Season 6 Episode 20: Mammoth Extinction, Pet Separation, and Mental Health Myths

What really caused the extinction of the last woolly mammoths?

This episode challenges the familiar narrative of genetic downfall, presenting groundbreaking genetic analyses of Wrangel Island mammoths. We uncover how harmful mutations were eradicated from their genomes, leading us to consider other culpable factors like climate change and disease. Our discussion sheds new light on conservation efforts, emphasizing the need to address modern-day species' vulnerabilities to environmental shifts and pathogens.

We also look at what would cause someone to forcibly be separated from their pet. 

Join us  then for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Jonathan Stea, a clinical psychologist from Calgary, Alberta, as he dismantles the myths surrounding mental health and addiction. Dr. Stea shares his daily work at a hospital's concurrent disorders outpatient clinic and his academic role at the University of Calgary. He reveals the alarming impact of misinformation in mental health, especially through social media platforms like TikTok, and introduces his upcoming book aimed at empowering individuals to critically assess mental health information in an era dominated by the wellness industry.

Cannabis addiction misconceptions take center stage as we explore its real impact and the shifting usage patterns post-decriminalization. We also delve into the startling study about mental health misinformation on TikTok, uncovering the vast reach of misleading content.

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https://www.jonathanstea.com/

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, we hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode 20 of season six.

Speaker 2: 0:37

The first week of summer is going amazing for our family. Beaker is in dock diving, which he really enjoys because summer's the time to shine. We're going to be taking Bernoulli and Beaker out onto the water very quickly and Chris and I have started working on Text from Bunsen, volume 3. In the first week of the summer we've packed a lot in there and some relaxation on the deck with the dogs. Chris isn't joining me for this episode. She actually caught a nasty bug the other day and her voice just isn't great for the podcast and she's pretty under the weather. And there isn't a family section this week because Adam is at the Calgary Stampede with the Red Deer Royals. We actually literally just watched him in the parade. We're so proud of him, he just rocks the tuba. The Red Deer Royals do such a great job and they'll be playing all around Calgary at different pancake breakfasts, they'll be playing at the Stampede and there's a big competition coming up. So that's why Adam is missing for the family section and Chris is missing as my co-host.

Speaker 2: 1:39

All right, on the show this week we're going to be looking at a fun study that seems to debunk a widely viewed theory of how the last woolly mammoths went extinct. And in pet science we're going to be looking at a meta-analysis of forced separation of people and their animals. So it is sad, but as we're in the summer and there's hurricanes coming and forest fires, forced separation is not necessarily because somebody got arrested or they are in the hospital. It could be because of a calamity happening in nature. So we're going to be. So we'll break down that study. And our guest and ask an expert is psychologist Dr Jonathan Stia, who's going to be talking with us about some of the myths and misconceptions and pseudoscience out there in the realm of psychology. So it's a very different conversation.

Speaker 2: 2:32

Okay, this one's really bad. What's huge and shaggy with tusks and horns? It's the woolly mammoth marching band. Okay, on with the show, because there's no time like science time. This week in science news it's the woolly mammoth marching band. Okay, on with the show, because there's no time like science time.

Speaker 2: 2:48

This week in science news, let's take a look at a recent study about the woolly mammoths, the last of them and how, based on genetic analysis. Perhaps how they went extinct isn't really what happened. Now, to sum up, of the woolly mammoth, they were prehistoric elephants that thrived during the Pleistocene epoch and they had populations existing until about 4000 years ago. 4000 years ago is a while ago, but there were definitely humans on Earth 4000 years ago. The humans 4000 years ago weren't that much different looking than what we are today. So our ancient ancestors some of them, would have had encounters with woolly mammoths out in the wild. They have shaggy fur, adapted for cold climates, and they roamed across the tundras of northern Eurasia and North America that's correct Canada. Now the study picks up with the last known population of woolly mammoths that were surviving on the Wrangel Islands in the Arctic Ocean. To get a picture of where the Wrangel Islands are, they're off mainland Siberia.

Speaker 2: 4:03

Siberia is on the northeastern part of Russia, west of Alaska, west of the northern Canada, and it was long thought that as sea levels rose after the Ice Age, different populations of woolly mammoths were trapped on inescapable pieces of land. During the Ice Age there was maybe a little bit more ice to walk on the ocean, but also the ocean levels fell. There was land bridges for these woolly mammoths to get around and they got trapped. And it was long thought that because they got trapped, there was a lot of inbreeding and harmful genetic mutations. Now that isn't the case.

Speaker 2: 4:45

Based on a new study that was published in the journal Cell, they looked at actual DNA from woolly mammoths in that area the 21 mammoth genomes and they found a couple things. Yes, there was evidence within the genome of inbreeding. However, harmful genetic mutations seem to have been eliminated. This is a bit controversial because it was thought why would the mammoths go extinct on an island that they were living on for thousands of years? Because the mammoths in this area had been stranded on islands like 10,000 years ago. There's evidence of them living on the Wrangell Islands for about 6,000 years. That's a long time for a population to live on an island. So the genetic analysis is interesting in that it didn't seem to show inbreeding.

