Neen suffers from chronic pain due to mixed connective tissue disease, with features of rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, scleroderma and myositis. In this discussion, she talks about some of her frustrations when seeking help from physiotherapists. Neen feels that Explain Pain and Pain Neuroscience Education type approaches have been harmful, rather than helpful, to her and others with secondary pain. She calls on physiotherapists to carefully listen to their patients and to seriously consider whether PNE will be welcome or helpful in each individual case. Evie on twitter: @onlinephysios https://twitter.com/OnlinePhysios Neen on twitter: @ArthriticChick https://twitter.com/ArthriticChick Full blogpost at: https://physiosonline.co.uk/2022/12/dont-explain-pain/ Video at: https://youtu.be/EmqYfK5oitQ

Asaf Weisman is a clinical physiotherapist currently doing a PhD in artificial intelligence and computer vision. He has a particular interest in nociception and pain theory. Evie and Asaf had this discussion following an interview with Lorimer Moseley by Jack Chew on The Physio Matters Podcast. You can watch that interview here https://youtu.be/xUBA7qQJ6vk Asaf responds to some points made by Lorimer in the TPMP interview, and we discuss more broadly the topics of nociception, pain science and the treatment of chronic pain by physiotherapists.

Jo Baxter is a physiotherapist and member of the "Physios Giving Well" community - a group of physios who donate monthly to GiveWell's top rated,  most effective and evidence-based charities. As a community Physios Giving Well aims to raise money for *effective* charities and to spread the idea of Effective Altruism in the healthcare community. Twitter: @onlinephysios About Physios Giving Well: https://physiosonline.co.uk/2022/05/why-were-giving-well/

Sue Julians is physiotherapist who has written a book about her experiences of Covid lockdown and the effects it had on her business and family. Sue is Director and Practice Principal at Barbican Physio in London. In this interview we discuss Why and how she wrote her book Her experiences of using twitter The positives and negatives of social media The effect of lockdown on her business, family and mental health Writing as catharsis The effect of lockdowns on her own and others' children Sue's favourite author Elif Shafak, the book Sue mentions is https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43706466-10-minutes-38-seconds-in-this-strange-world Effective Altruism The challenges and importance of being an ethical consumer  Being part of the Physios Giving Well community https://physiosonline.co.uk/2022/05/why-were-giving-well/

Dr. Akhil Bansal is a doctor who set up the effective altruism-inspired organisation "High Impact Medicine" (https://www.highimpactmedicine.org/). Their aim is "bringing together medics who want to have a wide reaching positive impact". He is currently working as a research analyst for Charity Entrepreneurship. In this interview we discuss The concept of Effective Altruism and how this may resonate with healthcare providers such as doctors and physiotherapists Charitable giving in general, and the drive to help others Akhil's background and upbringing and how this may have impacted his tendency to be drawn to EA The reality of what it means for children to die from infectious disease Akhil's hopes for Hi-Med and his ambition to build a community where doctors can support and inspire each other to do as much good as possible Some book recommendations that have nothing to do with EA Links and resources:  HI-Med https://www.highimpactmedicine.org/: "High Impact Medicine, Hi-Med, is a new movement bringing together medical students and doctors to learn more about all the ways medics can help as many people as possible in their careers and engage with opportunities to have a wide-reaching positive impact within medicine". Charity Entrepreneurship: https://www.charityentrepreneurship.com/akhil-bansal  The Physios Giving Well fledgling community: https://physiosonline.co.uk/2022/05/why-were-giving-well/  GiveWell - How much does it cost to save a life? https://www.givewell.org/cost-to-save-a-life  Akhil's article on the Effective Altruism Forum: "High Impact Medicine, 6 months later - Update & Key Lessons"https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TapN3wYhBJPFNBiGN/high-impact-medicine-6-months-later-update-and-key-lessons  Book Recommendations (not EA-related):  "Open" by Andre Agassi "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro "Piranesi" by Susanna Clarke To learn more about High Impact Medicine or join their community, go to highimpactmedicine.org To learn more about Physios Giving Well and join our community, go to https://physiosonline.co.uk/2022/05/why-were-giving-well/ or find us on twitter @onlinephysios and say something like "I'm in" :)

Tom Jesson is the author of a popular book "Sciatica", and is currently finishing work on his second book "Cauda Equina Syndrome" with co-author Rob Tyer. In this interview, we don't talk about sciatica or cauda equina syndrome.

