The Cult of Chiropractors
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Whenever I see a doctor influencer who's like scarily good at social media, it's always a fucking chiropractor. I made a comment about this once because it was think of like mid 2020 when that first wave of COVID people were like, you know, what is this thing? Do we really need the vaccine? Once a week, there'd be this new doctor, you know, think Facebook headline doctor comes out and says COVID is fake.

It got to the point that in my head I'd see it and I would know within five seconds, like, that's a chiropractor. God damn it. That's not a doctor. That's a chiropractor. And it was every time.

This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern-day cults we all follow. I'm your host, Amanda Montell, author of the books Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, and the forthcoming The Age of Magical Overthinking. Every week on this show, you're going to hear about a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist, from Disney adults to Instagram therapists, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? ♪

And if so, is it a live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out level cult? After all, the word cult is up to interpretation. But you know what's not at all up for debate? My obsession with watching chiropractor videos on YouTube. I admit it. I love cracking. I love hearing other people crack. I love cracking myself. Whatever you want. Your back, your neck, hips.

Knuckle? Toes? I've been really into wrists lately. I know. Some people find it really gross, but others are like foaming at the mouth for it. Like me, I don't know who to blame for this compulsion, this disgusting affinity. I guess I could blame my mom. She used to make me walk on her back when I was a little kid. So I grew up in a house where that was normal.

I myself have never been to a chiropractor, but I've always been very curious about it. There's one chiropractor on YouTube who does a move called the ring dinger, where he like puts a towel under your chin, pulls up and like separates all your vertebrae so that you're six inches taller.

It's not really that, but it looks like it feels incredible. So if I didn't know what I now know about chiropractors, I couldn't see myself falling into this cult. On the surface, I would think that someone who's there to professionally crack your back is literally God on Earth.

But I think I first caught a whiff that chiropractors were generally thought of as scammy on the show Friends. You know that episode where Rachel's dad comes to visit and he's a real hard ass and he's being super hard on Ross, her boyfriend, and Ross is only able to win him over when they're able to bond over their shared loathing of chiropractors and thinking that they're bullshit. But there

But there's a lot of stuff like that. You know, wellness treatments are promised to do things sometimes that they maybe probably can't really fully do. I can get on board with a certain amount of suspending your disbelief as long as nobody is exploiting anyone or putting anyone in danger. But of course...

tends to get there. And weirdly, in the field of chiropractic, it has gotten there and beyond. I really had no idea until I started looking into the overlap between the holistic wellness community and the anti-vax conspiracy theory community. It's too flattering to call that a community.

during COVID times that chiropractic is so much cold here than I ever thought. It's an industry that was literally invented by a self-proclaimed prophet type who claimed to perform miracles on the disabled. And now the field has morphed to be full of these power hungry, TikTok clout chasing quacks who both

resent medical doctors, villainize anyone who questions their practices, but also calls themselves doctors proudly. I'm speaking generally here. There are some good apples. We're going to meet one later in the episode. But there are more than a few chiropractors out there who think they can heal people's diseases with their literal hands. Some of them have arsenals full of bullshit medical textbooks and weird devices that would give L. Ron Hubbard Scientology E-meter a run for its fucking money.

Sometimes these quacks accidentally give people a damn stroke. Sometimes they start anti-vax new age empires that go way off the deep end.

It gets bad, but also they do actually really provide people with pain relief here and there, I think. Some people swear by them. I'm going to give a little bit of background before we get into my interview with my guest host today. And then we're going to hear from Trevor Zerke, who is a chiropractor himself, but also publicly super critical of his own profession.

He's gone viral for calling out culty and scammy chiropractors. Trevor himself acknowledges that the industry is low-key a cult. It's just a question of how bad is it? So let's give some fast facts, some quick stats before we get into the truly bonkers cult-like history of the chiropractic field. ♪

I'm going to start by quoting some stats from an LA Times article titled, Chiropractic Treatment, a $15 billion industry has its roots in a ghost story.

So in a way, that's all you need to know. But according to this article, in 2017, the American Chiropractic Association estimated that there were nearly 77,000 chiropractors in the U.S. who treat more than 35 million Americans every year. Chiropractors whole thing is the spinal column. They use what is called spinal manipulation. And if the term manipulation

Manipulation is a part of your profession already. Red flag. I'm kidding. But they use something called spinal manipulation to manually put your body parts back into place and restore a sense of balance, allegedly, to the body to help it heal naturally. If you're confused by my description here, there is a reason for that.

You will get more clarity, fortunately, from my guest host Trevor later. But also, the reason this is confusing is because every chiropractor has a kind of different ideology about what the practice even is, what it can achieve. And that's guilty already because so much of it is so disconnected from facts. But it doesn't start to get truly scary for me until we dive deep into the origin story of the chiropractic field.

The entire chiropractic profession is largely credited to a dude named Daniel David Deedee Palmer.

He was born in 1845. He was a professional magnetic healer. So take that as you will. He was a spiritualist, and he claimed that the entire theory for the chiropractic field came to him during a seance where he was able to get in touch with the spirit of a doctor named Jim Atkinson, who had been dead for 50 years. ♪

Palmer basically claimed low-key out of nowhere that 95% of all disease is due to subluxations. Essentially, Palmer was saying that misaligned vertebrae fuck with your energy flow and causal.

And from the very beginning, chiropractic was basically a marriage of bone setting and this spiritual magnetism that he had been practicing, which might sound cuckoo bananas, but it really launched a movement.

In the beginning, Palmer actually considered chiropractic a kind of religion. In 1911, he said that the practice, and I quote, must have a religious head, one who is the founder, as did Christ, Muhammad, and others who have founded religions, I, M.

and the fountainhead. It must be said, chiropractors don't go to medical school. They're not licensed to practice medicine. And in the early 20th century, when huge progress in medicine was being made, antibiotics were becoming a thing. It was a huge time. The medical community was like, hey, we're onto something here. Chiropractic is bullshit. It's a threat to the real science that we're doing. You know what?