Speaker 2: 5:37

So other things likely led to their extinction and the prevailing theory, if it's not inbreeding is due to a couple random events like climate change or a disease a disease that is spread amongst the last remaining mammoths and kills them all, or kills enough of them that they can't maintain a population, or a disease that wipes out their food source, or the climate change wipes out their food source. It's interesting because it allows other scientists to have insights and implications for our modern day endangered species, because a lot of endangered species are isolated too, and if the woolly mammoths didn't go extinct due to genetic isolation, perhaps we need to be less worried about that in conservation efforts and instead look at endangered species vulnerability to other factors like disease and climate change, because every decade somebody finds a perfectly preserved mammoth thing in the ice somewhere right. 4,000 years ago the actual structure of the earth was identical to what it is today, like plate. Tectonics hasn't moved things around that much in 4,000 years, so where the mammoths lived is literally like a 20 hour drive north of my house, and about a decade ago somebody in the Northwest Territories found a baby woolly mammoth in the tundra. And there's always that debate and I actually have asked a couple scientists who study genes and genetic engineering. Is that a good idea? And the answer is that they always give is. It's unethical to bring an animal back from extinction in that way. The DNA could be degraded. You may not get exactly what you're hoping for. You'd probably have to mess around and put the DNA from the mammoth into an elephant embryo and then you're opening that animal up for a whole host of problems. Plus, it would be it's only the one kind on earth. Now, don't get me wrong. I would love to see a woolly mammoth, because elephants by themselves are amazing creatures, but a shaggy one, that's pretty cool. All right, that's science news for this week.

Speaker 2: 8:02

This week in pet science we're going to look at a meta-analysis from a bunch of different articles on the human-animal bond and separation, and this is from AnthroZoos. What is forced separation? That is, where you have a companion animal like a dog or a cat, a bird or gerbils, anything fish even. Companion animal like a dog or a cat, a bird or gerbils, anything, fish even and you do not want to be parted from it. But something causes you to be forcefully parted from your animal. In the meta-analysis they were looking at what causes somebody who has a companion animal to be forcefully separated. What are the main causes? And it was actually really enlightening for me reading this because I had ideas in my own head and Chris and I have talked about this before. Like you see something on the news and somebody had to give up their dog, and I'm like my heart just breaks for them. My heart breaks for the dog. I would John Wick, a bunch of Russian goons to protect our animals, and the situations that have come up in the study have really made me think a little bit more with empathy and compassion for people who have had situations beyond their control separate them from their animals.

Speaker 2: 9:22

Now here's one, one of the crisis situations that have caused people to be forcefully separated from their animal, and that's domestic violence. They found that people actually delay leaving abusive relationships to protect their pets because their pets are also at risk or they're being used as tools of coercion by abusers. I will hurt the dog if you leave me. Therefore, that person doesn't leave the abusive relationship. 81% of domestic violence victims reported threats to pets by abusers. 55% had actual harm or killing of pets. So the risk is real and that's why people stay in the relationships and one of the things that cause people to be separated from their pet is twofold. One, they find a safe place for their pet to go so they can leave the abusive relationship. A shelter may not take a family and the pet or the pets, or to protect themselves and their children. They may leave the pet with the abuser, and that's also really heartbreaking and I never really thought of that as a reason why you would be separated from your pet, and I apologize if people are listening and they're like, oh my God, that's naive, but I'm learning too.

Speaker 2: 10:41

Homelessness is another reason why people are forcibly separated from their pet. I think we've all seen the news that rent has gone up so much in different places around the world. Big city rents can be more than two-thirds of your paycheck and if you have a difference in the income coming in, it may be in the place that you're staying is too expensive to live and provide food for yourself or your family. Finding pet-friendly accommodations can exasperate homelessness. Some people have chosen homelessness to stay with their pet over renting a place and giving up the pet. However, that's one part of forced separation from the pets. The pet, however, that's one part of forced separation from the pets. Financial constraints and housing policies.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Now the third one is a lot easier to wrap your head around and that's a natural disaster. And again on the news, you've probably seen people refusing to evacuate from forest fires, hurricanes, any kind of like natural disaster, because they want to stay with their pets, and that risks their personal safety. Pets are extremely vulnerable, like dogs, are extremely vulnerable for you just leaving them behind. They rely on you us for everything food, shelter, water, and sometimes natural disasters come about so quickly there's no choice but to leave the pet behind and hope for the best that it survives. The hurricane, the forest fire doesn't take the house, because where you are being evacuated to may not take the pet, or there may not be time, or you may be away from home when the evacuation order occurs and you may not be able to return to home. All of this was highlighted in the study and it's devastating. What are the consequences of this forced separation? It's devastating. It's devastating for the animal and it's devastating for the human. There are significant psychological distresses that occur and people will increase risk to their safety to maintain that human animal bond.

Speaker 2: 12:43

From this meta-analysis, it also gave some policy and service recommendations, like when individuals seek refuge from domestic violence. Perhaps we should have room for pets. If people are staying in violent situations because of not having the ability to bring their pet, maybe that's something that our shelters need to think about. We've mentioned this before, that every family should have an evacuation plan that includes what are you going to do with your pets. This doesn't include folks who have a plan and then are away from home getting groceries at Costco when everything shuts down due to a forest fire or something like that. But this is if you are evacuating, where do you take your pets? And having a plan is critical in that time. And, of course, with homelessness, society and social welfare should encourage collaboration between all of these different human services and animal welfare organizations.

