Beyond the Headlines 👓

A conversational podcast going beyond the surface of popular & unpopular topics.

Hosted by critical thinkers with independent perspectives.

#rtbth

[Beyond the Headlines 👓 @rt__bth]

The antidote for the chaos and mayhem....

Talk to your neighbor....

Go for swimming lessons at your local @ymca ....

Big shout to little bro @Kola_irl

#rtbth
https://t.co/XS0ndk9Lw2

[Mad In America @Mad_In_America]

Depression Drug Approved by FDA Had 11 Failed Trials and an Advisory Committee Vote Against Approval
by Peter Simons on the Mad in America Substack

Two positive studies out of 13 conducted. Rejected by the FDA four times.
https://t.co/yEKdKElEz2

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Ruthia He, the founder who built a startup prosecutors alleged was an Adderall “pill mill,” was sentenced to six years in prison https://t.co/auT6EyDEql

[The News Agents @TheNewsAgents]

"They've silenced her.

"This is an attempt to punish someone who spoke the truth."

The "bizarre" moment @maitlis is forced to ask Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams to leave the studio.

[The Boston Globe @BostonGlobe]

“Thank you for welcoming us with open arms, open bars, and open minds”: A Scottish newspaper ran a full-page advertisement thanking Boston for welcoming the Tartan Army fans for the World Cup this month. https://t.co/Hdt1n7ZjB3

[The Herald @heraldscotland]

The Tartan Army have thanked the city of Boston for its hospitality in a free full-page advert in The Herald 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇺🇸

Scotland fans made a hugely positive impression on the city, attending Boston Red Sox matches at Fenway Park, donating to charitable causes and decorating the city's statues with traffic cones.

A full-page advert in the Boston Globe thanked the visiting Scots for their contribution to the city, and the Tartan Army have been given a free full-page advert in The Herald to respond in kind.

Read the full letter 👇

[TTI @TikTokInvestors]

He’s lowkey cooking

[jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill]

Iran Enlisted “Senior Psychologists” to Help Craft Messages to Trump Ahead of Agreement

Trump’s “reactions improved noticeably" after the psychiatric professionals joined Iran's negotiating effort

https://t.co/egYSk9n9Bk

[Kashmir Hill @kashhill]

People are having very strange conversations with ChatGPT, in which they discover secret cabals or conspiracies or that we are in fact living in The Matrix.

It sends these people into delusional spirals.

Then ChatGPT tells them to email me about it.

https://t.co/9IL5rbNy8v

[James Barnes MSc., MA @psychgeist52]

For years, critics of psychiatry were told they were denying science. Now prominent psychiatrists concede that psychiatric diagnoses are not objective disorders discovered in nature.

So what now justifies psychiatry's jurisdiction over human suffering?

https://t.co/f7Hj4wHvug

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. In Jesus Christ, this humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life, opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness. #MagnificaHumanitas
https://t.co/6i9MWs6LJl

[Dr Joanna Moncrieff @joannamoncrieff]

I can understand this is a difficult time for my psychiatry colleagues. I am sure they all have good intentions, but it turns out that the most widely used psychiatric treatment, antidepressants, causes significant iatrogenic effects (e.g. severe withdrawal reactions, PSSD), is not very effective (at best) and does not target an underlying biological abnormality after all. Although many people still seek a psychiatric diagnosis and a medical approach, increasing numbers highlight how misleading and disabling this approach can be. Their voices are starting to be heard, and we need to work with them to provide help for people who have been harmed by psychiatric treatment, and to prevent more harm being done. Trying to shoot the messenger doesn’t help anyone.

[Daniel Owens @dsowens17]

Who are the real grifters?

It is breathtaking to me that the motley gang of deprescribers now stand accused of 'promoting a business model centred on amplifying fear around psychiatric medication' without looking at the other side of the story:

What about the business model centred around promoting psychiatric medication?

The American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology Task Force is a case in point:

It's recent paper on deprescribing included 45 authors of which 91% of the authors have conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies.

In total over 100 unique pharma companies are including often with the same major pharma companies repeated again and again over numerous authors. This amounts to a whopping 1,000 discrete relationships (for just 45 people!).

Some of the authors have disclosures which span up to 70-80 companies and roles.

Consulting fees, advisory boards, CME honoraria, stock ownership,royalties, speaker bureaus, etc.

(Speaker bureaus are particularly controversial because they often involve promotional educational activity tied to industry messaging)

This isn't some casual overlap between expertise and industry. This reflects a perfectly interconnected psychopharmacology ecosystem. Textbook epistemic capture by commercial interests.

Are we really sure that we should trust these people to give objective advice about our health?

But sure it's the ragtag bunch of tapering/desprescibing folks that are the real grifters...

[rogue therapist ✨ @roguetherapist]

It is a tragedy that a Pfizer-owned, nine-question questionnaire is all it takes for a primary care doctor to prescribe drugs they do not understand to treat a condition they do not understand.

And it is a long-overdue relief to have RFK bringing attention to this tragedy.

[FOX 5 Atlanta @FOX5Atlanta]

Family 'worried sick' in search for 16-year-old Benjamin Brathwaite https://t.co/nRdQx65Ney

[Dr Joanna Moncrieff @joannamoncrieff]

The psychiatric establishment is reluctantly and belatedly acknowledging the overprescribing of psychiatric medications and need to help people get off them in order to salvage its reputation.

[Mark Horowitz @markhoro.bsky.social @markhoro]

The consensus statement this @nytimes article is based on is full of minimisation+denial and psychiatrists continue to insist withdrawal does not undermine evidence for l-t medication (when it clearly does) but at least this topic is being talked about.

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[Attorney General James Uthmeier @AGJamesUthmeier]

Today, we launched an investigation into OpenAI and ChatGPT.

AI should advance mankind, not destroy it. We’re demanding answers on OpenAI’s activities that have hurt kids, endangered Americans, and facilitated the recent FSU mass shooting.

Wrongdoers must be held accountable.

[Ronan Farrow @RonanFarrow]

(🧵1/11) For the past year and a half, I've been investigating OpenAI and Sam Altman for @NewYorker. With my coauthor @andrewmarantz, I reviewed never-before-disclosed internal memos, obtained 200+ pages of documents related to a close colleague, including extensive private notes, and interviewed more than 100 people.

OpenAI was founded on the premise that A.I. could be the most dangerous invention in human history—and that its C.E.O. would need to be a person of uncommon integrity. We lay out the most detailed account yet of why Altman was ousted out by board members and executives who came to believe he lacked that integrity, and ask: were they right to allege that he couldn't be trusted?

A thread on some of of our findings: