ASM198 CBD, Ethical Marketing and Taking Cold Showers

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cbd ethical marketing and taking cold showers all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemic [Music] welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about literally anything because i believe that every sincere question deserves a supportive and non-judgmental response i'm your host mike mccarth no one around here is science mike i'm a college dropout non-expert who's had a lot of heartbreak and reads a lot of books it's a mystery to me about why this show is so popular but we're almost to 200 episodes so what do you say let's get it started nashville friends the christian transhumanist conference is almost here that's going to be october the 19th and that is going to be one of the two events that i do for the rest of 2019 so if you'd like to see me and hang out that's going to be one of two chances this year uh it's a really exciting conference i'm happy to be a part of by the time the show's there i'll have i'll have some details on my website about how you can get discounted tickets for the event as an ask clients mike listener just go to asksciencemike.com then click on the events button to get those details and then of course november the 9th episode 200 of ask science mike is going to be recorded which is interesting because we'll be about two episodes past 200 by the time that happens so i might have to do a couple of quote special episodes unquote in order to not have 200 episodes before 200 comes out uh so if you notice i stopped numbering episodes after next week you'll know why uh to get ready for episode 200 when we planned uh the date for episode 200 ask ascot spike wasn't coming out so regularly but now that we're back on schedule you know uh we've burned through our kind of gap there and i don't want to not do episodes so i'll figure out a couple of special shows to do between now and november the 9th it is sold out or was sold out we figured out how to rearrange the venue to get a few more chairs in there and a couple of people canceled so as i record this now there are three tickets one two three tickets available for that special celebration in los angeles november the 9th um so if you'd like to join us we'd love to see you there's three tickets available if if you go and it's sold out don't worry try back you know usually on sunday and wednesday i drop whatever new tickets are available back in and i don't want to say that out loud because if i miss sunday and someone checks you get disappointed what i'm saying is if you want to go just check back regularly there's probably going to be a chance for you to get in if you um if you go to my website a lot you could bookmark the page and you know check once a day whatever based on my web analytics some of you check several times a day mad props to you for that i just said mad props i am such a dad um anyway so that's the two events going on and then one other note about this week's program we just did a transition of all the science mic digital infrastructure from one this is really arcane technical stuff but basically from one google g suite account to another and some data got lost in that process namely the audio recordings of the questions for this week's show so there's two questions here that should have been audio recordings where you could hear someone's voice which will instead be me reading a summary of that question we do apologize for that technical error and by we i mean i do i'm the one who did the server transition and i'm a busy science mike you know i host the podcasts and do all the technical stuff behind the scenes so sometimes i miss things so if that was your question this week about cbd uh or about climate change denial excuse me cold showers okay so it's cold showers and climate change are the audio questions cbd is a traditional email question so that's no problem anyway my apologies to those of you whose voices have been lost to the great bit bucket in the sky now without further ado let's record this podcast [Music] our first question this week was an email question and it reads hey science mike what's the deal with everyone adding cbd to everything it's in candies lotions chocolate and even makeup does it actually cure any of the things people seem to claim it does like anxiety depression joint pain healthy scalp etc and then in the comments on the patron poll you know the patrons get to pick the show the questions every week there were some comments that followed up on this question spencer said if you do this question please mention the use of cbd with epilepsy in humans and dogs my dog's seizures have been drastically decreased since taking cbd and then aaron said i've been wanting to ask you a question about cbd also if you answer that one i'd also love to hear your thoughts about how it actually affects the brain as well as potential side effects i know it doesn't live up to the hypeiest hype but what does it do i believe i heard pete holmes talk it up on his you made it weird podcast uh what a great and timely question people uh not only ask me a lot of questions about cbd at events and email me a lot of questions about cbd for the show they also send me letters to my mailbox if you're ever wondering how to contact science mike the way you can do that these days is to send me a letter uh all the people who try to protect my mental health have taken away my public email access which and their defense has been really good for me uh but you can send me a letter that has nothing to do anything other than in those letters i do get a lot of questions about cbd and uh let's start with what's relatively clear-cut and that is cbd seems to be beneficial for epilepsy it seems to have an anti-seizure effect and why do i say seems to why would i say seems to about this well uh that's easy we don't have that much research available about cbd that's the problem there's a lot of claims out there about cbd and anecdotally there's a lot of encouraging things i suffer from pretty debilitating migraines as the result of a brain injury i've always had migraines but they got a lot worse after a motorcycle accident but i've actually found that medical marijuana especially medical marijuana with high cbd formulations is remarkably effective at getting rid of my migraines without giving me many side effects when i take traditional migraine medications they really take me out um in a big way knock me completely unconscious for a significant period of time and then i'm fuzzy for several days whereas if i take uh you know like a 20 to 1 cbd to thc formulation available legally here in