an art that then you Kukule the guy who invented the benzene ring Which I mean I guess later leads to World War two because our automotive companies give you know Hitler the ability to turn

charcoal into Diesel fuel which he couldn't have done. It's an oil-less country he couldn't he couldn't have done World War two if you know, thank you Henry Ford, but yeah, the the guy who invented the benzene ring K Kukule, he saw the serpent and a dream, and the Ouroboros turned into a figure eight. And a lot of those people were lying. Einstein, there's a million quotes out there. But a lot of those physicists,

especially the ones around nuclear engineering, I mean, they all said this just came from an intuition of I saw this in my mind and I understood how it worked. And then I had to make the math line up. And some of them didn't like math at all, which, you know, Oppenheimer and Einstein were famous for like, this is the last thing that you do is try and figure out the objective proof. We already know it works this way, just because I think there's a certain way of seeing that people that are creative have that is intuition. Where it gets murky is our intuition feels like our trauma and trauma feels like intuition, they masquerade.

A lot of cult leaders, a lot of religious abusive religious figures are incredibly intuitive people, but they're sort of putting a trauma in the place of the self or vice versa. And I don't want to ask you to play therapists too much. But when you look at the people who are, you know, in this book, can you see places where they're mistaking their own emotional needs for an objective truth? Or they're trying to? to? Yeah, there's one scene that I recount in particular in the book that comes to mind

where there are three women who are all, you know, some level of psychic or some level of medium and they are in a haunted sort of like former factory setting. And they're going through individually trying to like come up with individual impressions that they can confirm with one another and thereby, you know, sort of like have an objective truth and they're not doing a very good job of sealing their impressions off from one another. So they sort of like are leading each other into certain conclusions. But what they experience in that factory is the ghost of sort of like an abusive rapist, right? And this ghost sort of like makes an effort to molest all three of them individually.

And they all have this sort of like experience of being the object of a sexual assault. And then they work together to sort of like respond. And so they really sort of like lean on one another, sort of like affirm their, I'll call it sisterhood, and work together to sort of bind up that ghost and, you know, rebuff him, rob him of his power and send him off of this plane of existence. And it's empowering for them. It's described as kind of a healing experience. And it reminds me of how often a therapist in a consultation or something,

you know, we present that you have to validate the emotional reality before the person has insight. A ton of people come in and they're describing things where they feel they were the victim and you know that they weren't, that they probably, their behavior was not okay or whatever. But if you don't have empathy and say, yeah, you felt this way in that moment and this was hard and you don't wanna say you have a right to bad behavior

because you're a victim ever, but you do wanna say, like yes, your emotion is valid and like you are hurt. And that was your perspective at that time. And that line is gray. It's hard. That's a big conversation of how much do you be validating before that becomes enabling.

I draw that at the prescription. I don't ever want to say that I believe something that I don't believe. And I never want to say, you should do this thing because it feels good when it isn't healthy. I don't ever want to do that I believe something that I don't believe and I never want to say you should do this thing because it feels good when it isn't healthy. I don't ever want to do that. But you want to be able to hold the emotional experience of the person as much as you can. And that's kind of what evolves kind of naturally in some of these communities that you're observing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what really struck me about that particular experience was that,

Yeah, absolutely. And what really struck me about that particular experience was that it was just sort of like a very clean, it wasn't messy at all. Here, the abuser had no friends, had no pull with the legal system, was not going to turn around and accuse them of lying about their assault. He was just like sort of like a flat out evil entity. And they were able to, you know, sort of like be judged, jury and executioner and exert complete power over him and send him off. And that is in such

contrast to, you know, how they might be forced to navigate That sort of a situation or those feelings in the real world Yeah, and you know, and I'll also say like you I I don't know enough about the personal histories of the three women to say Whether they would consider themselves to be Victims of sexual assault themselves But sure and some people don't until they've healed, you know, it's it's part of the process They're they're not gonna you know, a lot of people I work with have real extreme

You know kind of violent political beliefs one way or the other and once therapy is done They're like, oh, you know, I don't believe that anymore and I don't know that because we didn't talk about what I'm glad that they don't But if I but you know, like it's the healing that makes the insight happen. And you know, like trauma patients, anyone with trauma, like a lot of times we revisit the same experience to try and have control over it and this kind of unconscious way of trying to heal.

And if somebody has experienced sexual assault or something, I mean, as a therapist, I would so much rather them go to a seance or a group that is gonna help them hold each other emotionally, whatever that means, then engage in hypersexuality to try and prove or dangerous situations with strangers to try and prove that they can go in and remaster that. I mean, one of those is preferable to me.

I mean, not that there's not an abuse of element sometimes in some spiritual groups. I mean, any of those is preferable to me. I mean, not that there's not an abuse of element sometimes in some spiritual groups. I mean, any group can have that, but, you know, the risk looks a whole lot less than getting on Grindr or something, you know? Absolutely. Well, I think, I mean, one of the things that has come up with me sometimes

when somebody has a fixation on religion, or I have to know this and I don't know I want certainty here. I mean I'll just kind of back up and talk about the limits of knowledge. You know like you know the universe is this thing that we say is expanding but what we really mean is that the amount of space we can measure on the inside is getting more and that there's this relationship between time, temperature and, you know, speed and space. And we can see this ball of rules. And from the inside, it looks like there's more of it.

We have no idea what's on the outside. I mean, I don't know. I'm a therapist, not a priest. And, um, you know, we talk like I talk to my daughter a lot, you know, we read mythology and kind of world religions and different things she's interested in that right now and, um, she's a seven. So we go to some, you know, Episcopal church services or different things. And she'll ask me, you know, what things are true and how are they true?

