Some recent reflections on the psychedelic field’s bifurcation. After this summer, the “cultophilic” side has lost power, and critical psychedelic studies is the field’s academic future.
I had planned to work with Veronika Gold for KAP just when the FDA committee open hearing occurred. I wrote a email to Polaris in SF letting them know how disappointed and appalled I was at what had happened with the woman who was restrained. It could have easily have happened to me given my own trauma history which involves gang rape and near death when I was eleven years old. As Bessel van der Kolk has said, if you want to make someone crazy, restrain them, hold them down. I was also traumatized as a child in a hospital where I was held down and restrained. I fought back.
This is an instinctual response. FIGHT response. Survival response. Peter Levine has written and spoken about the natural aggression response that often needs to be released from body in order to integrate trauma.
I received an email response from the three founders, including Veronika Gold. As I recall, they didn’t seem to think it was an issue worthy of apology or public recognition. I also told them that I would not work with them, nor would I suggest other survivors work with them. I am still upset about their attitude. I felt they pretty much treated it as a non issue. I also suggested that they solicit feedback from their clients regarding the quality of their experiences at their clinic. They didn’t seem receptive to that either.
Veronika Gold has tried to position herself as some kind of leader in psychedelic and trauma informed care. I don’t think so…. Leaders need to be able to take constructive feedback and own their mistakes.
I have since found a [suitable] practitioner and psychiatrist. Complex PTSD is their speciality. I feel so fortunate to have found them. They are ethical and kind. They understand the challenges I have experienced. They honor me. The psychotherapist I now work with says she would never restrain me! I was concerned after that reporting about what might come up for me in session. But, the psychotherapist assured me that she knows how to work somatically. I did move my body around a lot during one session… I didn’t want to hurt her if rage came up for me. But’s she was so reassuring that she would keep me safe. I feel that she really gets it!
Oh, btw… both my psychiatrist and psychotherapist think ‘trust your inner healer’ and PAT is total bullshit! They’re both concerned about the training of psychotherapists in the psychedelic space.
[Omitted personal identifiers]
I feel such a sense of gratitude to you! You have helped me so much Nese.
Keep doing what you’re doing! I wish you the best!
I still have the email response which I can post here or forward to you if you’re interested. It’s rather lengthy and it does make reference to you specifically.
[Please note: this comment was originally posted on October 24th — revised on the 27th. I have since edited and removed part of my response as it contains personal narrative, experiences and part of an email which I do not wish to share with everyone on Substack. If someone is interested in my perspective, please leave a comment or follow me. I do feel strongly about the patient advocacy and calling out what I believe to be bad actors or professionals that act unethically and without self reflection in the mental health space. As I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and violence, I think it’s important to consider the perspective of individuals like myself who have had negative experiences with providers of ketamine assisted psychotherapy including those individuals who have participated in the MDMA clinical trials. I have had negative encounters with more than one clinic and more than one individual who works in this space earlier this year. This kind of experience can undermine one’s sense of trust in psychedelic providers and clinics. I’m disappointed by what I see is an inability of providers to accept feedback or engage in healthy dialogue around legitimate ethical concerns around the use of restraint and safety issues.
I originally included a paragraph from one of the providers which I have chosen to delete. Again, if you are work in the psychedelic space or you’re a survivor interested in my experiences, please feel free to reach out.]
Thank you for acknowledging my comments. I thought the whole response was strange. And it felt disingenuous. I was left with the feeling, after reading the entire email that they didn’t really care, in a sincere way, about me or what difficulties I was having with the way they work with clients with severe complex PTSD and dissociation. I would have appreciated an effort to call me to discuss the particulars. I felt throughout the intake process they expressed so much confidence in their ability to manage my particular case without asking the right intake questions. It raised all kinds of red flags with me even before the FDA presentation. The response they provided felt was more about damage control or perhaps, mitigating possible litigation. But, I’m just speculating. That’s just how I felt at the time. And in all fairness to them, I didn’t provide you with my original email to them and their entire response. But, I think you get some sense from the tone and the language they chose to use.
I presented them with a clinical challenge and they didn’t offer a response of how they were going to rise to the occasion to ensure my safety and mitigate possible retraumatization if I had chosen to work with them.