the state of california uh then i don't feel high in any way and the migraine goes away especially if i lie down for a little while so if i lie down for a couple hours and then get up i feel clear i feel good i have no migraine so that's really encouraging in my life but but there are so many wild claims about what cbd could do we have really good data relative to other things we studied in cbd about epilepsy also about some of the most severe forms of childhood epilepsy such as lgs and dravet syndrome which don't usually respond to anti-seizure medications unless cbd has been shown to be effective in terms of other things cbd could be good for we have a problem there's just not that much evidence because cbd is still treated largely like a schedule one controlled substance the federal level so it's really difficult for researchers to fund i'll actually have a link in the show notes on ask sciencemic.com for episode 198 that is in stat news uh written by three researchers professional researchers who are trying to study cbd and have difficulty doing so because of federal drug classification so it's not that there's a lack of willingness to study cbd it's that there's questionable legality around doing so and that's a problem it means in the meantime a lot of people are taking cbd to treat symptoms and having success or not having success but we don't know what the long-term side effects could be of taking cbd and because of the legal gray area uh cbd supplements are not regulated by the fda so when we have tried to look into these products we find that sometimes they contain contaminants because there's not a lot of regulation they'll have heavy metals or pesticides or other contaminants in the cbd oil which is not good cbd we also know can cause nausea fatigue and irritability and really importantly it can increase the amount of coumadin in your blood meaning it thins your blood um which can be harmful uh if you have some propensity towards internal bleeding so if you have chronic pain there's a potential that someone taking cbd can end up increasing their internal bleeding because they're taking cbd oil do you see what i mean it's a complex picture so while there's tremendous promise in cbd as a treatment for chronic pain especially headaches migraines epilepsy and other related conditions there's still a lot we don't know about how cbd affects the body and more research is needed and more research is difficult to do because of federal drug calculations so we're stuck in a place right now where you're kind of taking your health into your own hands when you take cbd for me as a migraine sufferer i've decided it's worth potential risks to use high cbd oil and a tincture to treat my migraines because it's less quality of life impairing than other conventional medical interventions but i do so with with reticence and with with care and i have a lot of hesitation right now representing cbd oil and widespread usage precisely because of how much we don't know what we do know is encouraging but what we don't know is a lot larger set than what we do [Music] this episode of ask science mike has been brought to you in part by betterhelp a sponsor of ask science mike and a service that i personally use and i've had great results with betterhelp is an online mental health counseling service here's what they do they connect you with a therapist therapists are hard to find i know a lot of people want to try therapy but the act of trying to find a therapist is overwhelming and difficult what better help does is you fill out a questionnaire on their website and then they connect you with a licensed therapist who specializes in whatever challenges you may be facing what's neat about online counseling is you get to do this in a setting that you choose i have every therapy session in my home office a place that i feel really safe where my privacy is protected and i do phone calls with my therapist you could do a phone call you could do a video chat you can text you can do online chat all those options are available and what i really love about better help is if it just doesn't work between you and this therapist you can request a new therapist at any time for no additional charge and better help will find you a new therapist knowing that a lot of you are price sensitive as well i'm really encouraged that better help offers their services on a sliding scale so people with lower income pay a lower rate for their services and regardless it's a much more affordable option for therapy than traditional therapy in a therapist office so if you'd like affordable private online counseling that's available anytime and anywhere just go to betterhelp.com sciencemic where you can get 10 percent off your first month's service again that's betterhelp.com sciencemike [Music] okay our next question was supposed to be a voicemail question but science mike lost the file sorry uh so i'll just read this summary here uh is it actually beneficial to to my health to take cold showers i've heard a lot of conflicting information and i'm curious what the science says so that is a great question thanks for sending that in and it's a little bit like the cbd question in that there are some encouraging pieces of research out there but there's there's small sample sizes i'll tell you personally when i uh was on a my first major weight loss journey i'd gotten up to right around 300 pounds and this was before i was aware of you know healthy at any size as as a an option or a way of thinking in the medical community so i just was totally focused on reducing the number on the scale i started distance running and i read that swimming was even more efficient at burning calories than running as i looked into that i found out part of that is because water is really effective at transferring heat so your body has to work harder to maintain your core temperature when you are in water than when you are in the atmosphere duh that's physics so i started taking an ice cold shower every morning 10 minutes just teeth chattering in the water just to attempt to shock my body into burning more calories and i've later discovered that a lot of people have done cold war therapy for a long time that this is yes also kind of trendy in fitness communities but also something some cultures have done uh gosh for generations and generations so you know there are studies to promote a lot of ideas around um maintenance in your lymphatic system and improving circulation improving immunity uh some have shown it increases testosterone levels in men as well as fertility by increasing the amount of healthy sperm produced by man one study said that it can lower chances