Physios Giving Well is a community of physios who donate to GiveWell's Maximum Impact Fund and promote the principles of Effective Altruism. JOIN US!  Read about our project here https://physiosonline.co.uk/2022/05/why-were-giving-well/ See also: givewell.org effectivealtruism.org https://physiosonline.co.uk/2022/05/why-were-giving-well/

Marcus Daniell is a professional tennis player and Olympic medallist, whose organisation "High Impact Athletes" connects athletes with the most effective, evidence-based charities in the world In this chat Evie & Marcus discuss the topic of Effective Altruism and the inspiration behind Marcus's decision to set up High Impact Athletes. Also available as Vodcast at https://youtu.be/rVNDbT_kJSA 1:20 How Marcus got involved with the effective altruism movement "It just blew my mind how much sense it made" 3:23 "High Impact Athletes is the vehicle that I've created to try to be the best advocate for EA ideas as possible" 4:00 The significance of GiveWell "What GiveWell offers us is the most certainty we can possibly have in this space that our dollar is doing exactly what it should". 6:33 Confidence in GiveWell's process including their transparency about making mistakes, and the openness to criticism & new evidence in the EA community generally. 7:30 "If I can donate these amounts of money and it doesn't affect my quality of life or my happiness, then I'm not losing anything really, but that amount of money can be life-saving or life-changing for so many people or animals in the world" 9:58 Peter Singer's "Shallow Pond" thought experiment had Evie feeling pretty bad for a while there. Delighted with the recent focus on giving as an amazing opportunity, rather than a moral obligation (even if it is really a moral obligation) 11:30 The problem of relying on empathy to tell us how to do good. An example might be that vastly more money is donated to pet shelters than to organisations working to improve the lives of factory farm animals. 15:20 Marcus' decision to be vegetarian while at a sushi bar in Japan 17:00 Evie was a bit hazy on the details but got the gist of the scanning eggs example right. More about chick culling here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/can-new-technologies-eliminate-grim-practice-of-chick-culling-180977263/ 20:30 Evie & Marcus' views on Longtermism. The podcast episode mentioned by Marcus: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/alexander-berger-improving-global-health-wellbeing-clear-direct-ways/ More about Longtermism here https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/longtermism 23:50 An appeal to Messi, Neymar, The Williams Sisters, Lewis Hamilton, and whichever other athletes Evie can name (i.e. the very famous ones) to check out High Impact Athletes! https://highimpactathletes.org/ See the blogpost at https://physiosonline.co.uk/2022/05/high-impact-athletes-with-pro-tennis-player-marcus-daniell/ And the video interview at https://youtu.be/rVNDbT_kJSA

Lee Schneider is a PhD candidate studying pain and predictive processing at the University of Notre Dame in Perth, Australia.   This conversation was inspired by my earlier chat with Asaf Weisman, in one of the previous podcasts or available to view here https://youtu.be/j_0di-4Vaw4.   In this discussion, we talk about Lee's agreements and disagreements with Asaf's perspective, the debate about whether pain is a sensation or a perception, the predictive processing model, and many other topics.  The conversation was a lot of fun and we rambled all over the place, so there are some jarring cuts/edits in some places. Many thanks Lee.  For notes and timestamps see the video at https://physiosonline.co.uk/2022/04/a-conversation-about-pain/ You can follow Lee at https://twitter.com/LSchneiderPT

Evie from PhysiosOnline speaks with Asaf Weisman, pain researcher at Tel-Aviv University. We discuss some of Asaf's reflections around the subject of pain and pain science, including: Pain is not a thing Pain is a sensation, not a perception The brain as an "overstressed blue-collar worker" Is pain neuroscience education (PNE) based on a fairytale His study finding that a majority of people do not like being told "Explain Pain" material PNE is metaphysical conjectures, not truth The concept of "Coming Back To The Answer". In Judaism, people who are secular and want to go back to religion; they call this process "Coming Back To The Answer" because if you believe in God, you always have an answer for everything. The importance of neuroinflammation on human disease and health Reductionism Asaf's "Doomsday Prophecy" - "Within 5 decades, physiotherapists are not going to treat persistent pain states any more. We've got nothing to offer for these patients."Why am I in pain?" I cannot answer this question, and no-one will ever be able to answer this question. - Asaf Weisman View the video at Youtube and follow us at: https://youtu.be/j_0di-4Vaw4 Follow Asaf at: https://twitter.com/AsafKlaf Visit his website at: https://painlosophy.wordpress.com