So the nature of all that is kind of interesting. And I want to be respectful of her development and kind of leave room for her to have agency and curiosity there. And one of the things she said to me, we were like, we like read or tell stories at night. We were in the hammock and she was like asking like, yeah, but how did it get here? You know, the question of all the way back to the kind of the big bang.

And I was like, well, you know, in the beginning it was just this tiny white dot of light and heat and everything was together. And we can't really see past that moment. So all of our science is just taking us back to that moment but we don't really know why it's there. We don't really see past that moment. So all of our science is just taking us back to that moment, but we don't really know why it's there. We don't really know. We can't see past that, you know, through objectivity.

And she was like, do you think that's like God? And I was like, yeah, you know, like I think that that is kind of the mystery. And she was like, I kind of like that we can't know that more than that. I thought that was such a pretty way to kind of approach approach very wise Yeah, yeah

My kids are my kids are really weird Day in the woods sword fighting with them. So we're we're just getting back but um, yeah, I mean A lot of those things about just kind of the limits of knowledge And where we should maybe just have more humility or kind of an interesting place. But that, but you never make a case that like, well, who knows? And everyone's entitled to their own perspective. I mean, I like about your writing is that you don't,

you don't ever enable and you don't ever just kind of duck a hard question through being avoidant. You know, you say these things are bad. We know they're bad. I'm not going to reconsider these things. But also like maybe we don't know as much as we think we do or we don't know everything yet And I wonder you know if you could talk about some of your conclusions at the end of the book the flock of dodo stuff And the idea that science maybe needs to change or get bigger. I was thinking of Theodore Porter when when

When you when I was reading that section of your writing? Yeah, yeah, you know I essentially like I sort of your writing? Yeah, yeah, I essentially like, I sort of landed on this idea that scientists have lost control of their messaging, right? They can produce the most objective science that we've ever had, thanks to sort of like the buffers between them and their funding sources,

right? Where, uh, the public taxpayer is funding a lot of research, but they're sort of isolated from how those, how the members of the public think, right? So they're able to, it's not like they're dependent on a wealthy patron and have to worry about their, their analysis, um, uh, pleasing that patronasing that patron so in that science You should bring back like John D scrying for angles in the Queen's Court and then like losing favor Yeah, yeah And so But that disconnect Sort of has its own penalty with it, as so many advantages

do. Like, they can do very objective science, but their disconnect from the public also means that the public doesn't necessarily understand or trust or value that science right and so That's bad, right We want a public that will sort of like have some buy-in Into the advances that science gives us, you know Maybe not like the the squishy physics stuff of what happens when a quark goes out and we're all just a reflection of what's happening in a black hole somewhere like that, you know

Have at it public but when it comes to sort of like that the values of medicine or You know, how can we build the best bridge or how can we sort of like best measure the, you know, the impacts of bad water system or, you know, how can we contain a virus or, you know, some sexually transmitted disease best? Like these are questions that science sets themselves to that public ought to be really listening to, right? Because they have very practical impacts and benefits and disadvantages for our world. And so science needs to sort of like rethink how they message, right?

They don't just need the science arm, they need sort of like a messaging arm that will help to communicate the results. And part of that comes when scientists are sort of like undergoing their own gut check, and sort of like, not just papering over their, their sort of like elitist views, but truly coming to terms with those elitist views, right? And truly speaking from more of a place of humility and transparency. Everyone agrees that, you know, publicly funded science should be transparent, but part of transparency is sort of like acknowledging those doubts and acknowledging that humility. And to be fair to the scientists like oftentimes a scientist will sort of like make a statement that is couched in four or five qualifiers

Like if this is correct and and that bears further study then there might be life on this other planet, right? K to whatever that the news needs a five-second sound bite of life on other planet, you know, correct, correct. Yeah. Yeah. And so there is sort of like this. And if the news didn't do it, then partisan groups or special interest groups would control that messaging. And oftentimes do control that messaging and the ways that advantage their personal agendas. And so that bridge needs to be built out much, much better. I do sort of suggest in one section of the book that if scientists could sort of like re-enseal a sense of wonder in and all in some of the ways that they disseminate their findings. For example, about what happens to the energy of a human being after that human dies. There's a lot of spiritual answers for that,

but biology hasn't really put out its own message, which can be quite beautiful. its own sort of like message, which can be quite beautiful. Right? And so... Well, where a lot of the biggest scientists did, I mean, there's the, have you read that letter that Einstein wrote to the death of, I forget the name, but he had a colleague that died and you wrote a letter to the wife.

And he said, somebody who knows as much about quantum physics as me and your husband believe in the inevitability of all things to like conjoin through time or something. I don't remember it. It's very poetic and I mean, the sense of humility in some of the smartest scientists out there. I mean, in my mind, they're not the problem. Like I've never met the people that are the huge innovators. And I talked to a lot of people on the phone that you know aren't On the podcast and I like network a lot of people

