About this episode
Turn online alignment into an offline community — join us at TheWayFwrd.com to connect with like-minded people near you.Click here to get an exclusive discount to our Birthing Instincts Podcast Patreon membership. Use promo code ALECZECK50 for half off your first month, excluding our Medical Professionals Level. This Patreon is a great way to get additional content and support from Dr. Stu and the entire Birthing Instincts family.No animal in nature needs to be taught how to give birth. So why have we convinced human mothers they do?In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Stu Fischbein, an obstetrician who spent more than two decades attending hospital births before stepping outside the system to examine it more closely. After years working in highly structured medical environments, he began asking a difficult question: why hasn’t more intervention led to better outcomes?Modern approaches to birth and healthcare have drifted from basic human biology, and how fear, liability, and protocol often replace judgment and trust. This isn’t a debate about extremes—it’s a grounded look at how medical intervention, when applied by default, can create cycles that are hard to escape.We also touch on trusting your body, the loss of autonomy in healthcare, and why outcomes haven’t meaningfully improved despite more technology, more testing, and more control. The patterns we unpack here don’t stop with medicine—they show up anywhere systems replace thinking.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[01:43] How birth was medicalized through vilifying midwives and destroying natural practices[12:25] The takeover of obstetrics training and the relegation of OB-GYNs to gatekeepers, while outcomes worsened[18:29] Dr. Stu’s shift from classical training to questioning everything [33:33] Why we need to educate 13-15 y
