Skipping Ropes and Sweaty Palms: The Awkward Art of Speaking Up

If certainty had a sound, it would be the wellness aisle whispering boost, detox, and natural into your ear. We pull back the curtain on why those words feel so right—and why they so often lead us astray. With Richard Saunders from Australian Skeptics, we unpack how intuition clashes with evidence, how authority bias makes white coats and big badges persuasive, and how deepfakes and influencer snippets outpace careful science in the attention economy.Listen to Richard's Podcast - https://www.skepticzone.tv/Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting

A glittering festival of certainty met a table of questions. We took you inside Sydney’s Mind Body Spirit Festival with pharmacist Kate Thomas and skeptic investigator Richard Saunders to test the confidence, the charisma, and the sweeping claims—everything from tarot to “age reversal” stem cell patches. What we found wasn’t just crystals and calm; it was a sales engine where scientific words get borrowed, anecdotes become evidence, and vulnerable people are nudged toward costly detours.Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting

A young woman followed a fruit-only diet until her body could no longer keep up. That tragedy isn’t an outlier—it’s the end point of smaller ideas that sound reasonable, feel empowering, and get reinforced by online echo chambers. We pull on that thread to reveal how “eat clean” becomes a slippery slope, why influencer certainty beats cautious science in the algorithm, and how health halos and status battles can turn food rules into identity.Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting

Tired of being told to “love yourself first” before anything else can work? We take that sacred cow for a walk and ask a simpler, kinder question: what if love is a verb, not a mood? Annie and David unpack the pressure-packed version of self-love that dominates social media and swap it for practical actions anyone can do—no lotus pose required. Along the way we separate self-love from self-care aesthetics, look at why external validation actually matters, and explore how neutral self-respect can be more stabilising than forced affirmations.Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting

Ever tried to share a life when your partner’s best hour is your worst? We dive into the everyday friction of two people on different clocks—one of us a sunrise exerciser who thrives on routine, the other a late-day creative who hits stride when the world winds down. Along the way we challenge wellness overpromises (no, stress doesn’t cause 99% of illness), keep the real science on movement and ageing, and get honest about how habits actually form: fewer pep talks, more smart design.Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting

Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting

Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting

Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting

What if your biggest flaws aren't flaws at all, but simply part of being human? We've all had that moment—catching a glimpse of ourselves in the mirror and immediately focusing on some perceived imperfection. That unexpected view of "tuck shop arms" (as we call them in Australia) or an unflattering angle in a video can trigger an avalanche of self-criticism. But why do we do this to ourselves?Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting

What happens when a woman's desire for a "natural" birth clashes with medical reality? In this gripping episode, I share the second part of the first chapter from my upcoming book - a story that will have you holding your breath until the very end.Send us a message!Support the showProudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting