Bonus: The Bastards of Oprah

This is a bonus episode of our Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, and John of God episodes aka the bastards of Oprah episodes stitched together with limited ad breaks See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:03Robert Evans?

  Hey, everybody. Robert here, and if you've been paying attention, we just finished six episodes on Oprah Winfrey. And obviously, that dealt with a lot of the most toxic things about her career in media and her show. But as I noted a couple of times, we didn't go into much detail about three of the worst things she's been involved with: Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and John of God, because we had done two-parters of those. Well, given that all of those were, you know, a year or more old, in some cases, older than that, we made the decision to run them as one big episode as a bonus. You know, you're not getting less original content, obviously, but we clipped these

• 1:47Robert Evans?

  together as one big episode so that there's a lot less ads. So you can kind of listen through this story of all of the very worst people associated to Oprah with fewer ads than you'd heard before. So take a listen, my friends, and yeah, I love you. Go to hell.

• 2:12Robert Evans?

  Robert Evans, Behind the Bastards Podcast. This is Introduction Not Very Good.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  I liked it.

• 2:20Robert Evans?

  Thank you, Sophie. Thank you for lying about it being a good introduction. But you know what is good, certainly better than my introduction, is our guest for today, Mr. Andrew T.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  Fuck yeah. What's up? I'm alive. Can't kill me yet.

• 2:37Robert Evans?

  Nope, nope, can't. So you have made it through the Rona so far, Andrew.

• 2:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:43Robert Evans?

  I have to say, your hair looks as badly in need of a cut as mine does.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. I, I can't decide, are you, I'm like debating whether to just shoot the moon and grow it to like donateable lengths.

• 2:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, fuck yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  Or shave my head. I don't know. It's, it's unpleasant. It's, it's at the very unpleasant point of the growth, like it like

• 3:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I hate it.

• 3:09Speaker 04

  Sticks to the back of my neck. It's fucking disgusting.

• 3:11Robert Evans?

  It's terrible. But we could do, what if we did like a locks of love thing, but instead of for people who need hair, it's for like weird horny people on the internet?

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we raise money for some charity. I don't know what kind of charity, like, uh, Bombs Not Food, maybe? That sounds like a charity.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  I mean, it could be like sort of an OnlyFans situation.

• 3:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  The recording of people cutting it will be, will be useful to somebody.

• 3:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that'll be ASMR for some very weird person.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:42Robert Evans?

  And, yeah. So Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, as a general rule, when you and I get together, we talk about a horrific story of colonial genocide.

• 3:55Robert Evans?

  Which is what our friendship has been based on up until this point.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Even before the podcast, that's the fucked up part.

• 4:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I would just call you randomly in the middle of the night and be like, have you heard about what they did to Haiti?

• 4:08Speaker 04

  And I'd be like, nope. Let's hear it.

• 4:12Robert Evans?

  Today, though, today we have a story that's horrible, really, really horrible. But it's actually a little bit of a reverso because it's like, in part, the story of this weird belief system from Europe being adopted, uh, honestly by people in a colonized nation, and then used to justify horrific misbehavior on behalf of cult leaders. So that's kinda cool. Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Cool. New shit.

• 4:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I guess you could call it a type of, I don't know, I don't even know what to call this. It's a real motherfucker of a story, though. This is the tale of John of God. Have you ever heard of John of God?

• 4:52Speaker 04

  I've heard of neither John nor God, so no, no John of God.

• 4:56Robert Evans?

  Now, people might be confused. There's an actual, like, Jesus-y guy, like, a Catholic person called John of God. I think he's a saint or some shit. This is not that guy. Uh, this is a modern, uh, spiritual medical grifter, uh, repeatedly endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, who turned out to be a mass rapist, uh, and possibly a baby farmer. So that is, uh, that's what we're getting into today.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  You're welcome, Andrew for booking.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Fuck.

• 5:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me, Jesus Christ.

• 5:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah, uh, yep, it's, it's gonna be an interesting tale today. But before we get into John of God's story, we have to go back in history to the mid 1800s and to a man with, uh, what I would have to say is one of the most unreasonably cool names I've ever come across in my research. Are you ready for this name? You're not ready for this name. Nobody's ready for this fucking name. Hippolyte Leon Denisard Reval. That is a fucking name. Hippolyte Leon Denisard Reval, that is a fucking name, like, goddamn.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  So, what a, I like, like going, like, subtle on the, on the final landing. It's just like, yeah, we could do it normal. We can do it normal.

• 6:11Robert Evans?

  I like that. Fully 50% of his four names sound like Pokemon.

• 6:18Robert Evans?

  I've got a Hippolyte, I've got a Denizard. It's fucking rules. So Hippolyte Leon Denizard Revell was a French educator and he wrote under the markedly less cool pen name Alan Cardex, which I don't understand. If you're Hippolyte Leon Denizard Revell, you lean into that shit. This guy did not know what was clickable. Very frustrating.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  That's wild.

• 6:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's giving, speaking as a guy who's named after fucking the Godfather guy, like, and like, that's, that, you don't give up the gift of a name that cool. Very frustrating. So anyway, under the boring name Alan Cardex, he wrote a series of books about spirits. And Cardex's core contention was that all living animals were inhabited by immortal spirits that bounced around from body to body over the ceaseless aeons. Cardex also believed that spirits could become disembodied through a variety of causes and that these free spirits could impact the world in positive and negative ways. Cardex's theories became the religion of spiritism, which is still practiced around the world today. And it is particularly popular for reasons I don't really understand in Brazil. It has something

• 7:24Robert Evans?

  like 3 million adherents there.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 7:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  That is... I guess it, it's, it's sort of like a French version of sort of like an animist type religion, right? There's...

• 7:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I, I think, I think you're, you're, you're very keen to recognize that because I suspect it has a lot to do with that. And usually spiritism winds up being kind of like a spiritist Christian hybrid. And it does, you're right, it kind of does, because a lot of these places had sort of animist traditions prior to Europeans coming in and fucking shit up. And so spiritism felt like this kind of genuine synthesis of these old traditions with, you know, the new Christianity. I think you're probably on to something there.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  I guess that's kind of the shit that happened with like Catholicism, you know, in, in South America where it basically became, saints became a pantheon.

• 8:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Or the polytheism. It's like, yeah, it's fine. Just a slight demotion and they're, everyone's the same.

• 8:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's whatever. So, we don't hear a lot about spiritism today in the United States. And probably the reason why is that a sizable number of what were originally the religion's chief pillars have just become normal facets of like fringe spirituality. Like a lot of stuff that was originally part of this spiritualism religion that Kardak cooked up, just kind of became things that like people who like crystals all believe.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:48Robert Evans?

  Um, yeah, and even Christianity, kind of like mainstream evangelical Christianity in the United States has even absorbed a number of spiritist beliefs, or at least different Christian cults around the world have done that. Uh, and in a number of places, including Brazil, this has led to spiritual healers becoming a very big deal. Spiritual healers are individuals who claim to be able to carry out magical healing sessions because their bodies act as conduits for dead medical doctors, saints, and sometimes just God himself. Now, in the United States, this is often seen in Pentecostal communities, who I talk about a lot because people need to know more about them. They do, have you ever seen like spiritual surgery sessions?

• 9:28Speaker 04

  Oh shit, um, I feel like I, I can imagine it, but I can't think of one. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  It's kind of like, like laying on of hands type shit and...

• 9:39Robert Evans?

  Laying on of hands, but then they'll like pull their hands away. They'll be like, "Oh, there's a tumor inside you, the god, the, the devil's put a tumor around your heart." And they'll pull their hands away and they'll have like a bunch of bloody pieces of meat in their hands. And it's almost, it's, it's always like chicken or something. Like they get guts from like an animal and they do sleight of hand, like magician shit to make it look like they're kind of like that guy in Temple of Doom pulling out, you know, deceased organs. Um, yeah, like that's, that's a big thing in the United States. Um, and it's, it's, it's cool. It's a big thing in the parts of the United States that I'm going to guess most people don't know anything about. Like most Americans would be like, "This isn't a big thing in the United States, but you're wrong."

• 10:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it is, it is like nice how the state of the art of like 16th century magic has kind of remained the same. It's like, if you can palm a chicken heart, you can get away with a lot.

• 10:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the most important thing to realize about just the world is that people have never been dumber than they are now, and they have never been smarter than they are now. Human intelligence, regardless of the actual amount of knowledge that exists, is a flat plane.

• 10:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, spiritual surgery is a thing that happens here in the United States, and it's a thing that happens all over the world. The various kinds of spiritual healing traditions have existed since time immemorial. There's like a whole tradition of it over in India that has nothing to do with Christianity. It's like shit like this has been happening for thousands of years, right? But over in Brazil, a combination of spiritism and Christianity has created a thoroughly unique tradition of what is generally called psychic surgery. Now, unlike most similar traditions around the world, in Brazil, this psychic surgery often includes real cutting, with surgeons using actual knives on the eyes and bodies of their patients. So that's a cool wrinkle.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  What? That's fucking crazy. Oh, God. I mean, I guess it's like, on some level, it's gotta be a little bit similar to like, you know, an alchemy thing, where it's like, you know, sometimes the problem is just a little bloodletting is needed, or like, pressure's building up, and like, that will work occasionally.

• 11:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and it's kind of like, you know, people who, for like, whatever reason, because of like, a depressive disorder, cut themselves. Like, they feel, like, they tend to feel relief for one reason or another, and it's like, because it releases endorphins and stuff. So like, you do that in the context of a powerful religious experience, and it can feel really good to people.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, so, anyway, yeah, the Brazilian to first pioneer this technique was José Pedro de Ferretas, or Zé Arigo. According to his autobiography, an obviously problematic source, he started working at a mine until age 14. In 1950, at age 29, or he started working at a mine at age 14. And in 1950, when he was 29, he began to suffer a series of blinding headaches, followed by hallucinatory trances. This all culminated in his body being taken over by the spirit of a bald, German man in a white apron with a massive team of spectral doctors and nurses at his beck and call. So he was getting like, a whole German surgery team in his head.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  Jesus Christ.

• 13:03Robert Evans?

  Now, this, this magical dead German was Dr. Adolf Fritz, a field medic in the German Army, who died in the trenches in 1918. Um, which is cool. So it's, it's bizarre that like this Brazilian mine worker would choose like, it's gotta be a German field medic. That's, that, but that's, that's what he picks. Um, and I guess we all consider Germans trustworthy. I can't think of anything in history that would make me not trust German doctors. Um, so yeah, that scans. So, uh, together, Dr. Fritz and Zayarigo had a wildly successful 20-year career, performing surgery to adoring audiences of as many as 800 followers at one time. Zayarigo would go into trances and

• 13:46Robert Evans?

  become so taken with the spirit of Dr. Fritz that he would grab random kitchen knives and use them to cut out tumors and the like from his patients. He became known as the surgeon of the rusty knife. And this was not like, uh, nobody was like talking shit at him by calling him this.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  That's, uh, that's like, that's some shit. That's like a prison nickname, the surgeon.

• 14:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that is like a prison nickname. Yeah. Like if you're, if you get like locked up and they're like, oh man, that's the knife, that's the rusty knife surgeon. Like that's the dude you don't want to fuck with. That's like the butcher bill motherfucker, right?

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's incredible. And that's, that was a compliment.

• 14:28Robert Evans?

  Yes, that was a compliment. Yeah. Because like, that's, that's part of the evidence to these people that he's like so clearly holy and sacred is that it doesn't even matter that he's using a rusty knife because, and again, you'll see this throughout the whole episode and all these guys we talk about. Like, part of the thing everybody focuses on is that like, none of his patients feel any pain. None of them get infections, even though, you know, he's just cutting them with a dirty knife. Like, that's how holy this is. Yeah. Uh, so that's cool.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:57Robert Evans?

  You know what?

• 14:58Speaker 04

  It's cool.

• 14:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 14:59Speaker 04

  That, you know, blood of Jesus, that works. It's fine.

• 15:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  Antiseptic largely.

• 15:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the blood of Jesus is profoundly antiseptic. Um, yeah. So he prescribed various medications, generally a mix of herbal remedies and complete nonsense. His patients could redeem their prescriptions at a local pharmacy run by his brother. The height of Zé Arigo's career came when he removed a tumor from a popular senator. He was arrested in 1956 and convicted of practicing medicine without a license, but he was pardoned by the president of Brazil. In 1962, he was arrested and jailed again for the same thing, but the police allowed him to continue healing from his cell. He died wealthy and beloved in 1971 due to an auto accident that his spirits failed to warn him about. So.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. This guy would be like an amazing character in like a Batman video game, I feel like. He feels like real final boss energy.

• 15:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But he's, we're just getting started with Zé Arigo. So Zé Arigo dies and in 1990, this guy Rubens Feria, who's a 44 year old engineer and software salesman, um, kind of looks back at history 19 years and is like, this guy made a fuckload of money. What if I start claiming to channel the spirit of the same dead German guy? So.

• 16:20Robert Evans?

  Next up, Rubens Feria is like, Dr. Fritz is in my head. And he starts like, pretty soon he's attracting crowds of a thousand people every day to this giant hangar style building he buys in Rio de Janeiro. His patients were renowned to feel no pain even when he cut into them and they reportedly never got infections from all of his eyeball scraping and body gouging. Uh, Christopher Reeves is reported to have visited Mr. Feria for healing. Um, it didn't work.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  Boom, too soon, but boom.

• 16:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, I just, I'm not making a joke. It just, it clearly didn't do the trick.

• 16:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, seriously. Damn.

• 16:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I mean, that's a bummer. He seemed like a nice guy, but yeah, this was not the, not the treatment. So, uh, in 1995, Mr. Feria married Rita.

• 17:07Robert Evans?

  Costa, at age 34, he dumped her a few years later for a 19-year-old friend of his daughter's. Mrs. Costa reported her former husband to the police for non-payment of taxes. The police confronted him during a surgery in Rio and arrested his bodyguard for possession of an illegal weapon. That bodyguard then testified that he'd been secretly helping his boss dispose of the corpses of a number of patients who died as a result of Mr. Ferias hacking on their bodies. So it turned out like a bunch of people were dying and getting infected, and his bodyguard was just throwing them in a hole.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  I guess, I was gonna say, like, what does it take to have the confidence to just cut people with a fucking rusty knife? And I guess it is, you just have to, you have to break a few eggs to make a man a gomlet.

• 17:50Robert Evans?

  You know, I've always said, there's no, nothing builds confidence like having a large, heavily armed man willing to dispose of corpses for you. That really, that's all any of us really needs.

• 18:01Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. That's, I guess that's you for most people that I know.

• 18:09Robert Evans?

  I mean, yeah, I, I'll do a little bit of corpse disposal, you know, it's like a, yeah. So, a raid on Rubens Ferias' compound revealed more than 1,000 boxes of conventional prescription medications, suggesting that the spiritual healer was actually practicing traditional medicine, just without a license. He was arrested in jail, but while his district police chief agreed that Ferias needed to be locked up, he still professed a strong belief in the myth of Dr. Fritz, telling The Guardian, "In my opinion, I think that Dr. Fritz does exist, but that Rubens Ferias is doing things that he shouldn't." So, I think he's really channeling this German guy, but that doesn't mean he's not committing crimes, too.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  Oh, my god.

• 18:50Robert Evans?

  Really thread the needle. Thanks, Doc.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. My favorite is, that reminds me a little bit of, um... I've known various people that have gotten out of Scientology. And the worst of them sometimes say shit that is basically akin to like, well, I don't agree with all the homophobia and all the cult stuff, but obviously Xenu is real and, you know, controls our lives through us here, you know, shit like that, where I'm like, you know, it's, it's like, it's just about the practice of it, not like the underlying, like, logic of it. It's amazing.

• 19:22Robert Evans?

  Hey, I mean, you know, I, I, I worship L. Ron Hubbard, not for his spiritual teachings or, or any of the things he wrote about space aliens, but for his ability to get boats full of young people to search for gold that his past life buried. That's

• 19:36Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 19:37Robert Evans?

  That's what I celebrate about LRH. Um, yeah. So, yeah, this all is the background, I think, that's necessary to understand John of God. So, on November 17th, 2010, Oprah magazine writer Susan Casey published an article about her visit to Brazil, where she'd met with the country's new hottest psychic surgeon. Oh, boy. João Tia Cera de Faria, better known as John of God. This sparked a visit by Oprah herself and an avalanche of uncritical positive stories about how cool this new John of God guy was. For the first time, a Brazilian psychic surgeon attracted mass interest outside of Brazil. But foreigners had been trickling into the country for years before that, and

• 20:22Robert Evans?

  one of them, an American named Heather Cummings, wrote a book about John of God, the man who became her guru. It is a thoroughly uncritical work of puffery from a woman who clearly worships her subject. But it's also our best real source, our best source on the early life of John of God. So I'm going to start by reading from that. And I'm going to give the caveat that this information, this is all information that a mass rapist cult leader wanted to convey about his early life. So, you know,

• 20:49Speaker 04

  Noted.

• 20:50Robert Evans?

  Little bit of salt here, here and there. So, João Tixera de Faria was born on June 24th, 1942, in the poor village of, oh boy, Cachoeira de Fumacha, in the state of Goias in central Brazil. His mother, Dona Luca, was a popular member of the community and a dedicated housewife. John of God would later speak highly of his mother, and I have no reason to suspect she wasn't a nice person, other than perhaps the fact that her boy grew up to a mass raping cult leader. The biography of John of God continues, quote, "In the 1940s and 50s, there were no paved roads or infrastructure in this part of Brazil. The roads connecting the towns were dirt, studded with cattle grids, and wound their way through farms and villages. When construction

• 21:33Robert Evans?

  of paved roads began in the late 1950s, João's mother ran a small hotel and cooked for the road workers to augment the family's meager income. João often says that his mother became famous for her delicious cooking. His father was less successful. He was a tailor and owned a laundry business, but money was not great, and young João and his four brothers and one sister lived in constant economic anxiety. Young John had to work from an early age, starting as a cloth cutter in his father's shop at age six. He only attended two years of primary school before economic necessity forced him to end his formal education and take up a series of increasingly brutal jobs." Now, that's what his biography says. That's not the only version of that we have. A 2005 ABC News profile on him notes that based

• 22:16Robert Evans?

  on interviews with people from his hometown, quote, "He is said to have been so rebellious that he was thrown out of school after the second grade and could not keep a job." So, that's a different version of his background.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Sure, sure. Yeah, but either way, shit was, yeah, he had to, he had to do some shit. He got up to some shit and did some shit.

• 22:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and he-

• 22:38Speaker 04

  At the age of seven.

