Why YouTube’s favorite doctor won’t stop talking about politics

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: Mixed Signals from Semafor Media

Episode Title: Why YouTube’s favorite doctor won’t stop talking about politics
Date: July 11, 2025
Hosts: Max Tani (A), Ben Smith (B)
Guest: Dr. Mike Varshavski (“Dr. Mike”) (C)

---

Overview

This episode features a deep-dive interview with Dr. Mike Varshavski, the family medicine physician known to his 14 million YouTube followers as "Dr. Mike." The conversation explores his unconventional rise to influence, the evolution of health communication in the digital age, and why he's unafraid to speak candidly about politicized topics like vaccine skepticism and the shortcomings of both legacy media and public health institutions. The discussion offers insights into navigating medical truth in an era where science, social media, and politics are inextricably linked.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Rise of Dr. Mike: From Viral “Hot Doctor” to Health Authority

• Dr. Mike’s journey began after a viral BuzzFeed article highlighted his looks rather than his expertise ([05:42]).

• Initially seen as a superficial figure by legacy media, he used the attention to jump platforms and deliver unfiltered health information directly via YouTube ([05:42]–[07:02]).

  “Social media is where everyone’s at… For me to be a good family medicine doc, I have to be there for them.”
  — Dr. Mike, [06:36]

• He faced skepticism and even dismissal from traditional media partners when he prioritized medical ethics over sponsorship dollars, but persistence paid off as his channel exploded in popularity after a viral video ([07:54]–[10:23]).

  “If they had a little bit more patience, the switch flipped… those views are just astronomical. And this is also doing it with a very small team never selling out on the medical ethics, unlike a lot of the doctors that have been in the medical space historically.”
  — Dr. Mike, [09:39]

2. YouTube vs. Legacy Media in Health Communication

• Dr. Mike observed that patients increasingly turned to social media for health information, often encountering misinformation ([10:53]).

• He saw a need for credible doctors online:

  “The absence of good quality medical professionals on social media… was gonna create a huge problem of misinformation. And it was like crystal ball in that moment, because just three years later during the pandemic, there were not enough doctors on social media to tell the truth.”
  — Dr. Mike, [12:01]

• Critiques legacy institutions (CDC, FDA) for poor digital communication and inability to adapt messages for online audiences:

  “If you weren't translating that to the general public in a way that was understandable and trustworthy, it's like they weren't doing it at all.”
  — Dr. Mike, [12:49]

3. What Went Wrong During the Pandemic?

• Despite optimism that digital platforms could solve misinformation by boosting real experts, Dr. Mike and hosts agree public trust eroded further ([13:10]–[14:01]).
• Dr. Mike attributes this to:

  • Overconfident, non-transparent messaging by government agencies.

  • Government overreach, e.g., mandates beyond evidence.

  • Lack of humility and clear communication about uncertainties ([14:01]):

    “If we approached talking to people… as opposed to making the universal decision to sound ultra confident, I think short term that was a good move, but long term it ended up hurting trust and actually leading people to believe conspiracy theories.”
    — Dr. Mike, [14:19]

4. Debating Anti-Vaccine Advocates: The Jubilee Experience

• Dr. Mike voluntarily participated in Jubilee’s “Surrounded” series, debating 20 vaccine skeptics for three hours ([15:44]–[16:21]).

• Noted two key takeaways:

  1. Minds can be changed through honest, respectful conversation. The online anti-vaccine movement is loud, but not as dominant as it seems ([16:24]).
  2. Traditional media missed the story entirely—his debate got tens of millions of views but no mainstream coverage:

  “Zero news articles, not one Huffington Post, not one Vox, zero… The stuff that needs to be covered is missing in action.”
  — Dr. Mike, [18:25]

5. On Censorship, Social Media Platforms, and Dangerous Information

• Discusses how Big Tech’s attempts to censor misinformation (e.g., Ivermectin) often backfired, sometimes suppressing legitimate debate ([20:05]).

• Calls for measured, guided approaches—while also expressing skepticism about government regulation in such a politicized environment ([21:23]).

• Frustration with platforms’ reactive, inconsistent policies:

  “They're always late to the party and they're being very reactive as opposed to proactive... it's become quite messy...”
  — Dr. Mike, [20:39]

6. The Politicization of Medicine and Vaccine Discourse

• Traces the roots of anti-vaccine sentiment across both left and right, noting how political opportunism and government overreach catalyzed a new coalition of distrust ([24:29]).

• Highlights key historical moments (e.g., BLM protests, gathering bans, mandates) that undercut public health credibility:

  “When government started overstepping recommendations and making them into mandates… it brought in the libertarian right that then adopted a lot of the messaging from the anti vaccine movement on the left.”
  — Dr. Mike, [25:38]

• Argues his own messaging isn’t “political”—it’s based on clinical, evidence-based truth:

  “To me, this is not political, this is clinical. I took an oath… to tell the truth, to do no harm… it’s not left, it’s not right, it’s not center, it’s science.”
  — Dr. Mike, [27:50]

• Concerned major medical voices aren’t doing enough to counter conspiracy theories, citing lack of public response to RFK Jr.’s anti-vax claims ([28:38]).

7. Ethics in Sponsorship, Pharma, and Content Creation

• Dr. Mike refuses sponsorships from pharmaceutical companies for specific drugs; turns down 8-figure revenue to maintain trust and integrity ([33:31]).
• Open to partnering on public health campaigns (e.g., blood donations), not advertisements for expensive non-generic drugs.

