Speaker 1: It was a vision that came to me in twenty
twelve to create a podcast network. Twenty twelve, it's twenty
twenty six. Now look how many years it took to
put together your power of choice. That's what aero dot
net is, a r r OE dot net, nineteen different
podcasts and growing. Like vocal dfrag, we always ask questions,
but do you ever question the answers. This is a
serious question with some really fun results. Vocal dfrag on
aero dot net a r r o e dot net.
Enjoy your exploration. Hello, and good morning party people. Hi Aero,
how are you fantastic? Listen to your voice? Man? Man,
how did you get so in tuned so early on
a Monday?
Speaker 2: I get up early. I have a lot of coffee.
Speaker 1: See that's what it's all about. That's the secret, isn't it.
These people that sleep in man, you know at what
they need to do is wake up at six o'clock
in the morning and grab your book.
Speaker 2: Oh I appreciate that. Yeah, I hope that's right.
Speaker 1: Well, don't you think your book is a great way
to start off your day? Either that or or a
moment in your day where you can say I need
to cut myself off from the from the the rigamaru
of the social media as well as the headlines, and
I need to just listen to somebody who has a message,
and that's that's you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's hard to turn off to social
media in the mornings or even in the afternoons. But
I'm thrilled to have written this book and I'm super
excited to talk with you about it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm excited to find out how you even came
up with this title, because you know the title of
a book, that's where everybody goes to judge the author.
Oh and then you got to go through the editor first.
As I go, hope, please, I just need the journey
to get it out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so true.
Speaker 3: And you know, the pain Brokers was not actually the
original title of this book, as you can well imagine.
So I had actually started off with the Body Shop,
but my publishers were worried that people would get confused,
is it about automobiles?
Speaker 2: Is it about cosmetic?
Speaker 3: So we settled on the pain Brokers, and I think
they were absolutely right.
Speaker 2: I think it conveys the message really well.
Speaker 1: See it's moments like that that really does remind me
of of kind of like what Mark Twain used to say,
is that that we want to break it down, break
it down, break it down, and simplify everything, that we
might as well just go back to just going uggug
and they would know what we're saying, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't understand that, Yeah, but you know it does.
It brings it in line with some of these great
works by Patricrad and Keith Empire of Pain and Barry
Meyer Painkiller, which are both about the opioid epidemic. And
this isn't about the opioid epidemic, but it is about
another mass to it, like the opioid epidemic.
Speaker 1: So to have that honesty in this world where you're
supposed to be going, oh, I'm going to look this
other way. You did not, Elizabeth, look the other way
on this subject.
Speaker 2: No, I looked straight at it.
Speaker 3: And I've been writing about this for I mean, as
an academic for twenty some odd years. But as will
not surprise you at all, nobody really cares about what
academics say. So I wanted to talk about this to
a larger audience, and I went back to school and
got an MFA in Narrative nonfiction and wrote this book
along the way so that I could tell these stories
in a way that would really resonate with people.
Speaker 1: See I see that as being a soundtrack to your life,
because A you're not getting that time back, and B
when people say, what were you doing, Well, here's what
I was doing and look at the effects.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. You know, I think, you know,
scholars play an important role. And the difficulty in this
world that I write in is that the key stakeholders,
the people you're trying to convince to change, all have
a vested interest in the status quo. So if I
really wanted to create some sort of change in this world,
then I needed for the general public to understand why
this is so problematic.
Speaker 1: So what was it like for you to fit inside
the bookstore? Because we're talking about a book that's easily
a public service style book, but at the same time
it's a thriller. Where does that end up at Barnes
and Noble?
Speaker 2: You know, that's a good question.
Speaker 3: I've only seen it at the Barnes and Noble here
in town, and it was, you know, on the front
because I was a local author. But you know, I
think it's it's somewhere in maybe history. It's not quite
current events because it happened a couple of years ago,
although very much of this is happening still today, so
it could be current events. It's also true crime, so
you know, it's it'll be interesting to see where it
lands on the bookshelves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean my experience with that when when
I went in there and found it in my first
book in what's called New Age Religion, I went, what, well, no, no, no,
that's no no, and they wouldn't change it out of there.
I said, oh god, I guess I have to work
with this now.
Speaker 3: Right right, Yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see
where it lands. It's it's hard for these kinds of
narrative nonfiction books to really find a home because they're
not memoirs, they're not biographies. They're kind of history but
not quite history. And and so it's there, they're a
little bit of misfits in the bookstores.
