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Mind Body Health & Politics

Mind Body Health & Politics

By: Richard L. Miller
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Dr. Richard Louis Miller is an American Clinical Psychologist, Founder of Wilbur Hot Springs Health Sanctuary, and broadcaster who hosts the Mind Body Health & Politics talk radio program from Mendocino County, California. Dr. Miller was also Founder and chief clinician of the nationally acclaimed, pioneering, Cokenders Alcohol and Drug Program. Dr. Miller’s new book, Psychedelic Medicine, is based on his interviews with the most acclaimed experts on the topic. Mind Body Health & Politics radio broadcast is known for its wide ranging discussions on political issues and health. The program’s format includes guest interviews with prominent national authorities, scientists, best-selling authors, and listener call-ins. The programs offer a forum and soundboard for listeners to interact with the show and its guests. We invite you to listen to the latest broadcasts below or visit our many archived programs. We’d love to hear from you on political and health issues!

www.mindbodyhealthpolitics.orgDr. Richard L. Miller Alternative & Complementary Medicine Hygiene & Healthy Living Science
Episodes
  • Your Mind Creates Your Reality – Dr. Ellen Langer

    Your Mind Creates Your Reality – Dr. Ellen Langer
    Jun 10 2026

    In this episode—Dr. Ellen Langer, the Harvard psychologist who has studied mindfulness and mind-body unity for nearly fifty years, joins Richard to explain why mindfulness is not meditation, what the counterclockwise study revealed about aging, why the placebo is our strongest medicine, and how a diagnosis can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Richard shares his own recovery from two terminal diagnoses at 82.

    Guest: Dr. Ellen Langer—Professor of Psychology at Harvard (the first woman tenured in the department), author of Mindfulness, Counterclockwise, and The Mindful Body. More at ellenlanger.com.

    Chapters

    [00:00] The mission—connection as antidote to isolation

    [02:23] Welcome, Dr. Ellen Langer

    [03:03] Mindfulness is not meditation

    [04:30] The horse and the hot dog—everything I knew could be wrong

    [06:00] How to become mindful: notice three new things

    [10:00] Noticing makes others feel cared for—and it’s enlivening

    [17:50] Mind-body unity since 1977

    [20:15] The counterclockwise study

    [30:01] Imagined exercise builds real muscle

    [31:21] The borderline effect—69 vs. 70

    [35:18] ADHD, labels, and pharmaceutical collusion

    [40:05] Placebo, sham surgery, and “you’re making yourself well”

    [45:40] Richard’s two terminal diagnoses—and recovery

    [52:30] Add life to your years

    [55:20] Make the decision right, not the right decision



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mindbodyhealthpolitics.org/subscribe
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Support Jamie Joyce for Congress

    Support Jamie Joyce for Congress
    Jun 1 2026
    Dear Friends,I want to introduce you to someone I have known for years and admire a great deal. Jamie Joyce came on Mind Body Health & Politics this week. She is running for Congress in California’s 12th district, she founded the Society Library, and she is an artist (I keep one of her pieces that she made with a particle accelerator on my dresser). She is the real deal.You know how I open this program most weeks: human beings are tribal animals, healthiest when we live in small groups where we know one another by face and by name. The standing threat to that is the small number among us who would rather dominate than collaborate. Jamie has built her whole campaign on exactly that distinction. She is running, she told me, because she is tired of watching power concentrate in a few hands while the rest of us are talked past.It has already cost her something. Twenty minutes after she announced, the phone calls began — people telling her they would ruin her life if she did not drop out. In a later call, they read back the names of old boyfriends, to let her know they had been digging. A private citizen decides to run for office, and that is the welcome she receives. She did not drop out. When I asked her about it, she said something I have not stopped thinking about:“There are people who have taken bullets to the head for me to even have the ability and the right to run for Congress. If I’m not willing to risk my reputation to stand up for the rights of others, then I don’t deserve the job.”I felt protective when she said it, and I told her so on the air.Here is the part that delighted me. Jamie founded her Society Library after reading, in her early twenties, about a club Benjamin Franklin started — a small group that met to reason together in a spirit of sincere inquiry into truth, with no taste for argument or domination. Franklin called it the Junto. I started a Junto in Fort Bragg twenty years ago, and it still meets every Thursday morning. I invited her to join us. Two people, two centuries apart, reaching for the same simple thing: people thinking together instead of shouting at each other.We covered a great deal: the bill she wrote, the art she makes with a particle accelerator, the long odds she is running against anyway. I told her on the air what I will tell you now. I wish her all the luck, and all the help and support that the people who know her can muster. Go to jamiejoyce.com and see for yourself. Then listen to the whole conversation.And then, just below, I have a small practice for you this week.Golden light,Dr. Richard Louis MillerA note for CaliforniansThis letter reaches you on a Monday. Tuesday, June 2, is the statewide primary.If you live in California, you almost certainly already have a ballot sitting at home, because the state mails one to every registered voter. There is still time, but not much. Do not put it back in the mail now. Fill it out and drop it in any ballot drop box, or at any polling place, by 8:00 p.m. Tuesday. Or vote in person that day.I say the same thing at the top of the program most weeks, and I mean it every time: get out and vote, and vote for the people who will actually represent you. And if you happen to live in the 12th district, around Berkeley and Oakland, Jamie Joyce is on your ballot.Today’s PracticeA simple thing to take with you from this week’s conversation.Most weeks on this program I tell you to vote, and I mean it. This week I want to hand you something smaller and just as important — and it comes straight out of what Jamie and I were talking about: that we are tribal people, healthiest when we know the people around us by face and by name.Here is the practice. For the next three months, say hello to the people you would normally pass in silence. Say hello to the checker in the supermarket. Say hello to the clerk in the store, to the plumber behind the counter, to the person sitting inches from you who never gets a word. Introduce yourself. “Hi, my name’s Richard. Glad to meet you.” That is the whole thing.We live in a country that has been divided on purpose. We can begin to put it back together one hello at a time. Try it for three months and see what happens.And if you want the civic version Jamie left us with: pick up the phone, take five minutes, and tell your representative the one thing you most want them to do — then ask a friend to do the same. Mind Body Health & Politics is a community-supported broadcast. To receive new episodes and reflections, consider subscribing.Show notes[00:00] The missionRichard’s standing frame: human beings are tribal, healthiest in small groups where they know one another by face and name; roughly 95% of us want to collaborate, and a small minority would rather dominate. The civic conclusion he always reaches — get out and vote — sets up the guest.[02:39] Why she’s running* Jamie is running in CA-12 because she found her representatives unresponsive — she spent three ...
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    54 mins
  • Robert Whitaker on what the largest antidepressant trial actually found

