WTW11: Artisanal Coffee Comment Causes Firestorm?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:42 Thomas: And welcome to Where There's Woke. This is episode 11. I'm Thomas Smith. More importantly, that over there is Lydia Smith.

0:00:47 Lydia: Hello.

0:00:48 Thomas: The co-host. You're the main host. I am the cohost today.

0:00:50 Lydia: Today I'm the main host.

0:00:52 Thomas: Yeah. I really try to shut up as much as I can. Let's see. So excited. We're on a little side quest. Got to get some experience points. You know, we got to level up our weapons. Seen You a few of my video games.

0:01:03 Lydia: I've seen a few. I can follow along with what you're saying. I don't know if I could talk the talk, though.

0:01:06 Thomas: Yeah. Zelda has actually been holding off Ganon single-handedly in the castle for like hundreds of years, and we're like, I... now we could do another quest. We can do another request before we go to the main thing. So yeah, here's where we are, um, is part two, of course, uh, the Kilbourne law exam question, question, fiasco.

0:01:18 Lydia: She's fine, she's fine. Kill

0:01:29 Thomas: Oh, is that the second Bourne movie?

0:01:27 Lydia: Born Ultimatum which I don't know it might

0:01:31 Thomas: It might be like the seventh one though.

0:01:31 Lydia: Be I can't remember which one's the second one

0:01:33 Thomas: Yeah. I don't know. The Bourne identity, the Bourne supremacy, the bourne.

0:01:33 Lydia: There's so many that's all I can think of especially because his first name is Jason yeah

0:01:40 Thomas: Oh yeah. You're right. Jason Kilbourne. Yeah, totally. Ooh, I like it.

0:01:41 Lydia: Jason Kill Born Supremacy yeah here

0:01:47 Thomas: I'll re -up how we got here in case, uh, it's been a minute for you folks listening. Pausing on the main quest of of the Kilbourn to examine an example he brought up in an interview. Let's just very quickly play what he said we'll let Lydia take us on a journey.

0:02:04 Lydia: We

0:02:04 Clip: There's a professor at Yale who has something to do with medical something or like maybe it's psychology or any or something, but she was doing a field study. And I can't exactly recall what the subject of her study was, but she made a comment at some point in a paper about this study in which she expressed surprise that residents of rural Ohio might have a taste for artisanal coffee. She wouldn't have expected that. Before very long, there was an enormous firestorm from these crazy extreme leftist Yale students who characterized that comment of hers about rural Ohioans as being, quote, "dehumanizing." It was dehumanising for her to suggest that these rural Ohioan probably wouldn't have a taste for artisanal coffee. And you just have to read it two or three times to go, am I getting this right? I mean, you can't believe that this is how normal people, well-educated people at the absolute flagship of the higher education industry in the United States, Yale University, they're behaving this way.

0:03:02 Thomas: Right, so what Satelle.

0:03:04 Lydia: Go Sally Sattel. So we're going to talk about Sally Sattel.

0:03:08 Thomas: You Were able To, and let me guess, you were able to track it down by being like, "coffee professor, whatever," and then every single result came up and told you exactly what it was, and they were all on her Side? Is that's What happens.

0:03:18 Lydia: Yeah, pretty, pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. Sally Settel is an American psychiatrist. He says that she was conducting a field study. That is not true. We'll talk about exactly what she was working on, where these comments came up. He also said that it was a paper that she was writing, a comment in a paper that she wrote. That is also not true. It was not in the context of a paper. It was in a lecture that was given to Yale students. And then the last piece was that before very long, you know, there was this firestorm from extreme leftists that were Yale students and

0:03:51 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, wow. Kind of firestorm? How many dead? Oh, a letter. Oh, was it radioactive? Was there?

0:03:58 Lydia: It was pretty much a letter and

0:04:02 Thomas: There's anthrax in the letter and it killed how many?

0:04:05 Lydia: Yeah, I zero because it was digitally delivered.

0:04:09 Thomas: They have digital anthraxa. The woke have digital antrax, everyone. But

0:04:13 Lydia: Um, a group of anonymous psychiatric residents at Yale School of Medicine that sent this letter, but let's back up, let's talk about Sally Sattel a little bit. I'm not gonna like dive deep deep deep into her history, but I do think some of this is important. Yes, that's

0:04:27 Thomas: The official position of the show is that we will be referring to her as Sally Sitwell, because that was what you and I quickly said. You actually, I think, said it first. Yeah, that was impressive. You're not the quotey thing person. I'm usually the quote -y stuff person. So Sally Sit well.

0:04:34 Lydia: True. I did. Yeah.

0:04:45 Thomas: Tell us about Sally Sit. Well,

0:04:45 Lydia: Sally Sitwell. All we know she's a psychiatrist. We know where she teaches lectures at Yale, visiting professor at Columbia. She is also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2000. She has been with this conservative think tank for a long, long, long time. Listeners who listen to our piece on the Institute, Robert P. George, he's over at the American Enterprise Institute. Gottlieb is an important figure that we'll get to eventually. He was the FDA under Trump. He was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute before, and then he has returned after that administration ended. Of folks that we would like to see, you know, we get to see in the American Enterprise Institute, and she's one of them. In 2001, so shortly after she joined AEI, she a book called PCMD, How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine.

0:05:14 Thomas: She No way.

0:05:49 Lydia: Yeah, that's how it starts.

0:05:50 Thomas: You don't say.

0:05:51 Lydia: That's how it starts. Yeah. So she had a big problem with this idea that medical practitioners were expected to be mindful of, you the societal structures that are impacting their patients. And she really, there was an article I read where she basically said, "Now listen, black people and white people, they're different, and I'm gonna take that into consideration when I'm prescribing something because this thing does only 40 percent of the time in black people."

0:06:17 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:06:27 Lydia: So She'll start people at like lower doses, it's

0:06:27 Thomas: Well, OK. Okay. That is one of those like horseshoe theory type things where it's like, actually, was the 90s period and into the 2000s where it was like, "No, treat everyone exactly the fucking same, percent you can't see their skin," but I think, hopefully, a of people outgrew that, and it is fair to recognize there are different concerns of different people with different races.

0:06:41 Lydia: Right.

0:06:49 Thomas: So, don't know, sickle cell anemia or something. So, is that, is she, she's

0:06:49 Lydia: No, absolutely. Absolutely. One of her examples. Right. Is that sickle cell anemia is something that has evolved over time to be more prevalent in certain racial groups. Right? So that is something Something that a doctor should be mindful of. And that's understandable. However, however, she includes someone, an anesthesiologist, I think, saying that they black people at different rates than white people because of their rate of salivation. And years later, she issues a correction to this article where she says, "Numerous physicians have reached out to me unclear about where the salivation comment came from.

0:07:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:29 Lydia: Like, then I started looking into it and I don't really know where he got it either. But the rest of the article stands and is reasonable.

0:07:28 Thomas: My god okay So it's not sickle cel anemia, it's some racist myth about black people salivate differently. That and she just is like, I don't know where I heard it. Oh, my

0:07:42 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's from one source. One source, you know, didn't really like look into it. You know, granted, it's not her area of study, but but still like it's a pretty intense claim. Yeah.

0:07:47 Thomas: God, yeah, but that's, that's called racism, like that. Growing up in a small racist town, like, yeah, we were kind of told stuff about other races. And like, if you didn't, you know, go to college like I did and and realized like, oh fuck, nothing I learned is reliable, like, I'm just gonna forget all that, everything I knew about anything, I need to relearn. If you don't do that, then you're just like, "Yeah, no, black people definitely salivate differently." And then you work for a Republican think tank, and then no one calls you out on it, apparently, until what year was that? Yikes.

0:08:00 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:08:25 Lydia: 2004, 2005. Yeah. They called her out before and she just got around to editing it, you know, years later. I mean, both, both versions are bad. But in "The Health Disparities Myth" in 2006, she co-wrote this with an author named Jonathan Click, who is an economist, in book, their position is that differences in treatment do vary by race, but it's not because of race, it's because of insurance status, income, geographic location, that they're not seeing the same doctors because they live in

0:08:30 Thomas: Yeah, it could be huh, Oh, yeah,

0:09:04 Lydia: Different areas and I wonder how all of those things came to be right

0:09:06 Thomas: Yeah, so it's It's like, OK, so it's like black people aren't using a different drinking fountain because they're black. They're using the different worst drinking fountain because they tend to be located in line where that drinking fountain is for some reason. OK, You're right. There's no racism.