Fuck it. Let's lock these quacks on up. Literally, they were like, chiropractors? Fuck you. Prison. In 1916, a chiropractor named Tullius Ratledge, iconic name, was sentenced to 90 days in jail in California for practicing medicine without a license. Chiropractors were charged with violating the Medical Practice Act. There was huge publicity surrounding this. At the height of the public controversy, 450 chiropractors were arrested. ♪

But by then, a lot of people liked the benefits that they were getting from chiropractors. They didn't want their favorite crack daddies to be in jail. So then in 1922, Californians voted by an overwhelming majority to license the profession. So all of those chiropractors who were still in jail were pardoned. Every state had a version of this battle, but chiropractors emerged the winners every single time.

As you can imagine, the American Medical Association, which had always kind of been the field of chiropractic's main nemesis, they were pissed. They were not ready to give up trying to take chiropractors down. So get this. The American Medical Association had this clause that prohibited members from consulting with practitioners whose practice is, and I quote, based on an exclusive dogma.

After this whole era of chiropractors getting arrested and then pardoned and winning case after case after case, the profession was growing and growing. So in 1957, the American Medical Association explicitly called upon this clause to forbid consultations with chiropractors, to ban them. Actually, the AMA was even quoted as calling chiropractors an unscientific cult. They should have started a podcast about it.

But this shit backfired. In 1976, five chiropractors brought a lawsuit against the AMA. And 11 years later, after a long and costly litigation, the U.S. District Court in Illinois found the AMA and many of its associates guilty of conspiracy against Chiropractor.

chiropractors and in violation of federal antitrust laws. That meant that the AMA was forced to cease and desist. To this day, chiropractors, I think some of them have a bit of a chip on their shoulder, super protective of their reputations, super litigious to the point that the medical establishment and even journalists are sometimes like, you know what, bro, never mind. These chiropractors are not worth the trouble. Just let them have their little alleged cult.

And all the while, chiropractic patients freaking love it. According to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled Chiropractic Origins, Controversies and Contributions, studies that compare patient satisfaction with chiropractic with that of conventional medicine in treating low back pain demonstrate a marked preference for chiropractic.

But here's the thing. Chiropractors are not out here just saying, I can crack your bones and make your lower spine feel better. They're out here making all kinds of culty claims, and in some cases, building massive culty empires based on a field that was founded by a cult leader who thought he could talk to ghosts. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. It's bananas. So we're going to need to hear more about what is going on with the cult of chiropractic from someone who's been

Who knows? From the inside, the cracky, the quacky, and the just plain wacky. Please welcome my special guest host today, chiropractor extraordinaire and chiropractic critic, Trevor Zerke. ♪

My name is Trevor Zerke. I am actually a doctorate of chiropractic. I practice down here in Austin, Texas, as well as online. I graduated from school in Minnesota in 2021. So I'm newly into the cult, I guess you could say, although I'm kind of more like a mole, but we'll get into that. Love that. Also, you're one of many people who joined a cult in the pandemic.

Yeah, it was trendy. It was a culty, culty time. Can you talk a little bit more about what drew you into this cult? So I was dealing with an injury. I thought, you know, I need help with it. Who should I go to? I got recommended to go to see a chiropractor, saw them, saw some relief. And I was like, hmm, that'd be a pretty cool job down the road. I knew I wanted to do some form of health care or something anyways.

I had good experience with chiropractor in the past, so I just went into it kind of blind because that was my only real experience was with these one or two chiropractors who were actually pretty good. We'll dive more into in sort of the spectrum, but they're on the good end, right? So I kind of went in blind. You're looking at me.

Like I'm going to like chew your face off, but I'm not like, the thing is I want to believe, I want to believe so badly. So I'm not going to force you to convince me, but like, I'm just saying, I'm not going in like the dad in that one episode of friends being like, I wrote practice the quacks. Like,

I, I'm going in as a nooch as possible. No, and see, so did I. So when I went into school, I was pretty neutral because my experience was very limited. And then I got into school and I realized, oh, this is a lot crazier than I thought and a lot deeper, deeper than I was imagining. But I was already in there and I still liked what I could do with it. So I just, I stuck up the path and here I am.

Okay, what were some of those first culty red flags that you noticed in chiropractor college? Yeah. So for reference, my background was in sciences and my undergraduate degree was in exercise physiology. So I went to school and they started making generalized claims and stuff. I'd be like, man, that sounds kind of crazy. I wonder if there's any sort of evidence or stuff to support that. And I would look up and I'd be disappointed because I wasn't on. I'd be like, huh.

That's interesting because a lot of people were saying these things almost like they're concrete facts. And there really was no research to back up a lot of the claims. Like what? So a lot of it just boils down to when people think of chiropractic, right? They think about the back cracking and the neck cracking. Oh, yeah. A lot of people call that like the adjustment. And a lot of the claims with like how it was able to fix this or cure that.

There's not a whole lot of research data that says that that's true. I was looking up and I was like, that's kind of weird. So they were really saying that in school because, you know, it's like when I see a chiropractor online say like, oh, this adjustment can, I don't know, help with bowel

inflammation or whatever it is, I like to think like, oh, maybe that person is just like overhyping themselves to build a following. But I'm hearing that it's kind of built into the institution. Totally. And this is why it gets weird and very confusing and everyone in this world is

kind of knows it but i think people outside don't is the chiropractic profession is really like there's a governing body right that kind of washes over everything but after that it really splits into all these sort of subsections and it kind of boils down to what school you attend so the school i attended is actually more on the science end spectrum so they were making claims that would help with you know normal things like you think right like if you come in with back pain

getting adjustment, that would help. Actually, the data on that's pretty conflicting. Like it kind of does kind of doesn't who really knows the claims you're talking about, right? Like the wild ones where it's like, I have IBS, which I do get your neck adjusted. My school personally was not pushing a whole lot of that stuff. However, there are several and unfortunately, some of the biggest schools that talk about just that, if not crazier stuff.