  “We’ve shut down eight figures of revenue because we shut down this approach… That’s a way to work with pharmaceutical companies. That to me just makes sense.”
  — Dr. Mike, [34:23]

8. Practicing Medicine While Being a Viral Star

• Still sees patients and mentors young doctors. Finds synergy between research/education for videos and real-world patient care ([35:15]).

• The fame occasionally surprises patients, fostering trust and connection ([36:59]).

  “It happens quite often, usually with the younger demographic. But just the other day I had a 50 year old gentleman… he said, ‘I just watched your RFK special, what’s happening in our government. Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing.’ And it was a great bonding moment for us.”
  — Dr. Mike, [37:03]

9. Post-Interview Analysis: Health Information, Media Failure, and Dr. Mike’s Role

• Hosts reflect on Dr. Mike’s willingness to address political topics regardless of risk to his brand ([38:14]–[40:29]).
• Contrast Dr. Mike’s approach with other creators who avoid analytics and feedback; note his distinctly data-driven, audience-focused strategy ([42:20]–[43:36]).
• Legacy media’s disconnect from modern digital communication is seen as a root cause of public health failures.
• Dr. Mike serves as a cautionary tale and model for how trusted experts can and should adapt to new media realities ([41:11]).

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On legacy media’s missed opportunities:

  “Now all the political candidates… come on our podcast channel. Maybe a little bit too late. Senators are emailing us left and right… But we needed to be doing this earlier. We haven’t adapted to the times.”
  — Dr. Mike, [31:59]

• On the dangers of platform censorship:

  “When the Ivermectin crisis was going on… social media overreacted. And it ended up hurting real physicians, people who were trying to talk about Ivermectin responsibly.”
  — Dr. Mike, [20:11]

• On public health’s communication failure:

  “If you weren't translating that to the general public… it’s like they weren’t doing it at all.”
  — Dr. Mike, [12:49]

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• Intro and Dr. Mike’s background: [00:25]–[07:02]
• Building a YouTube medical brand & media challenges: [07:02]–[10:23]
• Social media as a response to misinformation: [10:23]–[13:10]
• Pandemic, public trust, and government failure: [13:10]–[15:44]
• Vaccine debate & Jubilee experience: [15:44]–[19:35]
• Social media censorship & content moderation: [19:35]–[21:26]
• Politics, mandates, and anti-vax landscape: [23:50]–[27:38]
• Ethics, pharma, and sponsorships: [29:56]–[34:44]
• Practicing medicine, teaching, life as a public figure: [34:44]–[37:18]
• Host analysis and episode wrap-up: [38:14]–[43:58]

---

Conclusion

This episode provides rare insight into how one doctor has leveraged new platforms to not only communicate medical facts, but also counter widespread misinformation and fill in the gaps left by legacy media and governmental missteps. Dr. Mike’s approach—uncompromising ethics, clinical focus above politics, and direct audience engagement—demonstrates a template for trust-building in the digital age. The conversation underscores the crucial interplay between credibility, adaptability, and effective communication in modern health media.

---

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media, where we are tracking the wild changes in this media age. I am Max Tawny, media editor here at Semaphore and with me still from across the world is our editor in chief, Ben Smith.

[B]

Great to be dialed in.

[A]

Well, this week we are sitting down with Dr. Mike. He is a YouTube physician with 14 million subscribers on the platform and counting. We're going to talk to him about some really interesting topics, including how to respectfully debate vaccine critics on the Internet, why he doesn't take money from pharmaceutical companies for advertising, and where the legacy media falls short in its health content and coverage.

[B]

He was really became a huge figure during the pandemic and I'm very interested in what he learned then and what kind of he's learned since about health communication.

[A]

Well, we'll dig into health communication, his relationship with RFK Jr and a lot more right after the break.

[B]

In our show about media. Our ads are, fittingly enough, about advertising. As we explore on the show, media and marketing alike are changing at a breakneck, disorienting pace. And Think with Google offers a compass in this shifting landscape. The platform brings you real talk from industry leaders, deep dives into trends and practical strategies for growth. Whether you're grappling with personalization or seeking the next big innovation, Think with Google has you covered. Visit thinkwithgoogle.com today and transform challenges into opportunities.

[A]

So, Ben, a blind spot that I feel that I have in my media consumption diet is stuff around health news. I think I'm a bit squeamish. I don't enjoy knowing all that much about what's going on inside my body. I'm not somebody who is. Every time there's something wrong with me, I'm looking it up frantically on WebMD or something like that. So I didn't know who Dr. Mike was. But you did. You have been interested in him for a while. Your kids are kind of obsessed with him. How did you come across Dr. Mike? Are your kids kind of impressed that we're doing this one? Is this something that's like excited them?

[B]

Oh, well, just to answer that last question first, my son, when I said, well, what should I ask Dr. Mike? He said, you should ask him if you can go on his show. That would be lit. And actually I first wrote about Dr. Mike in the New York Times and that's sort of when I first heard of him in 2020. It was a story about misinformation and kind of health misinformation and social platforms and the media. And like, these were simpler times, I would say. But I talked to Mark Zuckerberg and I talked to the guy who runs YouTube, Neil Mohan, talked to Jack Dorsey, really, on the theme of, finally, these platforms that have been in all these fights about political information have something that is very simple and straightforward, which is health. And as I was working on this story, actually, one of my kids was like, oh, you gotta talk to Dr. Mike. He's like the central source of medical truth in America. And in fact, basically true. And emerges this enormous voice during the pandemic on YouTube and made this transition from being like, this kind of cute Internet doctor that people were excited about to being a major, major authority and filling a role that in previous generations was filled by, like, the Dr. Aziz and Sanjay Guptas of the world, the big TV doctors, young doctor, practices in New Jersey, great Communicator, now has 14 million YouTube followers, and I think is, among other things, RFK Junior's in some ways biggest critic and has this huge connection to his audience in this new medium. We're going to all wind up having heard of Dr. Mike.