Speaker 2: 13:46

I cannot afford my pet right now. I'm looking for work. I'm looking for a place to take my pet. I don't want to give it up, but could you keep it for a couple months? For me, the human animal bond is precious For separation. I can't imagine it.

Speaker 2: 14:04

I think it's important for us to talk about that's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free, number one in our show notes. Sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun.

Speaker 2: 14:32

Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the Beaker stuffy and now the Ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger the science cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three, if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have Dr Jonathan Stea, clinical psychologist, today. Doc, how are you doing?

Speaker 1: 15:11

I'm fantastic, jason, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 2: 15:14

Yeah, we have been. Really I've been like I'm not going to lie I've been excited to talk to you. Like you're an account on social media that my wife and I both follow. We really we just appreciate what you do on social media. But, like one of the things I wanted to ask you where are you in the world, where are you calling into the show from?

Speaker 1: 15:31

Yeah, I'm calling in from Calgary, alberta, pretty close to you. And yeah, it's, I'm at home right now, but I was working during the day. I work at a local hospital.

Speaker 2: 15:40

Okay.

Speaker 1: 15:41

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Are you from Alberta or are you here, alberta, with your work?

Speaker 1: 15:48

I actually grew up in the Toronto area and I moved out. To how long have I been here? Since 08, I've been in Alberta for graduate school. So I did my undergraduate work at the University of Toronto and then moved out here to do a master's and a PhD in clinical psychology and I just never left.

Speaker 2: 16:08

So I love it here Was it, the mountains.

Speaker 1: 16:12

It was the mountains. It was the price of real estate. It was me getting a job. That's key, right? Yeah, I actually never left, like I've had the same job since I completed graduate school, so they just can't peel me away you got here?

Speaker 2: 16:29

yeah, I'm. I've lived my whole life in alberta. I was born in alberta. Oh, there are a lot of good things about alberta. The mountains are so close to you in calgary you can just step out your door and see them every day probably totally yeah, we're close, it's a big selling feature. There's not too many of them in Ontario.

Speaker 2: 16:49

No, it takes us about 45 minutes to drive there and then we're out skiing or hiking. Oh, that is a hard, that is really hard for people to wrap their head around when they hear Calgary is this enormous city and hop, skip and a jump and you're in the mountains.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Totally Exactly, cause we're in the Northwest, it's just oh right there yeah when okay.

Speaker 2: 17:07

So you went through the whole rigor grad school, worked on. Your got a phd. When you were young were you into psychology and science I was more into like astronomy and just basic science.

Speaker 1: 17:18

To be quite honest, I didn't really know what psychology was growing. Okay, I don't think it was that. At least in my personal experience it wasn't as talked about as it was today, and so I didn't really discover it till maybe high school, when I started to learn more about philosophy and then just going to undergraduate work at the University of Toronto, I didn't really know what to take other than philosophy and I realized that I didn't really want to spend my head in the clouds and it was really hard stuff to do, like taking medieval philosophy, and so I wanted something a bit more practical. And then I just found psychology, and specifically clinical psychology, where you just get to use science to help people, and I just loved that idea and that's how it got me.

Speaker 2: 18:04

That's so your career path towards being a cheaty did not happen. No, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:10

No, and philosophy was really. It was tough taking in high school and then in the early academic at the University of Toronto it was really tough. But then another part of philosophy that I really loved and that I actually found easier probably because I had more passion for it was the philosophy of science, and I think that the philosophy of science is such an important topic for, I think, just any healthcare professional in general to understand, because all of our healthcare professions are predicated or based on evidence-based practice, and so in order to do that, we need to know how science works, and what better way to understand how science works than go to the philosophy of it, even though it can be quite tough.

Speaker 2: 18:49

Getting into the weeds a bit, Doc, can I ask you what's a typical day for you as a clinical psychologist? I'm curious. I have no idea.

Speaker 1: 18:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:59

So after graduate school, so often graduate students, they can pursue an academic route or they can pursue a clinical route, at least for clinical psychologists, and sometimes there's a blend in between, which is where I ended up.

Speaker 1: 19:14

But for over a decade I've been working full time in a hospital setting where I've been working in a what's called a concurrent disorders outpatient clinic, which basically means that people who experience severe addiction and severe mental disorders can currently come to our program and we help them. I work on a really great interdisciplinary team with other mental health professionals, so other psychologists and psychiatrists and social workers and nurses, and all together we do individual therapy, we we do group therapy, we do medication management and that's what I do all day. And then I also have an academic appointment as an adjunct assistant professor at the university of calgary where I get to dip my toes in some research endeavors. So I get to sit on some masters and dissertation committees and watch students be at the forefront of science, which is really cool oh, that's cool yeah, and then At the side of my desk is a passion project that for the last several years I've been really taking to science communication.

Speaker 1: 20:12

So initially just writing blogs and op-eds articles, things like that, on topics like misinformation and pseudoscience, and then it just really came to a head because I realized that I just wanted to localize all of this information and just put it into a book, which is what I'm kind of doing now. But yeah, my everyday life is clinical work. That's my nine to five or four, rather.