So depending on what kind of school you go to, totally. And that's where it's always like when I see the chiropractors, I feel like I know exactly what you're talking about when you say stuff like that, like TikTok and stuff or YouTube. And then making these claims, I can just tell that they were kind of raised in a different path.

than I was. And I always have been like, well, do they actually believe that? Or is that just what they were told at school? So now they do believe it. Well, I mean, I know you're talking about chiropractors and health and wellness, but the way that you're describing the way that the belief systems branch off, it sounds like

you're talking about a religion. 100%, which if we get into the history of it, you'll see that's like kind of the point. Speaking of the history, I would love to hear about the background of the chiropractic field from your perspective and in your own words. D.D. Palmer, I think it was Daniel David

Palmer. He lived in Iowa, in Davenport, Iowa, which is important because that's where like the first chiropractic school popped up. And the story goes of how he discovered or sort of started chiropractic was he was working in some office and I think it was a janitor complained to him or had mentioned he had some sort of like hearing impairment. DD being at the time a healer sort of theorized that it was from some misalignment in his neck. And he did what he called the first ever adjustment and voila, that guy could hear.

So the story goes. It's very much Jesus curing the blind. 100%. So that starts up chiropractic. He eventually opens up his school in Davenport, Iowa called Palmer Chiropractic School, which is still this day of school. I think it's either one or two in terms of the biggest chiropractic schools that are out there. He founded that.

It goes through a big, big snake journey of like his son gets involved and they try to like take over and do all sorts of stuff. But the big thing was it got a lot of pushback from obviously like the medical community. We're like, hey, this guy is not he's saying he's practicing medicine. It is not medicine. So he actually at one point tried getting it viewed as a religion instead of religion.

healthcare so that it could have a little bit more leniency. Oh my god. Right. It explains a lot when you hear stuff like this. Seriously. And the way he sort of taught at school and it was sort of founded on like his stories and his beliefs. There's a lot of parallels to Christianity. Like it's kind of crazy. Like every time I think I don't think about it too much because I try not to.

But then when I'm reminded of it, I'm like, it's crazy. Like he actually, D.D. Palmer wrote his little book on his theories and beliefs of chiropractic. It's called like a little green book or something like that. And all the students at, for sure at Palmer and at other schools have to learn it. It's almost like the little mini Bible.

You learn it and you study it. And it's all his words from 100 plus years ago. Oh, my God. Right? Like, they don't really get updated. And it gets ingrained in you early as a chiropractic student. You're like, oh, well, this must be true. This is what we're talking about. And I would say that's where the profession is kind of split or divided right now. And I always like to explain it. It's like it's not a spectrum, right?

One of the spectrum is like normal current healthcare, right? We use the scientific method. We look at research. We apply like the current best practices and dictate it like that. That's unfortunately minority. That's where I like to think that I side on that side. And the other side of the spectrum is exactly what you described. They still follow DD's principles from 100 plus years ago to a T. They don't question it. They don't care what sort of research comes out. They know in their heart of hearts that chiropractic works for XYZ.

Yeah. No matter what it says, which is crazy. Well, yeah, it's crazy because it paves the way for like some seriously sinister figures to come in and be like, look at everyone else who knows this to be true. Now I can take it to the next level. And we'll talk about some of those figures later. But I mean, it makes so much sense that there is this beef within the chiropractic community, considering it's sort of like dogmatic woo woo.

It's like, of course, there is going to be tension and conflict there, as there always is in religious communities. But could you talk about the beef between chiropractors and the traditional medical community? Because my understanding is that they got into it legally and the American Medical Association eventually had to cease and desist on cracking down, no pun intended, on

on chiropractors. Yeah. You know, someone like myself, when I help people, I want to be incorporated in like a current healthcare model where we collaborate with other people, right? If I have to refer someone to an MD or I have to work with, you know, a physical therapist or anything else like that,

I want to be able to do that. Whereas this other subsection of chiropractors, they want to be the sole treatment option. They always say they want to do chiropractic. They don't want to do this other stuff. They don't want to help out, you know, send them to other people and stuff, which is wild and very unfortunate and kind of scary. It doesn't get cultier than that.

Right. And it's kind of always gets drawn back to like that initial thing where where that side of the spectrum they view, you know, the American Medical Association, we're trying to shut them down, they don't want chiropractic. So it's like an us versus them thing. Yeah, instead of everyone.

Collaborative thing. Yeah. Okay. So can you talk just a little more logistically about what qualifications you need to say like, I'm a chiropractor, I can adjust you and I can do that without getting sued? Yeah, absolutely. So the license we have is a DC, so doctorate of chiropractic. This is where it gets hairy sometimes when people are like, doctor, and they're like, no, you're a chiropractor.

The way I explain it, and this isn't like, you know, the surefire definition, but the way I explain it is like physical therapists are sometimes referred to as doctors. They also have a doctorate of physical therapy. So technically speaking, it's appropriate to call them doctor. However, I myself and I know a lot of other chiropractors, physical therapists don't like to use that title because a lot of people in today's society just view doctor as medical doctor. We don't want to get that vandalism.

viewed as differently. Got it. So it's like you don't want to confuse anyone or risk stripping power or meaning away from the word doctor. Right. But technically, our degree is a doctorate of chiropractic. We earn that through a graduate school program, three to four years, kind of depending on where you go. We have board exams. We have like a certified curriculum and stuff that's overseen by a national board of chiropractic examiners. And it's all legit on that end.

I myself went to undergrad first, so I had a four-year degree, and then I did an additional three years at chiropractic school. That's, I would say, the most normal route, but it is a real program. It's real. It's rigorous. It's not like anyone can just walk in and do it.

