Was I In A Cult? - RFK, MAHA Moms, & The Cult of Wellness: “The Divided Truth”

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

This week we're diving into the cultish side of wellness culture. Liz sits down with Dr. Laura Erlich, DTCM, LAc, FABORM — a licensed acupuncturist and fertility specialist who spent decades bridging Eastern and Western medicine… until the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the dangerous cracks beneath the surface.Laura shares her deeply personal story: growing up with health-conscious "hippie" parents, enduring the trauma of losing both parents young, and building a career dedicated to healing and helping. But when misinformation about vaccines and COVID exploded within her professional circles, Laura found herself isolated from a community she once considered home.LINKS & RESOURCESFind Dr. Laura: www.mothernurturela.comFollow Dr. Laura: Instagram/Facebook: @mothernurturewellnessDr. Laura’s Recommendations:Books: Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism by Peter Hotez Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure by Paul Offit, MDPodcasts: Conspirituality (an unbiased science podcast) Maintenance Phase (debunking wellness and diet culture myths)Science Influencers to Follow:@drnoc@niniandthebrain@epidemiologistkat@unbiasedscipod@your_local_epidemiologistUnbiased Vaccine Resources: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP Vaccine Education Center) Skeptical Raptor VaxopediaFollow Us for More Culty Content: Instagram/TikTok: @wasiinacultSupport the Show: If Was I In A Cult? has impacted you, please take a moment to rate and review — it helps new listeners find us! Want ad-free episodes and bonus content? Join our Patreon (link to your Patreon page)!Share Your Story: Have a cultic experience you want to share? We’d love to hear from you. Reach out at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I remember when the COVID shots first came out, there was a lot of confusion about whether it was safe for fertility. And I was one of the first people to say, look, here's the data so far, it is safe for fertility and cost benefit analysis, it's better than COVID. And oh my God, I got attacked for that. Now, five years later, we know for sure there's no issues with COVID shots and fertility or pregnancy. But then we didn't. So it was fine if they were saying, it's going to kill you, but it was not okay for me to say no, that's not true. Actually, here's what the true facts are. So the adherence to the belief system was so intense, very cult-like.

Welcome, everyone, to Was I in a Cult? I'm Liz Iacuzzi. And I'm Tyler Meesom. And today's episode is a bit of a departure, but not very far because it's still about cults. Perhaps less robes and rituals and more group texts and green juice. Today, we're exploring the overlap between wellness culture, vaccine skepticism and what happens when the search for truth becomes belief and starts to replace real evidence. Our guest is Dr. Laura Erlich, a licensed acupuncturist and fertility specialist who spent decades bridging the gap between Eastern and Western medicine. But when the

pandemic hit, that bridge collapsed and Laura found herself at ground zero in the clash between Western medicine and the ever expanding wellness industrial complex. And at the center of it all, a charismatic leader, of course, one Robert F. Kennedy Jr. R.F.K. Jr., a man who went from respected, respected, I think, respected environmental lawyer to the figurehead of a growing movement rooted in distrust and the belief that powerful institutions are actively causing us harm. A belief that has drawn in millions, including a large passionate group of mothers, convinced they're fighting for their family's survival.

Yes, they call themselves the ma-ha moms, as in make America healthy again. But for many, health advocacy has become so emotionally charged that challenging those beliefs, even mildly, can mean being cut off or cut out. And if you think this is just a fringe issue or something that was left back in 2020, well, think again. Because, spoiler alert, it ain't just Jenny McCarthy anymore. Liz sat down with our wonderful guest, so please welcome her to the show. I'm Dr. Laura Erlich.

I am a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. So I sort of have a very long history working in the wellness space. Where'd you grow up? I was born in New York City, but I was raised in LA from age four. My parents were really like young, hippie, healthy people. When I was six, my dad was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. He was at that time given five years to live and I kind of watched him go, no, fuck that, I'm not going to die in five years. I want to watch my kids grow up. So he and my mom kind of embarked on this dual journey of becoming very new agey.