I find this post deeply alarming. Devenot continues to double down on their misrepresentation of Veronika Gold, who is indeed a leader in our community and a compassionate, highly trained and ethical therapist. Like Susan, I am a Phase 3 therapist and co-principal investigator on the Lykos Trials. I am completely baffled and saddened by this slander of Gold. I hope reasonable folks can recognize the harm that Devenot's careless and unfounded claims are inflicting here and think twice before believing them. Hurt people hurt people, indeed.
I am a phase 3 MDMA-AT for PTSD therapist and PI. There seems to be a huge misunderstanding here. What Yensen did in the phase 2 trial is criminal. What Veronika Gold is describing is passive resistance where a therapist might put up a hand so that the patient/ client/ participant can push against the therapist’s hand. The patient themselves would provide the force or pressure and NOT the therapist. The therapist does not provide pressure and the patient’s movements would never be restricted. The patient can remove their hand at any time Safe word or no safe word, it would never be ok to pin down a person or restrict their movement as a form of therapy. MDMA-AT is about empowerment for the participant. What Veronika is describing is NOT a form of trauma “reenactment.” Rather, a patient might ask to have a therapist put out their hand so that the participant themselves can push against the therapist’s hand. This can be an opportunity for a corrective experience and sense of empowerment where a participant can have an opportunity to push against the therapist’s hand and yell out in this safe setting in way that they weren’t able to originally. The participant’s movements are not restricted and they can remove their hand at any time.
I am so sorry to hear about the threats and attacks as a result of your academic and advocacy work. Im glad you took a break.
As a doc and researcher that sees real value for psychedelic use in both medical and community contexts (and is looking to pilot some small studies about approaches that integrate the two) I am highly concerned about the enormous potential for exploitation, abuse, and other terrible outcomes. not to mention huge well funded groups overpromising benefits and saying that critique will ‘destroy the movement.’
I am wealthy enough to have had my own experience of group based ketamine which was really positive, and then individual treatment which was also positive/with a safe person. After my first treatment my thought after was holy shit this is so ripe for abuse. Finding your work has been really important to me (also feel real ridiculous that I found it *after* you left CLE).
It disappoints me that there isn’t an interest in genuinely engaging what has already happened to people, and what we need to do to keep psychedelic research above reproach—the people coming to us have already experienced abuse, including medical trauma. our ethical standards need to be rock solid, clear, and consensual. Higher than what is typically expected. The idea that people on these meds can use a safe word is shocking—it’s both contrary to the power relationship and the psychic vulnerability created on these substances.
I don’t know how to shift the notion that critique will ‘destroy the movement’ rather than do the opposite—the whole point is to build rigorous, theoretically well grounded, reproducible work that ensures the protection of anyone that participates. If we don’t agree with that as scientists—-we’re not in good company.
I think there will continue to be problems, both small and very large, with psychedelic therapy as it is presently perceived and constructed. Although a thousands-of-years-old tradition of healing using psychoactive plants is well known and studied, most modern therapists are vary far indeed from being shamans who really know the territories they are dealing with. And these territories are not in "in" the drugs, nor are they "in" the procedures and protocols they are forcing on their clients!
from my review of Psychedelic Drugs Reconsideed, first appearing in 1992(?) in the International Journal of Drug Policy
What psychedelics show us collectively about ourselves is that we have squandered the greatest of all opportunities. Just as the natural plant psychedelics have catalyzed and accompanied important evolutionary developments for mankind in the distant past, they have still an enormous potential for helping to bring about further far-reaching benefits. Not in a year or two, of course! but rather in the long-run of many generations as they “help us to explore and fathom our own nature,” in the words of Humphrey Osmond. I do not know of anyone who is personally acquainted with these archetypal states of consciousness who believes themselves capable of drawing the limits of their importance or potential to assist eventual far-reaching beneficial changes in society. Psychedelics do not correct behavior, of course, nor will they act as a ‘medicament’ that will cure some malady or dysfunction even when the patient is unconscious or indisposed, they are no ‘cure’ for what ails the human race, no insurance that the events of the 21st Century and beyond will not be even more menacing and filled with atrocity than our own sad example of civilization in the 20th. But psychedelics can and have historically acted as a potent aid and illuminating window to a larger consciousness potential in all human beings, but one which had no evolutionary advantage until the dawn of human existence. Thus this larger consciousness is not instinctively inherent in our makeup, we do not automatically bring it to bear nor trust in it the way we instinctively trust fear or other evolution-installed states of consciousness, but rather avoid it. The task before us is to gain trust in the psychedelic experience, to let the wider vision provided act as our guide and teacher for overcoming primitive instincts that no longer serve our survival but actually endanger it...