But at the same time, we don't have a set residency program like DOs or MDs have. We don't have a super strict curriculum. Like if you go to any sort of medical school, kind of what they're covering in the order and stuff they cover, it is all pretty similar. Ours is more so based on what the board exams are going to offer. They teach to help their students pass that exam. And that only covers a few things like diagnosing, anatomy, but it doesn't actually cover like the methods and, you know,

sort of the treatment spectrum that people do, that's kind of up to the university. And that's again, where you see that divide is different from school to school and kind of group to group that you kind of come up in. Wow, it's all really clicking for me. Sorry, there's like so many chiropractor puns to make it's clicking and cracking for me. Because like, the

The field fundamentally started as this savior complex situation. Like, I'm going to wave my hands over you and heal the deaf. So, like, no wonder those highfalutin promises are still present because that's how it started. And, like, if you're someone who experiences incredible pain...

that you haven't been able to find a treatment for, whether a chiropractor can actually help you or not, if they're saying that they are and hundreds of years of chiropractors before them have also said, yes, I can help with this too. And the American Medical Association has been forced to like back off and be like, ugh, the chiropractors, we can't come for them anymore. Then it's like, of course people are gonna believe them when the only person saying I can heal your pain is a chiropractor.

Right. The whole profession sits in this like weird gray area currently, right? Because I don't want it to sound like, you know, the governing board of chiropractic doesn't do their job because they do. But their real only job is just to prevent the general public from getting hurt. But in terms of like chiropractors saying, you know, this adjustment can help these things, which maybe it probably can't. It's a gray area where they don't necessarily have like the evidence or concrete proof that they can intervene.

It creates this weird muddied water sort of thing where, like you said, it just kind of depends on a lot of people's beliefs. Yeah. And a lot of these chiropractors, they're very persuasive. They have good sales pitches and stuff like that and can sort of amp the belief up even more so. And that's how it's gotten to be this big thing.

Not to mention my good friend, Aaron, his name's Aaron Kubal. He makes a lot of content kind of similar to where it's, you know, the real side of chiropractic. He always has the joke that TikTok has set the progression of chiropractic back a hundred years because now it's just the beliefs, but then they also have the very clickbaity ASMR of like, wow, that crack sounds really cool. Oh my God. I am so susceptible to that. I,

fall for that in two seconds. Thank God I don't have TikTok. But let's talk about this. How has the chiropractic profession gotten cultier over the years thanks to social media? Chiropractic has this great thing where it looks really cool. It's very flashy. We love a snap, crackle, pop. It's crazy. No. And then it's amped up to 100 where people have their professional podcasting mics right there. It's gotten so flashy. You take someone who they don't even know what they're watching and

Because everyone at some point in time has cracked their back and be like, oh, that felt pretty good. Right? And then you just see a video of someone doing it really well and it makes a very loud pop. You're like, wow, I bet that felt really good. Whether you know nothing about it whatsoever, you're already like enticed. Well, yeah, 100%. Also, because I think there's so many things going on. First of all, we love instant gratification and...

That is what the sound provides. I objectively, if I like put on noise canceling headphones, feel equally good when I stretch and when I crack my back. But I am so much more satisfied when I hear the crack.

Dude, totally. It's like you said, it's like human nature too. We want the instant gratification, right? You can go get your back cracked and it takes like five minutes, right? Yeah. Arguably, if you did that versus if you went and did like, you know, a nice yoga class, like a relaxing meditative yoga class for 40 minutes, you'd probably feel better. But that was 40 minutes. And like, he just cracked your back in like 20 seconds. That's the draw to it, right? Totally. I'm also just thinking like, we are so sort of simple and predictable as humans. We always think that something natural

Yeah.

happen in the world, which is a drive that I think is like really base to us and really easy to weaponize. Yes, exactly. It also is reminding me right now so much of the TikTok therapy and Instagram therapy cultishness because...

Similar to the field of chiropractic, there are not a lot of checks and balances in behavioral health. Yeah, you can like promise that EMDR is going to cure your trauma. And that's like a real method. But also you could treat someone with something totally unsubstantiated, crystal therapy, whatever. And you can't get sued for malpractice for like trying something out that doesn't work.

It's like, well, we tried, you know, and there's nothing to say that we didn't have pure intentions. No one is going to hold you accountable for that. We're all like shooting in the dark. It's still like a fairly new practice. So it makes sense that there's so much room for cultishness and chiropractic.

And mental health. Right. And that's where it gets hard when I talk about because I've made a few videos about, you know, chiropractics being scammers and like sort of scammy tendencies. And it's always difficult for me because I don't know these people personally. And I truly think maybe in their heart of hearts, their beliefs, they're like, no, I'm doing the best possible thing for this person. Although the only thing they're doing is they're just cracking their back and their neck.

And they think that's going to help them. But if it didn't work, they just say exactly what he did. They're like, well, you know, I tried my best. You know, I think if we stick to it, we'll keep going. But then all of a sudden it's been two years of you seeing a chiropractor two times a week, every single week. And you're no better. You've wasted all this money and all this time. But you have on the opposite end, you have some people who got help, who they're now believers of chiropractic. And they're the ones shipping like, no, we'll just keep going. Like it'll, it'll work and stuff. It's a super slippery slope. Oh my God. It reminds me so much of the last season of the NXIVM documentary on HBO, The Vow.

Where there were a couple people coming forward who had Tourette's. Who were talking about how some of the NXIVM courses like really cured them or helped them in meaningful ways. And you can't tell them that their truth isn't their truth. You can't tell someone like, no, you're not better. And those few people who are like preaching miracles, their voices travel far, especially on TikTok.

I'm glad you said that because that's like an important thing because this is where people get mad at me in my comments all the time. Like, well, I went to a chiropractor and I feel better. And it's like, totally. I'm not, I'm not dismaying that, like not at all. But it's currently nearly impossible for us to tell if you got better because you saw the chiropractor or you got better because it's been eight weeks and like, hey, your back just feels better.