My mom immediately shifted our diet and we were eating tons of vegetables and this was the 80s where everyone was eating so much processed crap. So I kind of had these equal memories as a kid of one, listening to my dad like violently ill from chemotherapy. And at the same time, I have these memories of going to these healing circles and getting in touch with nature but the type of chemotherapy my dad was given left him with a very high risk of recurrent cancer and also a bazillion side effects we had like quintuple bypass surgery when I was 11 because the

chemo destroyed arteries in his heart. The big plot twist was that when I was 16, my mother developed leukemia. And so my mom died when I was 17. So I was a senior in high school. And then a month later, my dad was diagnosed with that recurrence. My father was now being sent to Seattle for a bone marrow transplant.

And my sister and I had to spend every other week in Seattle giving platelets for my dad's literal survival. So meanwhile, I'm like flying around the country trying to get into college. And like, I just sort of became this emancipated adult really early. And my dad did survive the bone marrow transplant and he lived another four years,

which was pretty miraculous. But he passed away when I was a senior in college. It's like the grief and intensity of that. I just wasn't prepared for what the world was going to be like without them. But the medical path wasn't always the plan for Laura. So my undergrad training was in classical theater and I was really interested in being in the theater.

So that's why I decided to move to New York. Then I was like tired in being in the theater. So that's why I decided to move to New York. Then I was like tired of being a waitress so I decided to go to massage school. You know, it was a really intensive program. We worked with cadavers, we learned anatomy, we learned biosciences, and we also learned shiatsu massage and the Chinese medical model. But what that time really did for me is get me in a place of starting to recognize that like I was really injured by the trauma emotionally. My spirit was pretty jacked up from that whole experience. And so that took me into the world of alternative medicine. So it really became this time for me where my nervous system slowly was starting to reset itself.

A few years later, I moved back to Los Angeles. I ended up deciding to go to acupuncture school and was finding myself suddenly single and happy. Life was really good for the first time. And then I met my now husband of the last 20 years and we had our son a few years later. I literally got my acupuncture license two weeks after he was born. He was born in 2007 so it was you know less than a decade earlier that the Andrew Wakefield study came out. That was a terrible study. Tell us just for the audience that doesn't know who Andrew Wakefield or what this is. So Andrew Wakefield is a British medical doctor who has since been stripped of his medical

license. But the ultimate conclusion of the study was that there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. And the conclusions were, they were like daft. It made no sense. But of course, a lie spreads a lot faster than the truth. And so it infiltrated the whole wellness world and the mom world very quickly. And so I found myself coming up in this wellness environment with a son and having to make all these medical decisions on his behalf. And I did find myself briefly feeling like, should I be vaccinating? Is this dangerous? It's a question that so many parents have faced, especially in wellness-focused cities like Los

Angeles, where conversations around vaccines could feel less like science and more like social identity. Meanwhile, he was like fine after every single one. He's never, he's just a kid with a great immune system. He never gets really sick. And why do you think this was even a thing that Andrew Wakefield was even pursuing? I think he was pursuing it honestly for financial gain because he was developing a single shot. It just so happened that he had the cure to the problem

he also had invented. And where were we as a nation around autism at that point? Where we were was in a place of, it seems like autism is on the rise and we don't know why. And we're looking for an answer. And we don't want to accept that the answer is genetic, right? And in actuality, if you talk to child development specialists or pediatricians who specialize in autism,

they will tell you the autism rates haven't really increased per se. We're diagnosing it better. We're recognizing it better. We've acknowledged that it's a wide spectrum that many of us fall onto. better. We've acknowledged that it's a wide spectrum that many of us fall onto. You know, I used to have no idea what to get my mom for Mother's Day or my wife, especially when she hits me with that classic, oh, you know, you don't have to get me anything.

Yeah, you know what that means. You better get her something. And not a candle and not a panic plant. Something good, Tyler. Okay, right. Like what? Go to Quince. I'm serious. You can get everything there. It's your one stop shop for classy, thoughtful. Wow, you actually tried gifts. They have cashmere sweaters for 50 bucks, 14 karat gold jewelry, Italian leather bags, fragrances, shoes. It goes on and on. It's all there.

Yeah, but Liz, I mean, luxury usually means remortgage your house, right? Said Tyler. Not with Quinn's, Tyler. This stuff is 50 to 80% less than other brands and they work directly with top factories, no middleman. So you're paying for quality, not branding. All right, so look, we are reading an ad, but actually I get a lot of stuff from Quince.

I really do. I do too. I really like that. I love Quince. I really like it. I got my mom these amazing PJs and she doesn't know that I only paid not very much for them. You're a good daughter. Oh shit, she listens to this.

Oh shh. Great. Well, maybe my wife won't say it's the thought that counts this year with that tone. You know the tone. You've probably perfected it. It's the thought that counts. Now, just remember not to order in a panic the night before. Get ahead of it, guys. Shop Mother's Day at Quinn's. Go to quints.com slash Colt for free shipping, 365-day returns. That's q-u-i-n-c dot com slash colt.

Quince dot com slash colt. We're getting better. Hey, you know that out of sight, out of mind line? Well, it turns out it applies to subscriptions as well. So I got rocket money. Help me see how much I was wasting. I had no idea I was still paying for half of the subscriptions I was paying for. You sign up and you forget. I know. I've done it.

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Download the app today and tell them you heard it from us. Please. Thank you. See you later. Appreciate it. So we're back. Although from the end we just read we never really left. Question is, did you? Did you, listener?

So prior to those few moments of abject capitalism, Dr. Laura was discussing the Wakefield study. I think you have to actually go back before Wakefield to understand that in the 1980s, there were a large group of parents who started claiming that vaccines were causing harm to their children. And they started suing the vaccine companies. And this is something that is very counter to the anti-vax narrative, but I'm going to drop a bomb here and say that vaccines are not a lucrative thing for pharmaceutical companies.

It's not like a medication people are taking every day. That's where they make money, right? One-off vaccines in a child, it's not a moneymaker for them. So in order to get them not to abandon the whole thing and say, if we're going to get sued every five minutes because these people are making claims, it's difficult to defend against somebody's singular claim with a regular jury of our peers, 12 people. So out of that, with the agreement of the vaccine companies, a separate court was developed called the VICP.

And that was a place where parents were able to go and make claims about vaccine injury. And instead of being evaluated by a jury of our peers, they were evaluated by medical doctors and scientists. And they came to a conclusion about whether or not that was really a vaccine injury or not. What happened from there is that the anti-vax movement was sort of fueled by it, essentially, because now they were saying, see, we need a separate vaccine court and it's a scam and people don't understand what vaccine injury is. Now, a movement needs fuel, and the vaccine court was the match.

What was meant to protect science from chaos became the, quote, proof that a cover-up was happening, and suddenly belief hardened. Sides were drawn, and the war on vaccines went mainstream. And so the Andrew Wakefield thing was like a, see, I told you so, a decade later, essentially. So then that further fueled the anti-vax community. And then from there, it was just like setting off a wildfire,

basically, because now everybody is out here saying, my child's autism is because of vaccines. And the public health community is saying, we understand you think that, but it's not the case. The anti-vax world became so entrenched because they all, line in the sand, decided that Western medicine, Western science, Western doctors are all in a deep state cult of their own, basically, with a desire to harm, which completely goes against everything in their training. And that set up this adversarial environment between the pharmaceutical industry and the Crunchy Mom wellness community, essentially. So we were all cruising along in this kind of world where some people were saying, don't get vaccinated,

don't do certain things at birth like a vitamin K shot, antibiotics, all these things were kind of being questioned. And so I'd been doing this for a long time at that point and finding myself more and more entrenched in Western medicine. Because as a fertility specialist, every single day I'm guiding patients who are going through these major procedures, right? They're taking medicine, they're doing shots, they're having retrievals, they're using technology and science and medicine at the highest level. So I was also surrounded by people, midwives and other doulas and other acupunctures. But I was also in the hospital attending C-sections, sitting in the OR with women who were needing like the most advanced medical care, advising

them about whether they should get a pertussis vaccine while they're pregnant. And the answer is yes, yes, you should. You don't want to give that to your baby or you don't want your baby to get that. Yes, that's whooping cough. And yeah, you should protect your child from whooping cough unless you're planning to raise a 19th century Dickens orphan who sells matches in the snow and dies in Act Two from a cough. The Western stuff is not your enemy. The Eastern stuff can help you or the wellness stuff can help you maybe be healthier. Major inflammation might be lower or your're sleeping better or digestion is better, but it doesn't protect you from killer diseases. It's not like a one for one exchange there.