See what the presence of psychedelics in our midst has demonstrated about our culture and collective nature! It has been said that if peaceful aliens from another planet landed on earth, we would most likely misunderstand their intentions, betray and destroy them long before learning of the reason for their visit. This is precisely what has happened with psychedelic drugs, for they are visitors from the ancient past, the equivalent of another universe of consciousness, returning with messages of peace and co-operation among men, and instead of hearing them out we have made war against them.
And, I should add, now that we are no longer officially making war against them as we did for so many decades, we are instead trying every which-way to turn psychedelic therapy and psychedelics themselves into a big money-spinner, to make them yet another part of melt-down, Greed-is-Good, BigMoney Capitalism. This cannot possibly achieve anything except the troubles you recount so well in your post.
'Given the timeframe, Gorman implied that I was “viciously attack[ing]” Veronika Gold, which demonstrates his ignorance about the nature of systemic critique.'
Ingmar Gorman here. You're reading something into my comment that isn't there. I wasn't referring to Veronika Gold.
Who were you referring to as being openly attacked? I assume because it was public attacking you’re talking about, this is not confidential info — could you link to the open attacking you saw? Would be useful for all to be able to see what this was.
The beginning of the quote Neşe references, “You’re [i.e., Psymposia is] critiquing the integrity of us as therapists…” starts around the 20-minute mark of the podcast. The end of the quoted material, “…they’re being really viciously attacked for it,” appears at the 49-minute mark. I understand Neşe’s goal of capturing the essence without the full transcript, but there’s nearly 30 minutes of conversation between the start and end of the selected quotes.
To provide context, here’s the relevant section from the transcript at the 49-minute mark:
"Yeah. Again coming back to the people. Right. US Clinicians the staff at Lykos, some of whom have been attacked and are actively being attacked right now. They just got into this to help people. I know it sounds naive. Of course, they wanted to get paid as well. And they're feeling. I know some people are really feeling hurt that this is the intention that they went into this work with, and they're being really viciously attacked for it. And by the way, I should also say, look, you and I have mentioned symposia several times in a very critical light, and I want to make sure that. Don't harass them, don't send them threatening emails, don't. Because they've also, from my understanding, experienced a lot of not just hate, but threats, and that's absolutely not appropriate. So I want to really make that clear. And I think there's an argument to be made that for people who are acting unethically, things need to be brought to light. But psymposia has not been. I mean, they said I'm a member of a cult, and they called 100 of my fellow investigators cult members. They're not known for subtlety or nuance."
Van, these attacks weren't public, but I can clarify what I meant by the "attack" statements. The target of these attacks wasn’t Veronika, and those responsible weren’t Neşe or Psymposia. Although I never explicitly mention it in the podcast, at the time, I learned that there were journalists engaging in a tactic sometimes called "disgruntled source journalism" or "hit piece reporting." These journalists sought out former Lykos employees after the company’s major downsizing to unearth rumors or internal issues to create sensationalist articles. Unlike Psymposia and Sasha Sisko, whose motivations are more ethics-driven, these journalists weren’t concerned with ethical accountability at all. Apparently, there are journalists who make their entire career of contacting former employees after a company has a major downsizing (as Lykos did) and publishing pieces sourced by high emotionally charged accounts of disaffected employees.
Looking back at my quote, I see how I jump from the "attack" statements to then try to protect members of Psymposia from harassment and threats, which then associates Psymposia as being the source of the attacks that I'm referencing above. In the midst of the interview, I was probably aware that I was talking about "attacks" and then wanting to make sure that Psymposia doesn't get more harassment, but then inadvertently associated the two.
You're saying that what you meant by therapists are "actively being attacked right now" was that there were journalists behind the scenes trying to get stories out of former employees? Who are these journalists? Could you link to two or three. I'd really like to look more at their careers built on "disgruntled source journalism" - very concerning.
I did listen to the whole episode when it came out. It seems the only context you're adding is that in the end you told people not to harass Psypmosia? I'm not sure what this changes - the pulled quotes weren't misleading.