0:09:19 Lydia: Near this um, publisher, publisher, AEI Press. So at least, you know, there wasn't like, you know, a random house picked this up or anything like that. But it did carry, you attention. And, you backing up one year before with another AEI fellow that I know you know Christina Hoff Summers.

0:09:35 Thomas: God. Oh, fucking Jesus Christ.

0:09:49 Lydia: They co -wrote a book together called One Nation Under Therapy, How the Helping culture is eroding self -reliance. So this was very concerning to me because I read this title and I was like, wait, what? How Helping Culture is Eroding Self -Reliance.

0:09:50 Thomas: Oh, how the Uh, okay.

0:10:08 Lydia: You have a psychiatrist co -writing this book. That feels so wrong to me.

0:10:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, what does she want? Psychiatry to be just like berating your your client until, yeah.

0:10:17 Lydia: Yeah, it's bootstraps, baby. Maybe. Yeah. I don't really know.

0:10:25 Thomas: You're like, I have very severe PTSD. Grow Grow up!

0:10:28 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. They reveal how therapism and the burgeoning trauma industry.

0:10:34 Thomas: Therapism?

0:10:35 Lydia: Yeah therapism. Yep.

0:10:37 Thomas: She's a psychiatrist.

0:10:37 Lydia: And she's a psychiatrist.

0:10:38 Thomas: Well, wait, is Is that the thing where like psychiatrists frown on just regular therapists or is what they do? Yeah.

0:10:44 Lydia: Psychiatrists have like the medical component to it. Right. So those are the ones I

0:10:47 Thomas: But do you still call that therapy? I can't remember that's what I yeah

0:10:49 Lydia: Think so. I think you still call it therapy. You know it's just there's a variety of models of therapy.

0:10:50 Thomas: Okay therapism but psychiatrists tend to, they can prescribe stuff so maybe it's like more of that angle, like they're saying like don't just talk to someone, you either have drugs or not or something. I don't know.

0:10:57 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah I guess. Well Well, I don't know that every psychiatrist thinks this way. I think this is like very particular to her. Yes, reveal how therapy and the burgeoning trauma industry have come to pervade our lives. Is offered everywhere under the presumption that we need it. In children's classrooms, the workplace, churches, courtrooms, the media, the military. But with all the help comes a host of troubling consequences. Consequences. Can you imagine? Like I.

0:11:07 Thomas: No no no yeah yeah yeah How Could you think that what

0:11:34 Lydia: How can you think that? How is this something that you could think so much about that you have an entire book pouring out of you? Like, I don't understand this.

0:11:43 Thomas: Is the hell, how could you walk about the world in our country at least, and in this United States of America, and being like, fuck, there's too much help everywhere, everything's too helpful. You see, like, an Amazon driver run into a wall because he hasn't gone to the bathroom in four years and like another homeless people, all that. Damn. You know what's the problem? Too much help. What the fuck?

0:11:43 Lydia: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So they think PTSD, you know, it used to be applied only to war veterans, it's being applied to way too many people now. Um, grief counselors, they have a big problem with grief counselors.

0:12:18 Thomas: Grief counselors. Come on. Like, okay. If you want to do a thing, you can get me on board with just about anything. If your angle is the people on TikTok are doing this wrong you very, just stick to that.

0:12:18 Lydia: Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

0:12:32 Lydia: 2005.

0:12:32 Thomas: Like cause yeah. Okay. Are the people on TikTok, but what year was this book? Oh, okay, this is not even close. Okay, Okay, fuck you. This is not... In 2005, you're telling me we're already helping people too much and there's... All right.

0:12:37 Lydia: Yeah. I know it's horrible, yeah. No, because it's this idea, right? Right. The part of the yeah, the way that it's phrased to it says the unasked for grief counselors who descend on bereaved families, schools and communities. Yep. Yep.

0:12:48 Thomas: Grief counseling. She has a problem with grief counselors in 2005.

0:13:00 Thomas: What? Don't even know. Like, most of this stuff, I at least know the idiotic upside down world because I've spent too much time in their mindset. I don't know what... I mean, it's 2005, five, so this is before my time in terms of awareness of this kind of stuff, but I can't even guess as to what the fuck they are thinking with this, like, is there some news story of a grief count, I don't know, like, what

0:13:16 Lydia: Yeah.

0:13:28 Lydia: Yeah, I honestly don't know. But they did like a whole circuit of like sitting on panels together talking about this. This is something that, yeah, that they really, really pushed for for quite some time. And, you know, to your point in the previous episode and some of the other episodes that we've done on this show, you want to be fair. And just because I strongly disagree with a lot of these things here doesn't necessarily mean that she has a wrong opinion about everything, right? Think that there are some elements in my research of her where I'm board with what she's saying, right. She doesn't think the death penalty is appropriate for individuals with mental illness. Kind of a low bar

0:13:35 Thomas: Jesus. Yeah.

0:14:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:09 Lydia: To agree with, but I want to give her credit.

0:14:10 Thomas: Right. Let me guess, she's for legalizing weed or something, they always have those, no, I know, this is a joke, they always had the Dave, Dave Rubin has two, weed and gay marriage, and that makes him a Bernie Sanders.

0:14:16 Lydia: No. Oh, okay. Yeah. Right. Right?

0:14:24 Thomas: And you're like, no, it doesn't. More things than those two things.

0:14:26 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, so kind of tells you a little bit about Sally Sattel that I don't want to go too deep into her history, but But I think that kind of helps set up, you know, what the Yale students might know about her.

0:14:32 Thomas: Yeah. That she probably fucking sucks? Yeah.

0:14:42 Lydia: All right. So here we go. 8th, 2021. Yale does these things called Grand Rounds. So in their psychiatry department on January 8, 2021, it's a weekly thing that they do during the school year. The grand round present for that day was Sally Sattel. And Sally, you're right, Sally Settwell.

0:15:03 Thomas: Sally Sitwell. Please say her name correctly. I don't want to confuse the listeners.

0:15:08 Lydia: And she did a presentation that was titled My Year Abroad in Ironton, Ohio. So already titling it in a way that she will characterize as, you know, cheeky and fun. But, kind you of sets up these expectations, again, knowing a little bit about how she views race. In 2018, she says she moved to Ironton, Ohio. She did an interview with Reason in in a different, you obviously online in an article, they asked what drew you to Ohio. And she didn't really answer that. But I dug around to find out more of that story. In Grand Rounds, the way that she characterizes it is that she wanted to go since 2015 to a location, you knows, where she could help with addiction. That's where a lot of her background is, is working in clinics and helping individuals with severe substance abuse and and addiction problems and, you know, kind of figuring out getting on the other side of that.

0:15:16 Thomas: Yikes. Yeah.

0:16:10 Thomas: Does this feel a little JD Vance-esque, like, we're doing oh Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, sure.

0:16:15 Lydia: Funny you should say that. Wow. These are things I have not told you. So, yeah.

0:16:20 Thomas: No, yeah, I'm in the dark here, that

0:16:23 Lydia: She wanted to go since 2015. Eventually, she contacted a friend who had a lot of Ohio connections and he set me up and J.D. Vance and his charity.

0:16:34 Thomas: Okay. That is so funny, probably

0:16:34 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. The charity that I'll just add ceased operations when he started campaigning for Congress. It down.

0:16:43 Thomas: Because they finished doing all the good, yeah.

0:16:44 Lydia: Yeah. They fixed it. Right. Right. She went out there for about a year and she's, you know, telling the students in the lecture itself, talking about, you know, the connections that she's made there, what the town was like, you know, kind of setting that context for the geography. She they talk explicitly about OxyContin because that is such a deep, deep, deep problem in a lot of America, especially in Ohio. J.D. Vance, you know, it's how he became a a name in everybody's living room. Right. Hillbilly Elegy. Yes.