And like I'm always struck by the humility under the creativity and the powerful intuition of some of the best minds of our time You know, yeah. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. Yeah, like When they're shooting for that level they can be really brass knuckles. Yeah, you know for that level, they can be really brass knuckles, you know, overachievers, but when they get that level, it's almost like their, their whole being can just like relax and sort of like use the use that lofty perch to gain such wisdom and insight and sort of like, I guess, comfort in who they themselves are. I think that that really, really helps them to sort of achieve that. Well, I think that the worst ones are the worst people that are doing kind of politics or science that kind of discredit the things that it's like, you know, like I like, we have the same goal,

but I think that what they're doing actually makes it worse. Are the ones that are almost like hall monitors where they're like, I have to set a good example for you because I'm better than you and you don't know all the information. And so, cause I mean, like half of the conversations I've had with a colleague or somebody where I just feel like what they're doing is deeply ineffective,

either for political advocacy or for kind of scientific advocacy. When I say like, hey, look, I mean, like this is this is you're saying these things. And that's a really kind of condescending simplification. What I get 99% of the time is them being like, Oh, well, you and I know that. But, and when you have that attitude and advocacy, I think you get a hardcore, usually very right-wing reaction to you that is totally justifiable because it's annoying. Like, and it's, you know, and it's like the light and atheist thing and like the early two thousands of like, you know, I, you know, anytime anybody's up there talking about like,

oh, I'm a logical being that only is affected by logic You're just not aware of your emotional experience and it's and it's in control of you and subverting your intention You know a lot of the time Yeah it's like the best thing about the social justice movement is that it wants to bring about like social justice but the worst thing about the social justice movement is that it sort of plays into this human tendency to Uh feel holier than thou about somebody else.

You said that, you know, that thing that I wouldn't say. And let's talk about that for an hour. Right. Yeah. And that is so counterproductive and unhelpful and isolating. Just the question, like, who is this helping will trigger so many leftist groups where you're like, okay You've got you know, you're doing a 30-minute law and acknowledgement, you know, you know Is this something that is more for you or more for the cause and I think a lot of people that you know are

Aesthetically left but maybe more liberal and reactionary at heart what they're doing is they're talking about the population that they wanna help. And you see this in science too. I'm not trying to change the topic, but like they're talking about the population they wanna help, like they're this victim that whatever, but really you're talking about you

and you haven't done your work to realize you're just trying to kind of get validation. I don't know if that makes sense. You're kind of mistaken for yourself. And that's when you come in and you're like, okay, effectively, how do we help this population? And like, can as a social worker, like, what can we do? And like, we can give them these choices and these outcomes. The person who says, no, no, no, nothing that this group of people does is their fault at all. They're talking about themselves. They don't want consequences for them. That's the kind of victimhood leftism. That's not helpful

Any more than the projected, you know I'm going to identify with the abuser all the time right wing thing because a lot of right wing politics are also an emotional response Where you have somebody that says this group of people's gay or they're black or they're vulnerable and you go no, no No, that's the free marketer. That's god or whatever like the lot that's god. They don't have enough faith that that's just Your emotional reality is looking for a logical explanation for the abuser is right in every situation because I'm like the abuser right? That's not real. You know, we're countries I'm a straight shooter Yeah, yeah Yeah

I mean and so so much of politics to me is just trauma and a lot of that informs the way that we Deal with science. I mean you see those same fights in academia, which is why academia is kind of frustrating, I think. That's really interesting. Yeah. And what one thing that I talked about in the book is sort of the difference between how practitioners treat people who have been possessed by gin, right? Whose work is that? What was the name? I'm blanking on the name. Um, I am, um, not remembering her name fully either. Um, but she, she was a PhD candidate at, I believe UCAL.

Um, and she sort of did this really interesting side by side comparison of people who have been possessed by gin and people who have been possessed by a Jinn and people who have been abducted by aliens. And how in the Muslim world, people who have been possessed by Jinn, which is a very pervasive widespread belief, have a therapeutic clinic-based outlet for that belief. Right, when they go to see their clinical therapist who's fully trained in all the medical stuff and they say, I'm having this problem,

one of the tools in that clinical practitioner's toolbox is sort of like to create a therapy that speaks in the language of gin possession, where a holy man can be brought in and they write some special words from the Koran onto some paper that can be dissolved in water and drunk by the afflicted. And that is proven to be like a very practical and effective treatment. proven to be like a very practical and effective treatment. And it, it sort of like Trojan horses, some treatment practices that are recognized by Western science in terms of like, you know, peer support and frequent check-ins and, and, and that sort of

thing. But it also has its own sort of like spin and it just sort of comes from this other place. Whereas alien abductees, they don't get the sort of like mantle of cultural sensitivity, right? If an alien abductee walks into a clinical office in any country in the world and says, Hey, I've been abducted by aliens and I'm really afraid because I Worried it's gonna happen again There is sort of like there's no treatment for that other than this sort of like Cassette, you know

Well, I'm not gonna challenge your delusion. Well, that's what you're having Effectively psychology should say what symptoms is that causing? Well, I'm anxious. I'm scared. I'm not eating. I'm not sleeping Okay, let's deal with the emotion. Let's go through that. I mean what the person is saying happened Why fight about that at all? I don't see the point, you know Maybe they're just maybe it's real and the alien might come back and you still got to work with anxiety maybe it's not real and the person has you know made this metaphor that's more acceptable to their conscious mind for sexual abuse or something and it's easier to feel like I was taken to another planet and experimented on and then granddad touched me in the

woodshed and Your your therapy. I mean, how does it change? I mean the the insights gonna come back when the patient has capacity for it when the emotion is cooled down when the trauma response is not as much when you've recognized that emotion on the window of tolerance has gotten more. So I mean, why even sit there and say, Okay, what date? You know, I don't I don't understand why a lot of people need to kind of figure out what exactly happened. You're not a detective, you know, you're doing psychology. I think part of the root of it is that scientists and scientifically trained, evidence-driven practitioners don't want to put the wind beneath the wings of beliefs that they think are patently false. So if I start talking to you about the aliens, then I'm sort of like endorsing this idea of aliens that I do not think is true. I think that's sort of like the driving underlying motivation behind the reasons that scientists and, you know, those in healthcare and mental health fields in particular cause them to just sort

