'Nice Makes You Sick' with Jackie Bollen

Dr Sean Runacres was the prison doctor who assessed Veronica Nelson on New Year's Eve 2019. Thirty-six hours later she was dead. The coroner found he had set in train the events that led to her death, and the headlines called him the doctor who killed an Aboriginal woman.Sean was one of several health professionals who saw Veronica in custody. On the night she died, she called for help 49 times and was told to be quiet and go to sleep. So why is he the one carrying the blame?We go through what he saw, what he wrote down and what he didn't, why the medical board reached a different view of his care than the coroner, and what being publicly named has cost him: work, finance and his reputation. He also says what he'd do differently.It's a hard conversation about a tragic death, and about a system that, in Sean's words, needs someone to blame: "As a doctor, I'm expendable. We've just proven it."Watch the full interview on X, Spotify or our website: https://discernable.io/she-called-for-help-49-times-they-blamed-the-doctor-dr-sean-runacres/

Rob McMullan is a Fellow at the Natural Law Institute and part of the Australian Cultural Revival with the Aus Lobby Group. He has spent more than a decade working on Natural Law, an attempt to describe how humans actually behave rather than how ideologies say they should. He is also, somewhat improbably, a flamenco guitarist.Rob argues the ground is shifting under Australia. For decades the political class has governed from behind an empathetic facade, 'standing up for the little guy' while protecting the banks, treating working Australians like tax cattle and sedating everyone else. Now the incentives have changed. People can only hold the beliefs they can afford, and Australians can no longer afford these ones. The surge behind Pauline Hanson is not an aberration. It is the whiplash.We cover masculine and feminine political strategies, why collectives always outcompete individuals, the three incentives every ruling class uses to make people comply, and why Rob believes the 'kumbaya' era is ending.Rob makes his case for preserving the Australia we grew up in, and we disagree on how much of it is written in our genetics.

We start on Baudrillard, hyperreality and Happy Days' The Fonz, then move into failing Australian politics, and finally we get to the real subject: artificial intelligence and the crisis of meaning.The future is coming at us fast, and we wonder what role will remain for humans.

So many bad things have happened to me lately. From an unexpected medical diagnosis to a roof collapsing beneath me.Bad things are happening to you as well with fuel, food and rent/mortgage prices spiraling out of control. And it looks like the pain is only just beginning.So how can I say 'It's a Good Day'?I think the day was 'good' before we arrived into it. And when bad things happen, that creates a tension between what the day is (good) and what we experienced (bad).I don't think pain itself grows you. It just causes trauma. But the tension that exists there does build character.In this case, falling through a roof has led to the completion of one of my books - it came out fast after hospital. Maybe brain injuries are creative catalysts.It's a Good Day.

It's deliberate. Strategic. Politicians have a strong self-preservation instinct and the best way to deflect criticism is to divide the population and turn them against each other.That is exactly what Australia's Prime Minister is doing over the fuel crisis, blaming it on everyday families who are 'hoarding' fuel.This is how he does it: set up a false binary and invite viewers to self identify with a noble majority, channel all anger toward a hated and imaginary minority, then threaten the noble majority with pain so they blame it on the minority.It's the identical public relations playbook deployed during Covid. And it works.Here's how, here's why, and here's the video that obliterates your excuse for not knowing how politicians are manipulating you against your fellow Australian.

Dr. Peter Brukner is one of Australia's most decorated sports medicine physicians. He is former head of medical and performance at Liverpool FC, team doctor for Cricket Australia, Cathy Freeman's doctor at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, and now one of the most credible voices in the low-carb and diabetes reversal space.In 2012, at 60 years old and working in Liverpool, Brukner had a fatty liver, high triglycerides, elevated insulin, and a strong family history of type 2 diabetes. He tried a low-carb diet for 90 days. He lost 13 kilograms. Every blood marker normalised. The fatty liver (present for a decade) was gone.What followed was a complete reorientation of his career: founding Sugar by Half, writing the bestselling 'A Fat Lot of Good', developing the Defeat Diabetes program, and becoming one of the most persistent critics of dietary guidelines that he believes are built on fraudulent science.This is a wide-ranging, evidence-dense conversation covering the politics of how fat got demonised, why the medical system structurally cannot update itself, the real mechanism behind type 2 diabetes, the legitimate and illegitimate uses of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, athlete nutrition, injury recovery, and where AI is headed in medicine.Watch all of our interviews at https://discernable.io/interviews

Jackie Bollen is a physiotherapist and brain balance clinician based in Wodonga, Australia. She runs Reflecting Health, a holistic allied health clinic offering physio, speech therapy, and occupational therapy, with a particular focus on neurodiverse populations and root-cause health.In this conversation we go deep on internal work, hemispheric brain dominance, primitive reflex retention, why genuine people are genuinely rare, and the 11th-hour self-sabotage pattern that kills most meaningful change in our lives.Jackie also diagnoses Matt live on camera: head tilt, eye dominance, nostril asymmetry, forehead tone, and the results are uncomfortably accurate.

Rupert Degas is a professional actor, voice artist and impressionist who has appeared in thousands of film, television, stage, animation and advertising roles. Without realising it, you have already heard his voice in a film, animation, tv show or video game. He is a vocal chameleon. In this interview he makes the argument for the 'court jester' - the only one permitted to tell the king that he is wearing no clothes. Rupert believes in the role of comedy in a healthy society, and that accents and impersonations of different races is not 'racist', but a celebration of the diversity of humanity.https://rupertdegas.comhttps://www.instagram.com/rupert_degashttps://www.youtube.com/user/rupertqsound

Dr Brendan Moloney believes that parallel movements 'are inevitable' as governments and institutions fail the people they are meant to serve.

Voice for Victoria's Emily returns to Discernable to teach us why promises of 'free stuff' keeps winning elections, why it won't work long term, how to solve Victoria's spiking crime crisis, and how we should think about immigration, assimilation, and multiculturalism.Plus, machetes.