But we should also be willing to accept when the scientific method has been executed and it's been replicated and peer reviewed and they've all drawn the same conclusion. reviewed and they've all drawn to the same conclusion. And what seems like a running theme now on our show? March 2020 rolls the F around. But when the pandemic started, it was a wildfire. Because suddenly those same people that were kind of the wind at their backs from what happened in the 80s that, oh no, now vaccine companies are not able to be sued. This is the story that they have created.

And that again, that isn't true. Now this community who fully convinced themselves and to this day genuinely does believe that the COVID vaccines were designed to either control us or harm us. Last thing before we go tonight, the train to crazy town made an unscheduled whistle stop in Ohio this week. You're about to hear from a doctor and a nurse. Is it a combination of the protein, which now we're finding has a metal attached to it?

I'm sure you've seen the pictures all over the internet of people who've had these shots and now they're magnetized and put a key on their forehead. It sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them and they can stick Because now we think that there's a metal piece to that There has been people who've long suspected that there was some sort of an interface between what's being injected in these shots and all Of the 5g towers. So this is what I found out. So I have a key and a bobby pin here Editors note the key and the bobby pin weren't sticking to her neck and just

kept falling her hands are shaking and it's really embarrassing you gotta watch this video we'll link to it in the show notes explain to me why the key sticks to me it sticks to my neck too. Editor's note it didn't. Yeah so if somebody can explain this that would be great. I'll explain it. So most keys are made of brass, which isn't magnetic. So even if you had 5G activated vaccine blood, this isn't going to work. So I really watched the people around me just disappear into rabbit holes.

I was getting avalanches of emails and read this and watch this video. And it's all stuff where people are just misinterpreting data and using their own bias to say this is actually bad or wrong or whatever. And they're not properly reading the studies. So suddenly there's this massive divide. And I really found myself just standing in the middle of it

going, you guys, stop, this is harmful. Like a pandemic is a global public health emergency. You have to deal with the public health professionals and follow their guidance because it's not for us to decide this is safe or not safe. I mean, of course we shouldn't just blindly ingest things. We should understand how to read the actual data ourselves or find truly trusted people to help us interpret it.

At first it was her colleagues, but then it got personal. I had friends just so upset with me that I got vaccinated. I'm a healthcare worker, like I was in the first group, and I went and did it because I didn't want to give this to my patients. I also don't want to get it myself. But I was told that like, you shouldn't do this. It's going to kill you. The data is showing that everyone who gets vaccinated is going to be dead in three years.

My closest friends, who I always felt like we were kind of on the same page, but then one of them got very vaccine hesitant and she decided to try and convince me that there's a conspiracy element to this pandemic. Once they were there, there was no way to pull them out. Yeah, how did you watch that and realize, okay, this is more than just a belief system. Like this is an indoctrination into something. When all this started happening, it was almost like a feeling of visceral betrayal. That like, how can you guys be doing this?

How can you be creating an environment that's fostering the spread of this disease by saying it's not important to the spread of this disease by saying it's not important to wear a mask or by saying it's okay to travel without being vaccinated? But then as more time went on, I just found them going further and further. I was getting a lot of emails about is this true? Is that true? And I would always come back and say it's not true.

But it was almost like I would refute the claim and then I never hear from them again. I'm like stunned. And at one point, one friend decided to take her whole family on a vacation during the Omicron search, and they were all unvaccinated. And for me, that was like a real breaking point where I just emotionally was like, we're just not aligned anymore ethically. And that was quickly followed up by another friend telling me that she got COVID from the vaccine.

And I said, that's not actually scientifically possible. And she said to me, Laura, I don't need your science because God told me that I did get COVID from the vaccine and that I am going to have superpowers now. She convinced herself fully that now she was going to have these special superpowers. And it was a tipping point for me that made it impossible to proceed any further. And those have been some of the most gutting losses of my life next to my parents, because these are friends that knew them, you know, since preschool. What is the consensus sort of in the wellness versus like traditional medicine?