• 22:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and he had basically no school, and he never learns to read or write. That's, that's, that's the important thing here. Yeah, never, not a, not a reader, this guy. So, his biographers, though, claim that he worked many jobs, as a well digger, as a bricklayer, and, you know, generally, they say that he spent his late childhood and early adolescence in hard manual labor. He learned how, he never learned to read or write, but he did learn how to play pool, and this provided him with something of an escape from the dreary existence poverty had forced upon him. John's biographer claims that he was a brilliant natural clairvoyant who earned pocket money by actively prophesizing events at the pool hall.

• 23:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah. This is very funny because she notes that, quote, "After being given money, he would return to the pool hall. He is an excellent pool player to this day, and I can't prove what I'm gonna say next in any way, but my suspicion is that there is a germ of truth to this, but that he's not clairvoyant. John just discovered he had a knack for pool hustling and various forms of cheating that required quick hands and charm. This is a guy who would go up to spend his life doing sleight of hand stuff to giant crowds. The fact that he's a pool hustler as a kid makes total sense." So I think that's what's actually going on here, is he's like, yeah, he learns how to hustle at a pool hall.

• 23:57Speaker 04

  Well, it's also like, you can, the range of predictable items of things that could happen in a pool hall is like, finite and like, less than 30, I would say. I feel like you could just shoot, shoot a lot of shots in the dark and that shit's gonna come true eventually, pretty quickly.

• 24:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, he spends a lot of time as a kid in a pool hall. He learns sleight of hand. He learns how to, how to grift. And yeah, the, the, the, yeah. So, so far, the biographical information that we've got from his, his biography by his follower Heather Cummings, has been broadly reasonable. This changes with this next paragraph. Quote, "He also remembers walking into the fields with the villagers and pointing to roots and plants that would heal their ailments. The first recorded occasion of Joao's paranormal abilities took place when he was nine years old while he was visiting family in the town of Nova Ponte with his mother. It was a beautiful, cloudless day, but Joao had a premonition that a huge storm was coming. He began pointing out houses, including the houses of his brother,

• 24:59Robert Evans?

  and saying that they would be blown down or lose their roofs. He urged his mother to leave before the storm. Although she was not convinced, she humored her son and they sought refuge in a friend's home nearby. Exactly as he had predicted, the thunderstorm appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and badly damaged or destroyed about 40 houses in a small town." And depending on where you find this story, he always claims a different number of houses were destroyed. So, I don't know. Yeah. So he predicts a storm. This is his first, his first case of clairvoyance. But despite being clairvoyant and able to read storms in the sky, he found himself still forced to labor in order to get by. At age 16, he moved to a city, Campo Grande, to try and make a

• 25:41Robert Evans?

  living. He was only successful in fits and starts, and before long, he found himself unemployed and living under a bridge at the edge of town. One day, he headed to the water to bathe, and, John claims, as he approached the water, a beautiful woman called to him and invited him closer. They talked for hours. The next day, he returned to the water to speak with her again, but he found a brilliant shaft of light in her place. He heard her calling his name, and so he approached. She told him to visit the Spiritist Center in Campo Grande, which he did. So, that's, that's his version of events. The spirit meets him and they talk for hours, and then she sends him to the Spiritist Center in town.

• 26:19Robert Evans?

  So like, yeah, he arrives, and the director of the center like knows his name already, and says they've been waiting for him, and then John immediately like collapses. He like passes out, and when he returns to consciousness, there's this huge group of people standing around him, and they tell him that he has incorporated, which is the term they use for when you're taken over by a spirit, the entity King Solomon. And he cured 50 people while possessed by King Solomon. Which I remember King Solomon as the guy who cuts up babies, but I don't know.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  And as far as like, the luck of the draw goes, hey, that's a good get. Good get.

• 26:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  A name, a name Bible guy.

• 26:58Robert Evans?

  KS. That's a big one. Yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  Hey, could have happened to anyone. Could have happened to anyone. Amazing.

• 27:06Robert Evans?

  Could have happened to anyone. I mean, I would love to, I don't know, not King Solomon. Which king would I wanna?

• 27:13Robert Evans?

  Ooh, Henry VIII, Henry VIII, that's a good, that's a bad, I mean, that's a bad king, but that's a fun king to incorporate.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  To be.

• 27:22Robert Evans?

  Or King Leopold, I could ride a tricycle, take some hands, yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  I guess, uh, I guess, uh, the old dude, the old, old dude from the Bible, he probably got up to some shit, Nebuchadnezzar, whatever.

• 27:36Robert Evans?

  Methuselah, oh Nebuchadnezzar, you mean like the, the Babylonian emperor? Yeah, that's a good one.

• 27:41Speaker 04

  Right? Those guys, those guys got up to some shit.

• 27:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, oh man, and it's so much more impressive to take on Nebuchadnezzar. That guy's got a way better name than Solomon.

• 27:52Robert Evans?

  A little lame, yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:54Robert Evans?

  So, uh, yeah, obviously this is all lies. The only truth here is probably that John's age 16 is about when John started fooling around with spiritism. Um, unfortunately, I'm unaware of any serious journalism that exists to actually document what down, what went down with John's early years in the religion. Uh, but he claims that the director of the center had to take him aside and explain to him that he'd been chosen by an entity of light known as King Solomon. Uh, this director told him to leave and come back at 2:00 PM the next day to keep healing people. Since John was homeless, this guy invited him to stay the night at his house. John claims that this man's humble home and food were unthinkable luxuries for him, given the poverty he'd lived with his entire life. He was given his own room with an electric fan. So that's a big deal. Nice electric fan.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  It is like so weird to think about like the band of grifters welcoming in a new, I mean, this is in the retelling, welcoming in a new grifter, like what the fuck was actually happening?

• 28:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and it's one of those things, yeah, it's convenient that, you know, out in the, at this period of time, out in the middle of nowhere, Brazil, um, you know, lifespans aren't enormous, uh, so you're, you're really, if you make it old enough, you could just lie about what happened to you when you were a kid, cause.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 29:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Right, right, right, that makes sense.

• 29:12Robert Evans?

  That, yeah, the, the earlier most people die, the easier it is to be a grifter.

• 29:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 29:18Robert Evans?

  Whenever one I go to, went to high school with is dead, I'm gonna have some stories I start telling, I'll tell you that much.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, no corroboration.

• 29:25Robert Evans?

  Oh, I was healing the shit out of people in 11th grade.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  You wanna take a ad, buddy?

• 29:33Robert Evans?

  Yep, you know who else was healing a lot of people when I was in the 11th grade?

• 29:42Robert Evans?

  Okay, so, uh, uh, now, let's talk about, um, products. Nope, we did that. Now, we're back. Okay, so, John of God, he meets this, this spiritist church, and they tell him that King Solomon's taken over his brain, um, and he's like, "That's, that's good and normal." Um, and yeah, so he, he winds up staying the night with like, the leader of the center, uh, and he, he tries to explain to him that he's not a practicing medium, and he doesn't know anything about medicine, and he doesn't understand how he was healing all these people. He was actually terrified, because he didn't know, like, how to, he was expected to come back the next day, and he didn't know how to do what was expected of him. Um, but as soon as he gathered at the spiritist center the next day, uh, King

• 30:26Robert Evans?

  Solomon took him over again, and he kept healing more sick people. John claims this went on for months, while the more experienced spiritist practitioners educated him on the nature of the entities that increasingly took over his body. He became known as Medium John, and his new teachers said, "It is kinda funny, Medium John. It's like the sequel to Big John, that's not as, as good or rhythmic. Medium John. Just, just Medium John. Every morning at the mine, you could see him arrive. He stood five foot eight and weighed 135. Kinda medium at the shoulders and medium at the hips, and everyone knew it was okay to give some lip to Medium John."

• 31:08Speaker 04

  It's so, it is like so juvenile to find confusing medium with medium, but that is so funny to me.

• 31:15Robert Evans?

  It's very funny.

• 31:19Robert Evans?

  So, uh, his, his new teachers told him he needed to devote his whole life to healing other people. Um, and this is by, his biographers claim, started a five or six-year period of traveling throughout Brazil, healing the sick and the suffering. He became known as João Curador, or John the Healer. Through his biographers, uh, and in interviews, John always makes sure that people know that he is a healer, but he also, at the same time, all, always firmly rejects being called a healer. Um, so he makes sure that people knows that, like, everyone started calling me John the Healer, but I'm not a healer. The entities that channel through my body are the ones doing the healing. I'm just a conduit. So it's very important to him that you believe both things.

• 31:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, uh, this has a nice side benefit of allowing him to argue that he isn't practicing medicine without a license, which is, is handy when you're practicing medicine without a license. I don't know if you've ever practiced medicine without a license.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  (laughing)

• 32:10Robert Evans?

  But you gotta be careful with it.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  That is, so he's shifting the blame to literal King Solomon, essentially.

• 32:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he, yeah, exactly. If, if somebody dies while he's performing psychic surgery, it's the dead king's fault.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. That's a, that's a hell of a loophole. That's genius.

• 32:27Robert Evans?

  I mean, I am going to start blaming all of my many crimes on King Solomon. I, I'm, I'm not, I'm not gonna, I'm not even gonna lie to you about that. Like, I, that seems like a very good idea.

• 32:38Speaker 04

  Well, especially the baby chopping thing, cuz that's, he's got-

• 32:41Robert Evans?

  The baby chopping?

• 32:42Speaker 04

  He's got previous MO on that.

• 32:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, yes, officer, I was going 135 miles an hour in a 55, but if I didn't, this fucking king ghost in my head was gonna chop up some babies. Like, do you want me to go a little faster? You want some chopped up babies? That's all I gotta ask you.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 32:59Speaker 04

  It's up to you. Up to you, cops.

• 33:00Robert Evans?

  Up to you, cop.

• 33:02Speaker 03

  Seems reasonable to me.

• 33:04Robert Evans?

  You want me to heal you? Let me pull out some chicken gizzards and pretend to rip them from your chest. So, uh, his biographer's next note that he did, that while he did his, uh, extraordinary work of healing, "Medium John was persecuted by members of the medical and religious establishments." Uh, he claims that they were threatened by his presence and that he lost count of the number of times he was arrested for practicing medicine without a license. "John traveled constantly, never more than a few steps ahead of the law. He finally got a break in 1962, when Brazil was thrown into turmoil by a violent coup. His biography says the country suffered a revolution and a military government came into power. The reality is that Brazil's democratically-elected socialist president, João Goulart, was overthrown by a military

• 33:49Robert Evans?

  coup backed by the US government. A conservative military dictatorship would rule Brazil for the next 20-ish years. John's biography glosses all over, uh, over all of that, because the advent of a military dictatorship worked out really well for him. Medium John traveled to the capital, Brasilia, and offered his services as a tailor to the military." Quote from his biography. Because he was so young, he was not commissioned to create uniforms, but was given an opportunity to sew a consignment of work pants. His expertise impressed his new employers and he was soon promoted to full-time tailor and assigned to make uniforms for the army. Medium Joao continued his healing work quietly on the side, but word of his gift soon spread throughout the barracks. One day, he incorporated an entity who operated on the wounded leg of a doctor, which healed immediately.

• 34:32Robert Evans?

  The doctor was enthralled with Medium Joao's gift, and from that day on, he became the spiritual healer for the military and civil authorities. He was promoted to master tailor and became their protege for nearly nine years. Consequently, he was protected from persecution during that time and traveled extensively throughout Brazil with the army. There's a lot that's interesting there. The most fascinating thing to me is that, so the army comes to believe that this is a magical healer, and as a result, they promote him to master tailor, which is, this is an interesting choice.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  I mean, it's just like, keep him in the ranks, I guess.

• 35:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, keep him in the ranks, keep a paycheck going to the guy while you dictatorship Brazil. Look, I'm not gonna backseat dictatorship.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  You know what? Yeah, there's a lot of bureaucracy. You can't just insert like, which doctor surgeon general.

• 35:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you get, that's like a year eight of the dictatorship thing at best, you know? You gotta, oh my god, I want to be which doctor surgeon general so bad. That's, that sounds even better than Reverend Doctor, to be honest.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  You just have to, yeah, you have to work within the available structures until, until such time as you don't.

• 35:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, I got really fucked up fighting those partisans the other night. I got a bullet in my arm, I gotta go to the master tailor to deal with this. Yeah. So, John, John claims that the, the experience of working as a protege healer slash tailor with the dictatorship instilled in him a deep desire to become a successful businessman. His fawning biographers explain that he, quote, "needed money-making expertise to support his spiritual purpose." This is so he doesn't sound greedy. Wonderfully, they claim John just happened to have a great head for business, and his financial success has allowed him to fund his healing mission, all without charging patients a dime. This is absolutely a lie. But incredulous white Americans bought it for years.

• 36:22Robert Evans?

  So basically, he like, he claims that he became a great businessman and that's how he's able to fund his, his free healing hospital. The reality is like literally the opposite. He makes a bunch of money healing people and he used it to buy like ranches full of cattle and stuff.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  Makes sense.

• 36:36Robert Evans?

  Whatever. Yeah. Now, from this point on, the story of Medium John has a decent amount of documentation. So we're going to depart from his terrible, terrible biography. But before we do, I want to turn to his biographers for an explanation of exactly who these entities that take over John are. They describe the entities as transcendent spirits who are, who are quote, "able to use Medium Joao's body to produce cures by performing visible and invisible spiritual surgeries." Quote, "Medium Joao can incorporate approximately 37 entities, but only one entity can be incorporated at a time. The specific entity may change, however, depending on the needs of an individual patient. In addition to the entity incorporated at any given time, there is a highly evolved group of thousands of spirits who actually work on a person while the incorporated entity

• 37:20Robert Evans?

  oversees healing. This group is referred to as his phalange. One spirit might specialize in diabetes or heart problems, another in emotional afflictions. These entities serve humanity in the hopes of alleviating pain and suffering on the earthly plane. This service is part of their evolutionary process." So he's a whole hospital of ghosts.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Jesus Christ. That's having, having like support staff in this like fake, like spiritual slavery system. It's like, I, I mean, I guess it makes it sound more plausible on some level, like, oh, how could you possibly do this? No, we need, you know, the help of thousands to, to cure your fucking whatever.

• 38:02Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah, no, I got nurses. Yeah. Is it ever like, oh, I'm sorry. No, the guy who could help you, he's out on vacation. We just have like the dude who helps me cut people's eyes. Do you need an eye cut? Yeah.

• 38:14Speaker 04

  Oh, that's the other side of it is if you were like, if I were designing my own version of some cockamamie bullshit, I feel like it would be, it would involve as little true body horror as possible, like.

• 38:26Robert Evans?

  No, no, they, people love that shit.

• 38:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess that's true.

• 38:30Robert Evans?

  People love getting fucking cut into and blood and shit. Like, if you really wanna, if you wanna like, if you wanna get some cult shit going on, you gotta get gross with it, man.

• 38:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's part of it. It's part of it, but oh, so unpleasant.

• 38:41Robert Evans?

  The physicality.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah. That's why, you know, not everyone's made to be a cult leader, Andrew.

• 38:47Speaker 04

  I don't think I got what it takes anymore.

• 38:50Robert Evans?

  I, I believe you could be a cult leader, but you're, you're, you know, it takes some sacrifice.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't, I don't have the willingness to put in the reps to really get good.

• 39:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, there, there's a lot in common. Being a cult leader has a lot in common with having great abs, right? They both, they both take, you either have to be born with the right genes, or you have to put in a lot of time on the bench.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's not happening for me.

• 39:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah, well, that's, that's, yeah, we'll make the choices.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, there, there's not happening yet. I'll see, we'll see, we'll see where life takes me.

• 39:22Robert Evans?

  It would be cool to be able to incorporate the spirit that could just give you incredible abs. Like, one of them has to know how to do abs, but, okay. So, John claims that after a few years of making money and getting in good with a brutal dictatorship, his entities told him it was crucial he expand his work and heal more people. He wound up being guided to the town of Abadianya in Goyas. He first arrived there in 1978 and began his practice by sitting in a chair outside in the middle of the main road and greeting travelers who showed signs of illnesses. Through him, the entities would heal these people, and over time, the numbers increased from dozens to hundreds to thousands per day. John's incredible healings eventually earned him the loyalty of a mysterious benefactor,

• 40:02Robert Evans?

  who purchased him a plot of land and paid to build a healing center, Casa de Dom Ignacio de Loyola. This spiritual hospital, as his followers would come to describe it, eventually received more than 10,000 visitors per month. Since Abadianya has only about 19,000 residents, the huge streams of sick and dying people represented a big infusion into the local economy. So like, half the population of the city is coming in every week just to see this guy.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 40:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  That's, I mean, I guess you need like desperation tourism sometimes, but Jesus Christ, that's...

• 40:38Speaker 04

  That is actually Jesus Christ's business model also. So you know what? Maybe, maybe it's just a good one.

• 40:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, if Jesus Christ had benefited from like roadside billboards, I don't think they ever would have gotten to kill him. He would have made too much money, but.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Render into Caesar about 38% and you're fine.

• 40:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, honestly, yeah. So, uh, this was often glossed over by the positive coverage of John of God, but the extent to which he became an industry for the people who lived around him can't be exaggerated. I'm going to quote now from an O Magazine profile by Susan Casey, uh, just a terrible article from 2010 that nonetheless, revealed some important details about the economic impact of this guru on the small town of Abidiana. Quote, "Several businesses had displays of white clothing. The Casa requests that only white be worn. This makes it easier, apparently, for a person's aura to be seen. There were a number of vividly painted small hotels lined up side by side, lilac purple, canary yellow, lime green. One of them, a coral colored one-story building, opened up to the street and inside I could see a John of God video playing on a large screen.

• 41:41Robert Evans?

  An audience of about 20 people sat in straight back chairs and watched him cut into a man's chest with what looked like a rusty paring knife. The man's eyes were closed and he was peaceful and still as rivvy lits of blood ran down his white shirt."

• 41:54Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 41:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's awesome. That sounds like the kind of charming, small Brazilian town I want to vacation in. Just have a couple of fucking mojitos and watch some guy commit surgery on people? Hell, yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is like some midsummer shit. This is like insanity.

• 42:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah, imagine like you're just backpacking through Brazil and wind up here on accident and it's like, oh, no. Yeah, I have, I have erred. I did not want to be here.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, holy shit.

• 42:25Robert Evans?

  So John established a cattle ranch nearby and by the early 2000s, he was known to spend most of his week there, running his various businesses. He was able to do this because increasingly throughout the 90s and early 2000s, a string of foreigners, generally American women, moved in and dedicated themselves to helping his mission. This includes the Americans who wrote his biography. John of God's practice involved a series of mass meetings where sick folks would be. Basically fill up rooms and wait to be seen by the medium. He'd consult with his entities and then diagnose their problem. I'm going to quote now from a write up in the Montreal Gazette. Quote, "Once the diagnosis has been made, the healing procedure begins. It may be visible or invisible spiritual surgery. If the patient chooses invisible, they are directed to a room to meditate while the spirits do their work.

