A crooked self-help wellness guru named Ashley Black sold a skin-detaching anti-cellulite device to millions of woman since 2014. When thousands of her former-customers joined a watchdog group that claimed her device detached their skin from the underlying muscle, Black did what successful bullies always do--she went on the attack. Black sued her f…

In 2015 Netflix aired a documentary about the seedy underbelly of the Miami porn industry called Hot Girls Wanted. Two filmmakers and executive producer Rashida Jones followed the stories of three 18 and 19 year olds who answered craigslist ads to have sex on camera. Over the course of the next three months the women were pulled ever-deeper into di…

It’s easy to get disillusioned with American politics. There’s a two party system that makes everything seem intractable, a general lack or transparency, and an overwhelming sense that corporate greed somehow controls everything. But it didn’t have to be that way. This week I had the great privilege to interview investigative journalist David Sirot…

The Harvard geneticist sold a fake miracle pill to GlaxoSmithKline for $720,000,000, and now wants the world to believe that he has discovered a new immortality molecule.Everyone wants to live a long and healthy life. No one wants to die. The oldest scam in history is the longevity lie. The first writing recorded on Sumerian clay tablets recounts t…

A recent lawsuit by Peter Attia against his former sponsor OURA ring is a total bombshell--not because the outcome matters much one way or another, but because it outlines exactly how health influencers get paid to alter their messaging on behalf of companies and even alter the direction of scientific studies. Through the court filings I found out …

In 1985 a scientist in France named René Peoc'h very nearly proved that love can alter the quantum state of matter with an ingenious experiment involving newly hatched chickens and a robot. If you think that sounds unbelievable, then just you wait until you find out what the chiropractor to the stars Joe Dispenza did with the results. #quantum #hea…

Chances are that you have never heard of Feel Free before. It comes in a shiny blue bottle sold at convenience stores across the country as a social lubricant and substitute for alcohol. It proudly proclaims that it’s primarily kava—a south east asian tree root that has lots of traditional uses. But until recently, it was less forthright about its …

If you’ve listened to just about any podcast in the last few years you’ve probably come across a green slurry macro-nutrient shake called AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens). The supplement shake has garnered endorsements from the most influential people in science communications—from Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia—and just about every health and welln…

Today we're going to talk about some hard subjects--adultery, violence, power, and psychopathy. During the last few weeks I've been in touch with many amazing people from all around the internet who are trying to understand how deep the problems with Andrew Huberman really go. One of the people I met was the sex and relationship counselor Kate Bale…

The science of ice bathing has been evolving a lot in the last few years. Brad Schoenfeld is a PhD in physiology and hypertrophy (literally building muscle) who just completed a metastudy analysis that showed that ice bathing after working out could kill the muscle gains. Read more on his blog post about it here:https://www.lookgreatnaked.com/blog/…

So maybe you don't care about what happens in Andrew Huberman's personal life. So long as his science checks out, what's the harm? Well, I hate to break it to you but his science doesn't really check out either. From cherry-picked results to quack "protocols" Huberman frequently overextends his knowledge and starts shilling pseudoscience. This week…

At its height, the bone factories in Calcutta exported more than 60,000 anatomical skeletons a year to medical programs all over the world. Most of the bones had been looted from graves and burning ghats. Still, anatomy processors made millions of dollars stealing and then exporting those bodies abroad. Today, those hundreds of tons of human remain…

How many scientific papers are rotten with fake data? It turns out a lot more than you might think. Even some of the most well-respected medical institutions in the world have been caught out making things up in what should have been life-saving cancer research. Citizen sleuth, David Sholto came on the show today to talk about his role in unmasking…

Why did the US Government give $500 billion to Nigerian hackers? What is Pig butchering? How will artificial intelligence change the the way hackers operate? What is the future of cyber warfare? These are all true stories from the dark side of the internet.Today I had the opportunity to talk with Jack Rhysider--the amazing host of the podcast Darkn…

This week the author and hose of the Conspirituality podcast, Derek Beres joins me to talk about the strange axis between spirituality, wellness and conspiracy theories that have taken over the internet. We don't pull any punches in this conversation, touching on the rise of anti-vaccine conspiracies, lizard people, coffee enemas, and how the neuro…

Have you ever woken up while you were dreaming, only to find that you couldn't move a muscle? Or, perhaps even more terrifying: have you woken up and felt a deep weight on your chest and sensed that an evil creature was pushing down on your chest? That, my friend, is the night hag--another name for sleep paralysis. I recently had a chance to chat w…

In 2011 the journalist Michael Scott Moore was on assignment in Somalia on an assignment to document the spread of piracy in the Gulf of Aden. Just before he took a flight home, gunman stopped his car and forced him to get out. This was the beginning of 977 days in captivity. I had the opportunity to speak with Moore before he left for Somalia on h…