Speaker 2: 20:34

We'll get to the book in a second because it sounds so interesting. But, like one of the things you highlighted was you work with like folks that have addiction and mental health struggles, I feel like we're, as a society, we're more open to talk about it maybe not as much as we should, but since you're an expert in this area, are there some misconceptions about addiction and mental health or things you'd like the public to know from your time working with these folk?

Speaker 1: 21:03

I think there's so much mental health misinformation and mental health pseudoscience out there. In part that's what sparked my motivation to write the book. But prior to that, before I even thought about writing a book, and what got me into science communication in the first place was my dissertation research and a lot of my research. Academically, I came from an addictions lab and I did some work on the nature of cannabis addiction so addiction to marijuana or weed because there's a lot of misconceptions around that, and so I actually put out some articles years ago trying to debunk some of those myths, one of which being people just challenging the very idea that a cannabis addiction can exist, because often in pop culture we can hear mixed messaging around that insofar as a lot of people deny it.

Speaker 1: 21:51

And the reality is that cannabis addiction very much does exist and we happen to see those folks who come to our clinic. Now it's the vast majority of people who use cannabis don't develop a problem, just like the vast majority of people who use alcohol or other kinds of substances don't develop a problem With cannabis. It's about 1 in 10 people who ever try it may develop problems with it. That can lead to addiction, and so we see that kind of substantial minority of people that do, and of course, the nature of the addiction itself looks quite different than, say, an opioid addiction or a methamphetamine addiction or a benzodiazepine addiction, because the nature of the substances are different.

Speaker 1: 22:35

So a lot of my initial work was just trying to debunk those kinds of misconceptions, because what I would notice in my clinical work is that people would come to therapy and they would be also burdened by a kind of stigma or burdened by this kind of misinformation, because they're hearing from their friends or from pop culture that it's only weed man, what the hell, why can't you just kick it? But these people are doing it all day, every day, and it's interfering with their work, it's interfering with their relationships and their responsibilities and they can't get anything done and it's making their mental health worse. Now they're feeling depressed, they're feeling anxious, and so those are the kinds of folks that do have an addiction to it and a problem with it, and they need help and then if they're hearing messages that, ah, it's just nothing.

Speaker 2: 23:18

that's not a good thing. So that's what motivated me to debunk that area. Oh, it's natural, man, you can't get addicted to that stuff.

Speaker 1: 23:22

Totally. And now, of course, nowadays it's not even natural. You get all the concentrates and shatter and a whole bunch of other kinds of cannabis products which again and it's not to these topics are nuanced because people, a lot of people, can use cannabis perfectly fine and they don't develop addiction. So we need to have we're talking about the folks that do, and they exist too.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Yeah, and for our listeners that are specifically like from different States, alberta has it's part of Canada and marijuana or cannabis is decriminalized. There are. In Red Deer, where I live, there's a. There's a pot store on every corner. I swear I don't know if it's like that in Calgary, but it seems like every every little strip mall there's like subway walk box, weed and flame or something like that exactly it is like that.

Speaker 1: 24:15

In calgary too, it's like that go capitalism right.

Speaker 2: 24:18

But I'm just curious, because you work in that, has that? Has the decriminalization, decriminalizing it exasperated any of these problems to any degree, or is that a hard question to answer?

Speaker 1: 24:31

It's a hard question because I think it's an empirical one and I don't. I used to be more up to speed on the data on it because Health Canada would collect a lot of the data in terms of you know, we have good databases that would say large scale epidemiological surveys that would survey people to see if they have cannabis problems or cannabis addiction, and they could correlate that with decriminalization laws. So I don't know the data Anecdotally or based on clinical experience. I don't know that it totally changed the prevalence of it. I think it was always so widely available.

Speaker 1: 25:01

Anyway, people found a way to do it. I think what changed, at least in the last 10 years or so, again clinically, is the way in which it's used, because a lot of people just used to smoke it out of a bong or just smoke joints, and now people are vaporizing it and they're using edibles and they dab something called dabbing, which is smoking a concentrate of thc, which is basically like hitting 10 joints at once because you can just concentrate the thc down. That's why they're called concentrates and so that I think can pose a unique problem for people that have a problem with it.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Yeah, I'm embarrassed to say I live such a shelter life. As a teenager, my first experience with any kind of like knowledge of cannabis was the Trailer Park Boys, which is for the folks who are maybe not canadian. It was a crazy popular television show based on these like losers that lived what it was in the merit, one of the maritime provinces right like out east, I think so yeah, yeah anyways, they were always trying to get rich by growing marijuana in the trailer park.

Speaker 2: 26:09

Okay, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to bring that up, it's not. It's objectively a very funny TV show.

Speaker 1: 26:15

Oh, it's hilarious.

Speaker 2: 26:16

It's hilarious, not for kids, not for small children. But anyways, back to the interview, doc, you mentioned, you put all your thoughts in your previous blogs and you wanted to collate it into a thing in a book and it's called Mind the Science. Did I get the title right? Mind the Science.

Speaker 1: 26:34

Yes, it's Mind the Science. And then the subtitle is Saving your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry.