0:17:21 Thomas: He wrote the Hillbilly Elegy about the hillbilley upbringing, actually, not much of it was about OxyContin, but as it's, you're talking, I Google this town, Ohio, and it is, it think it's important to say, this is 92 percent white, so I was, I was curious, like, okay, is this a rural, like, black area, or is it, I think that makes a difference, um, terms of, you, some of the implications of what she's saying, but it is one of those JD Vance-esque, hillbilly, super white places, so, yeah, yeah,

0:17:30 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Also talks a lot about the history of the town and that it used to be a really strong coal mining area and the way that like coal camps worked and stuff. I learned a lot, honestly, about history, like reading through some of this stuff and the way that pain relievers ended up becoming a necessity for a lot of these individuals, because without them and they weren't able to go to work, they didn't just lose their jobs. If they had a house that was being paid for by the coal company, they lost their house.

Were like kicked out of town, essentially, in some of those cases. So becomes this reliance. Right. So just kind of talking about the drug history there. She speaks this entire time and brings up towards the end about how, you know, she's seeing the town starting to turn around. And that's where that artisanal coffee shop comes in. You know, someone has opened an artisanal coffee shop. And just thought that was, you know, so interesting because I didn't know that that's something that these people would like, you Know, kind of thing. And if you can play the link

0:18:04 Thomas: Okay yeah, yeah, sure. Hmm. Oh,

0:19:00 Lydia: I sent you, we get the Q &A portion where we're jumping in. And I thought this was really remarkable. So I want to share it with everybody. Everybody, yeah.

0:19:09 Thomas: Okay, here we go, uh,

0:19:11 Clip: Name's Sean. I appreciate you coming to talk about the opioid epidemic. I'm from Mississippi and have a lot of interface with rural communities, and I had more of a comment than a question, So, I wanted to make a comment about kind of how we talk about rural populations and how we use the ways that we describe them to make our points. Too often when we come out of our ivory towers and poke our head out the window, it's easy to view these communities kind of like a zoo. And I think some of the initial part of the PowerPoint kind of utilized that perspective.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but, to me, in some ways it seemed that that you might have been using the kind of dehumanizing or mocking the rural population of Ohio to emphasize your thesis that patients are more responsible for their illness than we previously thought, and I was just, just wanted to get your perspective upon the view that I took away from that. Do you think that people, of course, have a role?

That's what we do in drug treatment, we show them what that role was. So, I mean, not, not in any kind of a, you know, a blaming or, um, um, discouraging way, but that's, that's really the key to, I mean, after you've stabilized people on, we were talking about opioids, maybe after you stabilize them on methadone or buprenorphine or whatever, um, which is often the first move, people have to stand still that they're going to start to get better.

In treatment, then so much of the work is showing them, you know, that's not blaming the victim. It's showing them how they have, you know, this, that is what relapse prevention is all about, is understanding the vulnerabilities, which can take the form of, you now, cues in the most, you known, conditioned cues kind kind of way.

What else is, you know, how they can fill what they perceive to be some of the deficits in their life that has led them to feel so distraught that they often turn to drugs. So, you know, if we treat it like it's a formal disease, where, you, if you had pneumonia, I could treat it if you were in a coma. It's not like that, it's much more interactive. So, I think that talking about the extent to which people play a role in their circumstances is essential.

0:21:47 Lydia: You hear anywhere in her response where she spoke to his concerns about the language that she was using for her thesis? She

0:21:55 Thomas: Didn't address that at all, which I mean she seemed to focus on, I don't, where did she grab that from his question exactly, right?

0:22:03 Lydia: Read into the question where he was saying, you know, do you think that you do on that language in order to support your thesis that people are personally responsible, and then she said, well, people are, are personally responsible for their illness, right?

0:22:13 Thomas: Right, right, yeah, she just kind of skipped the rest of the the first part of the thing, yeah, yeah,

0:22:18 Lydia: Yep. Yep. That I thought was like really lovely and honest and vulnerable, and can be kind of a challenging situation to speak up in that kind of environment. Maybe that resident actually has gone on to become the inpatient chief resident and an assistant professor at Yale. And he's a big advocate for LGBTQ causes. And yeah, he's really cool. Sean Patterson, if anyone wants to check him out. That was January 6th. That's pretty much where her presentation ends.

0:22:48 Thomas: And That was the, we're talking, that was THE presentation in question.

0:22:51 Lydia: That was it.

0:22:52 Thomas: Okay. I mean, obviously, so we played just that one clip from a Q &A but this is an hour and 20 minutes, uh, that's what the Ground Rounds is, it's like a talk, like, that, like, a, okay, and because of COVID it's like virtual, gotcha, is answer that she did is, is, you're taking OxyContin, it's a little bit weird to be like, yeah, these people turned to drugs. She literally said that, like, oh, what, what, what's going on in their life that they turned to drugs? Do you think that's what happened, or were those drugs pushed by the fucking Sackler family and got a gazillion people addicted, and blah, blah, blah?

0:22:52 Lydia: Yes. Yep. Yep, yep. Of COVID at that time, it was virtual, exactly. So Yeah.

0:23:29 Thomas: It's, yeah, this personal responsibility angle on the fucking opioid crisis, um, I'm gonna zigzag here, that's slightly refreshing, because the other thing that's happened is that once something like this affected white people, then all of a sudden it was like, all right, well, okay, it's not, not their fault, like, it's, when it was like, okay, drug epidemic in any other race, it's like, well, those fucking people need to get their act together, so actually it's kind of weirdly, now I think about it, it's, I, it's sort of consistent for her to be like, yeah, also, these white people need to get their act together, but I think she's using that as a way to tell black people to get there, you know what I mean, like, okay, all

0:24:09 Lydia: Even worse than that, but put a pin in it because we'll get there yeah all, you're 100 right.

0:24:10 Thomas: Right, we'll put a pin in it but Oh, no, sorry, I will say one more thing. That is the whole bullshit about J.D. Vance. You tell know, this very brief story, and I hope your won't mind. But your dad recommended Hillbilly Elegy to me a lot, or to us, or I don't know. But it felt like to me, right after it came out. And that was pre -Trump, I want to say. Wasn't it like 2016? June 28th, 2016, I don't remember when I actually read it, but he started recommending it to me, and your, think it was cause of some sort of, I dunno, what family connection to that area.

And he just, he he, um, on to just the, yeah, like the, the family component of it in the hillbilly kind of, it, which I also found kind of interesting, you know, like that area, and you thing, but when I finally read it, I remember I told him, um, like, yeah, I, I read the book, did enjoy it, but didn't you feel like it was kind of like a, like right wing, you thing, like, cause at this time, by the way, mind you, this is just Hillbilly Elegy bestseller, that JD Vance isn't running for anything. Like he's just, you know, he's

0:24:15 Lydia: Yes like right, yeah, yeah, was like relatable, yeah, yeah,

0:25:12 Thomas: Just whatever.

0:25:13 Lydia: Everybody's talking about this book, yeah.

0:25:14 Thomas: Yeah. I knew nothing about any of that. I just read the book, and I was like, yeah, I remember specifically having a feeling of, of, like, wait, you're kind of using this downtrodden white people and saying basically they need to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps, and there's a part toward the end of the book where he was like, see, I got my shit together and got out of there and went to Yale or whatever the fuck he went to, and, like, I became a blah, and it was, you know, most of the book was fine, but, like, the end to the book, toward the n, I remember seeing that message, I and I was like, hey, I kind of feel like this, you know, like it might be kind of a right wing thing that in disguise, because it's, you know, it's one step away.