Unfortunately, this has created a wider rift. And you know, one of the things that I've done a lot in my own work is try to build bridges with the Western community, because my work is so integrative, because so many of my patients are using Western medicine. Unfortunately, though, what happened during the pandemic and what continues to happen now with this new administration, I think is going to set us back so far when it comes to the idea of really integrating with Western medicine. So how did this evolve into like a mass movement

with a leader? I'll give you the pleasure of naming the leader. Oh, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is certainly the current leader. So I think that the way it evolved was the iceberg was building underwater, but by the time it popped up through the surface, there was a lot of momentum behind it, which was why the pandemic was the kind of the catalyst, I think, that shifted this whole thing to where we are today.

R.F.K. Jr., I would say, is someone who suffers from something called the Dunning-Kruger effect, that unfortunately is like a virulent pathogen that has run through this entire community of people as well. The Dunning-Kruger effect is essentially to say that I learned about something and I know enough about it to now help myself as an expert, even though I'm actually not an expert and I really don't have the background. The Dunning-Kruger effect was coined in 1999 by two psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, after a hilarious but unfortunate news story caught their attention. Now a man had robbed two banks in Pittsburgh with lemon juice on his face as a disguise because he truly believed that lemon juice would make him invisible to

security cameras. Because when life gives you lemons, well, you rob a bank. You're telling me lemon juice is not invisible ink? Not that I know of, but... So you can see that I'm naked right now, but just covered in a shit ton of lemon juice. Yeah, but it's probably good for the skin. Damn it! That particular odd case inspired Dunning and Kruger to study why some people with very little knowledge or skill tend to dramatically overestimate their own competence.

They discovered that when you lack expertise in a subject, you also lack the tools to recognize your own mistakes. So they ran a series of studies in grammar, logic, even humor, and consistently found the same thing. The least skilled participants were often the most confident. In short, the less you know, the more likely you are to think you know everything. A truly horrific combination for anyone who has any power whatsoever. Horrible. I'm scared for our lives for the rest of my life. And it's so true, like, remember the Gangnam Style?

Yes, of course. This this theory reminds me of him. Make this connection, Liz. I don't know how you're going to do it, but bring it home. Bring it home. He just was the most confident, but the least skilled. I mean, act as if, right? Pretend you know what you're doing

and who's gonna question it. I just really wanted an excuse to play Gang of Style. Play it, Rob. No, don't. I do just think that, I mean, we must just be in a society that really isn't very self-confident. So when somebody does speak, even when what they say is nonsense and we see it all the time, we tend to glom onto it. It's just this faking your way through it that really can cause a lot of harm.

I thought you were setting up the pitch for, but if you'd like to get more self-aware, come follow us. No, no, I don't have that much confidence either. We're still bad co-leaders, Tyler. RFK, if you've watched any of what's happened in the last few months, when he's been like on TV or, you know, his confirmation hearing, he spews these things out as though they're facts even though they're either refuted science or they're unverified. But he says it with a great deal of confidence. But when you get into a mindset that entire institutions have been created and have now

deviated from their purpose to do deliberate harm against the people, what you are doing is being anti-democracy. What you're doing is actually participating in the erosion of our democratic system. NBD. Which is... No big deal. OK, thank you. What do you think it was?

I didn't. No breast dance here. Our institutions are set up to take care of us. That's why we pay taxes. When you start saying, oh no, these institutions, just these particular ones, let's start here, just the Health and Human Services branch of institutions are corrupt. So, these institutions, just these particular ones, let's start here, just the health and human services branch of institutions are corrupt. They're so corrupt that they don't care if our kids die, they don't care if vaccines

kill us. They're only about money and the deep state and I can't pretend to fully understand it. But now the MAGA movement managed to convince this group of Make America Healthy Again moms that in fact the way to do that is by destroying these institutions. These institutions are the reason. The institutions are what are corrupt. And I think we're in very dangerous territory right now because of that. This group of people have been convinced that the cure itself is worse than the disease

and the social obligation of keeping each other safe is no longer the thing of value. Because we have had the grand fortune of living our adult lives and our childhoods for the vast majority of us, free of these vaccine preventable diseases, because we're all vaccinated as children. It's like we've gotten so far away from what it is to live in a world where these diseases are