Speaker 2: 26:41

Oh man, the wellness industry is just a gong show. Okay, I know you don't want to give away too much of your book, but could you give us a sneak peek, like maybe, what it's about and a small snippet for folks that maybe would be interested?

Speaker 1: 26:58

Yeah, I'd love to. So Mind of the Science? It's a play on words, so it's Mind of the Science is basically pay attention to the science, and mind is alluding to our mental health. But really the goal of the book, what I really set out to do, was to really try to empower and embolden people to take their mental health into their own hands by learning how to protect themselves from the mental health misinformation and the pseudoscientific grift that we see that is baked into this wellness industry. It's a $5.6 trillion wellness industry. It's huge. People spend a lot of money on it.

Speaker 1: 27:40

There's unequivocal pseudoscientific treatments for mental health everywhere that we see in the alternative medicine industry, even within the world of mental health. It's been estimated that there's at least 600 brands of psychotherapy. That's growing. I can't even name 600 brands, so it just shows you the kind of proliferation of different treatments that are repackaged or just made up. The vast majority of these haven't been tested, say with randomized controlled trials, or they lack scientific plausibility. That's just within the world of mental health.

Speaker 1: 28:15

Outside of the world of mental health there's lots of unregulated professionals that call themselves professionals but they don't have legally protected titles like psychologists or psychiatrists or physicians or social workers. They'll call themselves wellness coaches yeah, life coach, yeah, life coach. Wellness consultants, and then even ones that sound more legitimate but they're not regulated, like therapist or psychotherapist or counselor, because, depending on particular countries or even jurisdictions, those titles aren't regulated, which means that there's no governing legal body that gives out licenses and training requirements for these people. So, all that to say, anyone can really hang a shingle on their lawn with zero training and say, hey, I'm a psychotherapist and I can treat your post-traumatic stress disorder or your depression.

Speaker 1: 29:08

And so a lot of what I do in the book is to make people aware of these things, aware of the pitfalls of the wellness industry, and I try to teach people to. I'm basically trying to teach the language of pseudoscience so that people know when it's spoken and they know how to avoid its harm. So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to help increase people's science literacy skills, their mental health. Literacy skills help people understand why we all fall for pseudoscience, why alternative medicine is so attractive, and then basically make the argument that it's not the solution to our problems. Because we have to also acknowledge that evidence-based care and evidence-based practice that we currently have is imperfect, because science is a constantly evolving thing. We don't know everything about how the brain works and we don't know everything about mental disorders and addiction and how to treat them. But those gaps in our knowledge is not a reason to fill those gaps with pseudoscience and grift and misinformation to exploit people financially and emotionally.

Speaker 2: 30:15

That's one of the logical fallacies some people use. They argue from the gaps, right.

Speaker 1: 30:21

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 30:21

You can't explain it therefore.

Speaker 1: 30:23

I can Exactly, and they do that and they market it.

Speaker 2: 30:27

So you'll see it on alternative medicine websites. Science doesn't understand.

Speaker 1: 30:31

Exactly, it's the science of the gaps fallacies. It's the nirvana fallacy, which basically means, just because something is imperfect, that it should be tossed away, but if you don't present a better alternative, then that's what makes it a fallacy.

Speaker 2: 30:46

I wonder. I don't know the history in Alberta schools, for example. Like my day job, I'm a chemistry teacher at a high school and I've got colleagues who are counselors right, they're school counselors and they are highly trained. But I want to say that was not the case decades ago. I think it was like whatever teacher wanted to be a counselor could be a counselor. I'm not sure how much training they got when I was in high school. In fact, they made fun of that in a TV show. It's like this teacher's like oh man, I'm not sure how much training they got when I was in high school. In fact, they made fun of that in a TV show. It's like this teacher's like, oh man, I'm not going to be able to be a counselor. And then this other person said anyone can be a counselor. Your dream's not dead yet. It just went. I think it was their poking fun at there was no, you just decided you were a counselor one day and you were if you got the job.

Speaker 1: 31:29

Exactly. It just captures that lax kind of requirement, so anyone can call themselves that, and that's really dangerous when you're purporting to be able to treat people's health conditions and their mental health conditions.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Yeah, I know just for people listening in Alberta at our high school, if you want to be a counselor you have to have a master's degree and tons of training and all of the different things from crisis management with kids and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 31:56

So, yeah, I think that's come a long ways. Yeah, totally, and they need to know how to assess for particular disorders like ADHD and learning disabilities and things like that.

Speaker 2: 32:05

I'm sure I don't have that training. I can teach chemistry. That's not what I'm good at. Amazing Is there? Okay? Is there something that that just grinds your gears? That's like your nemesis. I've interviewed Timothy Caulfield a couple of times. I don't know if you probably know who he is and maybe you chat because similar kind of he's a good friend of mine. Yeah, yeah, he's a good friend of yours. Okay, I was going to say you probably know the guy. He's a super cool guy. His nemesis is like Gwyneth Paltrow. Do you have a nemesis out there? Or like a pseudoscience that just grinds your gears? I'm just curious to know.

