Welcome back! In this episode Megan Leigh tackles a personal experience that underscores a troubling trend within the “critical thinking” communities—communities that claim to be open to questioning and dialogue but often shut down dissenting views. Episode blog 🔗

In this episode, we’ll cover:

• The DARVO Tactic: What happens when questioning turns into exile. Megan explores the manipulative tactic of Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, commonly used by high-control groups, abusers, and surprisingly, some “critical thinking” communities.
• How MLMs Use DARVO: A deep dive into how MLMs (Multi-Level Marketing schemes) use this psychological tactic to silence critics and keep people trapped in a system of manipulation.
• The Hypocrisy of Selective Skepticism: How figures like Brandie, who claim to fight misinformation, inadvertently fall into the same patterns of selective skepticism when it comes to the food industry, dietitians, and processed foods.
• The Problem with Experts: Megan discusses the dangers of blindly trusting “credentialed experts” without considering potential conflicts of interest, especially when it comes to the health and wellness industry, Big Food, and Big Pharma.
• Intellectual Humility vs. Ideological Rigidity: The importance of intellectual humility in the face of challenging ideas and how the obsession with data and science has become a new form of dogma, silencing dissent and critical inquiry.

Why This Matters: Megan delves into the tension between questioning accepted narratives and being labeled a conspiracy theorist or extremist, pointing out the importance of maintaining intellectual curiosity while avoiding the traps of ideological extremes. What happens when we leave one cult-like belief system only to fall into another? Is this really freedom?

Tune in for an episode that challenges both the content and the way we think about the conversations we’re having in these spaces.

🙏 Please help this podcast reach a larger audience in hope to edify & encourage others! To do so: leave a 5⭐️ review and send it to a friend! Thank you for listening! I’d love to hear from you, find me on Instagram!⁠⁠⁠ @taste0ftruth⁠⁠⁠ , @megan_mefit , ⁠⁠⁠ Pinterest! ⁠⁠ ⁠ Substack and on X!