It's impossible to say, but like you said, you can't tell the people who are like, well, my backup at our afterthought chiropractor, you can't tell them it didn't work because like it kind of did, but we just don't know which one of those things worked. And it makes it really hard to kind of go against that. I work with people who are in pain for a long time. It's such a debilitating thing that then when they get out of pain, it's like this, holy shit, like, oh my God, whatever this work, it's amazing. I want to tell everyone it's the best thing ever.

And it creates those really strong rooted beliefs that most cults are built on. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I feel this even when there's like a TV show that I love. I'm like, everybody has to drop what they're doing and watch it right now. And if you don't like it, there's something wrong with you. This is like that, but dialed up to an 11 because we're talking about physical pain and emotional pain too. Totally. Totally.

If you are enjoying this episode on the cult of chiropractors, I really think you might enjoy my new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking Notes on Modern Irrationality, which is coming out from Simon & Schuster wherever books are sold on April 9th. This book is

is about irrationality in the information age, covering subjects from celebrity worship to nostalgia to why we enter a flight or fight response in reaction to social media conflicts or tense emails with our boss.

It's really about this time in history when our innate proclivities toward magical thinking are clashing with the digital era and aims to explain why so little human behavior seems to make sense these days and why it sometimes just feels so hard to exist as a human in the world right now. If you're enjoying this episode, I especially think you might like chapter two of the book. It's called I Swear I Manifested This.

and explores the cognitive bias underlying ideas of new-agey manifestation and how they're actually a sort of conspiracy theory of their own, all the while revealing the juicy story of a cult-followed Instagram manifestation guru.

The book is pretty short, it's digestible, even if you don't normally gravitate toward nonfiction, I hope you give it a try. And if you prefer to listen to your books, I actually just finished recording my own audiobook, which was a dream come true.

Listening to this book doesn't feel that dissimilar to listening to a podcast. But if you like a good hardback, I currently just launched a pre-order campaign with my local indie bookstore Skylight Books. If you pre-order your hard copy of The Age of Magical Overthinking now from the link in our show notes, your copy will arrive signed and personalized. You can even request that I write something very strange or inappropriate or culty in your inscription, whatever you want. Anyway, I'm going to be doing a lot of

I'm so proud of this book. I really hope you like it. It's available for pre-order now. Link in our show notes. It's called The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality. And for behind the scenes on my publishing process, including the book cover design process, the titling process, updates on my forthcoming podcast, Magical Overthinkers, and to find out what sounds like a cult episode is dropping a day early, feel free to check out my newsletter at amandamontell.substack.com.

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Okay, so you are yourself on TikTok. Can you talk about like your journey on social media? I mean, you did have one pretty viral video where you said that 99% of the chiropractic profession is a scam. Yeah.

I started making videos because I opened up my own practice right out of school because obviously, as we were talking, the way I sort of practice and help people looks a lot different than most chiropractors. But because I opened it up, I had really no way. I had no money. I was fresh out of school. I was like, how do I market? Well, I was like, well, TikTok's free. I think I can make videos. So I started making videos and I would always get comments. People would be like, well, you're a chiropractor. You know what you're talking about.

And I would say, no, do you like listen to me? Like I'm saying like, hey, I don't really trust my profession that much. But then I just started doubling down with it. I was like, hey, well, you know, I'll make a few videos like poking fun at what chiropractors do because I think it's hilarious and who has better insight than someone on the inside. Totally. That's why you're the mole. Yes, exactly. So those started to really resonate. So I was like, well, they're kind of fun because I think it's fun too because I see again, I live with this shit all the time. Like I see

these crazy claims. And I'm just like, that's total BS. Why is no one calling it out on it? So I was like, well, you know, this gives me an opportunity to actually call that out, educate the general public so that you can hopefully not fall for that and go from there. And now it turns into every day on TikTok, I'm tagged in like, you know, two or three crazy chiropractor videos. And people are like, what are your thoughts on this? What are your thoughts on this?

Which is fun. I really do enjoy it because I think it's important. Someone did a study on this when they were looking at like the top sort of trending things on social media. And I think it was specifically TikTok. Chiropractic was like the number three most viewed topic on TikTok.

It's made for social media. It's like press down on someone's back, hear an explosive snap, crackle, pop. What more could you want while scrolling and bed rotting? It's never been bigger and like more exposure. But then at the same time, like that, what you just described, like if you have no clue what you're looking at, you're like, what did I just watch? Was that like literally Jesus cracking someone's back? Like, do I need to go see this human being?

I try to make videos to like educate people, be like, hey, this is what it is. This is what it doesn't do. This is what we maybe think it does, you know, go accordingly. There's something about the actual physiological thing that happens when you watch a cult documentary that's so similar to the physiological thing that happens when you watch back cracking videos or even like to some degree of pimple popping videos or earwax removal. That's my shit. We're like, it is horrifying, but...

But you cannot look away. And there's a part of you, I think this is why cults are alluring and cult documentaries even are alluring, because there's a part of you that's like, I want to be in that person's shoes. I want to get the shit cracked out of me. Totally. And I think with chiropractors, what's funny is it's like such a low barrier. Like you don't have to like sell your soul to her. Like you just have to go in and get your back cracked.

And you go and you're like, oh, that felt kind of good. Like maybe I'll start going like once a month. Maybe I'll start going once a – and it's like just – and then before you know it, you're going all the time. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. I want to ask two sort of complimentary questions. One is what are some of the most ridiculous culty claims that you've seen chiropractors make online? Okay. There's a whole lot. And I'll try and cover like the ones that I think are the most outrageous and the most common.

The first being that chiropractic adjustments can help with anything that isn't what we call musculoskeletal. So meaning when people say like, it helps with ADHD, it helps with like the common one, which unfortunately is like people tell parents that adjustments or chiropractic can help with their kids autism and stuff like that, like why?

wild, wild claims like that are like way more prevalent than I would like to admit. Like it's not even just like one or two bad apples. It's like there's a good amount of chiropractors who talk about things like that or hormonal balances can be affected by adjustments and stuff like that.