Speaker 1: 32:43

I do One of and I talk about it in the book. So a lot of people are familiar with the anti-vaccine movement, which is just a pseudoscientific movement that is really against vaccines, and they put a lot of misinformation out there, basically saying things like vaccines cause autism and that they're harmful and they cause all sorts of diseases and they kill people and it's just flat out wrong. But what people might be less familiar with is the anti-psychiatry movement, and that's my nemesis. I would say it is the anti-psychiatry movement because that is one in which, similar to the anti-vaccine movement, it is a pseudoscientific movement but it's hell-bent on destroying and abolishing psychiatry, and it does so by spreading misinformation and propaganda about mental health, and so you'll hear things like mental illness doesn't even exist.

Speaker 1: 33:36

There's no such thing as schizophrenia, there's no such thing as ADHD and that all psychiatric medications are harmful and that they're going to make you sick and that the risks outweigh the benefits, etc. So that's my nemesis and I spent a lot of time trying to unpack that in the book and say why it's harmful and then try to help people spot that, spot the tropes that they use, so these recurring themes or ideas, so that people can better protect themselves from that.

Speaker 2: 34:06

Yeah, I've seen like it's particularly egregious with the little video clips that come from TikTok and Instagram reels of these influencers that are like 80 or whatever. Like depression doesn't exist. All you need is to be out in the sun, and it's some jacked guy in the water. Totally Don't wear sunscreen, like everything the guy is saying is just horrifically wrong. But he looks jacked and pretty healthy, so it seems like it's an appealing message.

Speaker 1: 34:35

So people buy into it Along those lines.

Speaker 1: 34:38

Just really briefly, I was asked to join a team by Marco Zenon, who I think is Timothy Caulfield's postdoc student now or maybe he's an independent researcher now, but really great guy, excellent researcher, and he's been studying TikTok misinformation, and so he asked me to come along on this study where they were studying mental health misinformation on TikTok.

Speaker 1: 34:58

And what they did is they took a sample of the most popular videos on TikTok with the hashtag mental health and they looked at it in a specific timeframe in October I think it was October 2021. And they looked at it in a specific timeframe, in October I think it was October 2021. And we analyzed the videos of those top 1000 videos, and what we basically found was that 33% of the ones that offered advice or information about mental health were misleading, so that's a third that were misleading. And what blows my mind is that those videos were viewed 1 billion times. Like I can't even fathom that number. So of those, so those videos were viewed 1 billion times and a third of those were misleading. So that's how prevalent and pervasive mental health misinformation is.

Speaker 2: 35:48

But it's a grift right. Like you mentioned it. Like you, those people are making money doing xyz. Like there's a reason to spread misinformation. For the most part there's a lot there's a lot of money to be made out there.

Speaker 1: 36:00

Totally, there's a lot of people spreading that misinformation on purpose, and then I think a lot of those videos too, that they weren't necessarily grifters. It was just so embedded in our culture, like they were just people that, yeah, like people that just thought that they were making an educational video about ADHD and it was just wrong. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:20

They were just like shooting their TikTok in their house and it blew up.

Speaker 1: 36:23

Yeah, and they're getting tens of thousands of hits for wrong information.

Speaker 2: 36:27

My nemesis for the longest time on tiktok was this guy called the liver king. Have you ever heard or hear about this guy?

Speaker 1: 36:34

oh, I certainly have.

Speaker 2: 36:35

Yes I accidentally watched like two of his videos and the algorithms oh you like the liver king? Here's all the liver king stuff.

Speaker 3: 36:43

Every fifth tiktok and I was like this guy's clearly on gear.

Speaker 2: 36:48

He's eating testicles Like this guy's grifter.

Speaker 1: 36:52

Raw testicles.

Speaker 2: 36:54

Yeah, and then it all came out that he was totally on a whole bunch of gear and that's why he's so jacked. It has nothing to do with eating a bunch of raw meat.

Speaker 1: 37:04

I think he put out an apology video about that too, but I could be wrong.

Speaker 2: 37:09

I don't know if he. I don't know what's going on with him. I've stopped watching his videos, so my algorithm doesn't show me more of him. That was just my angry nemesis on TikTok. I'm not in your position.

Speaker 2: 37:20

It was just somebody that annoyed me. Oh, that's hilarious, speaking of social media like I know we. I got to know you by following you on twitter. Actually, you debunk stuff every day like you have little comments and you post links to studies and you're like timothy coffield you're out there fighting the fight and the amount of troll comments you get is like astronomical. So I my question is, first off, are you okay and and how do you handle that when you know you're poking the misinformation bear?

Speaker 1: 37:56

Yeah, I am okay. I appreciate you asking me that it can be really discombobulating at first. I'm okay because I'm well-practiced at managing it, because it's been happening for close to five years now. At this point, I quite literally get hundreds of hateful messages a day, and so does Tim Timothy Caulfield.

Speaker 2: 38:14

Yeah, I know, talk to him about that.

Speaker 1: 38:15

It's awful, yeah, like hundreds. We're not even exaggerating that number, which seems surreal. So, yeah, I'm quite well practiced at managing it. I think what helps, what helps me and what I try to help tell other kind of new science communicators, is that, um, it's important number one to lean on social support and social community, because we're not the only ones.