I had planned to work with Veronika Gold for KAP just when the FDA committee open hearing occurred. I wrote a email to Polaris in SF letting them know how disappointed and appalled I was at what had happened with the woman who was restrained. It could have easily have happened to me given my own trauma history which involves gang rape and near death when I was eleven years old. As Bessel van der Kolk has said, if you want to make someone crazy, restrain them, hold them down. I was also traumatized as a child in a hospital where I was held down and restrained. I fought back.
This is an instinctual response. FIGHT response. Survival response. Peter Levine has written and spoken about the natural aggression response that often needs to be released from body in order to integrate trauma.
I received an email response from the three founders, including Veronika Gold. As I recall, they didn’t seem to think it was an issue worthy of apology or public recognition. I also told them that I would not work with them, nor would I suggest other survivors work with them. I am still upset about their attitude. I felt they pretty much treated it as a non issue. I also suggested that they solicit feedback from their clients regarding the quality of their experiences at their clinic. They didn’t seem receptive to that either.
Veronika Gold has tried to position herself as some kind of leader in psychedelic and trauma informed care. I don’t think so…. Leaders need to be able to take constructive feedback and own their mistakes.
I have since found a [suitable] practitioner and psychiatrist. Complex PTSD is their speciality. I feel so fortunate to have found them. They are ethical and kind. They understand the challenges I have experienced. They honor me. The psychotherapist I now work with says she would never restrain me! I was concerned after that reporting about what might come up for me in session. But, the psychotherapist assured me that she knows how to work somatically. I did move my body around a lot during one session… I didn’t want to hurt her if rage came up for me. But’s she was so reassuring that she would keep me safe. I feel that she really gets it!
Oh, btw… both my psychiatrist and psychotherapist think ‘trust your inner healer’ and PAT is total bullshit! They’re both concerned about the training of psychotherapists in the psychedelic space.
[Omitted personal identifiers]
I feel such a sense of gratitude to you! You have helped me so much Nese.
Keep doing what you’re doing! I wish you the best!
I still have the email response which I can post here or forward to you if you’re interested. It’s rather lengthy and it does make reference to you specifically.
[Please note: this comment was originally posted on October 24th — revised on the 27th. I have since edited and removed part of my response as it contains personal narrative, experiences and part of an email which I do not wish to share with everyone on Substack. If someone is interested in my perspective, please leave a comment or follow me. I do feel strongly about the patient advocacy and calling out what I believe to be bad actors or professionals that act unethically and without self reflection in the mental health space. As I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and violence, I think it’s important to consider the perspective of individuals like myself who have had negative experiences with providers of ketamine assisted psychotherapy including those individuals who have participated in the MDMA clinical trials. I have had negative encounters with more than one clinic and more than one individual who works in this space earlier this year. This kind of experience can undermine one’s sense of trust in psychedelic providers and clinics. I’m disappointed by what I see is an inability of providers to accept feedback or engage in healthy dialogue around legitimate ethical concerns around the use of restraint and safety issues.
I originally included a paragraph from one of the providers which I have chosen to delete. Again, if you are work in the psychedelic space or you’re a survivor interested in my experiences, please feel free to reach out.]
Thank you for sharing this! I find "we are planning to respond to the concerns she brought up over time" to be a very strange response.
I'm really glad to hear that you were able to connect with respectful support!
Thank you for acknowledging my comments. I thought the whole response was strange. And it felt disingenuous. I was left with the feeling, after reading the entire email that they didn’t really care, in a sincere way, about me or what difficulties I was having with the way they work with clients with severe complex PTSD and dissociation. I would have appreciated an effort to call me to discuss the particulars. I felt throughout the intake process they expressed so much confidence in their ability to manage my particular case without asking the right intake questions. It raised all kinds of red flags with me even before the FDA presentation. The response they provided felt was more about damage control or perhaps, mitigating possible litigation. But, I’m just speculating. That’s just how I felt at the time. And in all fairness to them, I didn’t provide you with my original email to them and their entire response. But, I think you get some sense from the tone and the language they chose to use.
I presented them with a clinical challenge and they didn’t offer a response of how they were going to rise to the occasion to ensure my safety and mitigate possible retraumatization if I had chosen to work with them.
That's very well stated! I really appreciate that you took the time to share your experiences interacting with their clinic.