of like dismiss or reject those things, to debunk them. And I think they think like, oh, yeah, we don't want to legitimize those beliefs and give them more power. But well, I don't know why you would need to legitimize it. I mean, I have to follow evidence-based practice. I have a board. I'm licensed. I have to justify any clinical intervention I do. And I don't sit there and say, yeah, I think the alien is real and this is what's happening any more than I would say, you know, sit there and focus on if the person's bringing in traumatic incident that's more plausible. I mean, I wouldn't sit there and be like, yeah, you know, what you

the point of the treatment is to say, how's this affecting you? And how can you get better? And how can you change? So I mean, when I'm saying that you take it seriously, but not literally, I don't mean that you validate anything that is unhealthy. I just mean that there's not really a fight that I see you have to have from a therapy perspective. It's probably a level of nuance that's way above my pay grade because I'm not a therapist, but I would imagine that some practitioners would feel

that if they're not directly challenging it, then they are leaving the door open for that person to go home to their family and their concerned family member says, well, did the therapist tell you that you were wrong and that there's not a goblin under your bed? And have the patient say, no, no, he actually, he thinks that, he agrees that it's there,

but we're dealing with it. Yeah. Like that's, that's not the answer. Maybe that some concerned people would be looking for, you know, as, as off base as that might be. I've had patients that came in and felt like they were being gang stalked or that, um, and sometimes medication, you know, dopamine disorders need medication. I make everybody mad with my perspective on the podcast because people, you should say that crystals heal you without and I would throw your antipsychotic in the toilet. And I'm like, no, I don't think that. And then there's other people that are like,

well, you're a crank and a pseudoscientist because you're open to something that I'm not. So I kind of get it from both sides, but none of those patients, I didn't endorse the thing that they were doing that was not gonna have a good result for them. I told them what the result of that is. If you tell people about this thing,

they're probably gonna have this reaction because this isn't a common experience that a lot of people don't think about this. So if you keep doing it, you're probably gonna get that reaction. But this is what I would do with those emotions. And we did brain spotting, we did somatic experiencing. Some of them did QAG brain mapping and neuromodulation.

And most of those people at the end of it said, I realized that this was actually sexual abuse and I didn't want to make that true because I thought I loved this person or I wasn't allowed to have these thoughts about him. But I never got there with anyone debating them and telling them, I will not endorse your belief because your belief is not. I just didn't do that. I don't think that's effective. I think that's a way that you make those people feel more alone and get them to leave. But I don't enable people. I mean, I'm the joke with my friends

is I'm like the anti-social worker. Like I'm not, I'll tell you what I think and I'm not gonna lie to patients. I'm not gonna lie to anybody really. And those are really powerful results. So yeah, I think you're maybe unusual in your ability to sort of like hold respect for without explicitly endorsing.

You know, I think there are a lot of people who cannot navigate that quite as deftly as you can. Well, I think that's sad. I think that's something that that should the industry should aspire to to make more common, you know, and not to be like me. Yeah, I don't have the answer for you. And I don't do all kinds of therapy, but to find ways to open the door to real people. You know, and if they are, if they are motivated by sort of like a desire to not endorse and legitimize the what they think of as sort of lackadue beliefs,

my concern is that they are themselves becoming delegitimized by their refusal to sort of accommodate those sorts of beliefs. When you have large members of the public who are turning to ghost hunters and mediums and, and, um, uh, psychics and alien peer support groups to explain, uh, the world to them. Uh, people who are, you know, nothing against those, those, um, people who identify in those fields, but they are not, there's no training.

I can hang out a ghost, uh, a ghost hunter shingle on my front door tomorrow. Right. And start accepting clients. And when they tell me that they're hearing voices or feeling uneasy I can tell them whatever the heck I want to Right. And so that's sort of like the danger There was a place I have a friend in Florence, Alabama And he had a neighbor who seriously needed help and she didn't have a lot of money and whatever and there was a very predatory Organization like every time she was trying to lot of money and whatever and there was a very predatory organization like every time She was trying to save this money and this van would pull up It looked like the scooby-doo mystery machine

I don't remember the name of the company but it had some You know ghost stoppers or whatever and these people would go in with gas and stuff and she was trying to feed her kids And they had all these doodads and it's just clearly not what she needed. You know, it wasn't that the house The house was not the problem, you know, the environment was not the problem. It was something on the inside that needed to be witness That's how I mean that stuff is abusive. I mean, I don't think that I'm not endorsing exploiting anybody Yeah, yeah And so I think like if the

And yet, you know people are you know that that? if the, um, and yet, you know, people are, you know, that, that, uh, customers, you know, that, that victim was more comfortable calling those ghost hunters in Scooby Doo Van than she was calling a legit practitioner. Um, and if the industry was more open, if there was more of a language who accept that, I don't know that the business model of the, you know, $2,000 visit ghost hunter would be there You know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you can sort of like attack that on two fronts, right one you can require evidence based folks to be more open and inclusive and and have a welcoming environment for people who are in those worlds and two you can

sort of like create a a class of let's say ghost hunters who are licensed and who are trained. Yeah, maybe not. We're not in it for $2,000 an hour from people on, you know, welfare, basically. Yeah, right, right, right. Because they want to look for ghosts and yeah, better reasons. And people who are trained to sort of like mitigate the harmful effects that they might otherwise be prone to. You know, so like if the person describes hearing voices in their head, yeah, a licensed ghost hunter might say, all right, you know, I'm gonna look for demons, but let's also