    Robert Whitaker on what the largest antidepressant trial actually found
    May 29 2026
    In this episode — Investigative journalist Robert Whitaker returns for his fourth conversation with Richard. They trace the antidepressant story from the 1980 DSM-III rebrand through the reanalysis of the largest antidepressant trial ever run, the long-term data on children and stimulants, and — at the end — what Whitaker learned from the people who actually recovered.Guest: Robert Whitaker — investigative journalist, founder of Mad in America, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010), Mad in America (2002), and Psychiatry Under the Influence. His 1998 Boston Globe series was a Pulitzer finalist.Chapters* [00:00] The epidemic of isolation* [02:20] Introducing Robert Whitaker* [03:30] The 1980 DSM-III pivot* [05:50] Where the chemical-imbalance idea came from* [12:40] What the public was told instead* [18:30] How the drugs change the brain* [23:10] Patients who’ve been on SSRIs for years* [27:53] STAR*D: the trial reanalyzed* [37:01] Why the press stayed quiet* [39:53] Children on psychiatric drugs* [42:56] The MTA stimulant study* [51:00] “A menace to society”* [55:34] Why informed consent drives him* [57:32] The connection cureIntroductory notes - the epidemic of isolation [00:00]The mission of the program: enhancing wellbeing by making connections with the people who live near you, by face and by name. Ninety-five percent of people want to collaborate, not fight. A small group of dominated predators benefits from divisiveness. The current American epidemic is isolation, alienation, and loneliness. The antidote is connection - a theme the conversation returns to in its final movement.Introducing Robert Whitaker [02:20]Whitaker is an investigative journalist and the founder of Mad in America. He is the author of Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010), Mad in America (2002), and Psychiatry Under the Influence. His 1998 Boston Globe series on psychiatric research was a Pulitzer finalist. Of all the people I have interviewed in over twenty years, his work has had the greatest impact on my professional life.The corruption of psychiatry and the DSM-III pivot [03:30]* The forty-five-year story begins in 1980, when the American Psychiatric Association published DSM-III and adopted a disease model. Schizophrenia, bipolar, anxiety, and a new diagnosis called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were each declared distinct illnesses.* The profession said it knew the causes. Depression was too little serotonin. Psychosis was too much dopamine. A second generation of drugs would correct those imbalances, “like insulin for diabetes.”* Prozac arrived in 1988 as a breakthrough that could make you feel “better than well.”* Before DSM-III, American psychiatry felt its legitimacy as a medical specialty was under attack. DSM-III was a rebrand to position psychiatrists as medical doctors treating medical illnesses.“It was pitched to us as a story of science, but it wasn’t a science story. It was a marketing story. It was a rebranding story for American psychiatry, which in the 1970s was feeling that its legitimacy as a real medical specialty was under attack.” — Robert WhitakerWhat the science actually showed [05:50]* The chemical-imbalance hypothesis came out of the 1960s, working backwards from drug mechanism, not from measurement of patient biochemistry.* Tricyclics and MAOIs both upped serotonergic activity. Researchers inferred that depression might be low serotonin. Antipsychotics block dopamine receptors, so they inferred schizophrenia might be high dopamine.* Direct testing failed. By 1978 researchers weren’t finding it. A 1984 NIMH study concluded that a lesion in the serotonergic system is not a cause of depression.* In 1998, the APA’s own textbook declared the monoamine theory of depression dead. The profession did not tell the public (Moncrieff et al., 2022, Molecular Psychiatry).What the public was told instead [12:40]* Pharmaceutical ads kept selling SSRIs that “fix chemical imbalances.” The APA website told the same story. In 2005 the APA put out a press release calling psychiatrists experts in fixing chemical imbalances in the brain.* Drug companies funded APA education programs, media training, and “key opinion leaders” at Stanford, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Penn. Thought leaders were paid hundreds of thousands, sometimes more than a million, over a few years.* By 1998, when the New England Journal of Medicine wanted a review of antidepressants, it could not find an academic mood-disorders expert who wasn’t already on pharma payroll.My Other Books:* Master Your Mind: Practical Tools to Calm Anxiety, Silence Your Inner Critic and Stop Overthinking* Psychedelic Medicine at the End of Life: Dying Without Fear* Freeing Sexuality: Psychologists, Consent Teachers, Polyamory Experts, and Sex Workers Speak Out* Psychedelic Wisdom: The Astonishing Rewards of Mind-Altering Substances* Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca* Integral ...
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    54 mins
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