He didn't want to say, hey, black people, get your shit together. But if he writes about these white people and says, see, it is not about anything other than their personal choices, they need to get their shit together, but you're kind of, like, also implying, you, you're able to make that statement, to that message in a way that doesn't feel as racist because you're talking about your own family and your super

0:25:15 Lydia: Right, yeah,

0:26:21 Thomas: Poor white people that you're related to. So I noted that very thing, and that's what this feels like to me. It's like you talking about white people to avoid the charge of racism, but you're still saying the same thing. You're saying people in these shitty circumstances need to get their fucking shit together. Forward to, you know, a couple of years back or whatever. And J.D. Vance is running for a Senate as a Republican, Trump fucking Republican. And I felt pretty vindicated about that. Felt like I called that one. Literally didn't know anything about him. Read the book, was like, yeah, right wing and yeah. Nailed

0:26:24 Lydia: So, right,

0:26:58 Thomas: It. Anyway, so

0:27:01 Lydia: Picks this up. And, pick up that the Yale psychiatry residents are not pleased. And yes, some number of anonymous Yale psychiatRY residents. And those residents have sent a letter to Dr. John Crystal, John Crystal is co -chair of the Anti -Racism Task Force with Dr. Cindy Crusto. And she actually made history as the first Black woman professor in Yale psychiatry.

0:27:07 Thomas: Some number of them.

0:27:31 Thomas: In, like, 18 what 1930?

0:27:33 Lydia: 2021.

0:27:34 Thomas: Oh, 2021, wow, okay, which is, I'm not, just, that's also, like, importantly, the backdrop here, we're at fucking, Yale, white as could be,

0:27:37 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Right, Right, right. And so she was involved with Yale before then because the anti -racism task force started in September 2020. But she know, she didn't have a professorship at the time. Um, 2021, what a year.

0:27:53 Thomas: Well, September 2020, yeah. Yeah, because of George Floyd.

0:28:00 Lydia: So, um, know, before we get into the letter, actually, why don't I, why up some of that context of the world looked like, uh, Know, at large, but then also at Yale in particular, leading up to this. Right. So if we back up from when they formed the Anti -Racism Task Force, which we said was in the wake of George Floyd, John Crystal later described it as the largest and most important initiative in our department. But if you back up a little bit further, they actually started incorporating anti -racism education and advocacy into their curriculum for their residents in their medical school in 2015. you all stars.

0:28:36 Thomas: Yikes. So not, not 1968 or something like that.

0:28:41 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, but they did have something. It was formalized and structured, a piece of their residency program. They had a structural competency track, the human experience track, the advocacy track, and the history of psychiatry track. So talking about, you know, some of those systemic problems within psychiatry as a field and that has been pervasive in that field moving forward.

0:28:42 Thomas: Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. Well, Not to mention, I much of medical science, we own it. We own it all the time. We only know, we know a whole lot of stuff because we just experimented on black people without their fucking consent. So yeah, like maybe teaching, um, sort of medical student about that history I think would be a little bit, you know, at least, yeah, mention it. Like they should at least kind of know about that, that would be good.

0:29:15 Lydia: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it is something, you know, they talk about racism. They talk about ableism, colonialism, homophobia, transphobia, you general inequality that is pervasive in our society and how it has hurt marginalized communities over time.

0:29:26 Thomas: Yeah, And what are we talking about? I'm sure it's like, what, what is this, a course, or like one thing, you know, like people overreact to this as though this is, that's actually all they teach, they don't even teach medicine anymore, they just teach wokeness. It's like, no, there's probably like a fucking one course that they do.

0:29:53 Lydia: I think it's I I think it's one year of of material

0:29:54 Thomas: Sure, great, you, you know, it should, yeah, it's like, that's good. You know? That's, that should be taught. But it's, people overreact as though that's all they're teaching instead of medicine or something.

0:29:58 Lydia: That they do. Yeah.

0:30:08 Thomas: It's nuts.

0:30:08 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. So have this framework for their students. And then, you was looking through the grand rounds, you and stuff and stumbled on one from February 5th, 2020, where Dr. Amanda Calhoun spoke and she She was a resident at the time, and her piece was about sharing her experience with racism in the medical field. And she's doing this to her peers, right, to her colleagues, to Her professors and mentors. 30th, 2020, a few months later, there, you pieces about confronting racism in the curriculum itself, how it's important to the psychiatrists in this program that they're confronting racism. You know, that's around the time of George Floyd. Right. July 30th, 2020. And then the anti -racism task force is formed in September 2020.

0:30:57 Thomas: From the student's perspective, perhaps, it is like, all right, we are making some change around here. Yeah. The year of our Lord 2020. Instead of, you know, in 1900.

0:30:59 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. And finally got to it. Yeah. You recall the date of Sally Sitwell's presentation, January 8th, 2021. Do you know what happened two days before that?

0:31:15 Thomas: Oh, yeah? Yeah. Common. Okay, very big commonality with, uh, when the whole Kilbourne thing happened, not to go back to that. Yeah, um.

0:31:25 Lydia: So commonality there. And then, you we had the at the Capitol that were obviously really intense. Know Sally Sitwell does not believe in trauma, but yeah.

0:31:34 Thomas: Someone ran a Confederate flag in the the fucking House chambers, like that's a, yeah. That's the racism that happened, a big one.

0:31:40 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yale had held a town hall on January 7th for students offering support, resources, you know, an opportunity to discuss what happened, you know, just kind of creating a space to be there together. And then in comes Sally Sitwell, January 8th. I think that that's important context to have when understand the reaction from the students. Now, let me read. Let me read the reaction from The Students because,

0:31:58 Thomas: Jesus Christ. Are confess I've already read the letter because I thought I was just doing this myself and I want to fool people. I've read this, I can't wait. I don'

0:32:14 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. I will Dr. Crystal, Anti-Racism Task Force, and Yale Department of Psychiatry Leadership. We, a concerned group of Yale psychiatry residents, are writing this letter to express our disappointment with the Grand Rounds presentation given on January 8, 2021, by Dr. Sally Sattel. Presentation was given two days after the white supremacist insurrection that occurred at the Capitol and was further traumatizing to us and many of our colleagues. Leagues. The language Dr. Sattel used in her presentation was dehumanizing, demeaning, and classist toward individuals living in rural Ohio and for rural populations in general. Dr. Satel is known for her highly problematic and racist canon.

0:32:57 Thomas: Boy.

0:32:57 Lydia: That explicitly blames individuals facing structural inequities for their own health outcomes. In the book, The Health Disparities myth, Dr. co-author Jonathan Click claim that structural racism is a myth. They give a quote from there. Another work titled PCMD, Dr Sattell even has the audacity to challenge Reverend Al Sharpton, an exemplary individual and activist.

One disputes the fact that minorities, especially Black Americans, tend to be less healthy than whites, it is rash to ascribe this difference mainly to bias in the health care system or to doctors' subtle prejudice against minority patients. There are ample reasons for differences in health status, some easier to address than others, but the evidence does not support the charge of bias. The accusation is nonetheless being made by influential groups ranging from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to the Association of American Medical Colleges and by Black leaders like the Reverend Al Sharpton. As if this rhetoric weren't divisive enough, some of the remedies being implemented are deeply worrisome. It continues. Presentation, Dr. Sattel applied her problematic beliefs to psychiatric patients suffering from substance use disorders. We find her canon to be beyond a difference of opinion, in quotes, worth debate. Bait.

Racist and classist beliefs are particularly harmful to our psychiatric patients who do indeed suffer from structural inequities, as well as our Black colleagues who also suffer from racism and have had family members die in the medical system because of inequitable treatment by providers. Many residents who have roots in rural America also expressed hurt by her elitist portrayal of Ohio as both foreign and lesser. Example, at one point in her speech, she describes an artisanal coffee shop, one I would not expect to find here.

The very title of her piece likens rural Ohio to traveling abroad, another theme we found offensive. While we do promote holding space for opinions, diverse dehumanization should never be given a platform in Yale Department of Psychiatry. Does it say about our department that we are inviting the speaker, especially considering her previous work, while simultaneously forming an anti-racism task force? How can the departments support a woman who is minimizing the impact of racism and then claim to make it a priority. Dr. Crystal, you are the chair and leader of the Anti-Racist Task Force. We are especially shocked and disappointed in you. How can we as residents be inspired to join an Anti-racism Task Force when that same task force headed by you did not take a public stand against Dr. Sattel? Have demonstrated that you wish to talk about anti-racismo abstractly but not concretely. You You have modeled that you are unwilling to call out racism in our own colleagues.