connect you with this therapist, you know, but let's also connect you with this therapist. But let's also sort of like the complimentary medicine approach. I think I said this in the quack book, in some states there are like state boards of homeopathy. I do not believe in homeopathy at all. It's got some very odd ideas at its heart that don't pass a smell test. But a lot of people believe in homeopathy and what these state boards do, like for example, in the state of Nevada

is they ensure that a homeopathic practitioner who's treating a cancer patient isn't telling that cancer patient to stay away from the doctor And they're ensuring that their practitioners are not having sexual relationships with it with their their clients or patients Yeah, so just sort of like maintaining a basis of ethics There's a

astrology body in Birmingham or Alabama I know that because they have to refer to us They're they're more comfortable with our therapy Oh because they want to make sure that astrologers aren't saying I'm gonna treat your borderline personality disorder with planet They have some that's medical issue. So, you know, we'll get a call from from some of them That's absolutely fantastic. And like so what that does is that creates like in Birmingham, there's a, a class of fortune tellers who have found a home in the system and therefore have a stake in keeping this whole institutional thing rolling.

Right. Well, I mean, doctors, if you go back to those medical boards of like, when people were fighting about herbal medicine, when it was all, you know, kind of whatever, I forget the name of the guy that wrote etedorfa, which is this really wild novel and he has this huge library of like herbal medicine when it was all, you know, kind of whatever. I forget the name of the guy that wrote Etidorfa, which is this really wild novel. And he has this huge library of like herbal medicine and his organization is one that lost, even though it has some better organizations that came now.

But like, I mean, we licensed doctors of osteopathy, who believes in osteopathy? I mean, they're practicing medicine and they have to just because of this weird licensure requirement, if you get a DO instead of an MD, you have to memorize certain movements that bones do that don't do anything that don't heal you. I mean, like the school still has to do it. Cause it's part of their credentialing, but like no one thinks osteopathy.

And you know, sorry to the one listener out there who will email me, but like generally even the D O's that I've talked to, you know, don't think that that works, but that's baked into this institution. You know, a lot of this stuff, you know, have you ever looked at that? It's, it's pretty weird. No, no. Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of DOs, they're great doctors, but a lot of people have, I mean, cause they practice medicine, they can do the same thing any EMD can do. Um, but there's just, there's just this added,

I mean, there were points in American history where there were like nine competing medical boards that all thought the other one was cranks. And for some reason, DLND are the ones that won. That's really, really funny. Are you familiar with Joseph Campbell? I know you play D&D. So probably some overlap. That sounds familiar, but I can't. He's like the hero, Joseph Campbell was like the mythographer from the seventies that like inspired Star Wars and a bunch of that stuff with the hero's

journey, that idea. But him and like John Dominic Croissant, well, Joseph Campbell has this quote about myths are private dreams or yeah, myths are public dreams. Dreams are private myths. And John Dominic Croissant has like another line where he's talking about, I think he is Catholic, but he deals with kind of the psychology of religion

and how it represents these parts of self. And he has a thing where he was like, at the end of a talk, he'll stop and be like, I just wanna be clear that I'm not saying that ancient people talked in metaphors and we're now smart enough to decode them. I'm saying that we are now stupid enough to take metaphors literally.

And I mean, you look at like ancient Greece, Socrates gets executed saying that a ghost is talking to him that is probably a metaphor for a point that he's making. If you read Socrates, these things are kind of older. There's a lot of people that kind of go to the mat for subjective spaces being important with objective reality also. And I mean, that's such an old conversation. I don't know. I don't know if that is something that I'll hand that over to you. I don't know if any of that speaks to you or if that's just kind of out there needs to get cut out. Yeah, no, I mean, I think certainly like,

I think what it speaks to me is that it just sort of like reinforces this idea that like, well, I, you know, again, am an objective numbers science guy, you know, I'm far more a member of the skeptic community that than in any sort of believer community can recognize, you know, even I can recognize that people sort of like aren't built to just believe in objective science, right? People are built to believe in those myths and to believe in those dreams and to have those narratives that are hugely important to them, right? Much more important that, you know,

how many examples are there of, you know, the public doing something that is self-defeating because it serves sort of like a narrative, right? Yeah. And, you know And institutions have to learn how to sort of like tickle that part of the brain, and they have to learn how to accommodate those sorts of worldviews, or the institutions themselves will become obsolete. You know, history is littered with institutions that have become obsolescent and linked out of existence. And our current institutions, you know,

we're sort of like in the bubble, right? We can't imagine a place without, you know, big hospitals and government and a massive church and all of this stuff. But right outside that bubble, there are times in human history and perhaps times in human future that are not sort of dominated by those centralized institutional power structures. And I think that that's a really frightening idea on some level, but it's also sort of like an opportunity on some level. And But it's also sort of like an opportunity on some level. And if institutions want to change that,

they have to serve the people better. They have to share those dreams with the populations that they serve and find that closer space with the public. You know, they just need to, to, to hold more respect. And I would say that comes from giving the public more information, not being afraid of, well, the bigger the research study, the bigger the audience is the press. And so I'm going to try and withhold information or put up walls or condescend. I think that when you do that, you're really fueling right-wing extremism in a scary way.

We saw some of that during COVID where people are saying, well, the public's not ready to know this information. They'll get too confused. And it fueled conspiracy theories. If they had just said, yeah, there are some, the problems with this or, you know, right now there's a shortage of masks, so please leave them for healthcare workers, you know, then I think they switched over to now everyone has to wear a mask, it would have felt, people would have felt more empowered, felt more informed and a part of the process.