• 43:07Robert Evans?

  Visible surgery can involve sticking a surgical clamp up the patient's nose. It looks very impressive, but it is nothing but an old carny trick, usually performed with a long nail and a hammer. Any anatomical text will reveal that there is a roughly four inch long passage up the nasal cavity that is quite ready to accommodate a foreign object without any harm."

• 43:26Robert Evans?

  John maintains that, yeah, that's, that's a good trick. Yeah, he's, he's doing the nails up the nose thing. But he's calling it brain surgery.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  Classic.

• 43:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, classic. John maintains that the success of his treatment hinges on the patient abstaining from drinking alcohol, eating pork and having sex for 40 days after the treatment. This can provide for a convenient out in case no miracle occurs. Patients can be healed even if they are unable to travel to Brazil. All that is needed is a surrogate willing to undergo the spiritual surgery. So that's awesome. That's a good grift.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  God.

• 43:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 04

  Oh, well, I mean, I guess it's like, if you're gonna be a main grifter, at least bring up your little grifty town around you.

• 44:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I guess, yeah. I mean, that's, that's obviously the safest thing, right? Because then they'll have a vested financial interest in protecting you.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess that is what a cult is.

• 44:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's basic. I mean, yeah, more, I mean, this is a little more complicated than just a cult. Cause there's a cult, but then there's also the town who like, probably a lot of the townsfolk knew that this was bullshit. But they also know there's a fuckload of money in this shit.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Make everyone invested in you and yeah, one way or the other. You got leverage.

• 44:38Robert Evans?

  It's essentially the same way that like the pot industry works in large amounts of the United States. Or, yeah, like any drug, illegal drug business works where it's like, well, this is where the money is here. So nobody's, nobody's gonna start shit.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, don't snitch. This is the fucking godfather of the town.

• 44:59Robert Evans?

  Don't snitch. This is good for all of us. Yeah.

• 45:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's kind of what's going on here, except for instead of good, honest marijuana, it's a guy cutting people's faces and shoving things up their noses. And he actually hates marijuana. He was renowned, famous for saying that like, if you smoked pot, you had to like detox for a whole year before he could heal you.

• 45:21Robert Evans?

  The entities don't like weed.

• 45:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's can't be true, but fair enough entities.

• 45:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, if there are, if there are ghostly entities flying around, there's no way those ghostly entities don't like some fucking dank. Like, come on. Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  They love, they love weed.

• 45:38Robert Evans?

  So that, that last write-up I read you from the Montreal Gazette was obviously written by a credible journalist who was this critical of, who was very critical of John of God. But I want to read another example, another, another person writing about what his healing sessions look like, who actually like believed in him and was a member of his cult. So here's his biographer Heather Cummings recalling one of his healing sessions. Quote, "The entity, Dr. Jose Valdivino, called for his, and that's the guy he's channeling, is this Dr. Jose Valdivino, called for his instruments again. I opened the special drawer and carefully removed the tray and took the instrument tray to him. He chose a paring knife, a regular kitchen serrated edged knife. He passed his hand over the man's eye and told him to relax. He opened the eye wide and pressed down hard and scraped. See, here

• 46:22Robert Evans?

  it is, he said, as he wiped the knife on the man's shirt. I could see a minute dark sliver. I know beyond a doubt after seeing so many of these operations that the sliver was not a topical foreign object being removed, but rather something from deep inside that only the entities could see. The eye looks, the entity looks into the eye as a representation of the whole body system, not limited to the physical eye. I understand this is a symbolic removal on the physical level, but originating from many levels involving many different organs. The son is healed. You can take him to the infirmary, he said, as he wrote the post-op prescription."

• 46:56Robert Evans?

  That's cool.

• 46:57Speaker 04

  Holy shit.

• 46:58Robert Evans?

  That's an awesome gig, man.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  That is, I mean, I don't, I like, I don't wear contacts because I can't touch my eye, I think.

• 47:08Robert Evans?

  Oh, I'll heal you, man.

• 47:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:10Robert Evans?

  Come over to my house, I'll whip out a big old rusty machete and I'll carve the ghosts out of your eye, man. It's, it's fine. This is, this is where I'm taking machetison next.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 47:21Robert Evans?

  Man, that's, that's an easy grift. Just start slashing people's fucking faces, it's fine.

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Holy shit.

• 47:28Robert Evans?

  Oh, man, and then, yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  Can you imagine the first time you try this shit? Like, this'll work.

• 47:35Robert Evans?

  There's a lot of blind people who were like, before he learned how to scrape people's eyes without blinding them. Like, he, uh, there's like a whole village full of his, uh, his, his first draft healings.

• 47:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, Jesus Christ. I guess some of those people are dead, huh?

• 47:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, the good thing is, if you're actually like, if you're doing this kind of grift, I think you definitely want to start out only trying to heal people with serious terminal illnesses like cancer, because then, once you fuck up, they're not around very long, right?

• 48:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's really key. Um, yeah, a lot of good advice on how to start a medical grift in this episode. So, take, take notes when society collapses. Some of you are going to do very well remembering this stuff.

• 48:20Robert Evans?

  So, um, yeah, like, as that story noted, John of God would write prescriptions to his patients, and all of these prescriptions were for a specific herbal pill mixture sold in John of God's own pharmacy. The pills were mostly passion flower, and by some accounts, they've netted John more than $10 million a year. He also gets a cut of the sales of the white clothes, the hotel fees, the sales of blessed water, and the sales of healing crystals which he prescribes to his followers. So you can see why no one in Abediánya had any interest in questioning whether or not John of God was legit. He did face occasional challenges from members of the Brazilian government, particularly folks in the medical establishment who were leery of his psychic surgery. But this sort of woo is extremely popular in Brazil, particularly among rural voters, and John of God was both rich and connected, so it is not su-

• 49:05Robert Evans?

  surprising that very little was ever done. What's more surprising is the degree to which foreign journalists bought into his shtick. In 2005, ABC News sent a small team to Abidiyanya to meet John of God. They put together a documentary, basically posing the question of whether or not he was a healer or a bullshit artist. And they kind of landed on healer, like ABC News did a pretty shitty job of journalism here. And I'm going to quote from this right up in the Montreal Gazette, quote. And in a tip to provide a critical review, a view of John's antics, the producers invited two experts. Cardiac surgeon Mehmet Oz and James Randi, the world's leading investigator of paranormal phenomena.

• 49:45Robert Evans?

  Oz was probably chosen because he was a proponent of various alternative therapies, such as therapeutic touch and reflexology. And would be likely to be somewhat sympathetic to faith, healing, and perhaps at an air of legitimacy. Randy was invited as the token skeptic. Oz appeared repeatedly in the hour long show, basically echoing the refrain that science doesn't have all the answers. And not all other forms of healing need consideration. Science, of course, doesn't claim to have all the answers, but it does look for evidence before jumping on a bandwagon. Randy, who could have provided evidence for methods of trickery and for psychological manipulation, was given a total of 19 seconds on the show after being interviewed for hours. Why? Because the possibility that cancer can be healed by penetrating the nose with surgical forceps by a healer chosen by God

• 50:26Robert Evans?

  makes for better television than declaring him to be a self-delusional simpleton or a calculating fraud artist. So.

• 50:32Speaker 04

  Oh. I mean, this, this has to also be like something like the underlying, like, you know, uh, uh, faith in Christianity, like, you know, it's like, oh, you gotta, you know, can't question religion, can't question religion. Takes you all the way to, well, this could be real. This clearly fake shit could be real.

• 50:55Robert Evans?

  It's gotta be real. What else could it be? It's, it's, it's wild, man. Um. And Dr. Oz is a big part of justifying this guy. Like you can't overstate how much Dr. Oz played a role in giving this guy legitimacy. Because his job for his whole career, pretty much, has been to be a real doctor who will get up and say that nonsense makes sense. That nonsense medical treatments are good for you.

• 51:20Speaker 04

  I mean, I think I think it's like critical to point out that like physicians are not fucking scientists. Like you can be a doctor, Ben Carson believes in fucking, you know, doesn't believe in evolution. Like doctors are just like high stakes technicians.

• 51:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and and there engineers are regularly, engineers and doctors actually are not irregularly like part of like terrorist moves. Like Al Qaeda had a bunch of engineers and doctors in it.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:48Robert Evans?

  Because like they, you know, if you've got that kind of intelligence, like Ben Carson is a great brain surgeon and is also able to convince himself that the world is 6,000 years old. Like the the kind of brains that these people have don't, you know, there's a lot of very smart doctors, obviously, too. But you can be a doctor and very dumb.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and you can be a, but I don't think Dr. Oz is dumb. I actually don't think that's, I think Dr. Oz is a very intelligent grifter who's made millions of dollars, causing untold harm to the world and to our shared understanding of science.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  God, I hope the Dr. Oz ad comes on during this episode.

• 52:24Robert Evans?

  He's a piece of shit and a monster.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  I really hope an ad for Dr. Oz comes on right now.

• 52:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  I think I think it's just like worth pointing out that the TEM in STEM, um, none of those things are indicative of actual knowledge necessarily.

• 52:42Robert Evans?

  No, and this is part of why, like, this is, people talk about, like, conservatives in particular, like, talk a lot of shit about the liberal arts and like philosophy and all this stuff. And it's like, no, no, no, the reason why engineers and doctors should have some grounding in all that education is to stop Dr. Oz's from coming about. Like, like, it's to give people like a broader understanding than just, like, if you get really good at one incredibly narrow technical thing.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:09Robert Evans?

  You can convince yourself to believe all sorts of of stupid bullshit because you're a very smart person who doesn't have a wide ranging education. And it's very easy for those sorts of people to convince themselves of the dumbest things in the world.

• 53:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, and who have like, who are highly rewarded for it.

• 53:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 53:26Speaker 04

  So like, yeah, you watch like any Silicon Valley person make a pronunciation on anything outside of business. And it's like, oh, you are, you are less educated than the average person. You are

• 53:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 53:39Speaker 04

  bad at reasoning.

• 53:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And when a bunch of these people who are really good at one incredibly narrow task wind up responsible for a wide range of things, you have stuff like a viral epidemic get wildly out of hand and kill tens of thousands of people. But

• 53:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  Hypothetically.

• 53:57Robert Evans?

  Hypothetically, yeah. And Dr. Oz is of course, a part of that was like urging people to take bullshit medical treatments during the coronavirus epidemic because he's, he's, he's, he's history's greatest monster. You know, he was also cited repeatedly in that 2010 O Magazine article because of course Oprah gave Mehmet Oz's life and nursed him at her metaphorical breast of publicity. And I'm going to quote from that next. So this is the write-up in O Magazine that really put John of God on the map. Quote, "Five years ago, Oz had participated in a primetime live segment focusing on John of God. He examined hours of film footage from the entity's healings. He'd looked at scans and biopsy reports and there were results he couldn't explain. The shrinkage of an aggressive tumor, for instance. This guy has a glioblastoma, which is a very deadly

• 54:42Robert Evans?

  brain tumor, Oz recalled. It was grade four. They biopsied it and proved it. As an added credential, the biopsy was done at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, a prominent hospital. I took those films down to my radiologist along with a new set of films the patient had taken after his visit to John of God, which showed the tumor had calcified and essentially died. Now, I don't know Dr. Oz's radiologist, but I do know that Dr. Oz himself is a famous charlatan and a liar. I can't speak to the specific case, but it's worth noting that no other doctors got to look at this information. I can, however, speak about other cancers that John of God claimed falsely to have cured. In 2005, South African singer Lea Melman refused breast cancer surgery to be treated by John of God. She claimed to have been cured by him and showed up on Oprah Winfrey's show to tell everyone

• 55:25Robert Evans?

  the good news about how Brazil's miracle healer had, had cured her untreatable cancer, which actually was treatable that she just chose not to get treated. She died of her untreated cancer two years after her Oprah appearance in 2012. Oprah did not post a retraction based on any of this, of course. Some of this is probably due to the fact that there were many, many other grateful patients, all too eager to come forward and share their own stories of miraculous healing. That 2010 article by Susan Casey included the stories of several charismatic foreigners who claimed to have been cured by John and now worked for him or made money taking groups to be healed by him. Um, I'm going to read one example. This is a quote from that O Magazine article, which you can only find it on the Wayback Machine because once this guy got accused by of rape by literally hundreds of people,

• 56:10Robert Evans?

  um, Oprah pulled the article, but, uh, I found it on the Wayback Machine. And if you want to be really angry at an unspeakably shitty journalist and Susan Casey is one of the very worst who's ever, ever done the job, uh, read that article because it will make you want to punch holes in your wall. So I'm going to read a quote from it now, so get your hole punching hands ready. Over a good Chilean red, Ed Ween, an ordained minister, motivational speaker and author of the four spiritual laws of prosperity recounted the story of her brain aneurysm, deemed inoperable by five neurosurgeons. Get your affairs in order, she remembers being told, and try not to sneeze. That's how fragile I was, she said. So I did it. I went out and got my living will, my durable power of attorney, but then I realized I'm

• 56:54Robert Evans?

  not ready to go just yet. She laughed at the memory. That's all it is now. After her dire diagnosis, at the urging of her prayer group, all of whom say they received the same vision of John of God curing her, Ed Ween traveled to the Casa. I was nervous and I was skeptical, she said, but what did I have to lose? Almost immediately, the entity performed invisible surgery on her, a 40-minute process that involved sitting in a group meditation with her right hand over her heart. Nobody touched her, but Ed Ween remembers, I could feel things moving around in my head. It didn't hurt, but it was different. Afterwards, she collapsed in exhaustion for 24 hours. Days later, she was told by her guide, the stitches would be, could, would be removed. That night, I could feel ping, ping, ping, like stitches being pulled out. Eventually, a CT scan revealed the truth.

• 57:39Robert Evans?

  Her aneurysm was gone. I'm so grateful, she said, nodding toward the heavens. Since then, she's been back to the Casa once at Christmas, and now she was headed there for a third time, bringing a group of 20 people who also sought healing. So this is the level of journalistic rigor that we're getting in this article.

• 57:56Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 57:57Robert Evans?

  Oh, magazine, everybody.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  The mention of the wine is particularly choice.

• 58:02Robert Evans?

  Oh, it's gotta be, yeah, yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  Revolting.

• 58:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Oprah magazine was definitely like, it was, yeah, it was, it was, it was entirely geared at getting wine moms to believe spiritual nonsense and not get their cancer treated.

• 58:17Speaker 04

  Mm hmm, mm hmm. Jesus Christ.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  Uh, Robert, you wanna take an ad break real quick?

• 58:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you know what else doesn't care if wine moms get cancer treatment?

• 58:29Robert Evans?

  The products and services that support this podcast. They don't, they don't give a good goddamn.

• 58:34Speaker 03

  Great.

• 58:34Robert Evans?

  And that's the guarantee, that's the behind the bastards guarantee.

• 58:43Robert Evans?

  We're back. Oh, my gosh. What a great, I don't know.

• 58:49Speaker 04

  Whatever this is. What a great horrible story.

• 58:53Robert Evans?

  John of God is a monster and a rapist, and we will only hear more about the horrible things that he's done. But I can't have the same kind of hatred for him that I can for these fucking O Magazine grifters and Dr. Oz. And I don't know why. I think it's because on like a, on like a global level, the amount of harm that these people do is so much higher. And it's also so much like, this is gonna sound weird, but like the horrible physical crimes that John of God committed. Like, he just went out there and committed with his own body. Um, and there's a level of like commitment to evil that's necessary. Whereas Dr. Oz and Oprah just like sit in front of a camera and say bullshit that harms so many more people. While at the same time, they're perfectly friendly and nice people.

• 59:36Robert Evans?

  And so like, nobody hates them and they never go to prison. And like, I'm not gonna say they're worse than a rapist, but yeah, in a way, they do more damage on a, on a broad scale, right?

• 59:48Speaker 04

  Like, oh.

• 59:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It's not good.

• 59:52Speaker 04

  Well, it's, it's like, sort of like, it's like, um. It's like whatever the the PR version of money laundering is.

• 1:00:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Speaker 04

  They clean it. They're the cleaners.

• 1:00:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. They're like money launderers for like dangerous bullshit that gets people killed and molested and stuff. And they they they are responsible, in this case, for sending thousands of potential victims to this guy who, again, turns out to rape hundreds of people. And like, they're being sent there by Oprah, but all she gets is traffic for it and more money. And everybody loves Oprah. And if she ran for president, she would absolutely win.

• 1:00:29Robert Evans?

  And it's fine. And it's just fine. Because she's a friendly, nice person. I'm sure she I'm sure if I got to hang out with Oprah, I would enjoy her company. And I would forget momentarily the horrors that her brand has brought into the world. And that's very frustrating to think about.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  Although, to be fair, actually, if she were to graduate to the level of American president.

• 1:00:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 04

  She would, once again, be in company where, probably relatively speaking, her hands are relatively clean.

• 1:00:57Robert Evans?

  I and like, I hate to say it, but I suspect she would not be the worst president of my lifetime.

• 1:01:03Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:01:03Robert Evans?

  She might be the best. Yeah.

• 1:01:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Robert Evans?

  It's entirely possible.

• 1:01:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Both things are true. You can be the friendly face of a lot of horror.

• 1:01:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  And still be the best president.

• 1:01:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I would still vote for her over the current guy or even Joe Biden, to be honest. So.

• 1:01:23Robert Evans?

  Here we go. Like, it's fucking wild. This is so dumb. We shouldn't have presidents. Or billionaires like Oprah, but whatever. Anyway, that O Magazine article has been scrubbed from the internet because of all the rapes and stuff. But, uh, yeah, it's I almost recommend finding it and reading it just to get a crash course in how to write a really irresponsible article about a cult leader. Susan Casey should be in some sort of journalist prison. But instead, she went from being Oprah's editor in chief to working as the creative director for Outside Magazine, the editor of Sports Illustrated Women, and the author of a ridiculous sounding book on dolphins. And I am sure that I have ruined any chance of publishing an Outside Magazine now, which bums me out.

• 1:02:05Robert Evans?

  I would much rather do that than write about Nazis, but I don't like Susan Casey, and I think she's very irresponsible.

• 1:02:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Robert Evans?

  She's the journalistic equivalent of like.

• 1:02:16Robert Evans?

  Like taking your nine-year-old out shooting for the first time and just getting blackout drunk first.

• 1:02:21Speaker 04

  I mean, is it like, I, cause it's like, so they, they, generally, there's this like a vested interest in promoting like spirituality and Christianity on some level. And like, cause it's like, when you, when you encounter these people, you would not at any point like, "Hey, this seems fucked up." I, it's so wild to me that you don't, that they don't have that instinct.

• 1:02:47Robert Evans?

  You know, the key is that all of the people surrounding John of God, cause you don't spend much time with him. He spent a lot of time around these like, and they're mostly like white American ladies who, who like love his shit. And they're all the same kind of, they're all Gwyneth Paltrow kind of people. And they're all like, like well-heeled and friendly and charming. And, and they know how to speak to a specific segment of the population and those people find them trustworthy.

• 1:03:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So Susan felt the need to visit John of God, the author of that O Magazine article, so she could write a terrible article. But the, the ailment that sent her there was the fact that her father had tragically died very young. And the resultant grief had nearly broken her. She went to Brazil for healing and she basically claims that John of God put her into a trance during one of his mass healing sessions. And she was able to visualize her father in paradise, knowing that he was happy and off living his eternal life allowed her to move on. And that's all fine, like seriously, grief is the worst thing ever. And there are way worse ways of coping with it than paying a guru to help you to hallucinate heaven or whatever. Do what you gotta do to, to get by. I'm not gonna blame her for that. What I will blame her for is the utterly uncritical way that she wrote about John of God's bullshit. Like his claims of being able to perform surgery without even touching people.

• 1:04:01Robert Evans?

  So here's another quote. "When you consider the countless unseen things that have undeniable power, sound waves, microwaves, radio waves, emotions like anger or envy, wind, and of course, the awesome universal power of love, it seems silly to rely on the naked eye for proof of anything. Yet that is what we do. Numbers on charts and graphs, x-rays, those we believe in, but belief without documentation. Something we perceive with one of our five senses is considered, without, with one of our five senses is considered blind faith. Sweet, but we don't really trust it." So she's saying that like, it's, it's silly to believe in radio waves, but not the power of ghosts to heal people's cancer.

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  The hand wave, the hand waving of naked eye into evidence is fucking revolting.

• 1:04:45Robert Evans?

  She is hand waving so hard, it could power a fucking windmill farm. Like, Jesus. So she actually makes the argument in that article that it's unreasonable for us to reject the reality of John of God's powers, just because there's no proof behind them. This is reinforced by some, something she writes about her arrival in the hotel at Abidanya. Quote, "As I hoisted my luggage up to the second floor, a small sign of the wall caught my attention. 'Don't believe everything you think,' it advised." Which is, like, that's kind of gaslighting, right? Like, it's like, it's like gaslighting via decoration.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  That's, yeah, that is exactly, that is what abusers say. That's fucking insane.

• 1:05:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Speaker 04

  Holy shit.

• 1:05:25Robert Evans?

  In this same incredulous way, she writes about the entities that John of God channels. Quote, "If you spend time at Abidanya, you will hear the phrase 'the entities' over and over again, sometimes plural and sometimes singular, and you will come to use it yourself as if it were a completely ordinary thing to say. What it actually means, however, is so extraordinary that it defies our sense of what is logical or even possible in this world. The healing entities who work through John of God are the spirits of deceased doctors, surgeons, masters and saints." Heather's website explains matter-of-factly. "They use Medium Joao's body, channeling their power through him. Sometimes the spirits show up anonymously, but there are several who make regular appearances. They include Dr. Augusto de Almeida, a surgeon and army man with a serious and efficient manner; Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, whose specialties were infectious diseases and bacteriology; St.

• 1:06:09Robert Evans?

  Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuit Order, along with Casa's patron, St. Ignatius of Loyola, a priest and nobleman from the 16th century. Despite the presence of saints, Medium Joao, born a Catholic, makes it clear that Casa is not a church, but rather a spiritual hospital. My mission has nothing to do with religion," he says.

• 1:06:29Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:06:30Robert Evans?

  Have the, yes.

• 1:06:31Speaker 04

  Have these guys ever been like sued by the estates of these? This feels a little bit like Mormons, like

• 1:06:36Robert Evans?

  Nope.

• 1:06:37Speaker 04

  baptizing people in, in, uh, like, uh, postmortem.

• 1:06:43Robert Evans?

  Most of the poor people who come to John of God are too poor to sue. If their serious diseases don't get cured. And most of the rich people aren't actually coming there for serious diseases. They're coming there for things like, like Susan has, where like they're sad, you know?

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Robert Evans?

  That's a lot of patients.

• 1:06:57Speaker 04

  Sorry, I, I meant, I meant the estates of these spirits of the

• 1:07:01Robert Evans?

  Oh. Man, yeah, that, that would be fun to try to sue someone for that. I don't know that there's any legal precedent. I, I think it's really funny that you're like talking about like, okay, well, we've got this infectious disease doctor, but actually he's calling in a second opinion from the 16th century nobleman.

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, hey, my grandpa, you know, admittedly, my, my Nazi grandpa probably wouldn't have supported this, I guess, is not the best court case, but

• 1:07:33Speaker 04

  you know?

• 1:07:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Uh, boy. Um, Susan goes on to write, quote, "At the Casa, skeptics are as welcome as believers. I had already noticed that skeptics didn't tend to stay that way. Many harumphing empirical scientists had become impassioned John of God advocates after visiting and witnessing him in action." She doesn't go on to quote any of these scientists, um, or, or give any evidence of this. She just like says it, um, because this is again, a perfect piece of journalism. At one point, Susan attends a healing and says that John of God called for doctors in the audience to come forward. In her recitation of events, these learned men were all bowled over by John's inexplicable healing abilities. As far as I can tell, Susan took no action to determine if any of these men were actual doctors.

• 1:08:15Robert Evans?

  A real journalist, Michael Usher, did report critically on John of God in 2014 for 60 Minutes. And I want to compare how she and Michael both wrote about the medium's ice scraping surgery. For my vantage point only 10, and this is Susan, from my vantage point only 10 feet away, the change in his body and demeanor was easily visible. Now his eyes were more intense and they flashed noticeably darker. His gait became stiffer, his movements more deliberate. He turned to the three women standing against the wall, took the one closest to him by the hand and gently sat her in a wheelchair. Her eyes fluttered white as she meditated. Reaching to the tray, he selected a short knife with a wooden handle, a cheap looking type that you might use to pare an apple, and he held it up to the room, making sure that everyone saw its sharp blade. He tipped her head backward, running his hand across her face, and he opened her left

• 1:08:59Robert Evans?

  eye, holding the eyelid wide. Then he began to scrape the knife across her eyeball, back and forth with visible pressure. Unbelievably, the woman sat absolutely still, without flinching or recoiling. I had a hard time watching this, believing as I do that the words "knife" and "eyeball" should never appear in the same sentence. After what seemed like an eternity devoid of trauma, he put down the knife. The orderly took the wheelchair and steered it into the infirmary. As she had the entire time, the woman appeared to be napping. How on earth could a knife crush your eyeball and not hurt? Later, I would interview another recipient of this treatment. Connie Price, 62, from Jackson, Michigan. "There was no pain whatsoever," she said of the five-minute scraping. "I could feel the energy coming through him. I remember the heat pouring through that man's body. Price found the treatment beneficial. I can see a lot better now." So you'll notice the only evidence of efficacy of healing is they didn't look to be in pain

• 1:09:44Robert Evans?

  when this guy was rubbing a knife on their eye, and they said, one of them said afterwards, "I can see better now." There's no, again, that's not evidence, that's an anecdote. And that's not an anecdote based on like actually testing her eyesight.

• 1:09:58Speaker 04

  Is that, and also it's like, aren't there, isn't the whole thing, there's like, there aren't, are there nerves on your eyeball? Cause that's how they do like Lasik, right?

• 1:10:07Robert Evans?

  Yep. It's actually really easy to, it's the same thing with like, it's actually very easy to rub a knife and even cut a little bit on an eyeball without somebody being in horrible pain.

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:10:18Robert Evans?

  And, you know, even when you actually are cutting into people's chests, like it's easy for people to not feel pain. Like again, people who like, there are people who like do cutting and stuff, or who will like, like I have friends who like will suspend themselves from fucking things in the roof of a building with like hooks in their back. And like, it feels good to them. Like there's like a release of endorphins, like there's pain too, but like they, they're not like screaming in agony the whole time, even though you would think they would be. Um, like-

• 1:10:50Robert Evans?

  There's, yeah, exactly. The fact that these people don't report pain or anything isn't weird and is part of like a long documented history of people experiencing temporary relief from faith healing and stuff like that. There's nothing mysterious about it. For decades, Pentecostal revivalist preachers have done things like pray over people with injured legs and then have them discard their crutches and dance around. And the explanation for how this works is the same as the explanation for why if you throw your back out, you might find yourself forgetting the pain during a moment of extreme danger or extreme excitement. Like, it's just, sometimes our brains override our experience of pain. It happens. It's a thing that people do. It's like those stories of women lifting cars off their babies. So,

• 1:11:33Robert Evans?

  yeah, that's how Susan Casey uncritically reports on a healing session. Here's how a real journalist, Michael Usher, reports on a pretty much identical healing session. John of God is not a surgeon. He is not a trained doctor, yet he is presented with a tray of medical instruments, scalpels and all sorts of scissors. He takes a scalpel and scrapes eyes. He sticks knives and scalpels of some sort down the back of people's throats, and he claims he is getting to tumors. He claims he is getting to the root of people's illnesses. He claims he is getting to what makes people ill or sick. None of it is done with an anesthetic, and you don't even know if what he's using is sterile.

• 1:12:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That feels about right. A large part of why John of God's magic seems to work is the fact that he performs it all in public, among and in front of a large and enthusiastic crowd of true believers, many of whom also happen to be desperately ill. John tells them that they can all help fuel his work and heal themselves by sitting in the current and basically meditating for hours while he does his thing. As Susan Casey writes, "On any given day, maybe 400 people form the current, spelunking so deeply into their interior realms that they might well be asleep or anesthetized. While doing so, they refrain from opening their eyes or crossing their arms or legs. These things, they are told, cut off the flow of energy as surely as would kinking a hose."

• 1:12:48Speaker 04

  At least she said they were told in that one.

• 1:12:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I'm, I, if I'm throwing a lot of shade on Susan Casey for her bad article here, it's because her choice to platform John of God with no critical thinking, or even an attempted examination, brought his line of bullshit to the eyes and ears of millions of vulnerable people. Oprah Winfrey had her on her show in 2010, and one of the millions of women who watched that episode was a Dutch choreographer named Zahira Leenke, uh, Leenke, uh, Mouse. She suffered from sexual trauma and Winfrey's episode, Do You Believe in Miracles convinced her that medium John could heal her. She waited in line twice to receive his healing after traveling to Brazil. On her first visit, he prescribed her some of his herb pills. When those didn't do the trick, she went back and he offered her a spiritual cleansing in a rare private session.

• 1:13:35Robert Evans?

  From the Washington Post, quote, "She waited until everyone in line had their turns, until finally she was alone, and John of God invited her into his office and then into his bathroom. That's where Mose says he raped her, all while leading her to believe it was part of her healing." Now, Mose was one of hundreds and perhaps thousands of rape victims of John of God. And I, I want to end on this note to, to get to the point of like, what's really happened here, which is that an American industry based on uncritically looking at spiritual healers funneled victims into this guy's hands and allowed him to achieve a level of influence and, and basically like built a spider web for this fucking spider of a man.

• 1:14:16Robert Evans?

  So, we're gonna continue the story of John of God in part two, but, uh, right now, we're gonna continue the story of, uh, Andrew T. of God's, uh,

• 1:14:28Robert Evans?

  Plugables.

• 1:14:29Speaker 04

  Oh shit, uh, you know, just, uh, go to the Yo's is racist podcast, um, I'm at Andrew T., his last name is spelled T.I. everywhere. Yeah, that's it.

• 1:14:43Robert Evans?

  That is it. Well, I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on the internet, uh, behind the bastards dot com. You can find me on Twitter at I write okay. Uh, and if you want, uh, I will just sort of rub a machete all over your eyes. It's gonna cost you, I don't know, let's say, I don't take any money, but we do ask for $3,000 donations, um, to our, our, our medical center. So give me 3,000 bucks and I'll fucking, I'll rub a machete on whatever part of your body you want. That's the guarantee. That is a guarantee. Absolute guarantee. Um, and I also have a podcast called The Women's War. It's upbeat. It tells you about how to, how to make things that don't suck out of your

• 1:15:28Robert Evans?

  society when it sucks. So maybe listen to that, too. And, um, I don't know, go in Christ and cut up people's eyes. Mm hmm. Yep.

• 1:15:38Speaker 03

  That's the podcast.

• 1:15:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it is. Dope. It's part, part one of the podcast. Okay.

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• 1:16:58Robert Evans?

  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we talk about terrible people. And this is part two of our series on John of God. Yeah. Bastard is also Oprah, um, and Dr. Oz and Susan Casey, the author of that terrible article. So pull up a fine Chilean red and get ready to hear some more. I have to, this is, this is off topic, but I want to tell something I just ran across to my guest, Andrew T., before we roll into the episode. Andrew, how are you doing today?

• 1:17:30Speaker 04

  What's up? The J O G. Ready to hear about the rest of this motherfucker.

• 1:17:34Robert Evans?

  Well, before we do that, I just came across something on Twitter. It's a book that's being sold. It's like, it's like a part of the Joe Biden grift. Cause like every politician has a grift now. And this is a coloring book called A Hot Cup of Joe. And it has a cartoon of a sexy Joe Biden on it. Nope. Yeah. A piping hot coloring book with America's sexiest moderate, Joe Biden.

• 1:17:59Speaker 04

  Christ.

• 1:18:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's, it's awful. It is abuse.

• 1:18:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, oh, well, that's fucking horrendous. It's almost worth buying so you can have it for whatever happens with the election. Just to have this fucking horrible thing.

• 1:18:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I, I don't want to give this person money. But I do want to see inside this terrible, terrible criminal coloring book. The sexy 70 something politicians thing is one of the weirdest aspects of modern politics that like, you have these two old and clearly not in the best of health men, Joe Biden and, and Donald Trump, who both of whose supporters have to depict them as like muscle bound, like, like, like, like hunks. And I was like, guys. They're elderly dying men. Stop it. Like, you don't like, even if you think they're the right person to be president, you don't have to pretend that they're like, you don't have to get thirsty about them. What is wrong with you people?

• 1:19:04Speaker 03

  They both wear diapers. Like, let's talk about that situation. They're not out here, like, bench pressing. Come on.

• 1:19:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, they're not doing wind sprints. Like, Joe's abs, uh, don't exist because he's an old, sick man. And that's okay. I mean, it's not ideal, but like, whatever. Like, just stop it. Stop it, all of you.

• 1:19:25Speaker 03

  The flesh on his face is melting day by day.

• 1:19:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It's what happens as you die.

• 1:19:30Speaker 03

  Like, he's not, he's not fucking Popeye, okay?

• 1:19:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like, yeah, this is not on them, because they're like, pretty normally aged men for their ages. Like, stop making, you don't have to make them sexy. What is wrong with you?

• 1:19:47Speaker 04

  If I could just do a tiny pull and just point out that Sophie's idea of a sexy man is Popeye, and we can just, we can just live in that for a second.

• 1:19:59Robert Evans?

  I dare you to find a better example of uncut eroticism than, uh, Robin Williams as Popeye in that 1980s Popeye movie that absolutely exists. Look it up. It's fucking something else.

• 1:20:15Speaker 04

  Insanity.

• 1:20:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. People made that. People made that and no one stopped them.

• 1:20:22Speaker 04

  Isn't that Robert Altman?

• 1:20:24Robert Evans?

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:20:25Speaker 04

  I think it's Robert Altman. You keep talking, I'm gonna look it up. No, I'm not.

• 1:20:29Speaker 03

  No, don't do it to yourself.

• 1:20:32Speaker 04

  Never mind.

• 1:20:34Robert Evans?

  It's great. So, we're all back from...

• 1:20:39Speaker 03

  It is Robert Altman. I looked it up. I couldn't help it.

• 1:20:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, all right, let's, it's time to get back into this episode. Talk about John of God some more. I just had to, that hit my world like a fucking carpet bomb. And I had to, I just had to talk about it. So...

• 1:20:57Speaker 04

  They hit your world like a cruise missile at your wedding.

• 1:21:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like one of Raytheon's fine products, hitting a wedding, which, you know, if you've ever thought not enough weddings have missiles hit them, then you're the kind of customer Raytheon's looking for. All right, we really should start the episode now.

• 1:21:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:18Robert Evans?

  No human being has ever embodied the phrase, "The road to hell was paved with good intentions better than Oprah Winfrey." Like many of you, she was a regular background figure in my childhood. My mom would have her on when she was working from home while we did chores, etc. Like, she was just on in the background all the time. And compared to the other background figures of my childhood, guys like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, she was pretty benign. At least she seemed that way. I don't know if I would describe her as a monster, but her career has been a masterclass in how to enable monsters. Winfrey was a longtime friend of Harvey Weinstein. She regularly hosted Tony Robbins, another sex pest and self-help guru. She is largely responsible for making Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz into household names, and both of those men have gone on to do incalculable

• 1:22:03Robert Evans?

  harm to society. And of course, she is the reason John of God and his clinic were put in front of the faces of millions upon millions of gullible, desperate Westerners. After that O Magazine article was published in 2010, she dedicated a special episode to John of God, inviting the author of that article and a doctor onto her show. They were both total converts, but how they and Oprah presented John to their audience is really interesting to me. And I want you to click that first link and play it to about 38 minutes, Andrew.

• 1:22:32Speaker 06

  Because you weren't expecting to find what?

• 1:22:33Speaker 07

  Well, I went to just gather evidence to see what's true.

• 1:22:37Speaker 06

  Susan, when you were there, did he, I heard that he actually invites medical doctors from around the world to come up and witness him do these things, is that correct?

• 1:22:48Speaker 08

  Yes, and they always are sort of very careful not to ever pit themselves against the mainstream medical profession. They, you know, they're very much like, he's never going to do a heart transplant up there. It's like, he's going to do whatever he can do with his ability to heal, and then you might have to go to your doctor for the rest.

• 1:23:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:13Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm back.

• 1:23:14Robert Evans?

  That's good. Yeah. What'd you think of that, Andrew? What'd you think of that framing?

• 1:23:18Speaker 04

  Um, incredible, incredible. I mean, the one thing watching the clip is that, um,

• 1:23:26Speaker 04

  what is, oh, sorry. What is, what is the journalist, the quote?

• 1:23:29Robert Evans?

  Susan Casey.

• 1:23:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:31Robert Evans?

  Journalist is a strong word for Susan.

• 1:23:34Speaker 04

  The one thing watching that is that Susan looks almost exactly as I thought she would.