of depression or faster muscle recovery basically anything you would say there is a study with a very small sample size to back it up it's probably not wildly unhealthy i'd say the risk here is lower than cbd oil it's just cold water i actually found a remarkably nuanced title from the today show no less which knocked me over with a feather seeing responsible science journalism from a morning talk show but they had a piece titled doctors weigh in on potential benefits of taking a cold shower with the subtitle while more research needs to be done there seems to be a few benefits to a good cold shower and for i think the first time in my life i find myself agreeing with the positioning of the today show on a matter of science there are potential benefits but a lot more research would need to be done to make some kind of official medical recommendation around taking a cold shower we know for sure a cold shower will burn calories as your body fights to maintain and return to your core temperature level from the shock of cold water and there's a handful of you know potential benefits for fat loss and immunity stress level testosterone if you're a man um which i'll i'll leave this this article out there for you on the show notes this week called 12 benefits of taking a cold shower every day with the caveat that you've listened to this podcast understand that should say 12 potential benefits of taking cold showers every day comma but additional research is needed to support these claims our third question this week was an email question it reads hi mike i've recently made a career jump moving from ministry to marketing my new work is focused excuse me is heavily focused on social media and client engagement as i've learned more about the skills of marketing from smart people like donald miller and others i've come to notice that marketing tends to play on people's emotions this sits a bit uneasy with me i get the concept and notice its prevalence in our culture but is there another way is there such thing as being an ethical marketer who values the personhood of customers but also wants to promote one's product as beneficial or worth purchasing i would be interested to hear your thoughts since you have an extensive background in the marketing industry love the show thanks for all you do preston well preston if ever there was a question submitted to this program that got to the heart of my own personal existential crisis it is this one question absolutely i have an extensive background in marketing and publicity and absolutely my work is with people whose life patterns have been extensive manipulation that can be millennials in generation z who just have been exposed to more marketing messages than any other generation in human history that can also be people who are coming from religious backgrounds where emotional manipulation played a huge role in their indoctrination so what i understand is that people who listen to this program their trust has been broken a lot and i try to be really careful with that trust that means i don't do things that i know how to do that would promote the business side of my work and give me more stable income because i want to avoid even the appearance of emotional manipulation towards my business goals that means my email list is horribly run i know a lot of things i could do to make a really well run email list and i just don't do them any of them i know creating a regular content calendar and regular posts on social media would increase my social following and then increase propensity to purchase when i made posts that were commercial in nature and i just don't do it i know that creating offer pages on my website on a regular basis and training people to go over and over to my website uh in order to get discounts would increase the amount of money i could make in relationship with the audience and i don't do it what i do instead is try to be really generous this podcast is free it's always going to be free i try to make ticket prices for my events as low as i possibly can with the theory that enough people will support me that i'll be okay and that's what's happened a few hundred patrons of ask science mike together make sure that not only i can you know pay people who work on this podcast but also pay for my health insurance that's nice people buy enough books that book publishers keep buying book contracts from me and that helps pay a lot of bills uh people hire me to speak all the time largely because of the free podcast that helps pay the bills i couldn't pay the bills recently because of heart disease and a big hospital bill and the public volunteered to pay those bills for me and i've wondered if i were a better tactical marketer if i put more of what i knew into practice and had a more regular income because i was as you put in your email emotionally manipulating people you know would that go fund me have happened or the people said ah you know science mike he's a fun business person he'll be okay i don't know i don't i wish i had like a good buttoned-up science mic answer for this but this is something i wrestle with all the time uh but there's also no no doubt that i do emotionally manipulate people that's what media is in a lot of ways when you watch a movie or read a book you're being in one light emotionally manipulated activating people's emotions i think is a part of compelling storytelling so what i have to do is take the responsibility of one showing my cards being honest about what emotions i'm trying to provoke and to what ends and two i do activate people's emotions but it's to get them to contemplate an issue and come to their own conclusion about it if you listen to some of my favorite episodes of the liturgist podcast like lgbt or black and white they're very emotionally activating and they're supposed to be here's you're supposed to feel a new empathy for queer people listening to lgbt if that's not something you've experienced before you're supposed to feel the gravity of white supremacy in america when you listen to the episode black and white that's on purpose is that emotional manipulation preston i don't know it's how my work gets done i just try to be cognizant of not ever asking people to do or maybe playing to people to do something that's against their own self-interests or that is harmful to communities both local and global i try to make my work a place of safety and inspiration and that includes my marketing you know i thought recently i do need to do something with my email list because right now people who sign up for my email literally get nothing not even marketing messages you sign up for mama list and you get a