Those are like always my biggest ones. And to the point, like, which is very bad, very bad and very sad is I saw one fairly large practice nationwide that actually on their website claims they're pretty sneaky with it, but they don't actually claim it's a cancer treatment, but they put it as an alternative option for chemotherapy. And then they were talking about why

Oh my God. Crazy. I would love to make a video on them, but they're very big and have a lot of money and I'm afraid of getting sued. But some of these claims are insane. And again, it's like to the cult behavior is the people in those organizations or in that part of chiropractic don't really think twice about it because they're just like, yeah, no, I believe it.

it could work. Like look at all the reasonings that they have from the past that to believe it's true. For sure. And we're not inclined to believe that the miracles we've sunk hours, weeks, years, hundreds of thousands of dollars in are not true. Absolutely. So then my next question is like, I guess the worry is, and you mentioned that the sort of larger governing body in the chiropractic community is trying to prevent actual harm from

preparing for this episode, I like read a bunch of stories of people like having strokes or like being recommended a medicine by a chiropractor that didn't work for them, maybe killed them. And that carelessness, capriciousness in common with the sort of like woo-woo savior stuff has, from what I've seen, especially in the pandemic years, really bolstered

the sort of anti-science, anti-vax, new age conspirituality community. And I was wondering if you could talk about the overlap of the chiropractor slash new age anti-vax borderline conspiracy theory world. Yeah, totally. I really think they're like hand in hand. So I'm glad you brought that up because I think the wave...

or the popularity, rise of popularity in chiropractic is hand in hand with just like naturalistic view, right? That's kind of taking over like a lot of our culture nowadays, especially in America. Modern science, can we really trust them? You know, let's go back to our roots of everything that's natural. Chiropractic is just with your hands. It's as natural as can be. And that's actually marketed by like so many of the chiropractors on that side.

is that it's, you know, it's a natural alternative, which don't get me wrong. I agree with too. I think there's, you know, some overstepping in places like spine surgeries and stuff like that, where maybe the medical community has been too inclined in the past to do it. So there's like all things, there's some partial truths that they stand on, but then they build all these other crazy, crazy messages off the top of it. But it's gotten to be this point where,

I think people are believing chiropractic to do a lot more strictly because they want it to be true, right? They want it to be true that we can do the natural alternative and we don't have to go with traditional medicine and, you know, big pharma, right? I'm telling you, like 2020, 2021 was like the perfect storm for chiropractic because TikTok got big and then you also had the COVID on top of it. And it was just like, like a ton of momentum for that audience of people. Totally. Yeah. I talked about one chiropractor in my book, Cultish, this guy, Joe Dispenza. I know you've heard of him. Yeah.

I know a few people in my life who cult worship this guy. He's a marketing genius who has really like built himself up as a wellness spiritual guru. Yeah. Actually, now that I'm talking about him, I want to kind of make an example out of this guy. So for those who haven't heard of Joe Dispenza, he's this sort of like generic looking middle aged white dude who has

millions of social media followers who sincerely trust him as their new age sage. They claim he's helped them manifest everything from their dream job to their spouse to their cancer remission. He offers workshops and retreats and public speaking engagements and corporate consultations and guided meditations, CDs, gifts, books. His Instagram bio at the time that I was reporting on him for Cultish read, Researcher of Epidemiology.

the genetics, quantum physics, and neuroscience. He would proudly flaunt studies in biochemical sciences at Rutgers. He claimed to have done postgraduate training in, and I quote, "...neurology, neuroscience, brain function, and chemistry, cellular biology, memory formation, aging, and longevity."

But his energy is like very, very Scientology's L. Ron Hubbard for the modern day. He's so good at sort of like marrying academic sounding language with paranormal language. And a huge portion of his following found him on social media. So they're not doing necessarily like deep digging or questioning his rhetoric, but dispense a

never graduated from Rutgers. He has no PhD. He does have a chiropractic degree from a school in Georgia called Life University, which I love. But his web presence genuinely makes him look like a neuroscientist. More problematic than all of that still, though, is that Joe Dispenza has been allegedly connected to a controversial New Age podcast

cult called Ramtha. So the Ramtha School of Enlightenment is like a bullshit New Age Hogwarts. They offer lessons in subjects like telepathy and clairvoyance. It was founded in the late 80s by this self-proclaimed ESP master and proud Trump supporter named Jay-Z Knight, who has been quoted spewing all

kinds of QAnon rhetoric and just like generally bigoted vitriol. So Joe Dispenza is linked to this group. And yet he is this cult followed, of course, chiropractor. And I'm wondering, like, he's been able to build an empire, which is damaging for sure because it can affect politics and people's real health and bodies and minds.

But I'm wondering what you think is like the absolute worst that has ever happened from the chiropractic field so far and how bad could it theoretically get? That's a good question. I think the worst case scenario is the unregulated part just gets to be so, so, so popular.

Like it's more popular than most people think. I fear that it gets to be the point that it's, you know, like someone's sick. They're like, oh, I should go to see a doctor instead of going to the hospital to go see this chiropractor because like there's gotten to be this big following with that. That's like my biggest fear in terms of, you know, where it could go. Whenever I see a doctor influencer on Instagram who's like scarily good at social media, like

too good at social media, doing like all the TikTok trends, like dancing with the stethoscope. It's always a fucking chiropractor. I made a comment about this once because it was like mid 2020 when that first wave of COVID people were like,

you know, what is this thing? Do we really need the vaccine? And there'd always be like once a week, there'd be this new doctor, you know, think Facebook headline doctor comes out and says COVID, you know, is fake. It got to the point that in my head, I'd see it. And I would know within five seconds, like that's a car. God damn it. It's not a doctor. That's a chiropractor. And it was every time. I don't know why that is. It's, it's a weird phenomenon that, that me and my friends and colleagues sort of talk about.