Speaker 1: This is the style of book my wife wants to
read because she wants to have that experience of, oh
my god, this could really happen. I mean, that's what
she loves in a story like this, because it comes
with history. It gives her a chance to take a
break to go look something up that it might look
just like it or it is just like it. Because
I mean, you're talking about Sharon, Barbara and Jerry here,
three women who have been targeted, manipulated and violated. Now
you have the attention of the people. There's your true crime.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, and this is you know, it's
something this happened in the past. It involved Pelvic mesh
and some cold calls to jar and Sherry, Sharon and
Barb telling them that they had a ticking time bomb
in them that they had to have it taken out immediately.
And you know, the callers had all of the information
that you would normally expect to raise your red flag.
So you know, they're not asking for information about their
birthdays or their implant dates. They already have all that
information available at their fingertips through a data breach in India,
and so it sounded very legitimate.
Speaker 1: You know we're talking about You woke me up in
the way that I'm so tired of getting these phone
calls because and I work with con artists all the time,
because one of my favorite things to do in life
is to do jobs that people don't want to do.
And so one day I decided, I'm going to go
work at a grocery store because I saw it on TV.
These two old guys at a grocery store, and they
look like that they're community connected. And so when I
sit here and I read about con men and call
centers and rogue doctors, I'm going I live this every
day because they're coming through my store.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're coming through people's lives. You know, there
was an opportunity to there was, you know, hundreds of
thousands of women who started suing over this product. And
the lawyers and the doctors and the middlemen realized that
they were sitting on a gold mine and if only
they could convince women to have the product removed, that
it would increase the value of the settlement for them
and not necessarily for the women. And so the machine
started to grind, grind up.
Speaker 1: Doesn't this open up the door for people to say,
I knew it only because when it comes to America's
lawsuit factory. When I had my heart attack at forty seven,
I accused my doctor of faking it because they were
just looking for business. And even more recently, when another
doctor told me, well, I need you to lose weight
to get your cholesterol down, and I do it, he says, oh,
there must be a bigger problem. And I'm going, what
are you doing here? And then I come across you
here America's lawsuit factory. I'm going, oh, my god, am
I a victim? And are we victims? Just like Sharon
Barbara and Jerry Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the big question.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of this was based on
trust or lack of you know, maybe trust that shouldn't
have been placed in these doctors. I know one of
the reasons that so many women got exploited, and this
was the doctors were very dismissive of their pelvic pain.
So they would go and talk to their doctors and say,
you know, something's wrong, something's poking me, something's terrible happening,
and the doctors would just sort of wave their hands
and say, everything looks fine to us. And so when
these callers called and said, well, you know, doctors don't understand.
They're not on the cutting edge of this. There are
only a few doctors in the country who can do this.
We'll set up an appointment to fly you down to
see them.
Speaker 2: It resonated with a lot of these.
Speaker 1: People, Please do not move. There's more with Elizabeth Chamblee
Birch coming up next. The name of your new book,
The pain Brokers. Elizabeth Chamblee Birch, you went through two
hundred and nine thousand pages of evidence. I don't know
how you do it, but the thing is is that
I respect you for doing it because I thought I
was a research pig, and then when I find out
about this from you, I'm going I want to be
like Elizabeth. I want to have that courage and that
confidence to say there's a story here and we're going
to find it.
Speaker 3: Well, it is digging for that needle in a haystack,
and you have these like wonderful you know, just when
you get so discouraged and you're like, oh, there's nothing
that I can find, then you find that thing that
you weren't supposed to find, and it's just these amazing
aha moments that happened along the way that keep you going,
and you know, you feel a little bit like a detective.
Speaker 2: It's really wonderful.
Speaker 1: But isn't this con job also involving lawyers as well?
Because how many times have we seen those commercials on TV.
If you've had the hernia mesh, you could be in trouble.
Now I'm going, well, why am I going to the
doctor if the doctor says you got to do it?
And these guys are saying, well, you're going to screw
up if you do it. I mean you're caught right
in the middle of the quarter of walk and don't walk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you really are.
Speaker 3: And so much of it falls on us as consumers
to try to do the research to figure out is
this the right thing for me? You know, lawyers were
very much involved in this as well, and there was
a kind of a loophole in Washington, d C. It
started because lobbyists, I think, wanted to go on the
cloak of privilege with lawyers.
Speaker 2: But in DC you can start a law firm.
Speaker 3: With non lawyer partners as long as you have a
single DC lawyer who's willing to be your front man.
And so there was a call center that created a
partnership with a DC law firm and instead of selling
these quote unquote leads for clients, was actually able to
get in on the contingency fees.
Speaker 1: Oh, Elizabeth, you have woken up the bear here because
I'll tell you what it's happened to my wife and I.