And I just watched that be so mishandled. Um, and, and things, um, I don't know. I mean, that be so mishandled and and things. I don't know. I mean, that is that kind of what you're saying or is that? Yeah, I mean, I think absolutely. Like, I find the lapses of transparency to be sort of less prevalent, I suppose. You know, they that we see them when there's a lot of heat and pressure on an issue So maybe an app point, you know to that point like they're the most they're choosing the most damaging times to be less than transparent

Right. Yeah, I think other people like they're stupid. They will act like they're stupid, you know Yeah, if you treat people with respect they will they will Be more likely to rise to the occasion people with respect, they will be more likely to rise to the occasion. Yeah, yeah, I absolutely believe that. And, you know, and yeah, there is that sense that like, you can't you can't give the American public a hard truth. And everybody in government sort of like bending over backwards to do that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you mentioned how like on the left they were withholding certain pieces of information or you know the the government was from this sort of like protectionist uh place but you know Trump was sort of doing the opposite where he was saying like oh yeah there's no COVID everything's fine. Yeah and when I don't think that's awesome that's just yeah that's just wrong I don't mean that isn't what I mean. Like you give them more information. Yeah. But it was that same sort of like protectionist, uh, idea of like, well, I don't want people to worry. They're both avoidant. They're both avoidant about a problem and avoidance.

Yeah. To very bad stuff, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I, I do think do think you know transparency is an issue, but I think it's Probably not the greatest issue from my perspective. I think yeah from my perspective We need more deliverable outcomes from government. Mm-hmm. We need folks to feel like they are in a stable Country yeah and a stable world You know what one of the you probably knew about this before I wrote about it, but there was an anthropologist who went to the South Pacific Islands around 1900 and documented the different fishing

techniques of some indigenous folks who lived in sort of like an island system. And when they wanted to catch fish from the coral reefs, they would sort of like, you know, mash up a poisonous root and stick it on a stick and go out and throw a net over a coral reef. Stick in the stick, the poison would come out of the root, the fish would flound her into the net and they would go home with dinner. And that was a very stable way to get food and it had no sort of like superstitious behaviors attached to it. Now they did the thing because they knew the thing worked and they knew that that would get them the calories and food they needed to see the next day. When those same folks went shark fishing,

it was a dramatically different experience in terms of supernatural beliefs. There was a magic man of the village who instituted all sorts of taboos on whether, you know, you couldn't sing, you couldn't have sex, you couldn't whistle, you couldn't have sex, you couldn't whistle, you had to wear certain clothing. And then when it was shark hunting day. Would you normally have sex while you were shark hunting? Like does that need to be?

Well, like I'm talking about, like, good question, John. I'm glad you raised that. No, the answer is no. This is like the two months leading up to shark hunting season. Yeah, I don't need to presume, you know, how you hunt sharks or kink shame. You've been doing it all wrong. Yeah. Now when I have to shark, it's it's it's pretty steamy. You know, the jaws. Oh my god. They go out in these boats on the open ocean in a dangerous spot weather-wise and they

have these sort of like sticks with shells strung along the sticks and they shake those sticks underwater and it mimics the sound of a shoal of fish jumping in and out of the water. And then when the shark comes to that sound, they bash in the shark's head with like a piece of like stove wood essentially. And that is not at all a sure thing, right? That's a very chaotic endeavor without a lot of hope of success. And because it's such a, a sort of like chaotic, uncertain area of their lives, they attach all sorts of superstitions because they didn't have any other sort of way to, to have the confidence of control that they had when they were fishing in the coral reefs.

And so when a society is more chaotic, when we feel like we have less control over our lives, you know, certainly we feel like we have less control over our lives, certainly we're going to be more prone to turning to supernatural explanations for things. Maybe we can compartmentalize where we can ask an astrologer about how to cope with grief, but we can still ask an accountant to do our finances. But maybe we can still ask an accountant to do our finances, but maybe we can't you know, maybe we're just you know a couple generations away from Asking our astrologer to do our finances

uh I think a lot of when I was saying that I think we're approaching something with institutional decline that looks kind of like the 70s is Like anytime an empire star is waning You see a rise in a belief in magic. And that's why I get so frustrated with people where I'm like, even if you believe this, you want the same political outcome I want,

if you press this button, it does this. Like it just, it does. And like when you look at, because, and it makes sense because like when the Edward Endre has like a cool diagram and ego and archetype where he's talking about the thing where the institution is containing the archetypes Versus where the unconscious is speaking directly to people and the intuition looks a lot like, you know schizophrenia but there's like this you go back to like Rome and when they're the

Gaul is getting paraded through the streets with elephants and they they're like, the empire reflects your ego. Your personal power is the nation, or the religious cult is an extension of your personal power, so you have power and certainty. People feel okay, or okay, well, the empire's not doing so hot, but we're gonna pay for these gladiatory games, go watch football, and your team's gonna win, and you're gonna get, it's a reflection of my ego.