• 1:23:39Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 1:23:41Speaker 04

  Exactly the type of white woman that would promote this shit.

• 1:23:44Robert Evans?

  Yes. Yeah. And whatever picture you, I guarantee you, 100% of you, whatever picture you have in your head of Susan Casey is accurate.

• 1:23:53Robert Evans?

  Cause there's only one.

• 1:23:54Speaker 04

  Wild.

• 1:23:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's awesome, isn't it?

• 1:23:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's.

• 1:23:58Speaker 04

  And then also like this, this thing where she's like, he's not gonna do a heart transplant, but then he's like, you, you might have to go to your regular doctor for that is like,

• 1:24:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:09Speaker 04

  just like key, like sweeping shit under the rug. It's like, well, of course you will need real medical care also.

• 1:24:16Robert Evans?

  What, what's really cool about that is that it is very clearly and obviously an answer of, uh, Susan and this other doctor who we'll talk about in a minute whitewashing John of God. So like, they know that if they're gonna be on Oprah's show and talk to like a mainstream audience, they have to put in a, they can't just be all like, especially because of this is 2010 and we, we aren't where we are now. Now you could just say, doctors are bullshit. This guy's the only real healer in the world. Like, you can get away with that. Back then you had to be like, oh no, you still, regular doctors are still good, great for things. He's just helping with other stuff and like, that was necessary to get people on board. Um, but John of God's cult produced propaganda too. And this is why I say that Susan Casey and this doctor are like,

• 1:24:59Robert Evans?

  intentionally whitewashing him. Because for this episode of Oprah's show, they use clips from a documentary that John of God's cult produced. And in the actual documentary, um, there is no time wasted telling people that they need to consult their doctors. So I'm gonna play next, have you play next a clip from that actual, the documentary produced by the cult that shows kind of how internally they, they, they talked about his healing powers. And it's very different from how Oprah did.

• 1:25:26Speaker 06

  It cannot be explained away.

• 1:25:29Speaker 05

  Ich fragte die Wesenheit, könnte mir helfen?

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  Who said to me in reply to my question, "Can you help me to become healthy again?"

• 1:25:39Speaker 05

  Du bist bereits geheilt.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  And he replied, "You are already healed."

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  Holy shit.

• 1:25:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:52Robert Evans?

  Ah, so yeah, you see, like, in that, there's no talk about, like, oh, yeah, you gotta, uh, you gotta fucking, um...

• 1:26:00Speaker 04

  Right, consult a physician.

• 1:26:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah, no, he just heals your shit, yeah. So, the doctor guy that Oprah has on there is a fellow named Jeffrey Rediger, and he's really interesting to me because he is a very real medical professional and was actually, or is actually, a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. He researches spontaneous healing, which is like when people go into remission or whatever and there's no clear explanation why, which is a thing that happens. People get better from things we don't understand why. That's a thing that happens. And he is clearly there to inject both credibility and skepticism into the discussions about John of God, kinda like Dr. Oz was earlier. For example, Oprah, at one point, plays a video of one of John of God's brain surgeries, where he's like shoving stuff up people's nose.

• 1:26:48Robert Evans?

  And Dr. Rediger is really upfront and clear about the fact that this brain surgery through the nose stuff is sleight of hand, that he's not actually performing surgery, that there's a ton of space in the navel cavity and nothing inexplicable is going on. So he does make, he does state that to the audience. But he does that while he buys into the fact that scientifically inexplicable healing occurs at John of God's center. So I'm gonna play another clip from that Oprah episode, so you can kinda see how this skeptic talks about this healing.

• 1:27:19Speaker 06

  Dr. Jeffrey Rediger traveled to Brazil also to see John of God's work firsthand.

• 1:27:25Speaker 06

  Explain if you can the medical risks of surgery without anesthesia or proper sterilization. It doesn't look like he's like sterilizing the knife or Holy shit. The probe or?

• 1:27:37Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, as a physician, I have to say you don't try these kinds of things at home. And or with your loved ones. And you know, this guy has a second grade education. And I do have to say that these are things that I don't understand. So I can't fully endorse things that are beyond my understanding. But I've seen them happen. Generally, without anesthesia, you see enormous pain. I take care of people every day in pain from surgery and other events. The risk of infection is typically great and something that we have to take seriously.

• 1:28:21Speaker 06

  So have people followed up with these people who've gone through these procedures? Maybe infections came later?

• 1:28:27Speaker 07

  Well, I think every situation, spiritual healing is different.

• 1:28:31Robert Evans?

  So did you catch what went on there? This is really interesting to me. So Dr. Rediger notes that the psychic surgeries, which like use real knives and actually cut people, he notes that that's dangerous. Like he tells people not to do it at home. But he also says he's not aware of anyone getting infections. And then when Oprah points out that he could have, they could have gotten infected later, he doesn't respond to that. You'll notice he doesn't say that that's possible even. He just sort of says that like, a bunch of things could like, that's really, yeah, that's amazing. But it's the kind of thing, because it's been acknowledged, even though he doesn't then go on to state that like, actually, yes, we have no data that these people to suggest these people aren't getting infected. We're not performing any follow ups. I didn't take any attempts to actually determine whether or not people got infected later. He doesn't say that. He gives a non-response so that

• 1:29:16Robert Evans?

  the the show can move on and the audience can move forward, content that John of God, that these are real, serious skeptical people. And that that makes John of God even more real, because this this medical professional has vetted him with the requisite amount of skepticism, even though none of that was actually done. It's amazing. Like, this is a masterclass in how to, like, it's laundering bullshit. Yeah.

• 1:29:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's even like the way that like they can just claim they've addressed the infection risk by saying, oh, because they brought it up. It's fucking revolting. That's crazy.

• 1:29:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's awesome. Um, I want to play one more clip from this episode because we just gotta.

• 1:29:56Speaker 07

  Believe, and this is what medicine and psychiatry need to examine is I believe the powers of belief, the powers of the mind are far more powerful than we have even begun to explore. I believe that's an unexplored wilderness in terms of research.

• 1:30:10Speaker 06

  So you said that since you made that trip as the skeptic and then you were there in the presence and then had the whole bleeding experience yourself, that it turned your life upside down. How? How so?

• 1:30:22Speaker 07

  Well, if you can say something to the effect that I believe this in my head, but I don't believe it in my heart. I don't get it. It's too much. And then a little incision manifests on the skin over the area of your heart. That means none of this is what we think it is. It's something I don't know what that means. And there's I'm sure religions can layer on many different interpretations.

• 1:30:45Speaker 06

  Do you consider yourself a religious person?

• 1:30:47Speaker 07

  Because of this, I'm actually more interested in the development and cultivation of a spiritual life.

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:30:55Robert Evans?

  Yep. So that's interesting. One of Reddiger's claims is that like while he's watching John of God perform these surgeries, he spontaneously started bleeding from a hole in his eye, which is like, kind of like a stigma thing.

• 1:31:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:31:09Robert Evans?

  He's introduced as a skeptic who traveled to John of God Center in order to take samples and medically vet whether or not this man was a serious healer. And he says later in that interview, quote, "Some people I spoke with were able to remember the events going around them completely, and some people seemed to enter a sort of altered state during these surgeries. When I was assisting in one of these surgeries, John of God cut this woman's cornea. She didn't flinch. She didn't try to pull away from him. I can't explain that. I heard some people use the term spiritual anesthesia. I have no way to understand that." It's interesting that he says that because like, there's actually a lot of reasons why someone wouldn't feel their eye getting scraped.

• 1:31:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like perfectly explicable and like lending essentially the name of your institution and by claiming to be baffled, to give it like credence is like. God, truly pathetic. It's also like even accepting his words at face value until the end, it's like, okay, yes, the brain can do a lot. Yes, psychology is more powerful, probably in terms of physiological stuff than, you know, we give it credit for. And then pivoting to, I want to have a spiritual life is like, just an abdication of curiosity.

• 1:32:24Robert Evans?

  Yup.

• 1:32:26Speaker 04

  It's just like, what do you, yeah, this, I mean, it's, it is remarkable that some of these people don't feel pain, probably. It's documented in other media, you know, other types of formats of this kind of shit. And sure, worth exploring, but being like, yeah, I want to see, I want to learn more about these spirits is like,

• 1:32:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:45Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 1:32:47Robert Evans?

  He's, he's such a piece of shit. And it's, yeah, obviously, like, I've scraped my cornea before when I was out hashing in the woods and it didn't hurt, it hurt afterwards, like, because just like, it fucked up my ability, like, my eye was taking in too much light or something. Like, it was like, kind of blinded me. It was very much debilitating afterwards. But the actual getting scraped by a branch in the eye, it didn't cause pain, which is part of why it took me a while to realize what had happened. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's like, there's also a lot of data on how altered, mind altering states like people have in these religious moments can impact perception of pain. Worship is definitively a mind altering state. John of God requires his patients to go through an elaborate series

• 1:33:30Robert Evans?

  of meditations before and after treatment. And I actually found a scholarly study of his, his surgeries conducted by doctors from a Brazilian medical school. They note, "The surgeries were always performed by John of God and occurred in a large, non-sterilized and open room with dozens of spectators, most of whom were other patients and their relatives or friends. During each of these surgical sessions, approximately five patients usually remained standing while side by side in front of one of the room's wall. Rarely, patients were submitted to the surgeries while they were seated in a chair. Visible surgeries were performed in a few minutes in a very grandiose and theatrical way, invoking strong emotional involvement and even perplexity among the audience. Incisions were performed with either sterilized scalpels or kitchen knives and surgeries were performed in rapid succession. The cleanliness of the instruments contrasted to reports of other mediumistic

• 1:34:14Robert Evans?

  surgeries performed by dirty or even rusty implements." So you notice, The stories about this guy that incredible sources state always say that he's just using like random kitchen knives, sometimes even that they're dirty. When actual scientists studied his, like they know his knives are always sterilized. And he's not cutting open people deeply and removing organs. He is scraping their skin and their eyes. The fact that they don't get, a lot of them don't get infections, isn't weird. Have you ever gotten a scrape that didn't get infected? You've probably gotten a lot because your body is reasonably good at not dying from random scrapes. Otherwise, there wouldn't be people.

• 1:34:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:50Robert Evans?

  Like, it's, it's very frustrating. Another frustrating thing is that this study goes on to note that like, they don't know, like, they couldn't find any evidence of infections among John's patients, but they also note that they didn't actually get to follow up with any of these people further than a day or two on. Because like, a lot of them like, were traveling in from elsewhere. So like, the paper is a proper scientific paper and it concludes that like, we need to do more research and track these patients for longer term to determine whether or not anyone's getting infected, which is what you say if you're an actual scientist. Dr. Rediger, on the other hand, just gets on Oprah and announces that this is all inexplicable. Like, science can't explain this. It's like, yes, it can, you just didn't try. Like, you didn't even try. And I hate him.

• 1:35:35Speaker 04

  Science doesn't work when you don't do it. That's a remarkable conclusion.

• 1:35:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Thank you, doctor. I found a good critical write-up of Dr. Rediger's performance on the blog, Science-Based Medicine. I'm gonna quote from that now. Unfortunately, the camera angles used made it impossible for me to judge whether John was doing what he claimed. In the only close-up shot that was presented, it was clear to me that the knife never touched the woman's eye. And when John actually appeared to be doing something, the camera never focused on the woman's eye. How convenient. It was almost as though Oprah producers were making a conscious effort not to show a camera angle that would allow viewers to judge whether the procedure actually being done was what John of God claimed. Personally, I'd have loved to see an ophthalmologist, or even just a surgeon, rather than a psychiatrist, because Dr. Rediger is a psychiatrist, allowed to have a close-up view of John's activities. Rediger is also shown in a video clip apparently bleeding from the chest, apparently after

• 1:36:26Robert Evans?

  having viewed John do his corniest scraping bit. He expresses fear and is concerned that the bleeding doesn't stop as soon as he thinks it should, pointing out that he doesn't have a bleeding disorder. So again, Dr. Rediger is a psychiatrist, which makes him a legitimate medical professional, but does not make him particularly competent to rule on whether or not someone's reaction to a light surgical cut is inexplicable, because that is not what psychiatrists specialize in. Yeah.

• 1:36:50Speaker 04

  Oh, but it's also just being like the arrogance of being able to say, I can't explain it, so it is therefore, I won't explain it, won't find out how to explain it, so it's therefore inexplicable.

• 1:37:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's super great. Um, yeah, and it's also noted in that article that Dr. Rediger isn't just a psychiatrist. He's a psychiatrist who's built an entire brand off of embracing spontaneous healing. At the time this came out, he headed up the Initiative for Psychological and Spiritual Development, and on his old website, he wrote this explaining what the institute did, quote, "We live in a culture that has advanced enough that we can send the person with a medical problem to the medical doctor, a person with an emotional problem to the psychologist, a person with a spiritual problem to the priest, minister, or rabbi. Yet the Initiative for Psychological and Spiritual Development is founded upon the belief that beneath all and behind all the masks and appearances that we present to the world,

• 1:37:49Robert Evans?

  there is something more, and whatever healing potential exists comes from this place." Which is great nonsense, beautiful, beautiful nonsense. So Dr. Rediger's initiative appears to be defunct now. I don't think it exists anymore. I can't find evidence of that, but I didn't look super hard, so maybe I'm wrong. He does have a book out, however, called "Cured!" with an exclamation point, and it's about people going into spontaneous remission. I don't know enough about Rediger to declare him an absolute grifter, but I do know that he was once a ghost on Coast to Coast AM, which is like Alex Jones for people who are a little bit less racist than Alex Jones. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it's probably fair to call him a grifter. You don't go on Coast to Coast FM if you're like, or AM if you're like a credible person.

• 1:38:34Speaker 04

  Well, it's also like, like, the, you know, not acknowledging that spontaneous remission is a severe outlier event.

• 1:38:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:47Speaker 04

  And like, yeah, it's possible, but like, putting your treatment faith in that is insane.

• 1:38:55Robert Evans?

  Yes, yeah, and yeah, but it's a great grift. It's a thing people want to read about it. People love reading books about magical healing and shit.

• 1:39:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, yeah, Dr. Rediger is part of the grand tradition in the medical field of credentialed medical professionals who provide cover for miracle-slinging con men. And of course, Dr. Oz would be another example of this type of person. Another example is provided in Susan Casey's O Magazine article about John of God. And this is her, again, attempting to do some real journalistic research to talk about how it's not weird to believe that this guy could be curing cancer. Quote, "The belief in the effectiveness of prayer is as old as civilization. The results are tough to pin down. Bernard Grad, PhD, a Canadian biologist from McGill University, worked with a spiritual healer named Oscar Esteban conducting controlled studies in the late 1950s and 60s using mice that had been uniformly wounded.

• 1:39:46Robert Evans?

  Esteban would place his hands upon the wire covers of certain cages, willing those animals to heal. The results were dramatic. In one experiment, the wounds on Esteban's treated mice were very significantly smaller after two weeks than those of mice that had been left to heal on their own. The team also discovered that plant seeds exposed to energy healing grew at a faster rate. There was a force here, they agreed, and it appeared to be doing something beneficial. What that force was, however, no one could say for sure." Now, these studies happened. They're a real thing that happened. You can read them. Bernard Grad did carry out those studies, and if you look them up, you'll find conclusions that are pretty similar to what Susan Casey writes in her bad article. What you won't find is any clear follow-up to this study. In fact, basically, the only writing about this research you will find comes from either

• 1:40:28Robert Evans?

  woo-woo bullshit practitioners or other medical griftsmen trying to convince people that energy healing is real. This makes it difficult to refute because there really aren't direct refutations of Dr. Grad's work. What we do have, however, is almost a century of additional research into quote-unquote "energy healing," because, again, this stuff was done in the 50s and 60s. Like, it wasn't a big study. It was conducted a long time ago. There's, you can't say that it was, like, we can't prove to a point of certainty that these people were actually conducting it well or abiding by all the rules they said they were. And there's another 70 years of other studies into this that show very different results. So again, she picks out this one study from 70 years ago that says what she wants it to say.

• 1:41:11Robert Evans?

  She ignores, for example, the fact that in 1999, three psychiatrists with a lancet evaluated multiple studies, several hundred of them, that showed links between religious faith, faith healing, and energy healing and health benefits. Here's how Science Magazine reported on their findings. Quote, "Typically," they say, "these studies ignore other factors that may improve health, such as abstinence from tobacco and alcohol, and even the scientifically sound practices, they contend, were inconsistent and don't justify bringing religion into medical practice." Richard Sloan of Columbia University and his colleagues reviewed every article containing religion and physical health they could find in Medline, an online service that indexes medical studies. "Many of them," he says, "focused on such groups as Roman Catholic priests or Benedictine monks, which forbid certain risky behaviors. Others looked at more general populations of churchgoers and found lower disease rates, but failed to take into account

• 1:41:56Robert Evans?

  that only people who are in fairly good health can go to church. When these confounding factors were taken into account, either by the original researchers in a follow-up study or by Sloan's group, the alleged benefits usually disappeared. Overall," Sloan says, "the evidence is very unconventional and weak, much weaker, for example, than the link between marital status and health." So again, you can point out, there's a couple of individual studies that like, haven't been refuted, that suggest a benefit between energy healing and health, and then there's hundreds of studies that show no connection at all. And if you only pay attention to the studies that say what you want, it sounds great. If you look at the mass body of research, it doesn't look so good. But Susan Casey doesn't do that. Um, yeah, so that's cool.

• 1:42:38Robert Evans?

  Um, following that 2010 episode of The Oprah Show, Oprah herself visited John of God in 2012. She described the encounter as blissful, and in her wake, thousands upon thousands of other seekers made the call to travel down Brazil Way for some psychic healing. By 2014, John's humble center had transformed into a straight-up commercial empire. Those passion flower pills alone grew into a $10 million a year business. Celebrities visited, including Paul Simon, the Princess of Japan, and Bill Clinton. Maybe, probably. We don't exactly know. There's a bunch of celebrities who are rumored to have gone. Um, I'm gonna guess probably. Bill Clinton seems like the kind of guy who'd try this.

• 1:43:18Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah. But something else-

• 1:43:21Speaker 04

  Well, especially like all the other shit.

• 1:43:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:23Speaker 04

  It's like, who the fuck knows what's happening there?

• 1:43:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:26Speaker 04

  Ugh.

• 1:43:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah. But something else also cropped up over the years. Allegations of sexual misconduct by John of God. Objective observers noted that he seemed to have a strange, non-medical fixation with women's breasts, performing surgery aimed at treating heart conditions and other ailments by groping them and cutting around their nipples. So that's good.

• 1:43:46Speaker 04

  Oh, god. It's always like the most obvious shit, and yet, there's still gonna be years of like, of where they're like, "Oh, I don't know, he just, you know, he was just interested in heart surgery."