[A]

It's kind of interesting to me. You mentioned Dr. Oz, obviously, Dr. Oz has become a incredibly political figure. Ran for office, lost to John Fetterman, which is kind of interesting in retrospect. Now is a member of the Trump administration. You mentioned that Dr. Mike is also political. He's become kind of critical of RFK Jr. Which we obviously want to ask him about. But I just kind of wonder if it's impossible to be a doctor in a prominent media position and not dip into politics in some way. Is it possible to be an apolitical media doctor? Because medicine does become political when you reach a certain level. And obviously it's also. Science isn't perfect. And so it's something that you can argue about kind of endlessly. So I'm really interested to learn how Dr. Mike kind of navigates that.

[B]

Yeah. And I'm also curious, like, I really last talked to him at the beginning of the pandemic, and it didn't turn out to be as simple as we thought. I'm curious, kind of what he learned from that whole experience.

[A]

Well, Dr. Mike is actually waiting for us, so we can ask him about that and a lot more right now. Why don't we bring him in?

[B]

Dr. Mike, thank you so much for joining us. And it's nice to see you again.

[C]

Yeah, very great to see you. Troubling times we find ourselves in, but I'm optimistic that healthcare will find a bright New shining light.

[B]

Yeah. And I guess I was hoping we could just introduce. Because I think it's possible that some of our audience is not familiar with you, which I realize is kind of shocking at this point. And I just wanted to get you explaining a bit where you come from. And I realize I have a minor, minor connection to the beginning of your career, because I was at BuzzFeed when we ran. When I didn't edit this, but we ran a post titled, you really need to see this Hot doctor and his dog, which apparently set you on a path toward kind of YouTube stardom.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

What a way for a doctor to get popularity. But I immigrated to the United States when I was 6 years old. My father was a physician back in Russia, and when we came to the States, he had to do the entire medical journey all over again, which means medical school residency. And I was of age to witness that entire journey. I fell in love with it. I said, this is exactly what I want to do. And then, just like life tends to do to you when you least expect it, I had an opportunity to enter the media sphere because buzzfeed, as you said, wrote that really silly article that, you know, initially I thought, this is silly. I'll just move past it. But then I really viewed it as an opportunity to get people excited about health in a way where perhaps I don't have to corrupt the healthcare information that I'm presenting. They can laugh about the superficial title. We can make jokes about healthcare. We can meet people where they are. You know, I'm a family medicine doc, so I go to where my patients are if they're in the er, I go there. If they're inpatient there, home visits there, even nursing homes there. So social media is where they're all at now. This is billions of people logged online. The first thing everyone does when they have a symptom, where they get a diagnosis is they take out their phone and search social media. So I realized that for me to be a good family medicine physician, I have to be there for them.

[A]

So I'm really interested in your journey here. You basically decided after going viral, you went on television, you did a bunch of, like, essentially, it seems like daytime tv, various TV hits, where maybe you talked a little bit about health. And also they asked you about being hot and that experience, which is great. But you said basically, a year into your career of being a YouTuber, you decided to start a YouTube show after. After doing this media tour. I was watching a video with you, and you said that after a year into launching your YouTube channel that your partners thought it was a failure. And our producer actually tells me that your partners actually fired you. So why did you think it was a failure? And when did you feel like the switch had actually flipped and you had proved the people who fired you wrong?

[C]

Yeah. So the reason I even got into the YouTube sphere was because the people who were functioning in the traditional media landscape were writing me off. They were saying, you're a young doctor. We got the superficial sound bites out of you. We're no longer interested in your medical information. And I viewed that as a missed opportunity. I thought I had a lot of value to offer to the audience. And YouTube was a place where I could bypass those gatekeepers and present the information in the way that I thought people wanted to receive it and in a way where I didn't have to corrupt the medical information that I was presenting. We started the YouTube channel thinking that my 2 million followers off Instagram would come on over and start watching these dense educational videos. And it didn't really happen. Over the course of the first year of making videos every single week, I thought we'd certainly get more viewership than we initially did. And so did our partners, the multichannel network that we were working with. And after the year we was out, they saw all the sponsorships that I turned down because of my medical ethics. I didn't want to present something to the audience that was not true or something that I didn't necessarily believe in. And they said, there's not a lot of money to be had here. We're firing you. Sign an NDA, don't talk about this, and then we'll pay you your last bit of production dollars. I said, no need. Keep your NDA, keep your production dollars. And continued the venture completely on my own with a very small team that we started with. And literally three, four months later, if they had a little bit more patience, the switch flipped. We had a YouTube video go viral. We already had enough of a back catalog of other videos that people can watch after that video went viral. And folks just continued to grow with the channel. I mean, that viral moment happened in 2018. It's now 2025. Uh, we've passed 14 million subscribers on YouTube. Our monthly viewership is around 100 million viewers a month. I mean, those views are just astronomical. And this is also doing it with a very small team never selling out on the medical ethics, unlike a lot of the doctors that have been in the medical space historically. We don't do any supplement ads. We don't push any of these unproven miracle snake oil products. And we always just wanted to tell the truth and be as transparent as possible. And I think it's paid off because that viewership has only come because of the trust that has developed with the audience.