Speaker 1: 38:39

Harassment is huge online and I think nature put out a study during covid where they found like a huge majority of science communicators received a whole host of abuse and death threats et cetera, and it's just really awful.

Speaker 1: 38:53

And so I try to, number one help new science communicators understand that it can come with the territory and can be prepared for it and at least aware of it so they can make an informed decision. I think the other thing that helps me is to understand the psychology of it and the psychology of online trolling and harassment. I wrote a few blogs about it, but just gaining an understanding helps, I think, depersonalize, or help people not personalize what's happening to them, because the people that are often harassing us it reflects more of their headspace than ours and they're often attacking an idea of who they think we are and an idea of a cartoonish version of who we are, and so they're not even really attacking us on some very real level. In that sense they're attacking, they're tribalistic in a sense. There's lots of drivers of online harassment, so I think by helping people not take it personally can be quite liberating in its management.

Speaker 2: 39:58

That's great advice. I love that. I'm just so sorry that happens to you guys. My colleagues who are science communicators, who are female man, they get it with the sexism stuff, and if anybody's a person of color they get that on top of it, which is just gross.

Speaker 1: 40:14

I agree. I think they get it 10 times worse. Yeah, women and people of color. It's horrible. I even one of my new ones is because recently I grew my hair out, so now I have what they've been calling a man bun and so-.

Speaker 2: 40:25

Oh nice, my son has one too, what they've been calling a man bun oh nice, my son has one too.

Speaker 1: 40:28

That's amazing. But online my man bun gets more hate than I do. Oh what? Oh, it's terrible, and I actually had, for the first time in my life, a taste of what it does feel like to be objectified. Oh interesting. Yeah, I receive a lot of the misogynistic comments near what women get, but it's just god awful yeah, we're so lucky like my wife and I run the the munson and beaker account.

Speaker 2: 40:54

Um, we can. The dogs are the forefront right. And over the last two or three years we've, you know, basically for my mental health I've moved to being a communication account. That's just about pets, right, where we did do vaccine stuff and climate change stuff and oh man, it was disgusting. But I just have to echo what you said. If somebody's going to threaten to hurt your dogs over a climate change post, there's something wrong with them. That's like a total reflection of them. If they're just so so messed up, that's what they feel like they can say to somebody. So now I've got such thick armor I laugh off any of that stuff, but it's. I don't think I ever got what you guys get, even a fraction of. So you know, thanks for fighting the good fight for science.

Speaker 1: 41:42

Yeah, no thanks for your advocacy too, and I appreciate your support.

Speaker 2: 41:46

We've got a couple standard questions that we ask all our guests. They do a good job of humanizing our guests. One's the pet story. Could you share a pet story with us from your life?

Speaker 1: 41:57

Absolutely I have. I think it's a great pet story. I don't know what other people will think, but okay, so my wife and I had two pugs, so they yeah, they sadly passed away a couple of years ago, but we oh.

Speaker 2: 42:11

I'm sorry to hear that.

Speaker 1: 42:12

Yeah, because it can be hard, but they were just, they were wonderful dogs, as pugs are, and so Well, they are something else. Them type of dogs. Oh, they're something else. So one was the female was named Nena and the male was named Nacho, and Nacho was the docile one and Nena was the dominant one.

Speaker 1: 42:29

Yeah, so we had these two pugs and what we did was regularly we would go to what's called a meetup. So there's something called meetupcom, which is like a hobbies or interests website, and if you look at that, sometimes they have dog meetups, and one of them that we found was called Pugsters. So this is basically a Pugsters meetup. So what it means is basically everyone goes into a giant gymnasium that Pugsters rents out and they bring their Pugs. So it's like a giant gym full of 30 Pugs and you just, it's amazing, it's so much fun. And so you're just amazing, it's amazing, it's so much fun, and so you just there.

Speaker 1: 43:08

And so one time Pugsters decided to host a competition for a prom king and prom queen, and the way to the way that they pitched it was that we needed, if they wanted to enter, we needed to provide a photo of the dog and then a brief description and then to have people vote on it through facebook. And so that's what we did. We entered nana, we entered nacho, and I really wanted them to win prom king and prom queen and of the pug world and so happened to win it easily, and so that that was really great. But nacho was going head to head with this other old pug named Trooper and they were both very old at this point. That's why I really wanted them to win, because they were really gray and this is almost like their last hurrah.

Speaker 1: 43:56

But Trooper was this other dog competing with Nacho and he was equally old and his owner had a huge social media platform at the time and I didn't at all, because it was years ago and this guy was just getting a lot of votes for his dog, trooper. And Trooper was very cute. But I didn't want Nana to be prom queen without Nacho as prom king. So I went on some sort of campaign where I went on to all of the Facebook pages where they had animals and dogs and cute cats and I would basically spam the hell out of them to try to get them to vote for nacho, and I essentially ended up getting my facebook account temporarily suspended for spamming all of them, but I got the votes and nacho won prom king, along with nina so the ends justify the means.

Speaker 1: 44:44

Right there, it was totally worth getting my Facebook account suspended.

Speaker 2: 44:51

That happened to me. That happened to me not with dog stuff, but I did these science videos with the local radio station and we wanted to get enough funding me and the DJ that we thought up the idea. So we were spamming every science page on Facebook and we both got our accounts locked temporarily.