• 1:43:57Robert Evans?

  Like-

• 1:43:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's, it's always so transparent when the shit finally, like, when the mask starts to slip, I feel like.

• 1:44:03Robert Evans?

  Yep, yep, it is. But you know what mask never slips?

• 1:44:12Robert Evans?

  The mask of capitalism. And that means it's time for us to take our mask off and put some products and services on. Yeah.

• 1:44:23Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:44:30Robert Evans?

  We're back! Okay, so, um, yeah, we left off, you know, John of God has gotten this huge boost from Oprah and her grift community. People are flooding in from all around the world, but also some stories start to come out. Allegations, all vague at this point, no individual names attached, but that he's, he's sexually harassing and assaulting people. The allegations were enough that, in 2014, a real newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, sent a real journalist, Tim Elliott, to look into the matter. Tim's article provided the first comprehensive look at John of God's operation by someone who wasn't clearly two steps away from joining his cult. Like Susan Casey, the center provided him with a white expat handler to introduce him to John of God's world. Since Tim was a man, his handler was a man, Diego Capola. Here's Tim's article, quote-

• 1:45:16Robert Evans?

  Coppola was born in Peru, but spent most of his life in California, where he worked as a computer engineer. After visiting the Casa in 2001, just to check it out, he married a Brazilian and moved to Abadianya. These days, he manages the Casa's 50-strong staff, a multinational team of volunteers who take care of logistics, channeling the constant flow of visitors, and, most importantly, forming an impenetrable buffer around medium jiao, sheltering him from the ceaseless demands of a ravening public. "Everybody wants a piece of medium jiao," says Coppola. "Before I arrived, Coppola had promised me an interview with jiao, although he now lets me know that this is far from guaranteed. He is not like you and me," Coppola tells him. "He lives in another realm. Timetables don't mean much to him. What matters to him is doing the work, taking care of the healing."

• 1:45:58Robert Evans?

  So that's good.

• 1:45:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:02Speaker 04

  I mean, like, the handler for this sort of situation is always like, "It's so fucking sinister. It's so crazy to me that people get sucked into this shit. It just seems like on the face, like, get the fuck out of there."

• 1:46:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Now, the reality is that John of God spent most of his time living in luxury on a ranch compound nearby. He only worked about half the week, and later revelations would suggest that he spent much of his downtime sexually abusing women. Although he also spent a lot of his work hours sexually abusing women, too, so, who knows? Tim Elliott spoke to an Australian seeker, a woman named Sarah Layton from Melbourne. She's very emblematic of the success cases for John of God, and I'm gonna quote from him again. "This is her fourth trip to the Casa since 2011, during which time she has sought treatment for her liver, kidney, and heart, as well as female problems. She also had lots of psychic surgeries, which is when the entities operate on patients remotely. 'You wake up after one of these surgeries and you can actually feel the stitches in

• 1:46:56Robert Evans?

  your stomach,' she tells me. Real stitches? No, psychic stitches,' she says. What has helped her most, though, is the emotional healing. She's had a hard life. After being sexually abused as a child, she was tortured. Before coming here, she had attempted suicide four times. She estimated she has spent $50,000 all up in airfare donations (I always donate to the Casa because John of God doesn't charge anything) and medications, such as healing herbs, which are sold at the Casa's pharmacy. I used my inheritance, $20,000 from my grandmother, to pay for a lot of it, but it's worth it. My heart is healed, which Western medicine wasn't able to do, and my gynecological problems have stopped." So there's a lot going on there.

• 1:47:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, first off, you see, like, everyone claims he doesn't take money, and then this woman's like, "But I spent $50,000 here," which is like, yeah.

• 1:47:43Speaker 04

  I mean, I guess to that end, that's not that different than any religion, but yeah.

• 1:47:50Robert Evans?

  Or than actually getting medical treatment in the legal way, if you don't have health insurance, or if you do have health insurance in a lot of cases.

• 1:47:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, fuck, yeah.

• 1:47:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, but like you'll notice that like, and this is true with a lot of the, the most dedicated case studies who will come out and talk about this guy's healing is their actual medical complaints are really vague and there's, there's nothing in that that you can track pathologically. She like, she vaguely says gynecological problems, but also says like, it's really my heart and like my emotional problems that he healed. And Susan Casey, the O Magazine author was in the same boat. She was grieving, not physically ill. And I've read a lot of stories about women who received healing from John of God, and an overwhelming number of them came in with emotional pain. And these people do seem to have gotten real relief at the center, but there's nothing magic about what provided them with the relief. I'm going to quote now from a woman who wrote a story about like her own treatment by John of God.

• 1:48:41Robert Evans?

  This is what she described it as, quote, "Meeting the medium was a solemn process. Hundreds of people in white flocked to the casa every morning, some in wheelchairs, other frail from chemo. In an orderly line, we waited to go before him so he could prescribe our cures. Mine was as follows: five trips to the local sacred waterfall, four months without sex, alcohol, or black pepper, four months of blessed herbal capsules. A translator quickly scribbled these directions on a small piece of paper. For three hours a day, I sat in meditation in the current room, helping to conduct energy for healings. It felt special, purposeful. I napped, hiked, and stood under that freezing holy waterfall. I prayed in front of the casa's triangle, a big wooden wall hanging, whose three sides represented faith, love, and charity. And then I went home." And like, yeah, if you're fucked up and grieving and like in a lot of pain and you go to a distant

• 1:49:25Robert Evans?

  location that's like set up to be solemn and relaxing and chill and you detach from the internet and you stop getting wasted all the time and you spend a bunch of time hiking in nature and hanging out at waterfalls, that will help with your grief.

• 1:49:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, of course it will.

• 1:49:43Speaker 04

  And having caught someone confidently say, this is helping with your grief.

• 1:49:47Robert Evans?

  This is helping, you will get better. Like, that's a lot of what people need in those moments is like someone to really confidently tell them, like, this will pass and you will feel better. All of that stuff helps. There's nothing magical about it. It just is, it's good to go, like, when you're really fucked up in the head, it's good to stop getting wasted and to spend a lot of time hiking. Like, there's nothing controversial or inexplicable about that. Um, yeah. So in other words, a lot of the miraculous powers attributed to John of God are really just examples of the fact that life in his center is on balance healthier than the lives a lot of people left behind. Uh, that Sarah woman Tim Elliott interviewed even told him she's expected the same thing.

• 1:50:30Robert Evans?

  She said, quote, "You're in the fifth dimension here, whereas in Australia, it's the third dimension. In Australia, people don't understand spirituality. It's either work or going out and getting drunk. I find I have to escape that." And like, yeah, if your life, if you were, if you were like depressed and getting wasted every night and like that makes your body feel worse, it's bad for your health and you go to a place and a guy's like, "Stop doing that for four months. Hike, meditate. Yeah, that's gonna help."

• 1:50:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, honestly, just like, I could prescribe, just don't be in Australia. Come on.

• 1:50:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, get out of Australia is a general rule. Get out of Australia.

• 1:51:04Speaker 04

  We all know. We all know what you, you people get up to.

• 1:51:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah. But of course, John of God and his adherents couldn't just claim that the man had provided people with a relaxing retreat because claiming that this is magical and it also can treat cancer and stuff, that's where the real money's at. So when Tim did his interviews, his patients referred to John of God as a spiritual X-ray machine. And in the very dumb biography John of God, Heather Cummings, uh, claimed that John was able to see each of his patients as a hologram, which is why all staff, patients and visiting journalists were asked to wear white. He says it made them easier to read. It also coincidentally opened up a huge market in town for white clothing, of which John of God got a cut.

• 1:51:44Robert Evans?

  Awesome. Smart.

• 1:51:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:51:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:47Speaker 04

  And, and the uniform like starts to take away your identity and makes you more easy to manipulate and all that shit.

• 1:51:55Robert Evans?

  Yep. As business expanded in the wake of Oprah's show, John and his followers created new treatments. They opened up a series of crystal beds. Patients paid $60 an hour for the right to lie around a bunch of rocks. They also opened up a gift shop. Tim Elliott writes that it sold, quote, "Books, CDs, DVDs, tote bags, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and crystals. All crystals have been blessed by the entity," reads the sign on the wall. There are John of God pendants, postcards, and travel pillows, even glow-in-the-dark John of God wall stickers.

• 1:52:23Speaker 04

  I really like imagining like the fucking like entity sweatshop where the guy just has to like, or the spirit just has to bless, like a, just a, you know, 40 gross of crystals or else they can't go home.

• 1:52:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. The entities are like, yeah, they're, they're, they're working long hours to make sure all those fucking crystals are holy enough.

• 1:52:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Both the gift shop and cafe also do a brisk trade in water that has been blessed by the entity. People at the Casa treat the blessed water like nitroglycerin. "Don't drink it all at once," Jana Sue Jones says one afternoon when she sees me swigging from a bottle. "You'll be up all night." Sarah Layton tells me she regularly buys 10-liter jugs of the stuff to take home in her luggage. It's just water.

• 1:53:06Speaker 04

  Oh my God.

• 1:53:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I mean, a lot of religions have fancy water. Now, the, the heart of the whole grift is the pharmacy, though. Uh, when I first started reading about it, I assumed it just stocked a variety of herbal remedies that he was giving people, but it turns out that the reality was even dumber than that and more brilliant at the same time. Here's Tim, quote, "I had assumed that the pharmacy would stock a range of different herbs to treat a variety of different conditions, but note, there is only one herb for sale here, Passiflora, the flower of the passion fruit plant. When I asked Coppola about this, he explains that it's not what's in the capsules that counts, but rather the spiritual prescription that John of God writes for each patient. The intentionality of that prescription is transferred to the capsules at the time of purchase," he says. That's fucking brilliant. That's a great grift right there.

• 1:53:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, that's like the, the homeopathy. You know, it's the it's that you can put magic in whatever.

• 1:53:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:58Speaker 04

  And if you have a line on passion fruit flowers, which does sound good.

• 1:54:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And again, all of the people who see John, he actually just being seen by him and showing up and being in that line is free. But they all get prescriptions for these herbs and, you know, some by $50, some by $10 worth. But the average, Tim knows that the average purchase is about $20, which would account for $40,000 a day in herb sales alone.

• 1:54:24Speaker 04

  Jesus.

• 1:54:24Robert Evans?

  So great grift. A fucking plus grift, John of God, like very smart. So Abadianya is a small town. It is not located in a nice part of Brazil. Before John of God, its biggest industry was a series of brick factories. By the mid aughts, John was by far the largest business in the area, and this gave him power. The way Tim describes it, John of God's financial leverage turned Abadianya into his own personal thiefting. Quote, "The biggest industry by far is medium jau. There are no less than 72 posadas or hotels here, all catering to casa pilgrims, most of whom come on two-week tours and arranged for booking agents. These tours cost many thousands of dollars and must be approved by jau, or rather, the entity.

• 1:55:06Robert Evans?

  There are rumors that he also demands a percentage from the tour operators, but Coppola denies this. Medium jau owns farms and some mines. He doesn't need more money." Not if he's making 40 grand a day from herb sales, he doesn't.

• 1:55:18Speaker 04

  He also is definitely getting that kickback.

• 1:55:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah. My, my friends in the pot industry got into the wrong business. Just convince people that any random plant cures everything and start selling that shit. Like, that's the fucking money. You don't even need real plants. They could just be putting grass in those bills and people wouldn't notice.

• 1:55:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, or nothing.

• 1:55:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, or nothing. Just sawdust. It's brilliant. So it soon becomes apparent just how much the town has been molded in the jau, the entity's image. Photos of him are everywhere, on street poles, in the posadas and cafes. A whole industry has sprung up around the sale of white clothes for visitors who forget to bring their own. "He is the brand here," one visitor told me. "The locals are now worried about how long he's going to live." "The entity oversees everything here, from new businesses, which must be entity-approved, to new construction." "One Australian casa staff member told me that before building a house here, she ran the plans past the entity." Now, Tim did eventually get to conduct an interview with John of God, but only after he made it through a gauntlet of fawning former patients. The center made him interview all of John's regulars, men and women who claim he healed them.

• 1:56:18Robert Evans?

  The goal of this was obviously to instill a sense of awe in him, so that by the time he got to talk to John of God, he was in a mentally receptive place. But Tim is a good journalist, and this did not work on him. In fact, he says that by the end of the whole routine, he suffered from miracle fatigue. Quote, "If one more person tells me about their amazing recovery, I'll kill them."

• 1:56:40Robert Evans?

  I like, I'm a fan of Tim.

• 1:56:43Speaker 04

  Very good.

• 1:56:44Robert Evans?

  When they sat down to talk, Tim became probably the first reporter to directly ask John of God about the sexual abuse allegations against him. John's response, "I thought you came to talk about me, not other people."

• 1:56:58Robert Evans?

  That's fucking awesome.

• 1:57:00Speaker 04

  I mean, I guess if you're gonna pass the buck, why not? Jesus Christ.

• 1:57:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah. At this point, John tried to break off the interview to go nap, but Tim asked him about another allegation. Local reporters had alleged that he diverted donations meant to build a soup kitchen and used them to renovate his house. John responded with a rant that he wasn't a thief. The person making the allegations was a thief. So like, very credible guy here. Then the interview ended. And for a while, that was about all anyone had on the allegations against John of God. The Montreal Gazette had a big laugh in 2015 when John of God had an endoscopy, which revealed a tumor, and he had to undergo major surgery and chemotherapy to have it removed. When asked if this was hypocritical, John of God responded, "What barber cuts his own hair?", and went right back to fleecing thousands of people per year, which is just great.

• 1:57:50Robert Evans?

  Like, "I'll cure your cancer, but if I get cancer, I'm going to get some fucking chemo."

• 1:57:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. That's, I mean, look, he had an answer and the right answer ready to go, I guess.

• 1:58:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that is the right answer. You know what will cure your cancer?

• 1:58:06Speaker 03

  Oh, God. Please don't.

• 1:58:08Robert Evans?

  We are FDA-backed to say that all, all cancers are cured by whatever product and/or service comes up next. So again, the FDA completely backs and supports this. And if they have a problem with what I'm saying, they can come after me. Come on, you fucking FDA cowards. Bring it on. Bring it on.

• 1:58:30Robert Evans?

  Anyway, here's healing.

• 1:58:41Robert Evans?

  We're back, and I am just waiting for the FDA to try and take me on. Let's do it. Come on.

• 1:58:50Speaker 04

  They'll take this cancer from your cold, dead hands.

• 1:58:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Fucking, I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:58:59Speaker 04

  Who knows what's happening anymore?

• 1:59:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:01Speaker 04

  Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

• 1:59:03Robert Evans?

  In September of 2018, a very brave Brazilian activist, Sabrina Bittencourt, went public with allegations from dozens of women against John of God. The blowback against her was immediate and severe. John was well-connected in the Brazilian government, as well as extremely popular. An avalanche of death threats forced Sabrina to flee her home country for Spain. One of John's victims was hounded into suicide by her own family, who were all adherents of the medium and members of the cult. The story did not disappear, though, because as the weeks went by, dozens and then hundreds of new women came forward with their own stories of sexual abuse and rape at the hands of John of God. By the time the 300th allegation hit, the chief lawman in Goiás was forced to issue a preventative incarceration request against John of God.

• 1:59:46Robert Evans?

  Initially, John expressed a desire to work with law enforcement and comply with the investigation. From a local news story, quote, "I am grateful to God for still being here. I'm still a brother in God. I want to comply with Brazilian law. I am in its hands. João de Deus is still alive," he told his followers. When he left only 10 minutes later, he told reporters that he was innocent of all accusations. The psychic's appearance caused a visible uproar in the center. Some followers greeted him with applause, while others complained about the presence of reporters. "Respect my father?" one of the volunteers asked. Now, I included that quote about that John of God cult member saying, "Respect my father," which is really, because I think it's really interesting. And it's interesting because John's actual daughter accused him of sexual assault.

• 2:00:28Robert Evans?

  In January of 2019, after 300 other allegations go public, John of God's own daughter goes to the Brazilian magazine Veja to announce, quote, "Under the pretense of mystical treatments, he abused and raped me between the ages of 10 and 14." Oh, God. She claims the abuse from John of God only stopped after one of his employees impregnated her. In response to this, John of God beat his own daughter so badly that she suffered a miscarriage. She told Veia, "My father is a monster." True. Now, eventually, more than 600 women came forward to level accusations against John of God. Like, it is hard to over- and that, I'm sure it's thousands. Like, if 600 women came forward in a climate so dangerous where, like, at least one of

• 2:01:13Robert Evans?

  his victims was hounded to suicide, I suspect he is guilty of thousands of acts of sexual assault. But we know 600 women leveled accusations. Rather than report to the police, as he said he would, John of God went on the run, withdrawing $9 million in cash in an attempt to flee the country. But he was unsuccessful in this, and eventually had to turn himself in. Raids on his compound found millions of dollars in cash, as well as a large number of illegal firearms. Police who interrogated him started to report bizarre incidents, including their computer spontaneously typing the letters "O-O-O-O-O" a bunch of times, the printer printing spontaneously, and a mini-fridge exploding. These reports are almost certainly untrue. They come from tabloid sources, but there is a lot of evidence that sympathetic Brazilian police certainly wanted citizens to believe this was all going on.

• 2:01:58Robert Evans?

  You know, we started this episode talking about, like, the police tend to be on these guys' sides, because they believe the bullshit. Yeah. Less than a month after making initial allegations, Sabrina Bittencourt released a bizarre, six-minute-long video accusing John of God of having run a 20-year-long human trafficking operation. She alleged that the cult leader's spiritual hospital was nothing but a cover for a baby-smuggling empire that sold infants to parents in the US, Australia, and Europe for up to $50,000 apiece. Bittencourt alleged that John had established a network of isolated farms and mines, and that he would bribe poor girls aged 14 to 18 to move there and spend the next decade continuously pregnant. Once born, the babies were sold on the black market. After 10 years, the birth mothers were executed to prevent any witnesses.

• 2:02:41Robert Evans?

  Sabrina wrote, quote, or stated, quote, "Hundreds of girls were enslaved over the years, lived on farms in Goyas, served as wombs to get pregnant for their babies to be sold. These girls were murdered after 10 years of giving birth. We've got a number of testimonies. We have received reports from the adopted mothers of their children that were sold for between $20,000 and $50,000 in Europe, USA, and Australia, as well as testimony from ex-workers and local people who are tired of being complicit with John of God's gang." Now, those are some wild-ass allegations. Yeah. And unfortunately, I don't know if any of this really happened. Sabrina was absolutely right about John of God's career of sexual abuse. Hundreds of women came forward, including his own daughter. Like, and there's, like, there's so much testimony, it's very clear what happened.