[A]

I'm really curious, the decision to go to YouTube in 2018, were a lot of your patients essentially like, were they like bringing you YouTube videos? Were they saying like, oh, I saw XYZ thing on YouTube and therefore I am convinced that I have some sort of insane malady or whatever or insane disease? Is that like part of the reason why you decided to do YouTube or was it literally just like, this is the easiest way for me to kind circumvent the traditional media, which is not taking me seriously?

[C]

I think it's both reasons led me down the path of YouTube. It was even before that. 2018 was when the channel did really well. We ended up launching it in 2017, but in 2016 was when I really wanted to be on YouTube. Because what I was finding is in every encounter that I was discussing a medical topic with a patient, there was an influence of social media. There was a component of it. Either something that their family member has seen and they have seen, it's led them down a path of googling and webmding, some scary diagnosis. And a lot of times it was guiding them in the wrong direction. And actually, in 2017, I was writing for a blog of the American Academy of Family Physicians, and I pointed out that the absence of good quality medical professionals on social media, that vacuum, was gonna create a huge problem of misinformation. And it was like crystal ball in that moment, because just three years later during the pandemic, there were not enough doctors on social media to tell the truth about what was going on. And all the legacy institutions, the cdc, the fda, when they rushed to do mass media communication, a, they weren't prepared for it, so they made a lot of missteps. B, they had no idea how to utilize social media in the correct way in order to maximize their viewership. I mean, how many times would I see a CDC Instagram post with 10 likes on it? That is literally the equivalent of not doing it because it's not helping anyone. So it's not just the same way that I saw as a med student, some physicians that were really great diagnosticians, they knew all the correct treatments, but they couldn't communicate with patients in order to translate that information effectively, I realized that they weren't an effective clinician. Same thing goes to the CDC they could do all the great research, they could have all the correct information, but if they weren't translating that to the general public in a way that was understandable and trustworthy, it's like they weren't doing it at all. And I realized I needed to be there to fill that void. And in 2020, I mean, our channel absolutely exploded. We were on the front page of YouTube, consistently delivering accurate, honest and transparent information about a virus that we knew very little about when it first started.

[B]

Yeah. And that's when we first met. And the context, I was just looking back at the story. It was a story where I talked to Mark Zuckerberg and Neil Mohan and Jack Dorsey from then Twitter and to you. And the kind of central idea was there have been these debates about misinformation, about politics. It's all very difficult. But finally we have something pretty clear. It's gonna be pretty straightforward. You have some actual experts like Dr. Mike, who have real expertise in how to communicate in this medium too. YouTube promoting them. And this is going to work. We actually have mechanisms for getting good information for people. And that was clearly totally wrong. People believe more nonsense about medicine and health and science than they did before the pandemic. And certainly more Americans are skeptical of vaccines than they were before the pandemic. What went wrong there?

[C]

I think there's a lot of factors there. Just like you look at a health condition and you can't ever pinpoint it on one specific cause. It's usually multifactorial. Goes for this issue. A big part of what went wrong during the pandemic was the mass communication by the big agencies. Wasn't done effectively, it wasn't done transparently. It had a lot of government overreach in it, a lot of confidence. When we didn't have all the right answers, when we needed to show humility, we forgot about that. And if we approached talking to people during the pandemic in a way where we could say here's what we know, here's what we don't know, here's where we're trying to find the right answers and approached it that way as opposed to making the universal decision to say we're gonna sound ultra confident cuz we believe that's gonna give us the best results. I think short term that was a good move, but long term it ended up hurting trust and actually leading people to believe conspiracy theories. I mean, I just did a debate against 20 individuals who are either vaccine skeptical or full on anti vax and hearing a lot of the reasons for why they've come to their conclusion, where they're at now came from the fact that the government made so many mistakes in making decisions to put masks on toddlers, to recommend boosters in situations where perhaps they may have been overkill or inappropriate. Those small mistakes ended up being magnified by people who disagreed with the government, by people disagreed with vaccines from the get go. And I think it weakened our position as healthcare experts to be able to continue to tell the truth.

[A]

Yeah. You mentioned this Jubilee video that you did where you debated 20 vaccine skeptics, which is actually one of my first introductions to you. He's not necessarily anti vaccine, but he wants safe vaccines.

[C]

Yeah. So I'm pointing out that I think RFK Jr. Is a threat to public health.

[A]

The reality is if we don't get vaccinated with Jesus, we will face God on Judgment Day.

[C]

I'm Dr. Mikhail Varshavsky, better known as Dr. Mike across social media. I'm a board certified family medicine physician who makes content online improving health literacy. And today I'm surrounded by 20 vaccine skeptics.

[A]

What did you think of that experience? It struck me as pretty remarkable.