circulating that we think that we've turned it into something corrupt and it's obtuse. My uncle contracted polio in his 20s and spent his life paralyzed from the chest down. That was because he was not vaccinated. Why would I ever want to take a chance of something like that happen to my child if I could prevent it? It's like if you go to a cemetery that, you know, was around in the 1940s and 50s and continued on burying people into the 60s and 70s, what you will see is a dramatic drop off in children who have been buried. What happened was that children were dying left and right from smallpox, from polio, from the measles,

from all of these other vaccine preventable diseases. Vaccines became mainstreamed and suddenly the number of children dying dramatically dropped. vaccines became mainstreamed and suddenly the number of children dying dramatically dropped. We have this measles outbreak going on in the US right now. It has been made very clear by the public health community. It is because herd immunity rates have dropped due to vaccine hesitancy. And I would think this would be a wake-up call. Right? Oh, right. Okay. So now we actually are seeing what happens when we don't vaccinate.

Lots of kids are getting sick. So far though, I find it really alarming that isn't what's happening. What we have is the RFK junior, head of health and human services, still saying it's a personal choice. Whatever the case may be, like the idea of protecting each other

seems to have left the room. That is the thing that I think would have to change. Is there would have to be a significant mindset shift back to the collective good is necessary for a society to remain civil and functional. Well, it's just funny because medicine is so non-emotional. Doctors in general are very like, this is how it is. And there's not this emotionality attached to it.

And it's become so heightened and charged. A lot of that is really thanks to their fearless leader. Right, he's continually brainwashing them with all of these fears and these lies. They're feeling empowered by it, right? He is saying like, I'm here to hear you. Because I'm willing to hear you because I'm willing to virtually accept anything that confirms my biases even if the whole

entire scientific community is over there rolling their eyes and going we've already refuted that, we've already got overwhelming mounds of data. Because all cult leaders do this, right? There's a pitch and a promise and it gets you in and gets you in and gets you excited and riled up. I feel empowered and I finally feel seen and heard and taken care of and somebody's listening to me and oh my God. And then there's the bait and switch. The promises never happen. And there's always personal motive. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's safe to say anybody who's really spent much time

like listening to him there's some instability going on there a little bit I don't know if the motivation is fame or money but I would say that's definitely a part of it whatever else I don't even know what all the things that he has claimed about vaccines doing harm are but these things are bisonkers they're not true they carry no actual scientific merit whatsoever. But it's so weird because traditionally the crunchy granola hippie types are like bleeding liberals.

And how did they get swept up by him? The biggest thing that he did quite some time ago was he switched sides, right? He kind of sold his soul over to the Trump side of the equation. So a huge contingency of moms voted against the interests of their own lives. Because a lot of people voted for Trump because they wanted Bobby. Right? So they just decided, oh, whatever, how much harm can this guy do? But now we're seeing how much harm he is doing, how much pain and suffering he's bringing

upon the American people and upon the immigrants in this country. And we'll be right back after shilling some stuff. Hey, did you know that the first official Mother's Day was celebrated way back in 1908? So it's been over a century of children scrambling for gifts at the last minute. of children scrambling for gifts at the last minute. Yeah, and husbands. But not this year, Liz, because I planned ahead. I went with 1-800-flowers.com. I really did, and it turns out the flowers are still undefeated.

Look at you honoring the tradition like a true mama's boy. Mmm, that's me. I ordered a dozen roses and 1-800-flowers. Doubled it to two dozen for free. It was easy, affordable, and honestly kind of a hero for it. These roses are legit, you guys. They're fresh, they're full, and beautiful. Like, she might cry a little beautiful. Yeah, and right now when you order one dozen roses, as I just said, one hundred flowers, they double it to two dozen for free. That's twice the flowers, same price. No brainer. Yeah, and the roses, they're picked at their peak,

they're shipped fresh, they actually last. They're really pretty, but bouquets are of course selling fast, so channel your inner 1908 and get on it, order it now. To claim your double your roses off or go to 1-800-Flowers.com slash Colt. That's 1-800-Flowers.com slash Colt. 1-800-Flowers.com slash cult. 1-800-flowers.com slash cult.