message back automatically that says i don't use this a lot and then i'll send like two or three messages a year to my email list i've been thinking lately what would it look like to make my email list not a marketing list but an avenue of communication with the audience where if i have something to say i just put it in the email they're going to get anyway kind of like ask science mike but is there a way to make that email list more community driven and more conversational i don't know but i'm super interested in figuring that out so i think you're right to check your motivations and check the implications of marketing work because an i think an overwhelming majority of marketing work in the world today is wildly manipulative and i would even say predatory but in terms of like what are the guidelines you know for doing it well i'm so cautious now i barely do it at all when we work with partners for science mike things or the liturgists they get really frustrated with me because i won't hand over email lists for marketing purposes i don't like to do big targeted social media ad buys your privacy is like as important to me as my own privacy and i know that business partners have gotten frustrated in the the past with my absolute refusal to engage in even pretty normal and traditional marketing activities because not violating all of your trust in me matters so much but preston i can see how that would put you in a difficult position as a professional marketer and that's why i haven't been a professional marketer in over five years our last question was supposed to be a voicemail question ah but i lost a file so here's a summary many climate change deniers claim that our original global temperatures do not fall outside of normal averages so how do scientists gather data to calculate the average global temperature and how do they go about comparing it to previous times oh gosh um this would be a full episode by itself to answer well let's just let's start there this is a massive question there's a lot of techniques for looking at global temperature averages that can be analyzing atmospheric samples stored in ice and in sediments that can be looking at carbon that can be looking at um fossilized plant growth [Music] there's amelia a number of methodologies and techniques for ascertaining global temperatures over time it is an entire specialty multiple specialties in the sciences if you're interested in that i'll have a link that will go deep into that topic on ask science mike this week it's going to be called our surface temperature records reliable that'll go with recent history as well as offer some links into looking at geologic history of temperature i'd rather focus on the idea that our current current global temperatures don't fall outside of quote normal averages what does that mean normal for wind normal for the earth's history well of course not the earth was originally a ball of molten lava with no atmosphere it was really hot then so i think over time at normal temperatures it's probably better to think about when life exists on earth and not only when life exists on earth but when a diversity of life is on earth and what you'll find is that areas of rapid change like the one we're in right now are the most deadly events in the earth history for life that in fact rapid release of co2 is more deadly than massive asteroid impacts so in the past the few times our atmosphere has changed as rapidly as it's changing right now the planet has experienced mass extinction events where most life on the planet dies oddly enough for me the most compelling way to understand where we're at with climate comes from a web comic uh like a comic strip not like a stand-up comic the comic is called a xkcd it's one of my favorite web comic series it's been around a long time and they have a comic called earth's temperature timeline there's no not really a lot of jokes here it is is a vertical representation of temperature on earth starting at 20 000 bce and looking forward and you'll find for most of human history the earth's been pretty cold and then we got into a contemporary era of like what we'd say modern levels and that's about 9000 bce a little after so yeah 8 800 somewhere around there and then things have a general warming trend and cooling but small variation the earth's been very comfortable and hospitable for human history and very stable staying within just a single degree celsius of the baseline of this measurement really really stable and sometimes getting a little cooler uh especially in more recent history since genghis khan until uh you know the 1900s we've been in this cooling era and then what you'll see is starting in the late 1900s the trend line of temperature veers so wildly that it has moved more than temperatures moved in human history in a period of decades and that at the slope of that graph by 2100 will be hotter when compared to current temperatures and shift than we've had since 20 000 bce when glaciers covered boston and new york only this is the opposite this would be a hot earth the earth has been this hot before but it has not been this hot with people on it and so what i would encourage anyone to do is to just look at this comic and have a link to it handy this is a great resource to share with climate deniers because you don't have to even extrapolate out along the future the temperature records we have already in modern history that we have right now shows something completely ahistoric in human history in regards to temperature change and when you look at that in conjunction with the fossil record and the mass extinctions that have happened when we've had carbon chips like this before that's why scientists are so alarmed we've never had this much carbon be released in the atmosphere without losing a majority of the species on earth and that's not good for any life on earth including humanity [Music] it takes a village to make ask science mike so greg nordine thanks for producing and editing the show caitlyn hermstad thanks for organizing and producing the show andrew golucky thanks for all your work in pre-production brent cradle thanks for managing the whole team jeb botteford thanks for the theme song can't wait to see you at ask science mike 200 and thanks most of all to all of the patrons who make sure we can pay the bills for doing this show if you'd like to join them just go to asktanksmike.com and click the become a patron button i've recently completely redone my patreon page with all new tiers and a new video in my office that hopefully you'll understand what patreon is all about thank you so much everyone for listening and i'll talk to you next week