[C]

Yeah. So I watched Jubilee and their Surrounded series for many years, even before it was the Surrounded series when they had something called the Middle Ground. And I even reacted to an episode that they had several years ago on the YouTube channel where they had those who were anti vax versus those who were pro vax. And I always saw it as an opportunity where if you're gonna be an honest clinician, you can have a really good conversation. That might not convince everyone in the room, but I think to the general public that are watching, that are vaccine skeptical, that perhaps heard a scary story and unsure about what to do, you can get good information to those people. So we were proact in this Jubilee situation. We actually reached out to them and suggested the topic. We thought that this would be a prime time moment to get information out to a huge number of people. And I think what I learned from it, two big things. One is that people can and will change their minds. If you look at that video, it's about 10 million views. It's one of their best performers all year. The comments, largely positive pro vaccine comments. Yes. There are some people who are anti vaccine. Those are outliers and a lot of them are the loud outliers, which is why we believe so many people distrust the government. There are folks who are and that number is growing. That being said, when I'm seeing patients day in and day out, they perhaps are More skeptical than they used to be, but they are still trusting their family medicine doctor, they're still trusting the specialists that they're seeing. This giant situation of distrust that has formed really exists in the bubble of social media. And we need to control it because we don't want it to expand into our everyday life as we're seeing in Texas with the measles outbreak. But we wanna keep it there, we wanna limit it spread. And then the second thing that I learned is that traditional media still doesn't understand social media. The story, the Jubilee surrounded series that went before me got less views, but it was a little bit more political. Right wing versus left wing, Ton of rewrites, ton of media coverage, the story after me, the episode after me, ton of rewrites, ton of stories. My Jubilee episode, which is pretty historic. Doctors don't sit down with anti vaxxers to debate them. And they certainly don't do it for three hours with zero control over the content. That's where I place myself at the mercy of those individuals. Ask me anything. Let's talk it out. Let's get down to the truth. Ten million views, hundred million plus on the clips on X, Ten million on my channel. Zero news articles, not one Huffington Post, not one vox, zero. And it's not because I'm hungry for media, of course that will help my business grow. But the truth is the stuff that needs to be covered is missing in action. And it shows that there's a clear misunderstanding about what's valuable to the audience versus what they think think is valuable to the audience. And there is a potential opportunity here to educate millions of people.

[B]

But I think there's the countervailing kind of traditional view on that one. And actually, particularly when it comes to social media is not only should you not be talking to anti vaxxers, that X and meta and YouTube ought to be deleting their accounts and preventing anybody from talking to them. And I think that was actually they were doing that for a while. I don't think it really worked. Maybe the opposite. But what do you make of that dynamic of the attempts by the platforms to really downplay and censor often quite crazy information?

[C]

Yeah, they tried their best not knowing what they were doing. And I just spoke to Rene Derista on my podcast about this and they obviously went too far and it ended up actually hurting the cause of putting out good information. I remember when the Ivermectin crisis was going on and people were taking veterinary Ivermectin because someone told them on a podcast to Take it. And the social media platforms overreacted. They said, anyone that utters the word ivermectin, we're gonna demonetize that content. Shadow, ban it. Whatever strategy they had at the time, and it ended up hurting real physicians, people who were trying to talk about Ivermectin responsibly. But it's a tough challenge for them because they have so much content being uploaded and they're always late to the party and they're being very reactive as opposed to proactive. And at the same time, they're not a medical organization to know what's true, what's not. Where is debate appropriate? Where is discourse should be happening? And as a result, it's become quite messy for the social media companies, where sometimes they're taking everything down, sometimes they're not taking anything down. And there needs to be some guidance from the government as to what is accurate, what is the truth? Where can we go for an honest debate about a topic without entering the era of completely spreading mis and disinformation?

[B]

I mean, do you actually want guidance from this government on that?

[C]

This government? Absolutely not.

[A]

We have to take a short break, but we'll be right back after this with more from Dr. Mike.

[B]

This week on our branded segment from Think with Google, I spoke with Google's VP of marketing, Josh Spanier, about Gemini Deep Research. All right, Josh, what's one AI tool that you cannot live without right now?

[D]

Ben, I'm not a gazillionaire. I've always wanted a staff to help me tackle all the mundane things in my life. It's never going to happen. The closest I may get is Google's Deep Research reports. Google's Deep Research will write you a report on any topic. So you're investigating where to go on summer vacation with your family, you want to buy a new car. You are looking at college campuses and you want to understand differences between college campuses. You can ask Gemini Deep Research to investigate this question and then it will come back to you with this complete report answering customized to your interest.

[B]

How have you actually used it in your life so far?

[D]

So I got into running this year. I ran my first 5k. Now I'm doing a 10k and I wanted a new pair of running shoes. And I went online, I looked at various reviews, but most of the reviews are kind of generic for everyone. And I need something for me. So I asked Google's Gemini Deep Research to write me a report based upon my style of running, my speed, the type of experience I'm looking for. Where I'm running all these different factors. It took about 60 seconds. I then went off and got changed into my running gear. And in the five or six minutes that happened, Deep Research investigated about 150 websites, wrote a 12 page report, and then with the magic of Google's Gemini, I pushed a button and turned it into a an audio podcast. So I literally went on a run and listened to the podcast for my custom report from Deep Research telling me what shoes might be right for me. By the time I'd done my run, I could actually pick a pair of shoes to go and try on and buy.

[B]

And where can people keep up with the tools you're coming out with?

[D]

Head on over to thinkwithgoogle.com where you can read about Gemini Deep Research as well as every other model within the gemini suite of LLMs.

[B]

Thanks, Josh.

[D]

Thanks, Ben.