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after that particular episode. Right. And look, that's fine. People are free to say what they want. However, if you like what you hear. Yeah, if you like it. If you like it, we would like you to write a review. Right. And maybe a nice one. Send us an email that says you like it because it's We like it. Write a review. Right. Maybe a nice one. Send us an email that says you like it because it's nice to hear.

You know, just do five stars and then just write like boobies, boobies, boobies over and over. Whatever you want to write. We don't care. I don't know how that would help, but it's nice to read. So thanks for... Just write a nice review if you haven't done it, please. We appreciate it.

Hey, listeners, head to your podcast's app of choice, leave us five stars and write Boobies or write Gungham Style. Whichever you like better, it'll be an informal poll. We need an answer to the age-old question, Boobies or Gungham Style. You don't really have to say why you like one better than the other, but feel free to, if you'd like. We'll give you a shout out on the next episode if you do. Back to the story. Back to the story, thank goodness.

OK, so if you haven't been keeping attention to the news and if you haven't, well, it's probably for your own betterment. You're probably living a great life in your yurt. But in the past few days, RFK has been featured quite heavily in the news for saying, quite frankly, some very hurtful and silly things. Let's just call them dumb things. Very dumb. Yeah, sure, dumb. Like eliminating the suicide hotline for LGBTQ youth.

Yeah, or removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the list of recommended vaccines for kids. But he also recently got some press for spreading stupided lies about autism. And let's be clear, these are lies. There's nothing more to it than that. So here's Mr. Frog in the throat, showing his full Dunning-Kruger effect as he discusses autism. We can't understand what the fuck you're saying. You know what I'm saying? So here he is, Mr. Frog in the throat, showing his full Dunning-Kruger effect as he discusses

autism. This is an individual tragedy as well. Autism destroys families. More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which are children. These are children who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them, were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they're two years old. And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball,

they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children. And we need to put an end to it. But why stop at that blather? There are many other gems in his repertoire, as Liz will illustrate. Okay. He does sound like, like if you close your eyes and listen to him, it's like, is that a 400 year old person talking? I know. He is just like, I don't understand this fucking guy.

I wanted to just end on a little game. OK. I've made a list of things he has said. OK. And you can say true or false or whatever you want to say to it. Natural immunity is always superior to vaccine-induced immunity. Yeah, false. Oh, Fauci.

That is another podcast. The whole Fauci thing is really one of the most upsetting and disturbing things in the whole piece. Like, this is a perfect example of a career scientist who's dedicated his life to helping people and who's been undermined and told that his work was meaningless. Vaccine-induced injuries and deaths are common,

but intentionally hidden by the government. Very false. Big Pharma controls the FDA and the CDC, corrupting vaccine approval processes. Also false. You can literally have a whole podcast on every one of these. I know. 5G contributed to the spread of COVID-19. Massively debunked. False. 5G is fine. It doesn't hurt anybody. Antidepressants are responsible for school shootings. Not one shred of evidence to prove that and also they've really saved a lot of lives for a lot of people.

Wi-Fi exposure causes cancer and leaky brain syndrome. Yep, not a thing. Where do they get some of this stuff from? And I think we should end on this one since it's your career. Vaccines cause infertility. Vaccines do not cause infertility. In fact, vaccines prevent infertility in many cases, because so many of the vaccine-preventable diseases can harm fertility. We're not seeing, like, a further drop in the birth rate

or any increased infertility that is in any way related to the COVID vaccines. But we do know that COVID itself harms male fertility, potentially, harms female fertility, causes miscarriages, can lead to late stillbirths. The infection is terrible for the reproductive system, but not the vaccine. It's safe. So now today, has anything positive come out of this for you personally? In the same way that it made me a pariah with one group of people, it's

put me into a little bit of a leadership role with another group of people. I mean it really fueled my desire to understand all of this and you know I developed a whole mentorship program where I train other acupuncturists to be fertility specialists, making sure we're understanding how the immune system works, making sure we're understanding how diseases actually begin. I channeled my grief into teaching what is the truth, I guess, essentially. And it has compelled me to invest and reinvest in relationships with people who do have a similar perspective or who are at least not indoctrinated. On some level I feel like I'm I am now starting to step into the role of being the sort of person in the