And you're right about the you know, those call centers
in the way that it just seems like when doctors
see something that they that needs to be looked at,
why are we getting phone calls from four and five
different businesses? I mean to go get an MRI. There
must have been seven or eight phone calls for people saying,
I can get you in, I can get you in.
I'm going, is there anybody here that that that has
actually worked with me or talked with me? I mean,
you you're such an eye opening situation here with the
pain brokers.
Speaker 3: It is, and you know, the troubling part about it
was all these sort of side scams that I found
as I was going along.
Speaker 2: You know, you have these.
Speaker 3: Chiropractic clinics that are trying to you know, have lawyers
in house next door to the chiropractor and send their
you know, car accident victim over and some of them
are subjected to unnecessary surgeries to do the same sort
of thing. But you know, you have to pick the
story that you can tell and that you can write
about in a coherent way. And it's it's really disturbing
how much of this continues to go on?
Speaker 1: Are we a weak people? Because and the reason why
I bring that up is because I was always I
was angry when my parents ended up at the doctor,
like almost every day of the week. I'm going, what
are you doing? And are we weak? Or is it
that we just want to feel better?
Speaker 3: You know, I think people just want to feel better,
and you know, they don't always have the education, and
so we trust people who are educated and who are
supposed to be acting on our behalf. And there are
wonderful doctors out there, are wonderful lawyers out there who
are very much trying to do good in the world.
And so you know, the key is finding the right
group of doctors and lawyers who can help you instead
of bringing you additional pain.
Speaker 1: So, as a creative person, as the published author and
somebody who's connected to a publishing company, how do you
get somebody like chat GPT to get you on their
list when it comes because you know people are going
there to get answers, And how do we get the
pain brokers up there? How are you guys working on that?
Speaker 2: You mean, how are we getting it out into the world?
Speaker 1: Because I mean, because when I go to chat GPT,
I want answers and so and I think I think
the pain Brokers is an answer. But it's like, Okay,
we can put it up on TikTok, but where's everybody going.
And obviously everybody's going to chat GPT because they want
to put advertising on it now, They're not going to
do it if the people aren't there. And so it's like,
how do we get Elizabeth out there to where there
is something that we can choose from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, that's the real challenge, is
to try to break through the noise of things that
are going on every day. It's one of the reasons
I was so excited to talk with you is because
you know, you want people to be able to hear
about it.
Speaker 2: You want to get it out into the world.
Speaker 3: You want it to be part of the rhythms of
the daily life and to come up for people in
their searches and to come up as a reliable source
of information. But it is, I mean, it is a
real challenge to break through everything that's going on horribly
in the world and to try to get people to
focus on this for a minute.
Speaker 1: Well, my fear has always been the moments after we've
all dealt with a doctor Christopher, because we've all had
a doctor Christopher.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you all have these. It's it's this trusting
of your gut. And I think, you know, part of
the situation that these women found themselves in is that
they were flown, you know, thousands of miles to a
kind of an eerie twilight zone chiropractic outpatient clinic in
South Florida, and then they were you know, kind of
sucked into the machine at that point. So it's like,
you know, can you stop and say, no, this doesn't
feel right to me, I'm backing out of this. And
I think a lot of the women didn't feel like
they could do that at that point.
Speaker 1: Oh. I had a rotator cuff doctor get so pissed
off at me inside the office because he wanted to
do the surgery. And I said, no, you're wrong. If
this is my body, I know what I feel, I'm
going to go with what I feel. And he literally,
in lettering, big letters, in his own handwriting, said do
not invite this patient back here again.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it is very much about trusting
your instincts, about standing up for yourself, you know, just
about listening to your gut and saying this isn't right,
this isn't what I want to do for my body.
Speaker 1: How are you going to change the world now? In
other words, is your book is out, do you go
on a speaking engagement? How are you are Do you
go out and teaching some of these universities that that
are part of not only the educational field of lawyers,
but doctors as well.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting that we've had the first few
events for the Pain Brokers last week, since the book
has been out in the world for just less than
a week now, and I've already been contacted by our
med school. We have a brand new med school here
at the University of Georgia that's just starting up, and
you know, thinking about ways that we can partner with
them to talk about ethics and the medical profession. I
of course teach a third of our incoming class at
the University of Georgia School of Law to talk to
them about turts and civil procedure, and then I teach
advanced mass Torts and complex litigation. And then my hope
is that they go out into the world. You know,
a lot of them are clerking for judges and working
in these big law firms, and you know, between that
and talking with the public, I hope that we can
slowly start to tip the scales.