It's just Dee Dee Palmer of 2024. Dude, totally. And it draws it. I think you mentioned before where it's like this like God complex savior thing that Dee Dee Palmer obviously had. Like it still draws some of those people like sometimes because there's like a gratification or a feeling of like, let's say even myself, like I help someone get out of pain. You're like, oh, wow, that's awesome. Like I feel good about myself. And you kind of get like this little high.

Some of these people just like love that and they want more of that. And it gets to their head to the point that they're like, I literally I'm healing people with my hands. Oh, my God. Yeah. And it draws that personality of people who are susceptible to to that sort of high. And they want to believe that more than anything else. And then when you challenge their beliefs, like you said, it just makes them even stronger because they're fighting against it so aggressively.

They almost double down. Oh my God. It is a perfect storm. It's like the origins of chiropractic combined with just like American capitalism combined with maybe a personality disorder combined with the totally legitimate high that you get from helping someone combined with COVID and TikTok. Boom. Of course, chiropractic is a cult. It makes total sense. Yeah. And like,

Fair fucking enough, because if I was in excruciating back pain and it takes fucking two weeks to get a doctor's appointment and here's a chiropractor with an amazing TikTok account being like, I'll help you tomorrow. Who can blame a person? Dude, that's my thing. Because I have people when I make these anti-chiropractor videos and it goes viral and stuff and I'll get a lot of people come be like, oh my gosh, like I went and saw a chiropractor like I'm so stupid, blah, blah. I was like, you should not feel bad at all.

Right. Right. Like if I didn't know any better, I would feel the exact same thing you just talked about where it's like, the alternative is I just have to sit with this for weeks and like, maybe I'll get some help, but often not because, you know, kind of current the way is clinics and stuff in America run is you go see them and they're like, well, we'll send you to someone else, but that's going to be two months down the line.

Or you can go see this guy down the road and he's going to crack your back tomorrow. And like, it's probably going to feel pretty good. And maybe you'll go viral. That's the crazy thing. Like whenever I see YouTube videos where it's like, it's always like a hot girl whose like ass is in the thumbnail. I could do an entire podcast on just that topic itself. Those guys have just figured out the algorithm on YouTube to a T. And it's just like attractive girl in skimpy clothing on a chiropractic table.

Million views. Easy. Million views. Being whipped around by some dude. It's like a porn setup. It's ridiculous. It's so bad. Some of them are so... And the thumbnails and the titles that they'll use are just like... It's outrageous. And again, this is where it's so funny is that's gotten so popular. But at the same time, these same people are like, we want to be taken seriously as doctors and healthcare providers. It's like, do you? You.

You cannot have both. Like, my family's general practitioner is not uploading, like, big booty thumbnails to YouTube. Could you imagine, like, your general, like, medical doctor being like, OnlyFans model gets her neck adjusted and he posts it to his YouTube? Like, what the fuck? No.

Oh, man. Yeah, they really want their cake and eat it too. That is cult leader behavior. Okay, so then my last question is just how can people who are interested in seeing a chiropractor do so without accidentally joining a cult? Good question. And easier said than done. I know we all want instant gratification like we talked about, but just do a little bit more research.

on them. And that's why I really try to make like my videos, like I'm trying to come out with like a lot more series in terms of like red flags to look out for, you know, a chiropractor when you pull up their Yelp page or their Google page, like what should be looking for? Just if you can go in and see someone and not get any treatment the first time and just sort of listen to the way they talk, you're just going to want to be looking out for the signs that we just talked about of like the godlike savior of where like, oh, yeah, no matter what you say, being like, yeah, we can totally help with that, you know?

just if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And just being really, really skeptical. Like I can't say that anymore. Just be super skeptical of the person you're seeing. Because there are some good ones. That's why I hate like sort of the negative side of me making this is people didn't think like, well, all chiropractor is bad. And I was like, well, that doesn't make sense. Because I still practice and I like to think I'm pretty good. And I have a lot of colleagues and friends who do great work as well. Yeah, but it's there's so many bad

ones out there that it makes it really hard for me to even recommend people to go see a chiropractor unless they do a lot of research beforehand and seen the person. I mean, back to religion, it reminds me of like Catholic priests. It's like, yeah, they're mostly scary, but you could probably find a nice one if you look hard enough.

Yeah. Like, you know, this one's probably good, but you know, the other 10, they might touch you. And it's like, okay, I don't like my odds with that. And that's what I say to Simga. I was like, I don't really like your odds for the most part. But we need people like you in the field to balance out the super, super culty ones. That's what I hope. That's the goal. Yeah. Cool. Cool.

Okay, now I want to play a quick game that I just invented. It's called Quack My Back because I cannot get over that wordplay of quack and crack, but the title of the game has nothing to do with the rules. I just couldn't help myself. This is how you play. I am going to name three celebrities and you're going to have to guess which one allegedly, according to a blog post from a website called Riddle Wellness, so take it with a grain of salt,

Which of these three celebrities allegedly credits everything to their chiropractor? Oh, wow. We're going to do three rounds. Okay. The first round is athletes. Which one credits everything to their chiropractor? Simone Biles, Serena Williams, or Tiger Woods? I'm going to say Tiger Woods because I know he's had lots of back injuries. So I would assume he's probably seen a chiropractor at some point. You are absolutely correct. Well done.

You know, researching this game was interesting because I came across so many fascinating articles about like lawsuits or chiropractic adjustments gone wrong. And I was looking up the relationship between chiropractors and sports teams. And most sports teams have like an official chiropractor, although there are like certain athletes who refuse to work with anyone but a certain chiropractor for probably all the reasons we've discussed.

But I found several articles from earlier this year relaying the news story that this one chiropractor was sentenced to almost three years in prison for defrauding the NBA. He defrauded these NBA players health and welfare plan of over a million dollars.