In fact, you have, with no evidence of forethought or of warning, given such a colleague a platform and a large audience to promote her viewpoints. A concerned group of residents, do not necessarily represent our entire residency, but rather form an anonymous subset. We request a response from Dr. Crystal regarding the following list of questions by February 1st, 2021. 2021, we also request the same advantage that was given to Dr. Sattel, a large audience.

We ask that this letter be distributed to the entire Yale Department of Psychiatry. We also intend that this later be discussed during the next Anti-Racism Task Force meetings. Finally, we are ashamed to learn that Dr. Sattel has an academic affiliation with Yale. Of her previous work, we ask that Dr Sattels lectureship with Yale be revoked. And then they followed with some questions. What was the process of choosing her as a speaker? Who made this decision? What were the learning objectives of this talk?

Why were her problematic views not presented to us beforehand so that those who might be offended and upset could choose not to attend the presentation? Will her academic affiliation be reconsidered? Why should we join the Anti-Racism Force when this same department supports racist classes and problematic speakers who directly minimize the impact of systemic racism? Should We Trust that you are committed to anti-racism? Are you only interested in fighting anti-acism in an abstract space for which you can assume no responsibility?

Or are you interested in also fighting anti racism, even if it means challenging your own racism and that of your colleagues? What will you do differently in the future? Will you continue to invite grand round speakers with racist and classist mindsets like Dr. Sattel? Thank you, concerned Yale psychiatry residents. I

0:37:24 Thomas: That sounds pretty reasonable to me, yeah.

0:37:26 Lydia: Think so, too. I yeah, it that this is characterized, you everything else. Right. Way that Kilbourn characterizes it, these extreme leftist Yale students provoked because how dare she talk about artisanal coffee shops in Ohio and they're enraged. That's not that's not what happened. And that's how that letter reads. And it's talking points from fire is really what he's espousing right there. Right. It's because they got involved in this case. And so, you helping him out. And so he's helping to spread the gospel, I guess. So what actually happened after this letter came out? Do you think happened?

0:37:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:38:14 Thomas: Well, I... Okay, so they... Let's see, based on the... Know the reaction, I would say so. A group of them took over the school uh at gunpoint. They um no, nothing will happen until we get an answer to our letter. Um Publicly hanged Sally Sitwell. She's now dead. Yeah.

0:38:27 Lydia: Yeah. OK. OK, all right. All right. Nothing happened.

0:38:36 Thomas: Nothing. Yep.

0:38:37 Lydia: Here's a quote from an article where she responded to what happened. I was offered a chance by the chairman to discuss it with him. He was very professional, but I had no questions and I was not asked to do anything different. Was it. It. She continues to be affiliated with Yale. Didn't see any evidence that there certainly was no public response from the school to the residents. It had a large audience because somehow, you knows, it was published and FIRE got a hold of it. But again, who knows how big that audience is? You have to click through FIRE's main article to get to it anyway. I didn't see any response from the school, from Dr. Crystal. I through the anti -racism task force materials on their website.

I wasn't seeing anything relating to agendas or minutes or any sort of subcommittee documentation that they had. I don't think any of that stuff is made available for the public. So I wasn'T able to confirm if that was able to to be discussed. One thing I did note, though, I checked out some of the grand rounds that happened later. And they had one that was like the state of the department that they did several months after this.

One of the things that I thought was interesting was, you know, this is it was a tough year with coming on the, I tail of the worst of COVID anyway, and all the political unrest and the insurrection and racism, like horrible, horrible, terrible things, right? Dr. Crystal leads it off with like, it was a terrible year. And this is, you know, the same year that Sally Sitwell spoke. I thought that was kind of funny.

And then he turns it over to like like a video of students responding about what their experience was with the year. And several of them spoke about confronting racism, including confronting it within the school. And I thought that was really No one spoke about this particular lecture by name. No one called her out specifically in that, but certainly alluded to problems within the department That I think everyone has been eager to address. Wish I knew more.

But that's kind of where that piece ends of That's it. That'S the entire story of Sally Sitwell. I do have some other stuff that's, you But but let's talk about this. Sure.

0:38:51 Thomas: Yep. Cool. What?

0:40:59 Thomas: I, I don't, I mean it's it's absurd. I, the thing I had seen again before I kind of handed it off to you that I want to talk about is the Fire.org article, which is I I can't even now that you know the facts everybody because LYDIA: has done such a great job of breaking it down and you know what happened was she came she's she's a racist she She writes this fucking bullshit and, students wrote a letter. What happened. They wrote a newsletter. Administration did nothing from what we can find.

0:41:09 Lydia: Mm hmm. Yeah.

0:41:32 Thomas: Absolutely nothing. Like, nothing. Very important to keep this in mind. Event is, this person comes, she's uh racist who works for a conservative think tank, she's got all these views, whatever, regardless of some, if you are on the other side of those, she has those views and some students were like, hey, this kind of sucks, um, admitting that we don't represent everybody, you know, like they write an incredibly reasonable letter that says like, we're not big fans of this, um, especially again this is the fucking anti-racism task force, like do you maybe want to, you know, address some of these questions we have, someone's concern, could not be more reasonable, was this a raving mob of leftists that burned down, bill, no, they wrote a letter. And I, I, I know, guys, folks, this article, I can't, I can't even stress how fucking hilarious this, like, the victim mentality of these people is unbelievable.

Let me give you some highlights. Apparently there's this trap house case. I don't know what that is, but but it's some fucking, who cares? We'll look into that later. But it also is talking about the headline is Yale's treatment of a psych lecture. Yale's Treatment. We've we've told you what happened. Second, Yale's treatment of a psych lecturer, another step in continuing retreat from academic freedom. The, that's the head. I'm not fucking making this up. That's the headline. Here's the second sentence, because I guess that's what we

0:41:55 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:43:00 Thomas: Do now. We do a headline and then we do, I don't know, it makes sense. But trouble brewing after, quote, dehumanizing. Artisanal coffee remark prompts students to grind for filter. What? Grind for filter?

0:43:00 Lydia: I don't they got really stuck in the coffee mode.

0:43:13 Thomas: Yeah, boy, that's like trying to make a pun on Citation Needed. That didn't work. Go back to the drawing board. Grind for filter. Like guess you're trying to say like they want a filter for free speech or something. And so they're grinding. That's nothing. I'm sorry. You didn't do it. I didn't. Sorry, fire. Nice try. Not even close. But like real, Yale's treatment. I can't even. That's the headline. There's more. Experience alone is not the gravest violation of intellectual freedom we see in a given week, and yet both are symptoms of a worsening disease.

0:43:27 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:43:49 Thomas: Disease, wrote, they wrote a letter, folks, they wrote a letter that was ignored, they wrote it a letter that was ignored. More to this fucking hyperbole. Sattel's conclusions are, of course, fair game for examination and critique. The residents are flatly uninterested, however, in anything of the sort. They write, quote, "We find her canon to be beyond a difference of opinion worth debate," end quote. More to the point, they view allowing opinions like Sattel's on campus as wholly incompatible with Yale School of Medicine's commitment to anti-racism and call on Yale to terminate Sattell's status as a lecturer. Yeah, that's what happened.

They did call on that and then nothing happened. Fortunately, Sattelle writes, Yale has not done so. Ready for this? But Yale has also not used this as a teachable moment for its residents either, at least not in any public-facing way, and the chilling effect, the chilling affect, will no doubt disincentivize many potential lecturers from volunteering to be the next punching bag. Oh my god.

But what does it, it say, I'm still going, this is quotes, but what does it say about the culture of free expression at Yale? These are the terms of the discussion, I, sorry, they, they wrote a letter, you know what's another word for writing a letter, hun, of expression, you're expressing an

0:43:56 Lydia: I Yeah, yeah.

0:45:15 Thomas: Opinion and they wrote letter and that's it, that's all that, some, know, I keep repeating it, but imagine what would need to be the case for this. Whoever wrote, whatever fucking nut job wrote this article for the fire .org. would it take for them to be happy? That's what's important. Ask that question. So flip it around, for these people to think, oh yeah, Yale is doing a good job at free expression, here's what would have to happen. It, these students would have to have this very legitimate opinion that this person's a racist, and they, whatever, like you can disagree with it, that's their opinion man, they can have it, and then they're like, we should write a letter, but somehow Yale's like, either make these people happy, what would break, this article writer, have they write a book, and then Yale is like, how fucking, you're expelled.