When Willoughby Britton set out to study the potential negative side effects of meditation she never expected that the community would want to hound her out of her job. But that's what happened after her study on the "Varieties of Contemplative Experience" came out and she documented how one out of every ten people who start meditating have a clini…

Bigger storms, receding coastlines, and unlivable heat: climate change is coming and sometimes it feels like there's nothing we can do to stop it. This week I talk with Stephen Miller who has combed the history of humankind's attempts to control nature. He has some ideas about what adaptation will look like and how big tech projects have faired ove…

Most people seem to age in a predictable direction, but Eric Hinman seems to be an exception. In this video I dive deep into how Eric quit his corporate job selling life insurance and decided to dedicate himself full time to health and happiness. In this podcast he gives us his tips on what it means to be fit in your 40's, how to make friends at an…

This week I spoke to Casey Fiesler, a tech ethicist, professor and rather famous TikTokker about the parallel universe of copyright litigation, fair use arguments, revenge pornography and so much more. Find more out about Fiesler's academic work here: Website | YouTube TikTok

I'd never heard about Dahn Yoga until Chris Flanders reached out to me. When I started digging in I learned how seriously dangerous this organization really is. Support this show on Patreon and get exclusive EARLY ACCESS and access to a private discord server: Subscribe to my newsletter Scott Carney Investigates Podcast Books: ⁠The Wedge⁠ ⁠What Doe…

This is the full and unedited interview with Dan Ariely where we talk about the fraud allegations against him, the meaning of truth and so much more. Make up your own mind about what happened.Get Dan's new Book "Misbelief" here: https://amzn.to/3ZXxoLw#danariely #fraud #science

The one question that Emergency Room Doctors get more than any other is "what sorts of objects have you pilled out of people's rectums." I've known Dr. Rob Orman for several years now and he has stories galore: from the proper technique to remove rectal foreign bodies without damaging his patients, to how to keep up his bedside manner when operatin…

Before I interviewed a well-known hitman in Bangalore in 2008 I told my editor at WIRED that if I didn't report back in 12 hours that he needed to call a cop that was known to shoot first and ask questions later because I was already probably dead. This story is not only about the risks that reporters take in the field, but how the changing distrib…

The largest and most successful empire in history wasn't Rome: it was the Mongols. This week I interview Jack Weatherford the New York Times bestselling author of "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" about what made the Mongolian Empire so successful. . . and what is REALLY hidden in Genghis Khan's grave. Support this show on Patreon a…

The filmmaker Vikram Gandhi wanted to expose the fake spirituality of the American wellness movement by impersonating the Hindu priests he grew up around. He invented a fake yoga, intoned Sanskrit chants that were translated from the marketing materials of Nike Sneakers, the US Army and G.I. Joe and told people to trust their intuition. What he did…

How do we reconcile the fact that lying is an incredibly effective strategy with our shared desire for truth? In the natural world all sort of creatures lie about how dangerous they are in order to survive. The Allied command lied in WW2 to confuse the Nazis before D-day, and most of us would say that the lying was justified. But lying also erodes …

What is an expert? For that matter, why don't we trust them? In this week's episiode I interview Jamie Carlin Watson, a bioethicist and professor with a whole host of academic credentials at the end of his name who also happens to be an expert on the very notion of expertise. We discuss the madness that gripped the world during the COVID-19 epidemi…

How does the barbaric history of medicine shed light on the future of artificial intelligence? How will computers transform the way doctors think? Will patients benefit from the placebo effect if they're talking to a robot? Adam Rodman M.D. http://bedside-rounds.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdamRodmanMD Bedside Rounds https://open.spotify.com/…

The father of the first atom bomb quoted an ancient Hindu scripture when he saw the mushroom cloud exploding over the New Mexico desert. His immortal quote "I am Become Death, destroyer of worlds," framed the dawning of the age we live in today. I recently saw the Chirstopher Nolan's film on Robert Oppenheimer and it got me wondering about the famo…

In 2004 I was invited to join in sexual union with a room full of beautiful people in robes at the Osho compound in Pune. When I arrived there a few days earlier I saw hundreds of people speak in tongues together as they accessed their own spiritual truths. This was my first, by hardly my last, experience from the inside of cultic thinking and prac…

Do psychedelics actually make you a better person, or do they just make you feel like you're a better person. In this show I begin with the notion that spaceflight fundamentally transforms the consciousness of astronauts who blast off the surface of earth, the tendency for space tourists to snap selfies with the planet, and the marginal utility of …