Speaker 1: God, I would love to see you at you and
CC or even even Queen's College or for that matter,
CPCC with their world and how they're changing people on
the community level. You know, you get into the soul
of where the community is and all of a sudden, Elizabeth,
you're changing people's lives.
Speaker 2: Well. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: And I'll be up at Davidson at Main Street Books
in February. I don't know, that's a little bit of
a hike for me, for you, Yeah, from Charlotte.
Speaker 1: It's just up forty five. It's not that big of
a hike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm excited about that.
Speaker 3: I'm talking with the director of writing at Davidson who's
also a professor in gender studies, and you know, it's
open to the public. We'd love to have people there,
particularly from around the Charlotte area, and just really excited
to get this book out there. You know, I'm not
doing a ton of in person, but if people invite me,
I'm happy to come. And if people are doing book clubs.
I'm happy to pop in over Zoom just to kind
of do a quick Q and A if people have questions.
Speaker 1: Do me a favor. When you go to Davidson, that
is the home of Steph Curry, You've got to go
see you, I know, Oh my god, go see what
that man has done to that campus and how it
inspires everything beyond today.
Speaker 2: I can't wait. I'm excited.
Speaker 3: I went and toured Davidson when I was an undergrad
or thinking about going to school. That was a long
long time ago, so I'm sure it's changed a whole
lot since then.
Speaker 1: Well I don't know how you guys would even pay
attention if you were in class with Lake Norman up there,
because there's just way too much going on when it
comes to mother nature.
Speaker 2: I bet, I bet. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I didn't end up going to Davidson, but it was
a beautiful campus and the people were there were just lovely.
Speaker 2: So I'm excited to have a chance to go back.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you?
And how can we keep this conversation growing? This cannot
be a oh January twenty twenty six kind of a conversation.
Speaker 3: No, I hope it'll start, you know, spark beginning of
a movement. So my website is my long and convoluted
name at www dot Elizabeth Shamblyccha m bl e E
birch bu rch dot com. But if you just google
The Pain Brokers, I'll come up. It's probably easier to remember.
And I'm on Instagram and you know all the social
media that's out there these days trying to get out
and talk about the book and how it affects everyone.
Speaker 1: See, I'm shocked that you're not doing a radio show
doing this because I mean, it worked for doctor Lore,
it worked for all these other people that would get
on there and play the music. But then you could
sit there and say, now here's something we're going to
talk about today. Blah blah blah blah blah. You've just
got that type of personality where it's like that was
a beautiful song, but now, how can we incorporate something
into your day.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love that idea.
Speaker 3: Maybe I can I can do that for you know,
the Pain Broker's two point zero. But for now I'm
just excited to leave that to you and to talk
to you about it.
Speaker 1: Wow, well you've got to come back to this show
anytime in the future. Twenty minutes with you is not enough.
Speaker 2: Well, I would love that. I'd love to come back.
Speaker 3: There's you know, there's so much to this story and
there's so much to mask towarts. I mean, you know,
right now, the GLP one litigation is just gearing up.
All the people who are finding out that we go
via nozimpic isn't the dream that they hoped it might be,
or beginning to sue. There's three thousand of those lawsuits
and two hundred and fifty more being fouled every month.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm worried about what's going to happen there.
Speaker 1: You're scaring the Butjbi's out of that one because, in
all honesty, so that I could keep my life in
order when it comes to diabetes. I'm the one that
gives my wife her ozimpic every week. Yeah, and then
you and then I read about this inside the book
and I'm going, oh, for the love of Pete, Oh
what's going on? What do I need to watch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, it can be a wonderful drug
for many people.
Speaker 3: It's just that there are occasional side effects, and you know,
there's these questions.
Speaker 2: Like we think about you know, you think back.
Speaker 3: To Finn Finn, which was a massive disaster, but it was,
you know, a hugely popular drug and it was alleged
to have caused enlarge heart valves and the people who
used it, and then the you know, the pain brokers
came in and there were vans outside of hotels with
echo cardiograms in them, and people lined up to have
their echo cardiograms read within a minute to decide if
they were potential plaintiffs in a lawsuit.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, So you have got the courage to
march right through this dang mountain, and because I'm sure
there are people that are standing in your way saying, Elizabeth,
don't go there, but I have to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean these are stories that nobody really
wants told. So I'm not the most popular person in
the room, but i am excited to tell the stories.
And they're important and they're important for people to hear.
So I'm grateful for the chance to do that. Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, once again, please come back to the show anytime
in the future. The door is always going to be
open for you.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm so grateful to you, Ero, thanks so much
for having me on.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, you do the same. Thank you so much.