I find this post deeply alarming. Devenot continues to double down on their misrepresentation of Veronika Gold, who is indeed a leader in our community and a compassionate, highly trained and ethical therapist. Like Susan, I am a Phase 3 therapist and co-principal investigator on the Lykos Trials. I am completely baffled and saddened by this slander of Gold. I hope reasonable folks can recognize the harm that Devenot's careless and unfounded claims are inflicting here and think twice before believing them. Hurt people hurt people, indeed.
I am a phase 3 MDMA-AT for PTSD therapist and PI. There seems to be a huge misunderstanding here. What Yensen did in the phase 2 trial is criminal. What Veronika Gold is describing is passive resistance where a therapist might put up a hand so that the patient/ client/ participant can push against the therapist’s hand. The patient themselves would provide the force or pressure and NOT the therapist. The therapist does not provide pressure and the patient’s movements would never be restricted. The patient can remove their hand at any time Safe word or no safe word, it would never be ok to pin down a person or restrict their movement as a form of therapy. MDMA-AT is about empowerment for the participant. What Veronika is describing is NOT a form of trauma “reenactment.” Rather, a patient might ask to have a therapist put out their hand so that the participant themselves can push against the therapist’s hand. This can be an opportunity for a corrective experience and sense of empowerment where a participant can have an opportunity to push against the therapist’s hand and yell out in this safe setting in way that they weren’t able to originally. The participant’s movements are not restricted and they can remove their hand at any time.
I am so sorry to hear about the threats and attacks as a result of your academic and advocacy work. Im glad you took a break.
As a doc and researcher that sees real value for psychedelic use in both medical and community contexts (and is looking to pilot some small studies about approaches that integrate the two) I am highly concerned about the enormous potential for exploitation, abuse, and other terrible outcomes. not to mention huge well funded groups overpromising benefits and saying that critique will ‘destroy the movement.’
I am wealthy enough to have had my own experience of group based ketamine which was really positive, and then individual treatment which was also positive/with a safe person. After my first treatment my thought after was holy shit this is so ripe for abuse. Finding your work has been really important to me (also feel real ridiculous that I found it *after* you left CLE).
It disappoints me that there isn’t an interest in genuinely engaging what has already happened to people, and what we need to do to keep psychedelic research above reproach—the people coming to us have already experienced abuse, including medical trauma. our ethical standards need to be rock solid, clear, and consensual. Higher than what is typically expected. The idea that people on these meds can use a safe word is shocking—it’s both contrary to the power relationship and the psychic vulnerability created on these substances.
I don’t know how to shift the notion that critique will ‘destroy the movement’ rather than do the opposite—the whole point is to build rigorous, theoretically well grounded, reproducible work that ensures the protection of anyone that participates. If we don’t agree with that as scientists—-we’re not in good company.
I think there will continue to be problems, both small and very large, with psychedelic therapy as it is presently perceived and constructed. Although a thousands-of-years-old tradition of healing using psychoactive plants is well known and studied, most modern therapists are vary far indeed from being shamans who really know the territories they are dealing with. And these territories are not in "in" the drugs, nor are they "in" the procedures and protocols they are forcing on their clients!
from my review of Psychedelic Drugs Reconsideed, first appearing in 1992(?) in the International Journal of Drug Policy
https://peterwebster.substack.com/p/acid-test
What psychedelics show us collectively about ourselves is that we have squandered the greatest of all opportunities. Just as the natural plant psychedelics have catalyzed and accompanied important evolutionary developments for mankind in the distant past, they have still an enormous potential for helping to bring about further far-reaching benefits. Not in a year or two, of course! but rather in the long-run of many generations as they “help us to explore and fathom our own nature,” in the words of Humphrey Osmond. I do not know of anyone who is personally acquainted with these archetypal states of consciousness who believes themselves capable of drawing the limits of their importance or potential to assist eventual far-reaching beneficial changes in society. Psychedelics do not correct behavior, of course, nor will they act as a ‘medicament’ that will cure some malady or dysfunction even when the patient is unconscious or indisposed, they are no ‘cure’ for what ails the human race, no insurance that the events of the 21st Century and beyond will not be even more menacing and filled with atrocity than our own sad example of civilization in the 20th. But psychedelics can and have historically acted as a potent aid and illuminating window to a larger consciousness potential in all human beings, but one which had no evolutionary advantage until the dawn of human existence. Thus this larger consciousness is not instinctively inherent in our makeup, we do not automatically bring it to bear nor trust in it the way we instinctively trust fear or other evolution-installed states of consciousness, but rather avoid it. The task before us is to gain trust in the psychedelic experience, to let the wider vision provided act as our guide and teacher for overcoming primitive instincts that no longer serve our survival but actually endanger it...