[B]

There's also a big political overlay to a lot of this. When you ask conservatives, like, why don't you trust any medical professionals anymore? At least kind of maga people on the right who maybe sometimes know better about vaccines in particular, they often cite this moment when a lot of public health professionals signed a letter saying that even if you were locked down, you could go out and protest in the Black Lives Matter protests because like, racism was worse than Covid, basically. And I think for a lot of people on the right, that was like a moment of like, I just can't trust these people at all. This is totally cynical. It's kind of a mechanism of control. That's how they saw it. I was curious, like, if you think, if that was a big moment for you, if you think there's any legitimacy to that point of view.

[C]

Yeah. If you think about the anti vaccine movement, it's historically not a right wing conservative movement. It actually started on the West Coast. I mean, it went back hundreds of years. We can even go back further. But you think about crunchy liberals on the west coast who were saying that vaccines are not natural and then that completely swapped, which was strange because if you think about 2020, 2021, Trump was calling it his vaccine. This was his celebration. He was running Operation Warp Speed. I'm surprised they didn't call it Trump vaccine. Like it was literally going in that direction. And I think the big change happened. Absolutely. Some of those mistakes that you mentioned, I mean, even during Thanksgiving of 2020, the fact that the CDC was just saying absolutely, do not gather, instead of giving reasonable steps of how to gather safely, because telling people after a year to continue to not gather was Just gonna losing piece of advice. It's the same thing when doctors were saying that the only way we could prevent STIs is to preach abstinence. No, you can say that condoms work. You could find a middle ground and do risk reduction. And we missed that opportunity. But I think the biggest turning point, which was when government started overstepping recommendations and making them into mandates, and there were times where perhaps it was reasonable, but then it just continued and allowed government overreach to reach a critical point. And when it did that, it brought in the libertarian right that then adopted a lot of the messaging from the anti vaccine movement on the left. If we think about RFK Jr. As an example, right now he was running for president as a Democrat, then went independent. Now he's on Team Trump on the conservative side. So it goes to show that this libertarian shift really happened and brought in these parties that generally don't have a lot in common. I mean, RFK Jr. Is an environmental lawyer. And if we look at the conservative agenda of the past 10 years, it hasn't been very environmentally friendly or focused. So none of it really makes sense. It just seems that the opportunities aligned and it created this mutual understanding of let's team up to get what we want done. Uniformly.

[A]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting you mention rfk. You've been critical of. I was watching your video. You were, you know, critical of RFK Jr. And you know, you've been critical of Dr. Oz as well. Obviously, among the 14 million people who subscribe to your YouTube channel and among a lot of the people who have watched your videos, you know, in passing, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are, you know, conservative or lean right there. I'm curious how you think about your relationship with those audiences. Do you worry that, you know, being political or being outspoken in this way, even if you feel like you're doing it because it lines up with the science, do you feel like it cuts into your business? And how do you think about how you kind of come off to those audiences?

[C]

A. I couldn't care less about the business. The most important part is telling the truth. And I believe long term, if you tell the truth and you're transparent about it, the business and all that success will keep coming. That was the notion from when we started, from the very first time during the sexy doctor era. I went on one of these shows to talk about exercise and they said, oh, doctor, okay, take off your shirt now that you're here. And I just walked off set and left because it's not. I'm not interested in the fame. It's great that I have it, because with fame, I can have impact and improve public health messaging. But it was never why I started this journey. So couldn't care less about the business front. To me, this is not political, this is clinical. I took an oath, just like some politicians did, but they have forgotten that oath. My oath is to tell the truth, to do no harm, to make sure people get the best and most accurate information. And when I make these videos, I do them in a sense of it's not left, it's not right, it's not center, it's science. We worked with the Trump organization in 2020 to get Dr. Fauci on the channel. We worked with the Biden administration in 2022 to get Fauci on the channel. Now we're trying to find ways to work with the current administration to bring science back into the fold. So this isn't about which party are you working with. It's about telling the truth in science. And what frustrates me the most and scares me, if I'm being honest, is watching some of my colleagues. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, one of the leading and most trusted voices in media for CNN for so long, in November 2024, he was putting out all these warnings about RFK Jr. Potentially leading. HHS has been largely silent on the issue since. We need our medical trusted voices to stand up for the truth, whether or not it hurts our bottom. Our lives at stake, kids not getting vaccinated, our vaccine schedule being messed with by conspiracy theorists, funding from the nih, hhs, Medicaid, all of these issues are gonna impact millions of lives. The fact that we pulled out of Gavi is mind blowing to us. More than half the world's children are vaccinated by Gavi, and we're not taking that into consideration.

[A]

Yeah, I had a somewhat semi related question to something that you said earlier. You know, the Trump administration right now is considering tightly regulating ads on pharmaceuticals. You've talked about how you have like, kind of a well thought out kind of code of ethics or views on that. I don't know, what's your view on the Trump administration's proposed tight regulations on pharmaceutical ads? Great.

[C]

But we're talking about the dust in the corner as opposed to the mess of boxes that are around us. We need to focus on the real problems here. And the real problems is that our healthcare system as a whole is being decimated. So the fact that we're making one tiny good move in a Good direction here. But on the left side, there's an absolute disaster forming. It's not that they're ignoring the problems on the left side, they're breaking stuff on the left side and maybe fixing and making a correction on the right side. So it's just not balanced whatsoever. And it's also not done with any. There's no real grand plan here of what we need to do in order to improve our healthcare system. We talk about chronic health diseases going up. We talk about the over consumption of processed foods. Great. We need to highlight that we need to find solutions. But then I see RFK Jr sitting at steak N Shake eating fries while his co host is drinking sugary soda on Fox News. Yeah, yeah, we're just. We're missing the point here. And then on RFK Jr. S Twitter page, Secretary Kennedy's Twitter page, there are still inaccurate posts up saying that the HPV vaccine is hurting more people than it's helping. I mean, at some point, we need our institutions, our major medical organizations to come together and say this can't happen. Lives are gonna be lost as a result of these emotions and decisions, and they're not made again with any rhyme or reason.