0:46:02 Thomas: How dare you express an opinion on this racist lecture, you can go, well, get out of here.

0:46:10 Thomas: You're gone. I am not being hyperbolic. They literally wrote, they did not use it as a teachable moment. What, what would that mean? Would be the teachable movement? Hey, we saw that you wrote an incredibly respectful letter outlining your opinion, opinion about these issues, never fucking look me in the eyes, shut up, never do that again, assholes, what?

0:46:09 Lydia: I Think Also they sent it internally too, it wasn't like they plastered it everywhere, they went to the media, they sent to the folks that needed to see it and then wanted it distributed by them to other people, but they weren't trying to go crazy.

0:46:39 Thomas: Yeah Yeah Kilbourne Said There was a Twitter or whatever, I mean we haven't found that, I would think that these assholes on the fire would have probably quoted a bunch of tweets because that's What they love to do, it'll be a tweet from a student with four followers that that has one like, and they'll be like, look at this, look. Yeah. I order for the fire .org to think that Yale is good at freedom of expression, what they would have to do is completely fucking destroy the freedom of impression for these students.

0:46:52 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.

0:47:20 Thomas: No softer way to do this, they wrote a letter, they sent it, the school is like, fuck you, we don't care What fire .org is writing, an article as though she was assassinated, look, there's... there's more, look at this, it says Yale's historical commitment to free expression is, it's best encapsulated by the 1975 Woodward Report, blah, blah. And only saying this up because it's like saying, you know, oh, back in the day, you know, they used to be so into blah, bla, bla.

President Peter Salovi has described the university's speech policies as being based on the Woodward report, has said that academic freedom is sacrosanct at Yale, though, as we'll see later, its lawyers don't necessarily agree. That was not Sattel's experience. What? What?

She got paid to go talk there and is a racist and face no consequences, what, not in, sorry, I feel like a fucking crazy person, in order for Yale to be committed to free expression according to thefire .org they would have to not allow freedom of expression from their students, it would not be allowed, that's the only way that this is compatible, my, I mind is, I can't, the victim mindset, this could be a story from the other side, what the fire .org is doing is using this as, like, we're, look at this, we're about to be genocided actually for our view, it could be the other way, you'd be like, like, hey, this is awesome, students, you know, you know, those whiny fucking students, they care about racism, they wrote this dumb letter and the school is like, fuck you, man, could be a victory story from the right, they're writing as though this is like the sky is falling, man, because these students, you know what they did? They wrote a letter and

0:47:26 Lydia: Yeah yeah. Yeah

0:49:00 Thomas: Nothing happened after that. I can't believe it. I really, I'm in disbelief, the inverse victimhood. That's the Darvo bullshit, reverse victim and abuser, like that's what this is, okay, sorry, I just, that was the one part I did read of this and I'm still mad. Oh

0:49:06 Lydia: No I I get it. To get more mad. Add? What has Sally Sitwell been up to since this? Um, know that she didn't lose her position at Yale, nothing happened there, she's still a visiting professor at Columbia. What really struck me was looking up the appearances that she's done since this incident and how they have felt in contrast to what her appearances looked like before. You, she was really big in the organ donation space. She had received a kidney, need, transplant from somebody that saved her life. And so she was very, very invested in speaking about organ donation, trying to influence policy to incentivize organ donation so it's easier for people to receive what they need to continue to live. Was really involved with addiction and the opioid crisis, you, a different angle than I think we would necessarily expect. But she did, you, out in these clinics and stuff and spoke a lot about her experience with that. But ever since this, every single thing that I have found has been just this digging in my heels, too much identity politics in therapy, social justice is the enemy. Right, right. So September

0:49:19 Thomas: No, uh, She's gone full anti-woke, essentially, she

0:50:40 Lydia: Much. Yeah.

0:50:40 Thomas: Not that she was woke, but like instead of being a person who had, you you know, hobbies, who was like, "Ah, also kind of anti-woke." Now it's, inevitably, it's what happens to all of them. They're like, now this is my fucking life. Everything is this.

0:50:51 Lydia: Yeah and I'll say like I'm waiting for like the OAN sort of appearance right like the the names that I'm seeing here it feels like it's just it just it feels crazy like how deep and deep and this is going so all right September of 2021 she wrote an Atlantic piece called How experts How experts somehow overlooked Authoritarians on the left And it's a study And so I started looking into the study.

0:51:02 Thomas: Gee, OAN? Okay. Take us there. That's crazy. Atlantic. God damn it, oh. Shut up, oh. Okay, what?

0:51:25 Lydia: Is something I'd like to do in a follow-up episode sometime. I'm getting the data, actually, so I can kind of poke around in myself.

0:51:32 Thomas: Oh, what? Do you need do tell.

0:51:33 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, study in general was saying there is an established measure to look at right-wing authoritarianism, but there's nothing for left -wing authoritarianism. So we created a measure and we did a study. So I have the measure and have the

0:51:44 Thomas: Oh. Yes. Oh. God. I love this, uh. This is the meaningless letter writing index that's one of the main metrics. Of authoritarianism. How many letters? Per person that get written that do nothing, oh.

0:51:58 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. So Of the authors, man, hun, I went on this whole spiral, um, one, the lead author is from Emory University, um, you was funny when you were talking about the other you situations and other professors speaking about what happened to Kilbourne, and um, we got into the n -word and it was That One Emory University professor.

0:52:23 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. Yeah, good.

0:52:25 Lydia: Professor. That was just kind of funny as like an inside thing for me. But anyway, the authors from Emory University, and under the mentorship of of someone that Sally Sattel actually had worked with in other contexts and instances, he recently passed away, actually. But of the other with FIRE.

0:52:44 Thomas: Hopefully. So. I can't wait to get the the methodology, the Everything. That's Gonna be Fun.

0:52:50 Lydia: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. We'll do a deep dive on that. That was September 2021. In

0:53:00 Thomas: That's a long way from OAN. That's it. I mean, well, is it? Now I don't know. It's been so bad lately.

0:53:02 Lydia: All right. I don't know. October 2021, she made a panel happen. The president of AEI said, you know, if it weren't for Sally, this wouldn't have happened. This panel with Michael Schellenberger with titled San Francisco. Why progressives ruin cities.

0:53:24 Thomas: Opposed to those conservative cities cities what people ruin cities you might as well say what's

0:53:32 Lydia: 2021. She goes on Jonah Goldberg's podcast. Jonah Gold Berg was the editor for the the National Review from 98 to 2019. about woke medicine. And really important conversation there.

0:53:43 Thomas: Yeah. In fairness, I would say that was kind of what she was already doing, though. That's talking to an old school conservative. So, you know.

0:53:52 Lydia: True. OK. All right. Well, January 2022. Michael Shermer. Yeah. Two Hours. A two hour conversation. Oh gosh, five minutes about organs and then like they did cover organs. She does still care about it, like she wouldn't be alive if it weren't for that kidney donation, so I think that still, still is important to her, um

0:53:55 Thomas: Okay. Oh, God. Fucking my. About fucking what? Oh, so they did cover organs. Okay. Yeah. She's actually a hero. She's just using the anti -wokeness to gain a platform to talk about organs, of course.

0:54:20 Lydia: Yeah. Um, But she talks about uh, race theory in medicine, of course, and social justice and medicine and everything like that. And then she talks an hour about Ohio and her year abroad. And it's titled that way there, too, because she doesn't care. Know, You received some feedback from students at Yale and it didn't matter um 2022 she goes on a podcast um Allie Beth Stuckey who is with The Blaze, just random. The Blaze yeah

0:54:26 Thomas: Yeah, Jesus.

0:54:52 Thomas: The Blaze, that is getting toward OAN territory. I see what you mean. Isn't that fucking, what's this fucking thing, the Backs? Wow, that's cool. I can't believe that guy's still going. I wonder how relevant he is. Not very.