Josiah Hesse memorized his bible, let the Holy Ghost into his heart, and tithed 10% of everything to his evangelical church. It was only later when he realized how wrong it all had been. Now a pioneer of the EXvangelical movement, Denver-Journalist Josiah Hesse explains how it all went down, and what it means for the rest of christian America. More…

Electric illumination changed humanity's relationship with darkness. Clark Strand, author of Waking Up to The Dark wants us to reclaim lost human states of consciousness by turning off the lights. Find out more about Clark Strand. Support this show on Patreon and get exclusive EARLY ACCESS and access to a private discord server: Subscribe to my new…

What is it about being famous that turns people into shadows of their former-selves? And what does that mean for the rest of us who seek micro-levels of fame on social media platforms? Support this show on Patreon and get exclusive EARLY ACCESS and access to a private discord server: Subscribe to my newsletter Scott Carney Investigates Podcast Book…

Joshua Kappel helped lead the effort to legalize psychadelic drugs in Colorado, and what happened here might be a model for what happens in the rest of the country. Are we ready for mail order MDMA? Support this show on Patreon and get exclusive EARLY ACCESS and access to a private discord server: Subscribe to my newsletter Scott Carney Investigate…

This week I talk with Patrick Mckeown, the best selling author of The Oxygen Advantage and The Breathing Cure about looming problems in the broader breathwork community as the global movement gains in popularity. Mckeown has studied the Buteyko method for 21 years and worries that some of the more dramatic breathing practices that have gained popul…

Thirteen deaths; a $67 million lawsuit; lies, cover-ups and a near-fatal enema. After being Wim Hof's most public proponent and doing his method for ten years, investigative journalist Scott Carney reveals the story he never wanted to tell about what he thinks might be the impending demise of the Wim Hof method. Get Exclusive Updates, Behind the Sc…

What does it mean to live in a simulation? Is it a simulated universe that lives on the silicone chips of an alien computer (or a future computer invented by humanity itself)? Is it a simulated universe that runs on the karmic seeds described in ancient Hindu and Buddhist texts? Or are we a Blotzman Brain floating through the ether long after the h…

Probabilistic math makes the same assumption that shamans, Catholics, Mormons, Hindus and every other faith all make--that there's a fundamental force in the world that makes the world what it is. In this podcast I examine the assumption that physicists make that randomness correctly describes the most basic structure of the universe. Some people w…

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna is the most important person in the history of North America that you probably know nothing about. If you have any impression at all about the "Napoleon of the West" it's that he executed all of the defenders of the Alamo and Goliad. You might think of him as a murderer and a traitor. Mexicans think of him as one of the …

This is the story of the convoluted path that Buddhism took form India Tibet, and Tibet into your yoga studio at home. Get exclusive EARLY ACCESS on Patreon The Enlightenment Trap Theos Bernard, The White Lama of Tibet Drukpa Kunley #buddhism #history #spirituality #tibet

Otto Muzik is best known to me for his research papers on Wim Hof's abilities that connected the iceman's abilities to the mysterious power of the placebo effect. The Wim Hof method website frequently cites the study and there is another paper in the works. But Muzik has a lot to say about the science of brown fat and the organization around him ca…

The language that we use to discuss the role that DNA has in creating the proteins that make up our body is incredibly deterministic and not at all what actually happens at the cellular level. When you build a house a single centralized set of instructions makes a lot of sense. But when you consider that DNA exists in every single cell--we have to …

What makes a good skeptic? Is it dismissing things that don't conform to your own beliefs about how the world should work from a scientific perspective? Or is there a more nuanced approach that allows you to -- occasionally-- change your mind? This episode is about how I think we should all take a step backward and realize that much of what we thin…

Depending who you ask, the Wim Hof method either originated out of Hof's mind after he first jumped into ice water, or it's part of an ancient tradition of breathwork and ice bathing that goes back to human pre-history. I've decided to dig into the question to compare Wim's practices to existing Yogic practices as well as listening to Wim's own acc…

You've probably heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns where acquiring new skills ultimately tapers off until further gains are harder and harder to achieve. But what if you flipped that logic on its head? The flip side of the same phenomenon is what I call "The Law of Speedy Gains" where you can opt to harvest the easy-upside of taking on new thi…

Western medicine and alternative approaches are a lot more similar than you might think. In fact, every disease state that a person subjectively feels initiates a process of seeking out care, presenting symptoms, identifying signs and leading to diagnosis that is more or less identical whether or not you're going to a start of the art medical facil…

This is the story of the three times I've been cursed and the strange events that happened in their wake. Anthropologists have known that curses have real-world effects for more than a hundred years. E.E. Evans-Pritchard wrote about how curses form the world view of the Azande while Wade Davis demonstrated how the curse of the Zombi in Haiti produc…