Speaker 1: 45:10

Oh, it's hilarious.

Speaker 2: 45:11

But the video got enough views that we secured funding, so the ends did justify the means there too.

Speaker 1: 45:17

That's incredible. Yeah, it was totally worth it and in our case, we got there's a nice photo of them framed in their amazing prom king and queen costumes and I'm looking at it in my house right now, so it was totally worth it. What a wonderful memory. I love that. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 45:32

That's a cool pet story. Thanks for sharing that. Thank you. The last question I have for you is a super fact question. So we challenge all of our guests to share something that they know. That kind of blows people's minds a bit. Do you have a super fact for us?

Speaker 1: 45:49

I that they know that kind of blows people's minds a bit. Do you have a super fact for us? I do so. One of my favorite facts and it's a fact, it's also a thought experiment and it was pitched, or it was put forth by Richard Dawkins. So the evolutionary biologist in his book.

Speaker 1: 46:06

What was it called? I think it's the Magic of Reality. So it's one of his newest books and the fact or thought experiment is essentially that your and my 185th millionth great-grandfather was a fish. So I'll say that again. So 185 million generations ago our great-grandfather was a fish. And the way that he posed this thought experiment was imagine taking a selfie and having the photo on your desk, and then you take a photo of your dad and then you put it over top of that, and then you take a photo of his dad, and then his dad and then his dad, so forth of that, and then you take a photo of his dad and then his dad and then his dad, so forth, all the way down to 185 million generations ago, which he says he arbitrarily chose. And he said if you go back far enough, it sounds paradoxical, but when you go to the 185 millionth generation, it's a fish.

Speaker 1: 47:05

And the reason that it's a thought experiment is because it really reason that it's a thought experiment is because it really attests to the very slow, gradual, millions of years way in which evolution works. And he tries to pose the question of who was the first person or the first human and what this thought experiment tells us is that there really wasn't ever one to begin with, because the parents of every offspring was the same species. And it's hard to get our heads around because it just shows how gradual and slow evolution is. And we know this on a different level when we just think of normal human development, because we were all babies at one point and then we were all toddlers, and then we were all children, and then we were all adolescents and then adults at some point. But we can't pinpoint the day that we turned toddler to child or the day we became an adult. It's just a very gradual, slow progression. So, in the same way, that's how the evolution of species works, and that blows my mind.

Speaker 2: 48:01

Unless you subscribe to one of the world religions where, all of a sudden, there was people. There was no first people.

Speaker 1: 48:07

That was like the slow change from the previous species totally, or creationism, which says the earth was created 6 000 years ago.

Speaker 2: 48:16

Yeah, there we go exactly that's my favorite sound effect now for podcasting everybody I've just decided that is a great fact. I love that, thank you. I don't know if I'm going to tell my high school kids that, because they might turn that into some kind of weird put down you're a fish, yeah, yeah you're 180 185 million. Ancestor was a fish. Oh yeah, yours was a bottom failure or something like that. I'm sure they'll turn it into some weird put down.

Speaker 1: 48:47

So yeah, I love it Great.

Speaker 2: 48:50

Super fact. Thanks, doc. Thank you. We're at the end of the chat. Thank you so much for being our guest, jonathan. Can people follow you on social medias? Are you on the tech talks? Are you on the Instagrams or the Twitters?

Speaker 1: 49:04

I haven't come to the tech talks yet, but, yes, I'm definitely on Twitter or X and I'm on Instagram and I'm on Facebook and I'm on a website which I just developed for anyone that's interested in the book, and that's just my first and last name, so it's www N S T E Acom.

Speaker 2: 49:29

Perfect, we'll try to have a couple hyperlinks in the show notes. Everybody's here, one click away from following Dr Steyer.

Speaker 1: 49:36

Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 49:37

Is your book out right now or is it? What's going on with that? I apologize if this is a stupid question.

Speaker 1: 49:43

No, it's all good. It was recently made available for pre-order, so it's not going to be released or published until September the 3rd, but people can pre-order it now in Canada and the US and the UK and worldwide.

Speaker 2: 49:56

Nice, okay, so can they pre-order it from that website? Yes, okay, perfect, I'll just cut this part. Dr Steyer, can people pre-order your book from your website? Absolutely Okay, awesome, okay, there you go, everybody. Be one of the first ones with the copy of Mind the Science. I would love to read that book. I need to. I love learning the tricks the grifters have. That's my favoritest thing. It's like grifter jujitsu they try to throw you in a headlock and you're like nope, armbar.

Speaker 2: 50:29

Exactly To beat the enemy you got to know the enemy but not become the enemy.

Speaker 1: 50:36

Yeah, that's a risk too. Sometimes people become the enemy, so we don't want that.

Speaker 2: 50:40

Thanks for being our guest today. This was so fun, very informative. We wish you the best in the future and good luck with the book sales. It was so fun, jason. Well, that's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. And another call if you'd like to join the Paw Pack Plus, you get a whole host of bonus content and, depending on the tier you sign up, you get your name shouted out at the end of the show. Take it away, chris end of the show. Take it away, Chris and Ben Rathart.

Speaker 2: 51:58

For science, empathy and cuteness.