Snake Oil on the Shopping List? How Pseudoscience Ends Up in Your Shopping Cart – Dr Rebecca Wismeg Kammerlander

Skeptics in the Pub Online Podcast

From biodynamic veggies to detox cures, our supermarkets are full of products that are pure woo. One moment you’re picking up cold medicine, the next you’re eyeing a bottle of homeopathic sugar pearls. You finally decide to get started with a skin care routine, a moment later your money ends up in the pocket of an anthroposophical brand. And those carrots … are they just organic or are they grown in tune with moon cycles and fertilized with some magic concoction made of a shit-stuffed cow horns? Let’s unpick why pseudoscience is so at home among ordinary goods like apples and aspirin and why, at times, products that are gobbledygook end up in the shopping baskets of even the savviest skeptical minds.

Rebecca is an Austrian Studies Scholar who one day woke up as a marketing executive. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London, where she has previously been a lecturer in German and European Studies, as well as a literature enthusiast and a material culture geek. Her main areas of interest are Austrian literature and culture, consumer culture, and the construction and portrayal of identities. In her PhD research (completed in 2021 at King's) she examined consumer objects, identities, and author brands in post-2000 Austrian literature, unpicking the emergence of the national brand of Austria and introducing the concept of ""Consumer Literacy"" - the skill of reading the narrative value of consumer objects - to literature research.

The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.