• 2:03:24Robert Evans?

  But the baby smuggling stuff, there's not hard evidence of this. An investigation is ongoing into it. Um, and Sabrina Bittencourt, like, she got hounded out of her home and deluged in death threats and suffered a mental breakdown. She came out with these allegations days before committing suicide. Um, she was a sexual abuse survivor herself, clearly traumatized by that, as well as the ocean of death threats. This doesn't mean that her allegations weren't accurate, because there's actually a long history in Brazil that includes to the present day of like, religion, like, particularly Christian cults that have like farming communes, abducting people, basically, and forcing them into slavery to like, grow plants and shit. Like, stuff happens in Brazil. It's a big country, and there's a lot of areas that are beyond the rule of law.

• 2:04:08Robert Evans?

  This is not impossible, but it's really hard to know exactly what's going on. And you won't find any credible publications that have gone into the matter in detail, because really, all we have are the allegations and the fact that they're being investigated. And unfortunately, it is unlikely we will ever know the truth. Uh, because if Bittencourt's allegations are accurate, it is highly unlikely that the Bolsonaro administration would allow the truth to get out. Because Jair Bolsonaro has connections to John of God, and a lot of members of his political party were backers of John of God. And if John of God was operating a massive, multimillion-dollar baby smuggling empire, he absolutely did it with the consent and help of powerful men in Brazil, and the truth's just not gonna fucking get out. So, this is not a satisfying ending, um, in that case, because I can't tell you what

• 2:04:53Robert Evans?

  happened with his whole baby smuggling business. Pretty clearly, he raped a whole lot of people, and it was a monster. Um, but there's just a lot that's unclear about this story, that will be up in the air for years. Hopefully, good investigations will kind of come to a more concrete conclusion about some of this stuff in the future. Um, I will say, though, while our story doesn't end in the most satisfying way possible, it does end with something that kind of resembles justice. In December 2019, a judge in Goiás sentenced John of God to 19 years and four months in prison for the rapes of four different women. His lawyers are appealing, but John is incarcerated today. And at age 77, he is very likely to die in prison. So, that's something.

• 2:05:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, something, I guess resembling justice.

• 2:05:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah, if you like squint, yeah.

• 2:05:43Speaker 04

  Oh, it's okay. So, uh, Robert, as someone who spends a lot of time looking at men like this, is there ever a case where it's like, it just feels like these, like, the patterns of this shit is always the same. And I guess it's maybe self-selecting because it's the shit we hear about.

• 2:06:03Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 2:06:04Speaker 04

  Is, is, but it, why, it always feels like it feels, follows like such a similar blueprint. It's like, you know, it, like every cult feels the same.

• 2:06:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, because they, because they, they all operate on the same principle. Like every cult feels the same in the way that every oil and gas company works broadly the same way. Because the same sort of tactics, the same sort of promises, attract and work on the same sort of people and the same kinds of folks are able to successfully carry out these grifts because it, being able to do the work that these kind of people do, like John of God isn't all that different from, um, uh, a guy like L. Ron Hubbard. Like they all have more, more alike than different. Or all that different from Sarah, uh, Paula White Kane, uh, Donald Trump's spiritual advisor. They're all, they just pick different kind of ways to do the same thing.

• 2:07:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:07:02Robert Evans?

  And some of them are more successful than others and they're all differently successful. But it is, it's always the same grift and it, it just leaves a huge amount of human shrapnel in its wake, which sucks.

• 2:07:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. Jesus Christ. This is fucking dark as shit, man.

• 2:07:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, man. This one's a rough story. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I just, I wish we knew more about the baby farming stuff. There just doesn't seem to be.

• 2:07:29Robert Evans?

  Solid information and also just like Sabrina bit in court by the time she came out with those allegations was like pretty broken like like broken in the sense that like human a an ocean of hate from other people had like shattered her psyche. Um, yeah, which is also tragic. And, um, you know, what she did was very brave and she brought down this guy, but it cost her her own life, which is really fucked up.

• 2:07:54Speaker 04

  God, God, that's fucking horrible.

• 2:07:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's not great.

• 2:08:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. Another successful, uh, episode of Behind the Bastards.

• 2:08:04Robert Evans?

  We really nailed it today.

• 2:08:05Speaker 04

  Just grim shit. Uh, how often does it end in anything resembling justice? Can't be that often.

• 2:08:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, not all, not all that often. You know, most of them don't wind up in prison. Yeah.

• 2:08:18Speaker 04

  I guess everyone dies, but still.

• 2:08:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, about 15% of the time, something that like resembles justice happens to these guys.

• 2:08:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:28Robert Evans?

  About 15% of the time, I'll say.

• 2:08:30Speaker 03

  I feel like that's high, Robert. I feel like it's probably lower.

• 2:08:33Robert Evans?

  Maybe, maybe. Look, if you, if you the fan want to go through and run the numbers, please do. Um, I hate, I hate numbers and don't trust them.

• 2:08:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't do math.

• 2:08:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, someone do run the stats, run the stats on the bastards.

• 2:08:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:46Speaker 03

  Let us know.

• 2:08:47Robert Evans?

  Run the stats or just listen to Run the Jewels.

• 2:08:52Robert Evans?

  It's better than statistics.

• 2:08:54Speaker 04

  Only one, you can't do both.

• 2:08:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, no, absolutely.

• 2:08:58Speaker 04

  That's the key.

• 2:08:59Speaker 03

  Andrew, do you have anything you want to plug after that really just uplifting conversation?

• 2:09:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, God, I guess, I mean, look, this is probably the only podcast that I can comfortably say that yo is this racist, where we take some of the worst, uh, you know, just situations and shit in the news, people's like questions on racism is horrible often, not horrible, horrible, but, uh, I can definitively say we're less depressing than this. So.

• 2:09:27Speaker 03

  Word.

• 2:09:28Speaker 04

  Check it out.

• 2:09:30Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 2:09:32Robert Evans?

  Weeee. You can find us on BehindTheBastards.com where we will have the sources for this article or this episode. You can find me on Twitter at Iwriteokay and I have a podcast called The Women's War. Check it out.

• 2:09:44Speaker 03

  The Women's War is uplifting and not, it's hopeful.

• 2:09:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, more hopeful than this bullshit. So. Yep.

• 2:09:54Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 2:09:55Speaker 03

  Have a good day everyone.

• 2:09:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Thanks for having me. This is, I mean, I can't, I can't say it was fun, but it was certainly something.

• 2:10:04Robert Evans?

  Yep, it was certainly something.

• 2:10:08Robert Evans?

  So, yep, we're done.

• 2:10:10Speaker 03

  I'm gonna stop recording now.

• 2:10:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:18Speaker 05

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• 2:10:48Speaker 01

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• 2:11:21Robert Evans?

  What's lighting my dumpster fires? I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards. That little introduction was in honor of my hometown, Portland, which just had a police officer murder a man who was having a mental health crisis and will probably be lighting some dumpsters on fire tonight. Although you won't hear it the day that this happens. But anyway, that's all beside the point right now. Because the point right now is that I'm introducing our guest today, the inimitable. Matt Liee.

• 2:11:51Speaker 09

  Hey, what's going on?

• 2:11:54Robert Evans?

  Matt, how are you doing?

• 2:11:56Speaker 09

  I'm doing well. I'm excited to be here. A big fan of the pod. Love me some bastards.

• 2:12:02Robert Evans?

  And you are, you do a Sopranos podcast and the name is, I believe, Pod Yourself a Gun?

• 2:12:05Speaker 09

  That's right.

• 2:12:06Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 2:12:07Speaker 09

  Yeah, we're the world's only Sopranos podcast. Don't go looking for any other ones because they do not exist.

• 2:12:14Robert Evans?

  Little known TV show, The Sopranos. You might have heard of it. Very obscure.

• 2:12:18Speaker 09

  A niche, a niche TV show that only people who really like art understand. And that's, that's why we talk about it. We talk about the art.

• 2:12:27Robert Evans?

  It's fun thinking about that because I believe the song that introduced that show was something about waking up in the morning and getting yourself a gun, which is what I did this morning.

• 2:12:35Speaker 09

  You bought a gun?

• 2:12:37Robert Evans?

  I did, I did. I did buy a gun this morning. Not for Sopranos like uses. Although I am Italian, so you can't really know for sure. You can't really know for sure.

• 2:12:49Speaker 09

  Yeah, you woke up with a blue moon in your eye and you decided, I'm gonna go get myself a gun.

• 2:12:54Robert Evans?

  And then I'm gonna commit crimes in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

• 2:12:57Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:12:58Robert Evans?

  They do that a lot in the show, right? A lot of Pine Barren crimes?

• 2:13:00Speaker 09

  They do it at least once and, and it's great.

• 2:13:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that they're chasing that guy through the, yeah.

• 2:13:06Speaker 09

  Yeah, the Russian.

• 2:13:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they leave their DNA everywhere.

• 2:13:10Speaker 09

  Well, they pee everywhere and, you know.

• 2:13:14Robert Evans?

  We Italians are not a subtle people.

• 2:13:16Speaker 09

  No, they spend that whole episode literally like dying of like cold and they're lost in the woods, but they spend all the time talking about how they're starving because they haven't eaten in 12 hours. It's the most Italian thing in the world. But I want to hear about this gun.

• 2:13:31Robert Evans?

  Oh, it's just a gun. But today we have something much more exciting than a gun. We have a bastard and our bastard. Are you ready for this?

• 2:13:41Speaker 09

  I'm so excited.

• 2:13:42Robert Evans?

  Are you settling in?

• 2:13:43Speaker 09

  Yes.

• 2:13:44Robert Evans?

  Doctor. Mehmet Oz. I never introduced them like that. We're talking about Dr. Fucking Oz today. Yes, that's right.

• 2:13:52Speaker 09

  Who'd have thought he'd be a bastard? A TV doctor?

• 2:13:55Robert Evans?

  Who would have thought a TV doctor could be a bad man?

• 2:13:59Speaker 09

  No, they, they, they take an oath, TV doctors. They say do no harm and get good ratings. That's the, the Hippocratic oath.

• 2:14:07Speaker 03

  Do they, do they also oath to be bad guest hosts on Jeopardy? Because he sucked and I didn't enjoy it.

• 2:14:13Robert Evans?

  Honestly, if you are going up against LeVar Burton for any job, your first action should be like, you know what? I'm bowing out.

• 2:14:20Speaker 09

  Yeah, immediately.

• 2:14:22Robert Evans?

  I'm not going to compete with LeVar Burton.

• 2:14:24Speaker 03

  Respectfully fuck off, sir.

• 2:14:26Robert Evans?

  Fighting Jordy, fighting Kunta Kinte, fighting whatever the reading rainbow guy's name was? No, sir.

• 2:14:32Speaker 09

  I think it was LeVar.

• 2:14:33Robert Evans?

  LeVar, yeah.

• 2:14:36Speaker 09

  Yeah, no, I did not watch him on Jeopardy, but I have seen the show and had no idea he was a bastard.

• 2:14:44Robert Evans?

  Yes, um, he's a piece of shit. Uh, he's, he's a different piece of shit. We're also going to be talking in the very near future about Dr. Phil, who's a much worse person.

• 2:14:52Speaker 03

  Fuck Dr. Phil.

• 2:14:53Robert Evans?

  Dr. Oz is bad for some reasons that you'll suspect, you know, the pseudoscience stuff, but also for some, I think more complicated reasons, which will, will have us a nice talk about at the end of this episode. So I've always said that one of the great tragedies of American public life is that our very best doctors are usually like kind of schlubby dudes and ladies, uh, who maybe aren't the best at, at social graces and certainly don't have enough time because they're wildly overworked to do TV appearances.

• 2:15:21Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah, I, yeah, I agree. They're not hot. I've always said doctors, they're not hot. I look at them. I'm like, ew, like.

• 2:15:29Robert Evans?

  We need to put a couple of billion dollars into a national program for more fuckable doctors. Come on.

• 2:15:35Speaker 09

  Yes, yes. Doctors who fuck. That's the next level of healthcare in America. It won't be universal healthcare, but at least doctors will look fuckable.

• 2:15:43Robert Evans?

  Now, I mean, I think the problem is not their fuckability because it's inherently hot to be a doctor. It's more the fact that they're not necessarily, even the ones who are, have a good bedside manner are good at explaining things, just don't have the time to spend a lot of it on television because they're busy saving lives. This has led to a thriving industry, well documented in this show, of grifter, health influencers, and scam artists selling people poison with honeyed words and practiced smiles. Today, though, we're talking about a different kind of medical grifter, kind of a grifter who helps to launder those more shady grifters, the guy, people who aren't doctors, people who have no medical training, who are just trying to sell you nonsense cures. The guy we're talking about today exists to give them credibility and launder them into the

• 2:16:24Robert Evans?

  public consciousness, and his name is Mehmet Oz. Mehmet Oz is maybe the most influential public physician in the country, possibly the world. He is, in every professional sense of the word, an excellent doctor, exceptionally even. Within the bounds of what it is he is trained to do, he may be one of the best in the world at what he does. And he uses his, you know, the thing that makes him a bastard is that he uses these exceptional qualifications, along with his charisma, his handsome face, to sell millions of people on nonsense cures every single year. And that's, that's a bad thing to do. It's kind of made worse, we'll talk about this a lot, by the fact that he is, he's a, he's a, he's a heart surgeon, and he's an exceptional heart surgeon.

• 2:17:07Speaker 09

  That's so sad. It's always sad when, like, an amazing doctor is a piece of shit. This is like how I felt when Ben Con, Ben Carson turned out to be a Trump guy. I was like, but you're so good at the brain surgery.

• 2:17:20Robert Evans?

  It's always surgeons. Which, you talk to doctors, they'll be like, yeah, of course it's always surgeons.

• 2:17:25Speaker 09

  Yeah. Yeah, they're the ones who think they're gods, right? They essentially have a god complex, and they'll be really good at one thing, and then they'll also think that they're good at, like, politics and shit like that.

• 2:17:38Robert Evans?

  I think good surgeons are so prone to being also, like, nonsense, like, so many of our nonsense public doctors or surgeons for the same reason that so many of our terrorists are engineers. They're people who get really good at a specific thing, and it lets them convince themselves that they know what they're talking about in a wider variety of things than they really do.

• 2:17:56Speaker 09

  That's cra- it's, it just makes me glad that I never, you know, got really proficient in any one skill.

• 2:18:02Robert Evans?

  Never gain skills.

• 2:18:04Speaker 09

  I never, never.

• 2:18:05Robert Evans?

  Ever learn how to do things.

• 2:18:06Speaker 09

  You'll become too smart for yourself and think that you are God.

• 2:18:09Robert Evans?

  If no one learned to do anything, we would still be living in the mud and eating grubs. And you know what we wouldn't have?

• 2:18:17Speaker 09

  Snake oil salesman?

• 2:18:18Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah. Or, or that. We would have very little at all.

• 2:18:24Robert Evans?

  Mehmet Sengiz Oz was born on June 11th, 1960 to parents Suna and Mustafa Oz, who must have fucked at some point in October of 1959 in order to conceive him. We have to assume his parents fucked in the, in October.

• 2:18:37Speaker 03

  You don't know that.

• 2:18:38Speaker 09

  Yeah, he could be immaculate conception.

• 2:18:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:18:41Speaker 09

  You know?

• 2:18:41Speaker 03

  Robert.

• 2:18:42Robert Evans?

  Possible. I would say right now, the most likely theory is that they fucked sometime in October.

• 2:18:47Speaker 09

  Oh, all right.

• 2:18:48Robert Evans?

  His father Mustafa had been born in Bozkir, a village in southern Turkey. He had grown up poor in the countryside during the Great Depression, uh, and obviously, you know, Great Depression, bad time everywhere. Real bad time if you're like in rural Turkey, you know?

• 2:19:02Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:19:03Robert Evans?

  You're, you're dealing with a different kind of poverty than even like our grandparents dealt with here.

• 2:19:08Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:19:09Robert Evans?

  So he had to work himself to the bone in order to make something of himself, in order to get into medical school and distinguish himself enough that he was able to earn scholarships, which allowed him to immigrate to the United States as a medical resident in 1955. So this is a, this is a hardworking man. Um, and a man who's, has to struggle, I'm going to guess in ways that, that are kind of difficult to imagine for most, even as difficult as our present times are.

• 2:19:34Speaker 09

  He's like a true, uh, lift yourself up by your bootstraps kind of guy.

• 2:19:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Came from the middle of like nowhere rural Turkey and worked himself into becoming a good enough doctor that he got it. Uh, you know, he was able to get over the racism of the fucking 1950s immigration system.

• 2:19:55Robert Evans?

  That's, that's an achievement.

• 2:19:56Speaker 09

  Yeah, no, good for him. Started from the bottom and now he's on TV selling fake cures.

• 2:20:01Robert Evans?

  That's his dad. Um, that's his dad. That's not Mehmet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Mustafa. Yeah. So, uh, we're talking about his dad and his mom right now. His mom, Suna, uh, came from a much wealthier background. I don't know if this is what helped his dad get into the country or not. It may have been. Her father was a successful pharmacist, uh, and both sides of her family came from Istanbul. She grew up with a lot of money. As befits his more modest upbringing, Mustafa was an observant, traditional Muslim. Suna's family was more moderate and secular. Mehmet and his two sisters grew up split between both approaches to religion. The Oz kids spent their childhood speaking Turkish and English fluently at home, so they grew up in a bilingual house.

• 2:20:43Robert Evans?

  Mehmet was from a young, uh, from a young age ambitious, starving for success and his father's approval. He was wont to note that he was born in the year of the rat, according to the Chinese zodiac. In one interview, he noted of this, quote, "You run the maze. If you put cheese in that maze, I swear to God, I'll get to it, and I'll get to it really fast. But should I be running after that cheese? Am I in the right maze? All of these questions, which people much greater than I am think through, I put on the back burner as I'm running after that cheese."

• 2:21:12Speaker 09

  What the fuck? Like, he said, that's way too much stock into the year of what animal you were born into. At least he wasn't born into the year of the pig. And he's like, well, you, what you gotta do is you gotta take your snout and put it into the trough of life and just laugh at all the slop.

• 2:21:27Robert Evans?

  Shove your face into food as hard as you can.

• 2:21:31Speaker 09

  You roll around in the shit and then you hope that someday you find another piggy to fuck and then you have little piglets.

• 2:21:37Robert Evans?

  Look, I was born in the year of the pig and that's why I dispose of bodies for the mob. It's just what you do.

• 2:21:44Speaker 09

  Well, that's a, it's a nice take on year of the rat for him.

• 2:21:48Robert Evans?

