How I Choose Podcast Guests and Controversial Topics

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Good night.

This is like pulling back the curtain on The Wizard of Oz, and I'm just going to talk to you today a bit about how I choose podcast guests, how I approve and accept guests who apply, and how I go looking for guests that I'd love to ask. And topics that are controversial and what your reaction might be and how much that plays into whether I ask or don't ask a guest. And on this one, I really invite you to comment because I'd love to hear your comments afterward. So let's dive into this one.

I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. And it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made for menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone balancing, fitness, and longevity, and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve.

First, before we even really get into the meat of this, I appreciate your thoughts. I work hard personally on keeping an open mind and listening to suggestions, yours, but not just that, to my guests as well. And keeping an open mind and staying curious is really part of the game when you are working in any area. I can't imagine any area where this wouldn't apply, but it's also very easy to get stuck in our old beliefs and old patterns. And that's how they become limiting beliefs, limiting our growth or personal experience in life. So I want you to know, I work really hard on keeping an open mind, listening to suggestions that are yours coming from you as a listener and coming from our guests. And being open when someone might apply using words that really are not a part of what I call the Flipping 50 lifestyle. And yet I think, okay, maybe because we've seen major studies, haven't we, that been around for decades overturned, reversed, retracted.. And if we all had a closed mind to that and only believed what we heard once and again and again for decades, we would go through the rest of our lives missing out on an opportunity to potentially upgrade our energy and our health. And of course, I am talking about the women's study on hormone replacement. And how initially that had everybody running scared from women to physicians. And in some cases still does because there's still an operation on what I learned once, you know, and I'm just gonna stick with it even though the science is proving otherwise. And so are women's experiences. So keeping that in mind, I can't take action on all of your suggestions. I am, however, keenly aware that I am here because of you. This has grown to over 4.5 million downloads because of you. And we are here and in business serving women like you, and more women hear about us because of serving you. But I'm hoping that you'll go with me. There's a dance here between the expert, the experienced, the educated individual in me that gives advice, even creating programs in a way that may go in opposition of what you want. Let me explain that. It's partially though, because let me justify it and then come back to it. I'm applying 40 years of science, of research studies, combining the physiology of fitness with the physiology of menopause. And with the science of human behavior change, that is so very difficult for all of us. We've created things that will make some of you contest the very way we deliver them. And what I mean by that is, for an example, our Stronger program is a 12-week program. You're not buying the videos. When the program is over, the videos go away unless you decide to join our membership where you have access to them. And the reason for that is this: lifetime members in gyms are the least likely to use it frequently as they need to get fit because there's no pressure. They can join whenever, they can go whenever, it's always going to be there. And when you know that something is going away, you have a limited time access, you have more urgency and reason to do it. And if you know fitness, the components of fitness that require or are required in order for you to get results are that you do it in a certain frequency and in a certain consistent pattern, doing the right thing. So it is with great reason that I do that. And there is, there's a great number of people who don't like it because, because they don't get to keep the videos. And I understand that. I hear you. And it's very persuasive. Some of you are very persuasive, by the way. I should hire you. But I'm going to stick with it because when we get to the end of a 12-week session and I have women who say, I've been able to stick with it and I've never done this before, women in their 50s and their 60s, 'Who said that?' Then I know I'm doing the right thing. I know that probably the frequency and the duration or the length of those workouts is in a sweet spot so you can adopt a new habit that you haven't had before. And certainly we can expand on that, but we've got to have the foundation in the first place. You know, if you're brushing your teeth every day and you're doing it twice a day, you know, and you're doing it for a minute, maybe we can get you to do it for a minute and a half, or maybe we can you to use a Waterpik too, so you're flossing, right? I mean, that's what a dentist will think. We've got to have one habit first. What we're thinking too. But I want to share with you how that is so relevant to what we're talking about today. I want to share deeper on how we come to accept or reject guests for now who apply to the show or who are pitched by PR firms, because that happens quite frequently, and how we reach out to professionals or some would say stalk them until they say yes to us, who can not only share science but share stories, theirs and their clients or patients that they've worked with. And I'm doing this topic because someone recently was upset hearing a guest that I hosted who had offended them by using ivermectin to overcome their COVID 19. And I would have to say, I've had other guests who have suggested that Ozempic or semaglutide drugs were, you know, black and white, like either all in and everybody should and they're gold, or not, never, nobody should, and these are bad. You know, another listener and social media follower said, though she had followed me for years, she thought I had lost it. Meaning my marbles, which may or may not be the case, but it's, you know, I'm kind of happy in here. So when I hosted someone who is discussing energy frequencies, you know, I have experts who want to come on and talk about keto and intermittent fasting, and I have professional opinions about both based on 40 years of both digging into the science and of experience working with midlife women and our community of more than 300,000 women. We've seen, you know, women who've come in and what happens when they've done something for a period of time. So I feel, you know, that gives me the experience behind an expert opinion, but I won't necessarily turn them away because our opinions are different. I'll ask if they're open to a conversation about when and how and why it might be appropriate for someone but for everyone all the time. If they're willing to agree to disagree respectfully with me and me with them, and to help a listener understand and hear both sides of the story and decide for themselves, yourself, then the what and the why, I still may bring them on. I also reserve the right not to publish certain recordings, either that are poor in sound quality or just poor. A discussion very recently was terribly awkward. A guest didn't actually directly answer any of the questions that I asked, but instead seemingly had their own agenda.

Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there is one thing you can't do in the gym at your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself, not only to get the protein but the fiber, the fruits and vegetables I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day 30 years ago. But when I realized all the junk, the sugar, and the extras that you don't want that I don't want hiding in most protein powders. That's when I finally caved in after years of saying I will never ever ever sell supplements. Stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning after workouts by always being prepared.

Look, yep, I agree, real food first, but it's just not convenient to carry a turkey sandwich.

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I know a lot of experts who do have an agenda. They want to get their word out. That's why they've gotten booked on a podcast. It's why they've gotten booked on media. And yet I don't have to publish that. All I can say is that might have been a waste of an hour of my time and theirs, but I won't publish it if somebody is just going down a different path, not listening to the question and not directly answering the question. So let's dive into this a little deeper. How I choose podcast guests and topics for you. So number 1, in real time, in real life, this is one example. I have my ear to our Facebook groups, to our support box. We call it Freshdesk, is where support tickets come in. And I listen and am hearing what are the biggest pain points for you right now, whether it's absorbing all the content that's out there or whether it's literally it's belly fat or injuries that keep plaguing you when you get started. So it's important to me that And here was the answer, by the way, to the individual who wrote into our support box about the ivermectin and being really offended by that. This is how I responded, and hopefully you can hear the respect in my tone because that was my intention. And I said, actually, many of the functional physicians I work with use this quote unquote, and what I mean is ivermectin personally, if they've caught the virus soon enough. I don't know that we have to agree 100% of what any expert or human does or says, but I do think that personally we have to keep listening and taking in another set of thoughts, somebody else's perspective. Otherwise, we'd still be believing in the retracted data suggesting that hormone replacement therapy, specifically bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, was a threat versus a life-preserving option for a majority of women. All said with respect, you know, I wish I had the luxury of not listening to somebody because I didn't agree with every thought, would relieve a lot of tension. But I have had to be willing to adjust my thinking and see science interpreted from all sides. In fact, I, you know, within a very short period of time, because I did have an open mind. I reacted really harshly to something, some news that I heard very recently. And then within a matter of 3 days, I'd come full circle again to realizing, okay, there's more than one way to think about this. But it would never have happened if I wasn't willing to have the conversation and have an open mind about someone else's bias and what they were making their decision based on. No one of us can possibly sift through all the information that we have at our fingertips and that we can Google and ask any number of AI tools right now. And we also have to say, and does that apply to me and women just like me at the same time? And I certainly hope this isn't irritating. I hope it lands as it's intended for you as the means of my own filter for women. I've hosted on the podcast intermittent fasting experts knowing fed exercise is what I believe to be more optimal based on the science for women in midlife and beyond. For 8 years I've had that opinion. It's never wavered. And guess what? I've had those people come on and many of them have come around. They no longer are promoting fasted exercise for weight loss or improving belly fat. They're promoting fed exercise for maintain— maintaining and gaining lean muscle mass. Two big proponents of intermittent fasting are now agreeing with the science suggesting that we have to choose our priorities and the timing of everything we're doing. That wouldn't have happened without someone challenging their thoughts and listening to the conversation. I, you know, must host those I agree with, those I don't, and be transparent in both cases. And not long ago, hormone replacement therapy was very misunderstood. We can all agree on that. Recently, someone I know well consulted with her physician and was told going on hormone replacement would be more risky than not because it's been too long since menopause. And another expert who prescribes hormones every day, who works with hundreds and thousands of women globally, not just locally in a GP practice, disagreed with that science. Other doctors are adamant that this is not the case, and I will continue to bring them on, all of them, so that you have access to more people than, say, your unique and individual allied health professionals. Because I know we're all busy. It is very hard to shop around for a new doctor, a second opinion, in the limited time and energy that we all have. But by giving you access to a podcast while you're going for a walk, doing a drive, or lifting weights, maybe we open the door to the fact that telemedicine, telehealth makes it very accessible now. And maybe there is a reason and a need to get a second opinion. You do have choices. One physician only has the experience they have, and to the degree to which they're comfortable making changes in their thoughts, information, and action is the quality medical care that you'll receive from them. I would love to hear your response to this episode. I'd love to hear any controversial topics that you think you'd like to hear me tackle and/or guests that you'd like to suggest. We always will put resources and other episodes that you may like to listen to based on the topic for this one in the show notes. So you'll find those at flipping50.com/howichoosepodcastguests. And what are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today.

Thank you for listening. To listen to a decade of episodes and to get the show notes, visit Flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all the previous episodes. And I made it super easy to make the most of your listening time and get exactly what you want to listen to as top priority by getting the top 10 episodes in the areas you most care about, like how much protein do you need, weight loss, and other 3 ultra important topics we've identified as our community's top 5. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife women. So go and listen right now. Do you have a question for a podcast? A question you'd love to ask, or maybe a story you want to tell? Did you know we have a special group just for podcast question roundups and the answers? My community coaches and I provide answers daily inside of this group, but it's also where I go when I occasionally say, okay, open call for podcast questions or tell your story. Would you like to be a guest. So if you're looking for a community of women who are also interested in optimizing their health, strengthening their mindset, and looking forward to every new year, join the Flipping 50 Insiders group. That's Flipping 50 Insiders on Facebook.