Creator Q+A: Doctor Mike

Dylan Wells: How have you seen this world of science content adapt over the last decade, and where do you situate yourself in that evolution?

Dr. Mike Varshavski: I think adaptation has been slow, and that's probably been the most frustrating part of it all. I think most creators in the room can attest to the fact that we don't get organizational support from our hospitals, our museums. But times are changing very clearly, as we're all here today. So the idea of buying into the fact that influencers can make huge change — they can shift politicians' trajectories, they can create uprisings, they can make science fun again — and really leaning into that has changed my mind about how things work, how we can reach audiences that perhaps were not scientifically curious, and get them to be scientifically curious. 

How we get people who completely disagree with us to just hear us out about a specific topic — and that's not easy to do. A lot of us think we can do that with one conversation or one video, but it's really about the journey and getting buy-in from an entire institution. Historically, science institutions have said: “We're going to stay off social media. That's not for us. We're going to debate things in research conventions. We're going to do this through research journals” … We were losing the people who needed to hear this information, and that's the general public. We lost that connection to them, and I think that happened as a result of the shift that we've experienced in media. 

Now, because people are watching so many different platforms, so many different channels, so many different podcasts, there is no unifying message to send out for a correction. So that's why we need a diversity of voices. We need a diversity of creators, an army, if you will, in order to get there to reach all those people and actually fight back against this misinformation. Because if we don't, then we're creating a vacuum where snake oil salespeople, grifters, just have their heyday.

DW: What lessons can be taken from those communicators who may be spreading misinformation, but are effectively reaching people?

MV: You look at “The Dr. Oz Show.” What made it successful? They leaned into what people wanted to hear, but then told them something untrue. What if we can lean into what people want to hear, but tell them the truth? Make it fun. Bring some comedy into it. Bring some music, some creativity. There could be a world of education happening that we're not taking advantage of. 

When we first started making content, we were not very successful. … Then we started doing reaction videos because those were popular at the time, and they took off. People started watching. They got really excited, but then that got tired. Then we saw people were doing memes on their YouTube channel, so we started reacting to memes. Then TikToks came out. We started reacting to TikToks. Then we saw historical videos were doing well. We started doing historical videos. So we would look as much as we can at what people were enjoying, and instead of telling them what they should change to enjoy, we made ourselves adapt to their enjoyment, to their entertainment, and just inserted a little bit of medicine into that. And over the last few years, it's been a very successful model. 

DW: Talk more about that reverse engineering, because if you look at your channel right now, for example, you see videos about Halloween, about the movie “Obsession,” about viral moments and you can see that you are trying to tap into these broader cultural moments with scientific content. How do you choose what areas you need to weigh in?

MV: That's probably the hardest part of being a science creator because when you're debunking misinformation, you want to not give credence or attention to theories that are not yet popular. Because what can unintentionally happen through good intentions and bad outcomes is you get a piece of misinformation that no one was listening to, and for the views get an easy slam dunk debunking it. But remember, there are always outliers that end up falling victim to it, even when you're debunking it, because for whatever reason they view them as the hero and you as the evil villain. So I really try and only debunk things that have already caught the mainstream audience's attention. 

I've had a doctor on my show by the name of Dr. Gundry, who is very popular for his lectin theory, where he believes that certain substances on healthy foods make them now unhealthy for you. And I invited him on the podcast to debate. And every time I see a comment saying, "Why are you bringing him on when he's not scientific?" Well, when you have one, two, three New York Times best-selling books, that person is having an impact. And if no one is going to be out there to call that out directly to his face, we're going to be losing an opportunity to actually change people's minds, and I think there's no better example of that than what we're facing in our government today. 

RFK Jr. currently has the highest medical office in the United States, secretary of Health and Human Services. So when people ask me why I'm debating those who are perhaps anti-vaccine, his supporters, they're talking about me giving a platform to those people. I disagree with that, and the reason I disagree with it is they already have the platform. It's called the White House. It's called the majority in government.

They are not going to get more successful because I'm debating them. But what we will have the opportunity to do is showcase to the audience: there is a person yelling and being unreasonable and saying things that obviously don't pass the most basic whiff test, and there's a person sitting across from them who's empathetic, who's listening, who wants to hear them out, who's had experiences in the hospital, who continues to work in the hospital, and they're just trying to give their scientific expertise on the matter. And I feel like we've been missing that because we've been afraid of villainizing people, perhaps afraid of giving attention to people who have inaccurate theories. But we need to improve our barometer there. We need to understand that sometimes we need to let misinformation go because it's not making an impact. But at the same time, we can't ignore all of it because if we do that, we do that at our own peril and allow it to become very viral, very effective.

DW: What's a [viral] moment you've let go recently? 

MV: The hantavirus cruise ship situation. There was a lot of opportunity to get monster viewership. There was a thumbnail in my mind of a scary hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship that's going to freak everybody out, very clickworthy. But I didn't feel like it was a scenario where I had all the facts that I knew exactly what evidence that I can present or information I could present that would change the management, if you will, for the average person.

DW: Does every doctor need to be a creator now? 

MV: I have a hot take on this. I used to say that I think more doctors, if not all doctors or science creators, need to be on social media, and I've walked that back. I actually don't think everyone should aim to be a creator. However, I think we should all be influencers and lean in and own the title of being an influencer. If you don't want to do it with a capital “I,” do it with a lowercase “i.” Be an influencer to your children. Be an influencer to your classroom. Be an influencer at the local YMCA group, at your local church group. 

There are ways to influence people where you don't need to change a million people's minds all at once.

This Q+A is part of Verified, a newsletter that is published by Washington Post Creator, a new business outside The Washington Post’s newsroom that is focused on the creator economy and content partnerships with independent creators. Learn more about Washington Post Creator.