When you say All the all the political options are bad. You're not gonna get what you want Yeah, you can go vote but it's the ending of Mass Effect 3 then what happens is People go inward to find a source of certainty and and and sometimes with interesting results I mean, I don't think that process is entirely bad. But like yeah when you say interesting results. I mean, I don't think that process is entirely bad. But like, yeah, when you say, left or right, whatever you want, the political options are terrible, and you're not going to get what you want, and the empire doesn't do anything that you want. And yeah, we have these huge group of issues that are bipartisan, that everyone wants. Neither political party will touch them. What you get is 60% of your population believing in magic every

time. That's why Mithraic cults exploded in Rome. Like, if you do that, that's what you get. And there's people that want to be like, well, I go on to Wikipedia and I cite my sources and I have a thing where you can check the meme for accuracy. It doesn't matter. If you continue to have a political stagnation like we're doing, what you get is this, you know? and, and you, you could say you don't like that, but not accepting that it's just a refusal to accept the way the world works on its own terms. You know, this pretend it's absolutely true. And whether we chalk that instability up to, you know, hyper partisanship or late stage capitalism, or just sort of like societal decay or the internet or whatever it is, you're

absolutely right that it seems inevitable that these beliefs are going to be spiking around now. And it's really, really important that we figure out ways to cope with and overcome that and still have faith in one another and in our collective actions. Because that's really what's sort of like its sake here is the belief in a shared reality. Yeah. Right? Yeah. If your normal beliefs that prize the individual experience over a shared reality, whether

that shared reality is, you know, the dogma of a church or the outcome of a scientific study, you know, the facts, then you really have a radically different society that may not be able to take care of its people in the same way that we have right now. And if that's the way we're going, we got to bridge that gap and make sure that that's a positive change in society and not just this sort of like degradation and collapse

like has happened in the past as you point out to. Well, I mean, I think, you know, both political parties don't really want to do the things that I mean, to a certain extent, some elements I think in the Republicans do it like a lot of the Democrats, people are like, we've seen you get elected, we've seen you have a supermajority, we've seen you control three branches of government. And then you were like, Oh, well, somehow mcconnell's stopping me I don't know. I have to wait till 100% of everyone agrees with me to do anything and When you do that You know people quit believing you and you know when people can see not even the weird coincidences and deep esoteric

Whatever, I mean when people can just see okay the Panama paper things happen and the official story does not make sense. The people you're punishing are not even the ones when the Epstein thing happens. I mean, those, and no one will touch these things. You know, when just every 15 years we say, oh, oops, the CIA did something really bad but no one was punished and we promise we won't do it again

but no one was held accountable and we'll do this 12 years later. You know, since when you continue to do that, you know, what do you expect to happen? And when you have neither political party will do anything, I think that, and I'm not trying to make a political point, I'm just trying to make a psychology one that like, you're feeding all of these things

that are ripping these institutions down that you claim to love based on your own avoidance of those issues and those hard problems. And I think that you look at that really honestly at the end of this one. It seems like that we've cut out so many exceptions to transparency in the name of national security or the name of sort of like shielding medical practitioners from consequences and all that sort of thing. Like, you know, those are good goals, I suppose, to maintain national security and to allow a practitioner to- Did it work? Is the world better? I mean, Noam Chomsky has got a pretty good line in the end of one of his books about like, if you look at the war in Iraq and you look at everything

that we did after 9 11, assume we did nothing and we took this money and we spent it on anything else. Yeah, lighting it on fire may have been better than what we did. Yeah. Yeah. The effects we're dealing with now and will be over the next 25 years from that foreign policy experiment. But there's no accountability. John Bolton is back in the White House for a minute

until someone else is. It's like, can we take some of that hyperlogic and objectivity that we claim to do and maybe look at people who have been wrong about foreign policy every time they've opened their mouth for 80 years and get them out of the Senate. Can we do that? Right, right, right. Absolutely. And we defend them because there's no one else until they're so old, they have dementia. And so it's mean to criticize them, but they still have to

be wielding the keys to nuclear missiles. I mean, what is that system? And how do you expect anybody to go into a hospital and be like, yeah, this makes sense. I believe in authority and stuff. It's it's money in politics. It's special interests. It's it's yeah, it's a, and one of the things that's so frustrating about it is that every time there's sort of like a surge of, you know, what I'll call progressive, progressivism, but because I am a progressive, is, you know, every advancement of worker rights, say, is sort of like, grappled with by the capitalistic powers that be, and they just evolve new systems. And so every time there's an advance, we make the system tougher and the game gets harder to beat. And it takes so much collective action to achieve anything for members of the public.

And the power structure just sort of like adapts and evolved. You know, I did you were you a comic book fan? I've read some yeah. All right. I was really into like the Marvel comics for a while when I was a teen and there was like this group called the West Coast Avengers they had Hawkeye and some of the others and Avengers. They had Hawkeye and some of the others. And they got into this fight against this robot creature or whatever. They would go out and the individuals on the team would defeat it, but every time it got defeated, it just reprogrammed to accommodate that flaw that had led to that loss. that flaw that had led to that loss. And that's sort of like what the capitalistic

powers are that run the world. And it's really dispiriting. And, you know, it really does feel like they're being very well served by the current chaos. They're kind of immune to protests at this point. I mean, protests were a scary thing in the 70s. I don't know that they are anymore. You know? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's absolutely true. A public reaction is just kind of built into the system and the, the, the mathematics to be accounted for in a way where it changes, uh, take the option for changes taken away from you, which is, you know, what we're talking about few feeds, a lot of these problems. People feel that whether or not they consciously are aware of it, they, they feel it and that energy goes somewhere. They're just so insulated and you know, Starbucks puts a lot more thought into what symbols

they're going to put on their coffee cup than they do on their coffee. They have to pay anyone a fair wage because the coffee cup symbology will motivate people and the fair wage will not you know You'll not see people turning out on the streets in anger or the fact that You know workers aren't getting paid a livable wage say and not to pick on Starbucks specifically, but You know choose choose your company. Well, I think what you're talking about at the end what you're implying I think is incentive structures. I mean people want to like cancel this or get mad at one company I mean I remember there was like a huge thing where

People were angry with Walmart for doing something and I was like was the thing legal they're like, yeah But stop Walmart and I was like, yeah Maybe you put enough pressure on Walmart to do it a different way But everyone else will make it illegal if you don't want them to do it I mean, there's a whole thing where people are like, oh subway puts a chemical that's allowed to make it illegal if you don't want them to do it. I mean, there's a whole thing where people are like, oh, Subway puts a chemical that's allowed to, that is used to make yoga mats and the bread.