middle, you know, willing to hold both sides of it, not have to say it's raining and sunny outside. No, it's not my job to say it's raining and sunny outside. It's my job to look outside and tell you if it's raining or sunny. So what's the last thing you want to say to a woman, a mom, somebody who is maybe scared? We all want healthier kids. We all want a healthier environment. We need to choose what we're fighting for and not fight against each other. It's like we turn our energy back to getting the plastics out of our environment, getting the endocrine the plastics out of our environment, getting the endocrine disruptors out of our environment, focusing on making sure that all kids are fed well and cared for and given

the proper things they need to thrive so that our society can continue to thrive. As we age, a whole group of people have chosen a really weird hill to die on. And if they could shift their narrative back to, let's make things better for all of us, instead of let's fear the other and assume that they're out to get us, I actually think we could make a difference. Thank you for being here. You're welcome.

This was great. You're awesome. Thank you. It's easy to mock conspiracy theories from the outside, but when you really zoom in, what you find isn't stupidity, it's grief, it's fear, it's a desire for control in an uncontrollable world. See, conspiracies offer comfort. A villain to fight. A reason behind the chaos. A story

that makes sense even if it's not true. And in a time when truth itself has become somewhat negotiable, the people who speak up like Laura, they often pay the price because belief, once rooted, is a powerful thing. And when it's tied to identity, to belonging, to motherhood, it's not just a belief anymore. It becomes survival. It becomes who you are and who you're willing to lose to protect it. But here's the thing, guys.

If belief can lead us away from each other, it can also lead us back. If we're brave enough to ask questions, to check our sources, and maybe, just maybe, admit when we've been wrong. Because the goal shouldn't be just about winning. I don't know if this whole thing is about winning all the time. It's not about winning, winning the argument, winning best country. Our goal is to keep

each other safe. The goal is still and has always been to protect our kids. So if you're listening to this episode and something in this story feels maybe uncomfortable or familiar, that's okay. We're not here to shame anyone. We're just here to say, you're not alone, and you don't have to live in fear every day. Thank you to Dr. Laura Erlich for her honesty, her courage, and her science-backed common sense. You can find her mentorship work and wellness practice

at the links in our show notes. She also shared some excellent resources if you're interested, so we've linked those in the show notes. And with that, I should probably go put some clothes on and wipe this lemon juice off my body. Yep. Fooling no security cameras, Liz. It's making YouTube happy. Anyway, we'll be back next week with another episode of Was I in a Cult? Of Was I in a Cult? You'd think after four seasons we'd get a line.

Nope. I'm in a group of people. We're supposed to be brothers and sisters. I'm a mom with six children and a husband. I am so lonely. I feel lonely. And that's what that isolation does to you as a woman. In your mind, you're isolated. You're nothing, you're the dirt on the ground, you're lower

than the sheep. This is a hierarchy. It's the husband, the children, those beautiful sheep, and then me. Was I Necult is created, produced, and hosted by me, Tyler Measles Meesum. And Liz Influenza, not Influencer, Ayakuzzi. Sound design and edit by Rob Poliopera. And our assistant editor, the wonderful Greta Smallpox Stromquist. Take out your knife, purify me. Don't spare my life, crucify me. This is a story that begins with a dying wish.

One thing I would like you to do. My mother's last request that my sister and I finish writing the memoir she'd started about her German childhood, when her father designed a secret super weapon for Adolf Hitler. My grandfather, Robert Lusser, headed the Nazi project to build the world's first cruise missile, which terrorized millions and left a legacy that dogged my mother like a curse. She had some secrets. Mom had some secrets. I'm Suzanne Rico. Join my sister and me as we search for the truth behind our grandfather's work and for the first time face the truth behind our grandfather's work and for

the first time face the ghosts of our past. Geez, who is he? Listen to The Man Who Calculated Death, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Pluto TV has all the shows and movies you love streaming for free. 3 And thrills are free with heart-pumping hits like The Walking Dead and Pulp Fiction. Feel the free Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.