0:54:55 Lydia: Yes yes uh Yeah. Yeah, Then in December 2022, she did a pair of appearances with the Manhattan Institute. The first one in particular was a panel that she sat on called Current Challenges Around Woke Medicine, and Dr. Stanley Goldfarb was on that that panel from Do No Harm. And sorry, No Harm on their website says that they fight for individual patients and against identity politics. So they are very, very focused on fighting the woke mob in your doctor's office, um, let's see, they want to protect minors from gender ideology, yep, yep, it's always what it is.

0:55:40 Thomas: That's doing what, what is it doing, what are they talking, what, what the fuck? What are they talking about?

0:55:49 Thomas: Oh, of course. Yeah. Sorry. I don't know why. I don'T KNOW WHY I DIDN'T THINK ABOUT SHE COULD ALSO BE A TURF, OBVIOUSLY. Okay. So she's a turf.

0:55:56 Lydia: Yeah. Um, uh, you sat on a panel, anyway, um, didn't call into question those, uh, and uh, you know, they're against implicit bias training for for physicians and and everything like that. So that's sort of been her trajectory. We've talked about Sally Sattel's canon a bit, right? The group of Yale students had described it as racist and classist. We talked about some of the books and some of the work that she's done. And, you, I probably to agree with them. And maybe those beliefs were driving her language choice and that position that she demonstrated in her presentation of of people suffering from addiction, including those in Ironton, Ohio, of course, they had a personal responsibility for their addiction, that the drug itself was not to blame. It's not appropriate to call addiction a disease, et cetera. But there's another angle here that may help shed more light on what could be informing her position. Want to get too ahead of myself, but bottom line, she has been directly involved with Purdue Pharma since 2001.

0:57:03 Thomas: Bombshell, how directly involved are we talking about?

0:57:06 Lydia: Well, ProPublica did a big investigation in 2019. And in their article, they titled it Inside Purdue Phharma's Media Playbook, How It Planted the Opioid Anti -Story.

0:57:14 Thomas: Oof. Question, were they specifically looking at her? Like, they're like, we gotta fuckin' investigate why this person is such a big fan of... Oh, okay, so she was a byproduct. Gotcha.

0:57:18 Lydia: Yes. No, no. She's a byproduct. Yeah, but it's her name kept popping up. And they're like, oh, this is very interesting. So some background, you know, we won't get into the history of Purdue Pharma and OxyContin and everything, but they launched it in 1996 and it very quickly became widely prescribed. One the biggest opioid painkillers used in the United States. By 2001, it had grown so much that their profits were huge. And with that came growing concern about potential overdoses and addiction.

0:57:30 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Yeah.

0:58:00 Lydia: They were starting to see the beginnings of that. Right. In August of 2001, a column came out in The New York Post opinion section criticizing media reports that OxyContin was being abused. It was called Heroic Dopeheads, question mark. And it basically mocked, quotes, in a new species of victim, the hillbilly heroin addict. And in the article, they basically said in this opinion piece that the real victims were the patients who may lose access to this prescription drug.

0:58:36 Thomas: Huh. Well, okay. I mean, there was some validity to that. I mean like, but obviously that fuckin' headline already seems terrible, but yeah, like it is true that because of all this, there are people who really need pain meds and it's just such a fucking hassle to get them now.

0:58:38 Lydia: Sure.

0:58:48 Lydia: Right. 5 .17 in the morning, the day that article was published, the founder of a crisis management firm, Desenhal Resources, the Founder Eric Desenhall, sent an email to Purdue executives. And this is in a lawsuit against the opioid makers. So there's, you know, there's receipts. And his email says, see today's New York Post on OxyContin. The anti -story begins.

0:59:17 Thomas: Mustache.

0:59:17 Lydia: Yeah, feels planted, right? Right?

0:59:18 Thomas: Twirl in engage. Yeah. Geez.

0:59:22 Lydia: And this was, I said, August 2001. He came on to in this crisis management role in the summer. And in July of 2001, one of the very first things he did when he was hired by Purdue was he had lunch with Sally Sattel. They had a meeting.

0:59:22 Thomas: Interesting.

0:59:41 Thomas: Was it just a date or

0:59:43 Lydia: No. No. Well, you know, maybe. I don't know. I guess it could be. I don't that. In that meeting, she expressed that she was eager to get started. She had read a, in quotes, debunking package and again, in quote, was interested in doing an opinion piece on the medical needs of patients being sacrificed to protect drug abusers, in quotas.

1:00:06 Thomas: Yeah, okay.

1:00:07 Lydia: So that's not great, right? An opinion piece that went up on the Boston Globe, not trying to say that the New York Post piece was hers. I don't think it was. But her piece went up on the Austin Globe a month later defending OxyContin. A couple months later, February 2002, AEI, that she's affiliated with, held a panel discussion, who is responsible for the abuse of Oxycontin? And the panel included Sattel, of course, a Purdue executive, a a Purdue lawyer, and then another AEI fellow and a reporter for Charleston Gazette. But if you were having a panel about who's responsible for this, would you invite Purdue? Maybe like one person, but yeah, crazy. And so it doesn't stop there, hon. In 2003, a with Desdenhall, the crisis management firm, recommended her specifically as a guest for an NPR show, and they helped prep her for that appearance to kind of speak on behalf of OxyContin, I guess,

1:00:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Also, There was like an actual animate, like a talking pill that was like, "It's not me, guys, I swear," and

1:01:11 Lydia: And Purdue, the

1:01:11 Thomas: So you're saying this, that that person who's prepping her is still the, like, PR campaign for Purdue? Yeah.

1:01:15 Lydia: Crisis management company.

1:01:16 Thomas: Okay. Gotcha.

1:01:16 Lydia: Yep. In 2003, Rush Limbaugh he was addicted to painkillers, right? Purdue recommended that Sattel talk to CNN. They wanted to do a story about it. And they reached out to Purdue, and Perdue said, oh, how about you you talk to Sally instead to discuss this? And the in that conversation was that OxyContin is a very effective and actually safe drug if taken as prescribed.

1:01:17 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, well, I actually remember, remember when that happened. I remember my uh of the liberal students going, had an interaction with one of them, so, like, I can kind of pinpoint that day.

1:01:41 Lydia: Yeah. Interesting.

1:01:48 Thomas: It's funny, yeah.

1:01:49 Lydia: Interesting.

1:01:50 Thomas: Um, that's a bad sign when, like, you're like, "Hey, we need a spokesperson for your evil pharmaceutical company that's killing people," and they're like, "Well, um, we could do it, the the company itself self could do it, but, you know, who would be even better, this other person is

1:01:57 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah." 2004, you know, things are already looking pretty bad for Purdue, right? It's ramping up. It's getting worse and worse. Significant prescription abuse happening in the United States. And in October of that year, the New York Times published an essay from Sally Sattel titled Doctors Behind Bars, Treating Pain is Now Risky Business. A quote from that I'd like to share. When you scratch the surface of someone who is addicted to painkillers, you usually find a seasoned drug abuser with a previous habit involving pills, alcohol, heroin, or cocaine. Contrary to media portrayals, the typical OxyContin addict does not start out as a pain patient who fell unwittingly into a drug habit.

1:02:49 Thomas: There, like, sources or anything, or she's just, like, because she's a doctor, she can be like, look, right, so she can just say that and it's, there's not a lot you, don't, I guess, nobody was like, but did, you, are there their studies or anything, apparently?

1:02:52 Lydia: This is her essay that she wrote. Yes, she's a psychiatrist, studied addiction. She does have credentials in that respect. You know, she did offer. Yeah. So the New York Times was pretty hands off from what I can tell. ProPublica had reached out to them to find out, you know, like, what were those conversations like with the editor? And they said they didn't know because the people who worked on that story, you you know, back in 2004, no longer work there. So they didn't have any history of that. They couldn't speak to that. They Um, didn'T disclose that AEI was, uh, involved with Purdue. They received contributions from Purdue. TheY did from 2003 to about 2018, um, contributions for special events. The amount that they were giving is, um I guess the middle middle tier of what AEI offers for contributions.