See what the presence of psychedelics in our midst has demonstrated about our culture and collective nature! It has been said that if peaceful aliens from another planet landed on earth, we would most likely misunderstand their intentions, betray and destroy them long before learning of the reason for their visit. This is precisely what has happened with psychedelic drugs, for they are visitors from the ancient past, the equivalent of another universe of consciousness, returning with messages of peace and co-operation among men, and instead of hearing them out we have made war against them.
And, I should add, now that we are no longer officially making war against them as we did for so many decades, we are instead trying every which-way to turn psychedelic therapy and psychedelics themselves into a big money-spinner, to make them yet another part of melt-down, Greed-is-Good, BigMoney Capitalism. This cannot possibly achieve anything except the troubles you recount so well in your post.
'Given the timeframe, Gorman implied that I was “viciously attack[ing]” Veronika Gold, which demonstrates his ignorance about the nature of systemic critique.'
Ingmar Gorman here. You're reading something into my comment that isn't there. I wasn't referring to Veronika Gold.
Who were you referring to as being openly attacked? I assume because it was public attacking you’re talking about, this is not confidential info — could you link to the open attacking you saw? Would be useful for all to be able to see what this was.
The beginning of the quote Neşe references, “You’re [i.e., Psymposia is] critiquing the integrity of us as therapists…” starts around the 20-minute mark of the podcast. The end of the quoted material, “…they’re being really viciously attacked for it,” appears at the 49-minute mark. I understand Neşe’s goal of capturing the essence without the full transcript, but there’s nearly 30 minutes of conversation between the start and end of the selected quotes.
To provide context, here’s the relevant section from the transcript at the 49-minute mark:
"Yeah. Again coming back to the people. Right. US Clinicians the staff at Lykos, some of whom have been attacked and are actively being attacked right now. They just got into this to help people. I know it sounds naive. Of course, they wanted to get paid as well. And they're feeling. I know some people are really feeling hurt that this is the intention that they went into this work with, and they're being really viciously attacked for it. And by the way, I should also say, look, you and I have mentioned symposia several times in a very critical light, and I want to make sure that. Don't harass them, don't send them threatening emails, don't. Because they've also, from my understanding, experienced a lot of not just hate, but threats, and that's absolutely not appropriate. So I want to really make that clear. And I think there's an argument to be made that for people who are acting unethically, things need to be brought to light. But psymposia has not been. I mean, they said I'm a member of a cult, and they called 100 of my fellow investigators cult members. They're not known for subtlety or nuance."
Van, these attacks weren't public, but I can clarify what I meant by the "attack" statements. The target of these attacks wasn’t Veronika, and those responsible weren’t Neşe or Psymposia. Although I never explicitly mention it in the podcast, at the time, I learned that there were journalists engaging in a tactic sometimes called "disgruntled source journalism" or "hit piece reporting." These journalists sought out former Lykos employees after the company’s major downsizing to unearth rumors or internal issues to create sensationalist articles. Unlike Psymposia and Sasha Sisko, whose motivations are more ethics-driven, these journalists weren’t concerned with ethical accountability at all. Apparently, there are journalists who make their entire career of contacting former employees after a company has a major downsizing (as Lykos did) and publishing pieces sourced by high emotionally charged accounts of disaffected employees.
Looking back at my quote, I see how I jump from the "attack" statements to then try to protect members of Psymposia from harassment and threats, which then associates Psymposia as being the source of the attacks that I'm referencing above. In the midst of the interview, I was probably aware that I was talking about "attacks" and then wanting to make sure that Psymposia doesn't get more harassment, but then inadvertently associated the two.
You're saying that what you meant by therapists are "actively being attacked right now" was that there were journalists behind the scenes trying to get stories out of former employees? Who are these journalists? Could you link to two or three. I'd really like to look more at their careers built on "disgruntled source journalism" - very concerning.
I did listen to the whole episode when it came out. It seems the only context you're adding is that in the end you told people not to harass Psypmosia? I'm not sure what this changes - the pulled quotes weren't misleading.