And in Europe, you can't even feed this to mice in a lab, but we feed it to kids here. And so Subway is bad. And it's like, is it legal to put that chemical in food? Why? If the incentive structure allows it and incentivizes you to do it, most people will do it. But we want to make personal accountability work like for corporations or something in this weird way where it's like

You can't cancel Halliburton in the same way you can cancel Neil Gaiman, you know, you you have to say Go out and do this speaking of comic books. Yeah Yeah, I I think that Someone to the stuff that you'd say is is really interesting. You also speak truth to power and one important point Circus peanuts are terrible. I don't think since banana. What's there's been a worse candy Who is buying them Talk about things that ought to be illegal. They're always in the bag where if you buy two, you get it for like nine cents cheaper or something.

I'd like one circus peanut, please. OK, but for four dollars less, you can have all of these circus peanuts. You can have a bat of them. OK, I guess I got to buy the best. Yeah, we give people a little sample, too, because there's one place where you mentioned me in the book, which is the circus. have all of these circus peanuts you can have a bat of them okay I guess I gotta buy the bat yeah we'll give people a little sample too because there's one place where you mentioned me in the book which I appreciate so just go ahead and get to that um here we go please do this is this is not my voice this is Matt's voice it's read in right in his voice um my investigation led me to

Alabama where I met a shoeless dullard of a social worker shirtless grubby barbecue grease smeared overalls. His dull sad eyes peered out beneath the brim of a loosely woven straw hat. His reptile like tongue licked gnats and beads of perspiration from his patchy mustache, delicately savoring each indiscriminately as if they were the sweetest ambrosia. So this is beautiful prose. I mean, that's like looking into a mirror. I don't know how you-

Thank you. That was actually the first draft. I'm so surprised that that made sense. So that is not where actually Matt's writing. If you want to read it, you should buy the book on Amazon. Is there a place where people can buy it that is more beneficial to you? Well, no, I do get asked that and I always appreciate the question, but the answer is just no, you

know, get it from your library. You know, like I don't care. What is good for me is people reading it and liking it and talking about it to friends and family and sort of like building that culture of appreciation for it. And that is that is money in my pocket at the end of the day. And it also makes me feel very good. So if you if you have, you know, 30 bucks, go buy the hardcover. If you don't get it from the library, go steal it out of Joel's office. Oh yeah, yeah, because you had what two, three copies of If It Walks Like A Quack disappeared from the waiting room. I love the idea of like a bit about somebody that's obsessed with evidence-based practice in medicine and also a thief.

and also a thief. Yeah, and Matt's first two books, so Libertarian Walks Into a Bear. I mean, there's a great, if you want a sample of that one, there's a great write up in, I think, the Atlantic or something. What is it? And this is the New Republic. The New Republic.

Yeah. That's a great preview of that one. It's a great book. And it walks like a quack. It's a really interesting kind of walk through The scientific method and the ways that people grift in health care and this one's fantastic. I think goes live is my favorite Just yeah, and there's a lot of places where you just let this stuff be as funny as it is what with in a loving way And it's just it's really sweet. It's touching dills into all of these questions about our society.

It's beautiful. If nothing else, you learn so much about the inner workings of a paranormal-themed organization. Everything from a psychomantium to a psychic fair to a ghost hunt. There's just all sorts of interesting settings and devices in the narrative that lend themselves to a really fun experience, I think, in the reading. So thank you, Joel, so much for saying such kind things about the book.

And I'm really looking forward to being able to see more people read it and and hopefully share your enjoyment of it Why I really appreciate you coming on I want to be respectful of your time if there's anything that because I know you're an hour ahead of me So it's probably late there and we but if if there's anything that you want to talk about or things we can do as Trying to structure the conversation so there were certain clips I could cut around to get the sciency crowd and then a funny joke for my Instagram and like different things together

But if there's anything you want to go on about you know I'm happy to continue and then put that I can put that in you know earlier in the interview or anything Let me think for just a second if I want to take advantage of that it is it is getting Pretty late here, but sorry. I'm sorry that our no no no it's not on you at all I'm looking at everything left on my like notes from the book And they're either pretty abstract or they're like jokes about echo the dolphin being like RFKs dreams and things like that Well yeah, I guess I think the one thing that I'll say is that I do think our current environment of institutional distrust and sort of like anti-institutionalism is maybe the most pressing political issue of our time. Yeah. It is at the root of everything that's wrong with America and all of our institutions

and talking heads that are trying to address the idea of institutional distrust by debunking conspiracy theories and talking about science literacy and all that, they're all completely off base. They've identified the problem, but they haven't identified the solution. And I think that folks who read the book will get a different perspective into how you can thwart a conspiracy theory by understanding the conspiracy theorists behind it. And you can-

And I would say the emotion under the conspiracy theory and the material need that is fueling that emotion. you know, if you provide healthcare, if you provide these things, you know, what you're going to get what you say you want, you know, so let's go ahead and separate the people who say they want it and the people who actually want it, you know, politically. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And, and, and how we can sort of like, you know, co-opt might be choosing too strong a word, but how you can harness the energy behind this very vibrant culture that encompasses a large swath of America and had that work for the public good instead of its current harmful expressions. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I really appreciate your time. It's wonderful to speak with you. Hunt for ghosts inside our hearts cause we'll never give up Wishing that we live on, baby we live on

In our song, our haunted song