1:03:49 Thomas: It's the like middle tier corporate bribery package, you know, we have a, we have a higher upper tier, lower tier, oh, you're, you're interested in mid-level corporate brivery, okay. Okay. Yeah. You is good. It's a good package. It is a good package. I feel like you can go for the high end, but yeah. No, there is plenty of value there. Will get right on it.

1:03:50 Lydia: Yeah. Exactly.

1:04:08 Lydia: Sattel cited a doctor in her article and their experience in treating patients patience with OxyContin. And in the final article, he wasn't named. Turns out he was actually an employee of Purdue. When ProPublica had reached out to him, he described her as an old friend. And then he clarified, you know, hey, I left Purdue in 2005 and I work for a consulting company now that has Purdue as a client. Article came out in 2004. So he He was an employee at the time of the article. Now, no longer, you know, he just still continued to work with Purdue in a different way. Is just an unnamed doctor that she cited as, you know, so it's like the whole don't take my word for it. You know, it wasn't citing studies. It was like, yeah.

1:04:49 Thomas: That's someone she cited and they worked for Purdue. Okay.

1:04:53 Lydia: Did cite to study within in the article. Out it was funded by Purdue and it was written by their employees and consultants. When ProPublica asked her about this, she said, I cite peer -reviewed papers by title as they appear in the Journal of Publication. That feels really lazy to me.

1:05:03 Thomas: Wow. Yeah, what does that mean?

1:05:12 Lydia: She's basically saying, like, I wouldn't look into, you credentials of the people who wrote the article, Cole who they're affiliated with.

1:05:12 Thomas: Yeah. Okay, but like there is a conflict of interest statement usually or whatever like there's a, I okay

1:05:24 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure. And I guess I don't know when the study was from exactly. Who knows? Maybe they've tightened down on that. But that seems still like, you for someone who is so incredibly smart, just really, I very disappointing.

1:05:26 Thomas: Yeah Somehow this person is justifying what they're doing to themselves and I, I wonder what that is. Oh,

1:05:42 Lydia: Yeah yeah. Then before she published this piece in 2004, for. She sent a draft to Purdue's Washington lobbyist, asking him for his opinion on how balanced it seemed. Yeah. Asked about that. And she said, Oh, I don't remember sending a draft. Not something I usually do. Then ProPublika said, Well, but you did the same thing in 2016 also.

1:05:54 Thomas: Wow. Wow. Asking but Yeah.

1:06:10 Lydia: And she was like, oh, but I was checking facts there. So yeah.

1:06:13 Thomas: I feel like that's something you'd remember, like Like if you're doing a climate change thing, you're like, let me just check with like big oil if this is OK with them. Well,

1:06:17 Lydia: Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah. This kind of practice continued for Sally Sattel up She did another piece. This was in Politico called The Myth of What's Driving the Opioid Crisis. And that That piece came out. Purdue had started engaging with additional PR firms, media strategy companies. Things were getting really, really bad.

1:06:47 Thomas: I mean, yeah, I means if you've made gazillions of dollars killing the world, that one benefit is like, well, I we have some money available for trying to do a total disinformation campaign rewriting history. You know, you might as well hire every single PR firm there is.

1:06:51 Lydia: Yeah. That's exactly what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:07:03 Thomas: A

1:07:03 Lydia: And so this media they were going to be working with, when that article came out, they sent it over to the execs at Purdue and they said, that, oh, you know, we're going to work with AEI to promote this and start getting it into social media feeds of people who've searched for opioid issues so we can start kind of changing, you know, the narrative a bit. The media strategy company said they didn't end up working with AEIs to promote the story, but that intention was there. Two years later, do you remember what happened in 2020? Well, yeah. OK, fair.

1:07:33 Thomas: Lot of things happen in 2020, hun. Yeah, the

1:07:37 Lydia: Yeah. Well, with regard to Purdue, they pled guilty. Eight billion dollars pled guilty to a number of criminal charges.

1:07:38 Thomas: One thing that happened, Right. I mean, there there have been a lot of lawsuits that they've, you guilty, there's different state level ones, there's, you know,

1:07:51 Lydia: Was like the big federal one where they, you know, misled the FDA and everything. Yeah.

1:07:53 Thomas: Right. That Sure, they paid all of, you know, twenty thousand dollars in penalties by the time judges got done reducing it. She's

1:08:02 Lydia: Because they have the whole bankruptcy court and everything. But, you I find really interesting is that nearly 20 years Sally Sattel is engaging in this act.

1:08:13 Thomas: One of the fucking doctors saying it's okay to smoke in the sixth, or whatever, whenever that was, you know, just doing that, and then God forbid you write a fucking letter saying this person kind of sucks, then you're, you're actually the death of Western civilization. Wow.

1:08:16 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yep. The But God forbid Yale students write a letter saying, you know, we're not really happy that she came to speak here. Went into that decision? This is the kind of person and this information was, you investigation came out before that grand round occurred. I disappointed that I can't find anything regarding a response from Yale Psychiatry to that letter. Would I think that at the very least, I hope privately they shared a response to that letter with those students. But truly, I think it deserves to be public because everything else related to this case is on the Internet. You know, I've been able to find all these things. And then now I'm just left sitting here being upset that, you know, I had to sit and listen to that ground rounds, too, knowing the kind of person this individual is. So Kilbourn's person of high honor and esteem.

1:08:48 Thomas: Yeah.

1:09:26 Thomas: So Yeah, what's the verdict on Kilbourne's, uh, here would we say that someone just said that they're surprised that that rural Ohioans would be interested in artisanal coffee, and that's, and part of is any, like, I guess that part's true, she did say that, or whatever, she, yeah, sort of true, and then the rest, everything else is the dumbest fucking complete distortion of reality to come to any other conclusion other Other than, oh, students, you good that they wrote a letter and also Yale should have done something.

1:09:38 Lydia: Yeah. And the extreme leftist mob. Yeah. That was a sentence from her from her presentation. Yeah.

1:10:02 Lydia: Yeah. But you know, misinformation is easy, right? You just spout things off and people aren't going to put in the work to it together and find out what really happened. You

1:10:12 Thomas: Think I'm going to tease story number two, debunk So this is the bonus third debunk, for uh, the price of one that you haven't even heard yet. But, um, I think I'll tease this and do it as a bonus because, uh this has got on long enough. So, uh You'd like to hear this bonus here, let's tease the story here, the way that I should have played through the end of this. He's referencing Yale and to what his go -to reference for like how important or prestigious Yale is. I

1:10:19 Lydia: Oh. My.

1:10:38 Clip: Yale University, they're behaving this way. These are our future leaders, right? George Bush went to Yale. Lots of other very famous people whom we all could recognize have gone to these places, and they are completely falling apart at the seams. If you can't have a conversation involving end space or mentioning rural Ohioans' taste for artisanal coffee, I mean, where are we now? Another of my favorite examples is this professor, I can't recall where this was, was, simply mixed up the names of two young Black men who had been in that class inadvertently. This happens all the time with white people, with all kinds of other people. You just forget their names. These people aren't our lifelong friends. Once again, you just have to grab your head and go, "Am I hearing this right?" Because this poor student, this poor professor, mixes up a couple names, goes, "Hey, sorry," right one.

1:10:45 Lydia: Yeah. Okay.

1:10:48 Thomas: Can only name George Bush for some reason Oh.

1:11:31 Thomas: Don't let the Sally Sitwell situation color your predictions for how true this story ends up being, but uh, you'd like to find my debunk of that story, if professor mixes up two Black students' names and then tries to apologize and is fired for that, um, to patreon.com/wherethereswoke, uh, at the second tier and above and B this month, bonus, so debunk, gonna be a lot of fun, we'll see if that's that stacks up. All right, hun, well, excellent job, we've completed our side quest, we've uh, we've leveled up our stats a little bit, I got a better, uh, you know, uh, sword or something. Yeah.

1:11:37 Lydia: Nice. Yeah.

1:12:07 Lydia: There you go.

1:12:08 Thomas: You gotta, you gotta cross boat and we're leveled up a little bit, we're ready to take on our main baddie, our main villain for, back for part three, back to Professor Kilbourne and take a look at what really happened and see how it uh stacks up to the narrative that you've heard in part one. We'll see you then.