[B]

It sounds like you think that the sort of legacy media is also kind of intimidated by this administration and not being as critical as they should be. Is that right?

[C]

No, I think they are. I just think that they've lost their effectiveness. I think over the last few years, they've received less funding, less clicks, and they failed to adapt to the times. I mean, how many times have I reached out to these organizations to have me on to talk about a subject? And they viewed me as not worthy of coming on their platforms or perhaps too risky for me to come on their platforms. But guess what? Now all the political candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris, three days before the election, comes on our podcast channel. Maybe a little bit too late. Senators are emailing us left and right to come on the show. But we needed to be doing this earlier. We haven't adapted to the times. We believe that as clinicians and researchers, if we just did the right work, everything would fall into place. But it's not enough to do the research. It's not enough to have the answers. We need to be able to communicate it as well.

[B]

All right, this is the Surgeon General of the AOC administration speaking. Is that a reasonable guess?

[C]

Maybe in the future, I mean, it would be nice to have a Surgeon General who's a licensed medical provider. I'll just leave it at that.

[A]

Well, you know, to get back to something that you were, that you said earlier. I just am curious. You make a lot of money on advertising. I'm sure you're probably in the top percentile of YouTubers having 14 million subscribers and counting. How do you think about your own rules around ads that are kind of appropriate, that you kind of support, that you want to kind of put out there to your viewers and what stuff that you don't want to touch?

[C]

Yeah, I think it needs to be viewed through a lens of what would I tell my patient? There's been companies that have come to us with over the counter products that I perhaps have recommended in the past to my patients, but I would never recommend them to my audience. Cause it would make it seem as if I choose this over the counter for a medical condition over all the others. And it didn't seem like it was a genuine message to send out to millions of people. The same with pharmaceutical companies. They come to us quite often with a specific medication, usually one that's not generic, usually one that is very expensive. When there's a generic alternative that exists and they ask us to promote it, we shut it down every single time. We've shut down eight figures of revenue because we shut down this approach. But look, when a pharmaceutical company like Abbott to us and says, hey, we're not getting enough blood donations in the United States post pandemic, we wanna motivate people. Can you help us create a campaign? I'm gonna work with Abbott to encourage blood donations. And we've made videos getting tens of millions of views, getting people to donate blood. That's a way to work with pharmaceutical companies. That to me just makes sense.

[A]

As a physician, you're still a practicing physician, right? Like you still have patients. Are people coming in because they're like, oh my God, the YouTube doctor is the guy I wanna. How do I go see him?

[B]

Max, you need a doctor, don't you? Max doesn't like to go to the doctor. Maybe you could see Dr. Mac.

[A]

You know what? I actually do need to. I'm overdue for a physical. I do need to go and see the doctor. That's not exactly where I was going with this. This was more of a General question about Dr. Mike and being a viral YouTube star and also, you know, seeing patients.

[C]

Well, first of all, I think it's a good time to mention that everyone should invest in getting a good primary care doctor, you included too. Many young folks, especially in big cities, rely on urgin care to be their form of primary care. And that's just not good when it comes to long term health outcomes. You want someone that knows you, who understands you. You want someone who's been along with you for at least several years or at least a practice where there's a group of physicians that take care of you, which is where I happen to work at Atlantic Health System Overlook Medical Center. I work in an office where there are multiple physicians. When they are not able to see their patients, I can fill in and see them. Same thing goes for my patients. When I'm not there, they can be seen by them. And I also do something called precepting, where I teach the future generation of physicians, they're currently residents where I was 10 years ago and teach them how to take care of their own patients, how to communicate better, how to communicate on social media, how to be better clinicians. So it's really a 360 approach. And when I first started doing social media, I didn't know if, if medicine and social media could coexist in a reasonable way. And what I found is not only can they coexist, they actually help one another. When I do research for a YouTube video on a condition, I become a better clinician for my patients. When I'm in a room with a patient and I understand where they're being misled, what misinformation are they falling victim to, what language I need to use to better explain a given subject to them, I can then bring that message to millions of people on social media. So it's actually quite the symbiotic relationship that I did not expect.

[A]

Is anybody ever starstruck when they come in to see the practice that you work at and they're expecting maybe to see a different doctor and you're the person who walks in through the door?

[C]

Yeah, it happens quite often, usually with the younger demographic. But just the other day I had a 50 year old gentleman that was coming in for an urgent visit and after the visit he said, by the way, I can't believe you're my doctor. I just watched your RFK special, what's happening in Our Government. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing and it was a great bonding moment for us.

[A]

Wow, that's amazing. Well, Dr. Mike, thank you so much for being with us today. This was really great and super interesting and a good reminder both from you and from Ben that I think I need to go for my annual physical.

[B]

Thank you, Mike.

[C]

Absolutely. Definitely get on top of that. Thanks, guys.

[B]

In our show about media, our ads are, fittingly enough about Advertising. As we explore on the show, media and marketing alike are changing at a breakneck, disorienting pace. And Think With Google offers a compass in this shifting landscape. The platform brings you real talk from industry leaders deep dives into trends and practical strategies for growth. Whether you're grappling with personalization or seeking the next big innovation, Think with Google has you covered. Visit thinkwithgoogle.com today and transform challenges into opportunities.