Holy. I've heard of a few stories of like the defrauding. It usually involves like insurance companies, but to do it to an NBA team is bold. Really bold. That's incredible. Yeah, he made all these like fraudulent invoices. I'm telling you, it's like it's the ego. Like you think you can just get away with anything. Totally. Okay, next round. Which of these celebrities allegedly owes everything to their chiropractor? Leading ladies edition.

Is it Pamela Anderson, Liza Minnelli, or Jane Fonda? Oh, it's got to be Liza, yeah? You're right. Okay, while I was researching this round, I saw that the family of this former Playboy model settled out of court with a chiropractic practice because their daughter, the Playboy model, had gone to

for treatment and died of a stroke after an adjustment and her family sued for wrongful death. What is with the strokes? I've been seeing a lot of shit about strokes after chiropractic. Totally. So it's a thing. This is like the most hot topic among chiropractors themselves because it's a known thing. It's happened. And just to give you like a quick

20 second synopsis of how it happens. It's when they do the neck adjustment, you have obviously arteries that go from your heart up to your brain. It goes through the neck, that motion of like the rotating and snapping can sometimes put pressure on those arteries. And if someone does a really aggressive adjustment or with someone who's maybe more has a condition that makes them more susceptible to their arteries being, you know, weaker or susceptible to we call it dissection, that can cause a stroke. And so why it's

A hot topic is that's very serious, obviously. Like it can end in death. Yeah, yeah. So scary. Super serious stuff. It doesn't happen that often. There's been research on it. It's like literally up there with like one in a million or right around that range. So it doesn't happen that often. But it still happens, right? It's still like for the potential reward, like you really want to risk that. And I talk about that a lot. Like I try to make people very informed that that's a thing, right? And to the point that I don't actually adjust people's necks very often, like

unless they really, really want it. And they have a history of like, yeah, no, it's fine when I do it. I mean, I've kind of screened them. Then I will. But otherwise, I don't for that reason, because I just don't think that risk outweighs the reward. Oh, my God. I've even like let massage therapists like crack the fuck out of my neck. I got to stop doing that. I don't want to throw like I don't want to scare people when I say that. I just want to make you like that's a thing that can happen. Right. And if you've had, you know, experiences in the past where it's like, oh, it's been totally fine.

Cool. But it's more so these, a lot of people go in and see a chiropractor and they don't do like a thorough, because they're trying to see as many people as possible, right? Like you said, capitalism plays a role in this. They're trying to see as many people as possible. They're going to be pretty lackluster on the screening and I missed some signs that like, hey, maybe I shouldn't, you know, whip this girl's neck around like crazy, but they do it anyways. And it can end in stuff like that.

Oh my gosh. Wow. Okay. Last round. Which of these problematic male icons credits everything to their chiropractor? Is it Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joe Rogan, or Elon Musk? Oh, wow.

This one's tough. See, this one's... I have a little background because I know Joe Rogan actually hates chiropractors. I don't know if he hates them, but he's made it on his podcast where he talks about he doesn't like that because that was always funny because chiropractors hate that video, even though I think it's very funny. So it's between Musk and Schwarzenegger. Boy, that stuff. I'm going to say Arnold because I can't see Elon admitting someone else helped him a ton. Yeah.

You are absolutely right. You won the whole game. Well done. Yeah, give yourself a round of applause. But this is what's so nuts about researching this, is I was looking up Elon Musk because I was like, oh, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who are people in that similar category of celebrity problematic male icons? Let's see if Elon Musk has a relationship to chiropractors. And he does. Get this. According to an Atlantic piece called Elon Musk's Anti-Semitic Apartheid Loving Grandfather, most...

Musk's grandfather was a Canadian chiropractor, this guy named Joshua Haldeman. And his biographer, Walter Isaacson, wrote a whole book about the guy, described him as the source of Musk's obsession and affection for danger. He called this guy a daredevil adventurer. He held quirky conservative populist views. And he was also a radical conspiracy theorist, a racist, an anti-Semite, and an anti-democrat.

anti-democrat. I mean, a lot of those just touch base with a lot of the chiropractors we've been talking about, right? So that checks a lot of boxes. Yeah. Well, Elon Musk, spawn of chiropractor cult leader, not the most surprising thing in the world. No, it wasn't number one on my list, but it might have been like, you know, 54. Okay. So now I'm going to ask you the ultimate question that we always ask at the end of every episode of Sounds Like a Cult.

The cult of chiropractors. Do you think they're a live your life, a watch your back or a get the fuck out level cult? I think it's I think it's a watch your back.

Literally, literally, it is a watch your back and hips and shoulders and neck. I don't think it's quite get the fuck out unless it's, you know, really, really bad. Right. And again, like red flag alarm should be going off if it's really, really bad. There's enough good. You could be in excruciating pain, physically, mentally, emotional. And if you can get a little bit of help here and there from a relatively low risk perspective.

option for the most part. Like I think it's a pretty good thing. Like there's not a lot to worry about as long as you're not buying into it. Right. So, you know, in culty terms, I think you can have a little bit of Kool-Aid, but you know, I don't want you chugging on it all the time. Right. Like you can have a little bit every now and then. One or two a week. Yeah.

Probably a little more. Honestly, that sounds like it's not a lot, but in a chiropractor case, if you're going once or twice a week, probably too much, you know? Once a month just for the vibes? Yeah, okay, that's cool. Like, you know, I'm fine with that. Amazing. That's such cogent advice. Yeah, I'm going to take your word for it. Watch your back. Watch your quack. Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week, but in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. But not too culty.

Sounds Like a Cult is hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and edited by Jordan Moore of The Podcabin. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. This episode was made with production help from Katie Epperson. Thank you as well to our partner, All Things Comedy. And if you like the show, please feel free to check out my books, Word Slut, A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language.

Cultish, the Language of Fanaticism, and the forthcoming The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality. If you're a fan of Sounds Like a Cult, I would really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

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