[A]

One of the things that I thought was really interesting here is, you know, there's a lot of people who we talk to in new media who wanna be really careful about their relationship with politics, particularly if what they are doing isn't necessarily political science and health has become political, but it isn't inherently necessarily 100% political. And most of the videos that Dr. Mike makes are him watching the pit and reacting and saying what's real and what's not, and him watching Grey's Anatomy and reacting and saying what's what, you know, what's real and what's not. Him watching viral T and kind of, you know, evaluating what might be going on. But one of the interesting things to me is how unafraid he is of speaking out in a political way, even, you know, alienating some of his audience. But I'm curious what you thought about the fact that we thought maybe we were going to talk about, you know, modern health and YouTube and we ended up having a conversation a lot more about RFK Jr and the kind of political information, health information landscape. What did you think about that?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it makes me think about something that people often talk about with kind of companies and public figures and this question of, like, should you weigh in on everything? Should you be jumping into every fight? And I think the smart answer that people are often given is, well, like, who asked you? Is this something like, do you have permission? Should you be talking about this? Are you like, if you are like a sock company, like, probably nobody asked you about healthcare, but if you're a doctor, doctor. And it's not like he's leaping way out of his lane. It's like he is authentically really freaked out about the vaccine stuff. And yeah, I think his audience obviously really responds to that. I mean, it is just a matter of fact that a lot of what HHS is saying flies in the face of a lot of received science. And I do actually think that elements, parts of the mainstream media have felt like running around with your hair on fire isn't getting them anywhere. And they're probably a bit intimidated by Trump and by his supporters. And it was interesting that you saw this YouTuber, really, because as you say, that's often a much less political space, in a way, be so much more confrontational about things that are right in his, you know, in his personal strike zone, essentially.

[A]

Yeah. You know, one of the things that it seems like maybe he does agree on with parts of the administration or with the right is this idea that legacy media organizations have fallen short in their approach to covering health and science and that people just aren't listening and aren't paying attention or maybe that they're not finding them really where they are, which is YouTube. I thought that that was actually really interesting. I didn't realize how much of his origin story as a kind of Health creator, YouTuber was in reaction to what he saw as failures by legacy media and the fact that when he went on daytime television, they just wanted to talk about how hot he was and he wanted to talk about health, raise awareness about various health causes.

[B]

Yeah, it's a high class problem, honestly. And I do think, and I think this is a story that we missed, right? Like during the pandemic, if the CDC is posting, you know, important health information and it's getting two likes, I think we thought, well, you know, that's sort of how it works and they're doing their job and maybe it's not quite working. And someone like him accurately sees it as like, this is a crisis, these people are morons. Like, that's crazy. Like, his competence is getting people to listen to these stories. And it's funny, amid all these conversations about public health and trust and communication, I think we kind of miss the story of. Just like, they are terrible at it. They were terrible at it during the pandemic. And Fauci, who had been an old school kind of television communicator, was not good at communicating in social media, nor the people working for him. And that wasn't like a sidelight. And that wasn't because people were acting in bad faith. It's because they hadn't caught up to the way media worked. And I do think that was a. It's interesting that really his core critique, his core story about the pandemic isn't about kind of political overreach, although it's partly about that, but it's also about kind of an outmoded communication style.

[A]

No, that's totally true. And, you know, it's funny, I see parallels between that and the episode we did last week about Zoran Mamdani's campaign and why media was so kind of crucial and central to that, which is just that, you know, he was able to defy the odds because he rethought what media strategy in 2025 should look like. And it's not dissimilar to what Dr. Mike is doing, which is to realize where people are and to talk to patients and say, hey, wow, these people are seeing weird, crazy stuff on YouTube and a lot of it is wrong. I need to go there and be good at that. And one other thing that I thought was interesting was that he's clearly unlike some of our other guests. You know, we talked to Chris Black who said, you know, I don't pay attention to the analytics. I just do kind of what feels right, basically. And I've got good instincts there. Tom Colicch in a previous episode was saying kind of the same thing. He was like, look, I don't read the comments. I'm not paying attention to any of that stuff. They'll let me know if I'm doing something wrong. Dr. Mike has a very different view. He really is clearly plugged in. He is figuring out which episodes are doing well, which aren't doing well. He is looking at where his stuff is being covered in other places. He clearly is in it and obsessed with the building of the platform in a way that is a little bit different than some of our other more laid back guests, which I also thought was kind of interesting.

[B]

Yeah, in some sense, those. Those are the two paths to success in media, Right? Usually really successful people are some of both.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. Well, Ben, thank you so much for turning me on to Dr. Mike and reminding me that I should get an annual checkup and disclosing to Dr. Mike that I don't like to go to see the doctor. But seriously, he was great. We gotta get a background like Dr. Mike too.

[B]

Oh, my God. I know. So good.

[A]

Well, that's it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. Our show, as always, is expertly produced by Sheena Ozaki. And our special thanks go out to Josh Billenson, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern. And Tori Kaur. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Billy Libby. Our public editor is Jason Wiley from Jubilee Media, which turned me to to Dr. Mike.

[B]

If you like Mixed Signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and please leave us a nice review.

[A]

And if you still want more, you can always sign up for semaphore's. Media newsletter out every Sunday night.