  It is, it is telling because what he's saying there is like, I don't think about why I'm doing what I'm doing. I just, I just strive to, to, to achieve things and I don't think about whether or not they're good or bad. I just, I have to achieve.

• 2:22:02Speaker 09

  Yeah, he just wants that cheese.

• 2:22:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he wants that cheese. It's ambition without an analysis, I think is what you'd, you'd call it. And he's, he's pretty open about that. Now Mustafa, his dad repeatedly told the growing Dr. Oz, who's not yet a doctor, obviously, that when he'd grown up, when Mustafa had grown up, he hadn't been able to relax for even a second on his road to escaping poverty and establishing himself as a cardiothoracic surgeon. So he's like telling his kid as he grows up, like, you know, like, if you want to succeed, you can't relax for even a second. You can't take a moment off. You always got to be hustling.

• 2:22:36Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:22:36Robert Evans?

  And that's how Mehmet grows up. He's an excellent student, but no amount of success is ever enough for his dad. He later recalled, "I'd say I got a 93 on a test. He'd say, 'Did anyone get better?' That was always the question he asked."

• 2:22:50Speaker 09

  Cool dad.

• 2:22:51Speaker 03

  Sounds like a fun guy would hang.

• 2:22:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, the school I grew up in, because of just where we were in North Texas, like about half of the kids in my school were either from India or from China or Japan. And so you had a lot of kids who would talk that way about their parents, right? And some of them had, especially around our senior year, there were a couple of kids who had to get like taken in by an ambulance because they would just like, one in one case seizing as a result of stress, like, it's not good to put this kind of pressure on a kid.

• 2:23:24Speaker 09

  Yeah, like, straight having like nervous breakdowns just from like trying to get good grades.

• 2:23:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:23:30Speaker 09

  Once again, don't get good at anything. It's not worth it.

• 2:23:34Robert Evans?

  Develop skills.

• 2:23:35Speaker 09

  Don't develop skills. You'll get seizures. You're at risk of seizures. You're at risk of your of your dad not loving you. You know, you just gotta fucking-

• 2:23:43Robert Evans?

  He won't love you no matter what.

• 2:23:44Speaker 09

  Yeah, exactly. Stop caring about your dad, you know, just coast, coast your life.

• 2:23:49Robert Evans?

  Find some dirt, eat some grubs, you'll be fine.

• 2:23:52Speaker 09

  Yeah, start a Sopranos podcast.

• 2:23:54Robert Evans?

  Start a Sopranos podcast.

• 2:23:57Speaker 09

  That's all you gotta do, dude.

• 2:23:59Speaker 03

  Really bringing it back there.

• 2:24:03Robert Evans?

  So Mehmet decided to become a doctor when he was just seven years old. He recalls standing in line at an ice cream parlor. Quote, "I remember it like yesterday. There was a kid in front of me who was 10. My dad, just to pass the time, said, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' The kid said, 'I don't know. I'm 10.' My father waited until he was out of earshot and said, 'I never want you to tell me that if I ask you that question. I never want you to tell me you don't know. It's okay if you change your mind, but I never want you to not have a vision of what you want to be.'"

• 2:24:34Speaker 09

  Mehmet, go kill that kid.

• 2:24:35Robert Evans?

  Kill that kid. Fucking cut him.

• 2:24:39Speaker 09

  Murder that loser kid and tell me what you want to do with your life. God damn, that is way too much pressure, way, way.

• 2:24:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's so much pressure to put on a kid.

• 2:24:49Speaker 09

  And it seems like the kids like that always end up becoming the like going into the career that their father wanted them to do. And then eventually their dad dies and then they're like, oh, fuck, I didn't get to do what I wanted to do with my life and now I'm miserable.

• 2:25:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a real bummer. Um, it's not just, don't put pressure on people. There's plenty of grubs.

• 2:25:10Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:25:11Robert Evans?

  By the time Mehmet was ready to start school, his father was wealthy enough to pay to send his son to Tower Hill School, a K through 12th grade private college preparatory school in Wilmington, Delaware.

• 2:25:22Speaker 03

  Jesus, that sounds horrible.

• 2:25:24Robert Evans?

  I know. It sounds like a fucking nightmare. The fancy boy.

• 2:25:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, it sounds uniforms, ties.

• 2:25:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah, probably like weird shorts during the summer.

• 2:25:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:25:36Robert Evans?

  The fancy boy prep school worked well enough that Mehmet was accepted to Harvard where he played football and water polo. His grades were, as always, exceptional. One of his roommates later recalled, he was very competitive. There was never any question that he wasn't going to be a doctor. He wanted to be a fantastic surgeon. So people around him, like everyone kind of recognizes this kid is brilliant. Everyone recognizes he's got the drive, he's going to achieve, you know, so good for him.

• 2:26:03Speaker 09

  I mean, it's just like, I just look back now at my own childhood and I'm like, god damn it, if I can think of one friend where I, where I knew what they wanted to do for a career. I don't think we ever talked about like, what's your career gonna be? No one was like, I'm a doctor, you know? It was, it was mostly just like, uh, you know, how's, how's your hip hop album working out? And they're like, good. And they're like, cool. And that was the whole thing.

• 2:26:28Robert Evans?

  That's interesting. I think it was different for me because there was definitely a lot of pressure to have something. You know, I went to a public school. Um, I didn't go to a private school, but I went to a public school in, my early schooling years was in a dirt poor farming town called Idabel, Oklahoma. And the school was as good as it could be in a place like that. Like they paddled us and stuff like it was not,

• 2:26:49Speaker 09

  damn.

• 2:26:49Robert Evans?

  Not a high end educational.

• 2:26:51Speaker 09

  Wait, they paddled you in a, in a public school?

• 2:26:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:26:55Speaker 09

  Oh, damn.

• 2:26:56Robert Evans?

  They still did that in Oklahoma back in them days. Yeah. You got to sign the paddle afterwards, too.

• 2:27:02Speaker 09

  Oh, that's nice.

• 2:27:03Robert Evans?

  But when I was in, I don't know, third grade or so, I moved to Plano, which is a fairly wealthy suburb of Dallas, and the schools, the public schools are very good, and there is a lot of drive to achieve. Like I said, a lot of like kids who were really motivated by their parents to achieve. And so you either were kind of planning to be a doctor, or, you know, something on that level, or you were planning to join the military because it was Texas.

• 2:27:28Speaker 09

  Right.

• 2:27:28Robert Evans?

  I was in ROTC, so me and all my friends, I think we all kind of assumed we're all gonna join the army, you know?

• 2:27:33Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah, I went to, yeah, public school, you know, my entire life, and I think most of my friends either wanted to, they were either gonna go into the army, or they were, or they wanted to be famous musicians and/or athletes, so.

• 2:27:50Speaker 03

  See, my brother is a doctor and knew he was gonna be a doctor from the, he's my older brother, too, from the time that he was like seven, so like, and I'm like, la, la, la, no idea.

• 2:28:03Speaker 09

  I'm just saying, like, a level of ambition at a very, very young age has always been a turnoff for me when it comes to like friends, because it just, they always have that like sense where they're trying to get, you're some sort of stepping stone into their, whatever their career path is, and I don't like it.

• 2:28:21Robert Evans?

  So Oz took only one break during his relentless progress through medical school. And that break was to do a compulsory, I think it was a one-year term of service in the Turkish army in order to maintain his dual citizenship. Other than that, straight on to like becoming a doctor. That's the only kind of break he took. So I guess that's his gap year, is being in the Turkish army.

• 2:28:43Speaker 09

  I'm just gonna take a break, have a gap year, and join the military of a foreign country.

• 2:28:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it helps suppress, you know, Kurdish liberatory movements and stuff, whatever.

• 2:28:52Speaker 09

  Yeah, they gotta stop trying to have their own thing.

• 2:28:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:57Robert Evans?

  He got a four-year degree in biology and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he doubled up, working on both an MD and an MBA. He succeeded in earning both, so that's interesting to me. He gets both, he gets at the same time as he's getting his MD, he also gets a business degree.

• 2:29:13Speaker 09

  Yeah, this is, uh, it's very, uh, there's a lot of foreshadowing going on.

• 2:29:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there's some foreshadowing. Uh, he earned both, obviously, with flying colors. He's, he's an incredibly intelligent man, right? This isn't just a guy, like, we'll talk about Dr. Phil later. Dr. Phil, I don't think is, is very smart. He's incredibly good at reading and manipulating people. He's not particularly a genius. Mehmet Oz is a genius. Like, I think he almost certainly is an actual genius.

• 2:29:38Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:29:39Robert Evans?

  In 1985, at age 25, he married Lisa Lamoll, who was the daughter of a cardiothoracic surgeon who worked with his father. They met at like a party or something. This relationship gradually opened him up to alternative medicine and Eastern mysticism, because Lisa's mom was hardcore into homeopathy, meditation, and other new age stuff. We'll talk about that more in a little bit. For the next decade and change, Dr. Oz's career zoomed forward. He became triple board certified, which I don't know what that means, but it sounds impressive.

• 2:30:07Speaker 09

  It's at least three boards.

• 2:30:08Robert Evans?

  It's at least three boards. That's three more than I've been certified with.

• 2:30:12Speaker 09

  I got zero boards under my belt.

• 2:30:14Robert Evans?

  Not a one, not a single board between the three of us, so.

• 2:30:17Speaker 09

  We really should find a board just to get us some certifications, guys.

• 2:30:21Robert Evans?

  Just to get certified. If you're a board, if you're a medical board, hit us up.

• 2:30:25Speaker 09

  A board out there, please.

• 2:30:26Robert Evans?

  Well, actually, you know what? The state of New Jersey has certified me as a Reverend Doctor, so I'm one board certified.

• 2:30:32Speaker 09

  All right, you got a board out there. Is there a board in the Universal Life Church? Cause I am a minister slash Jedi Knight.

• 2:30:39Robert Evans?

  I'm gonna say that counts.

• 2:30:40Speaker 09

  All right, I'm board certified.

• 2:30:42Robert Evans?

  Can you get me painkillers?

• 2:30:44Speaker 09

  I, you know, I, I know a guy.

• 2:30:48Robert Evans?

  That sounds legal enough.

• 2:30:52Robert Evans?

  So he starts working as a heart surgeon and he's very good at being a heart surgeon. And he's not just good at the heart surgery part. He's good at the science part. Over time, he authors hundreds of peer reviewed articles and he's awarded 11 patents. One of them is for a solution to preserve transplanted organs. Another is for an aortic valve that can be implanted without open heart surgery. Like he's, he's not just really good at, at the mechanics of surgery. He's an excellent scientist.

• 2:31:19Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:31:20Robert Evans?

  11 patents is pretty good.

• 2:31:23Speaker 09

  Seriously. One might say he's the wizard of Oz.

• 2:31:28Robert Evans?

  There, I think I read like six articles with variations of that title on the guy.

• 2:31:32Speaker 09

  All right, well, I gotta go then. Bye, guys.

• 2:31:36Robert Evans?

  It's just a thing. Journalists can't fucking help themselves.

• 2:31:38Speaker 09

  Oh, you can't help yourself if you're anybody. You see Oz and you're like, oh, I gotta call him a wizard.

• 2:31:43Robert Evans?

  Gotta call him a wizard. Dr. Oz was hired by Columbia Medical School as a teacher and as, you know, he's also working. They've got a hospital. He's working there, but he's also teaching. He very quickly rises to the level of full professor and becomes the vice chair of the cardio, of the heart surgery department, basically.

• 2:32:02Speaker 09

  How old is he at this point?

• 2:32:04Robert Evans?

  He's in his 30s.

• 2:32:05Speaker 09

  Oh, man.

• 2:32:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like everything I've read right now on its own would be a career trajectory. Any doctor in medicine would envy. Like you could die happy with that being your fucking resume. Like that's a hell of an achievement.

• 2:32:19Speaker 09

  Yeah, my God.

• 2:32:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah. In 1995, a New York Times profile referred to Dr. Oz as, quote, "probably the most accomplished 35 year old cardiothoracic surgeon in the country." He might be the best at what he does in the entire United States at this point.

• 2:32:36Speaker 09

  I mean,

• 2:32:36Robert Evans?

  I don't know how to measure that, but he's, he's very good.

• 2:32:40Speaker 09

  I mean, I don't know any other heart surgeons by name, so fuck. I mean, he's the guy.

• 2:32:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Now, the article that I found that quote in, however, gives some hints about what was to come because that article was about Dr. Oz's increasing experimentation with alternative medicine. It opens with the story of one of his patients, a 49 year old diabetic smoker who suffered a critical heart attack. She went under Mehmet's knife for a dangerous surgery. Quote, At the invitation of Oz and his patient, there were two other people on hand in surgical gowns and masks, a second year medical student named Sally Smith stationed at the patient's feet, and a 52 year old healer named Julie Motts, who was standing at the patient's head. As volunteers in Oz's cardiac complementary care center, they worked for free through the operation, seldom moving except to reposition their hands. As Oz

• 2:33:29Robert Evans?

  requested sutures and clamps and units of lidocaine, Motts called softly to Smith to move her hands from the small toe of the patient's right foot to a point on the sole known as the bubbling spring. What they were doing, no one else in the operating room knew how to do, or had ever seen done during a coronary bypass, or had ever thought worth doing, even as an experiment. In this ultimate theater of scientific medicine, the women were using their hands as kings once did to treat subjects with scrofula, and as Jesus is said to have done, and as shamans and mothers and Chinese qigong practitioners still do, they were using their hands to run a kind of energy, which science cannot prove exists, into the patient's kidney meridian, which also may or may not exist.

• 2:34:09Speaker 09

  The kidney meridian?

• 2:34:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you gotta get that meridian. That's the best part of the kidney, is the meridian.

• 2:34:15Speaker 09

  That's the most delicious part of the kidney is the meridian.

• 2:34:19Robert Evans?

  Oh, man, with fucking on a Ritz cracker sliced thin, I love me some little, like, you just wanna get, you wanna get like some duck fat or some butter, and you wanna get it sizzling in the pan, and you just slap that meridian on for like a half a second, and it's good to go. That's all you fucking, just a little bit of, little bit of char, you know?

• 2:34:36Speaker 09

  Yeah, I mean, this all feels like he's gonna start turning his patients into foie gras, and I'm very excited for what's to come, this heel turn that he's gonna take.

• 2:34:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, yeah, that's, that's, that's silly. I, I, I think that's silly. But, at the other hand, like, it's in a hospital, these people are clearly following sanitation guidelines, they're not getting paid, the patient's not getting charged extra, so I don't have a problem with that.

• 2:35:04Speaker 09

  And he's the smartest doctor in the world. It's like one of those things where you're like, I feel like this is wrong, but I don't know enough to dispute it, so I'm gonna let him fuck with my kidney meridian.

• 2:35:15Robert Evans?

  I, I, I'm not willing- To morally condemn him for that, even though I think it's silly just because like, yeah, yeah. What's the fucking harm in seeing, you know? And in that case, if you're actually doing it in a medical context, you're guaranteeing everybody's taking proper sanitation procedures. Fucking whatever.

• 2:35:30Speaker 09

  And it seems like, from what I can tell, that sounded, uh, non-invasive.

• 2:35:36Robert Evans?

  It sounded like- Yeah, yeah. They were just doing energy work or whatever.

• 2:35:39Speaker 09

  Yeah, they were throwing, you know, crystals and doing fucking pendulums over, over him.

• 2:35:44Robert Evans?

  It falls into the category of it couldn't possibly hurt, so why not give it a shot? Right? Which is, we'll talk about this more later, but that's kind of what they were going for. You know what else can't hurt?

• 2:35:55Speaker 09

  I don't.

• 2:35:56Robert Evans?

  The products and services that support this podcast guaranteed to not harm you. In fact, every one of the products of ours that you buy extends your life by exactly 45 minutes. So, you know, spend all your money and gain immortality.

• 2:36:17Robert Evans?

  We're back. Uh, we're talking about Dr. Oz, who in the mid 90s, has started some weird alternative medicine stuff. Now, he's not the person who starts the alternative medicine program at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, which is also like a teaching hospital, whatever. It's one of those hospitals that they have a medical school with, you know, you know, the thing. If television has taught me accurately, all of the doctors are fucking constantly.

• 2:36:41Speaker 09

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Doctors fuck and teach. That's what they do.

• 2:36:44Robert Evans?

  Doctors fuck and they teach. That's all they do, you know? When you're not teaching, you're fucking. And Columbia Presbyterian was among the most reputable medical establishments on planet Earth. Still is, uh, as far as, as I'm aware. So this alternate medicine program there is kind of an odd thing. It was not started at the behest of anyone at the top of the school. The whole thing came about because in 1993, a retired utility executive named Richard Rosenfall gave them three quarters of a million dollars as a private grant in order to establish a center to study alternative medicine.

• 2:37:16Speaker 09

  Just gifted money and just said, "Start a, uh, magic doctoring school." I wanted to be like Hogwarts.

• 2:37:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, okay. Now, Richard had been motivated by having several close friends of his get terribly sick in such a way that doctors told them there was nothing that could be done to help them. And his response was to basically throw a bunch of money into a hole to see if alternative medicine could come up with solutions. And it's one of those things I could make fun of, like, this is almost exactly a week after my mom just died of a type of cancer that when you get diagnosed with it pancreatic, there's basically nothing they can do. You know, it's even like, like she went through chemo and it did nothing, you know? I get it. You go through something like, okay, well, let's try other shit, you know? So I can't, I can't even blame Richard for, like, it seems like he was motivated out of grief to do this, you know?

• 2:38:10Speaker 09

  Yeah, you can't blame people for trying to try any other alternative to, I mean, you know, something in which there is no cure in modern medicine.

• 2:38:21Robert Evans?

  I will blame the snake oil salesman. I'm never gonna blame someone who's like, well, doctor said they can't cure me, so I'm gonna eat this root, you know? Fuck it, why not?

• 2:38:29Speaker 09

  Go for it.

• 2:38:30Robert Evans?

  Who gives a shit? Like, it can't hurt if you're definitely gonna die.

• 2:38:34Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:38:35Robert Evans?

  And it is, to be honest, like, it is kind of within, even you could argue within kind of medical best practices, because one of the things, if, like, I took EMT training years ago, one of the things they tell you is that you're not supposed to use an AED, you know, like paddles to restart a heart, you're not supposed to use them on an infant. But if an infant is in, you know, the state where, like, you use them on them because they're dead.

• 2:38:59Speaker 09

  Shock the shit out of them.

• 2:39:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they're dead. You can't make dead worse, so like, why not? So I guess, like, yeah, you can't, I don't know, can't make it worse, why not see if it, if, if something happens? I'm not against the basic idea of testing some of this shit, is what I'm trying to get at.

• 2:39:14Speaker 09

  The worst thing you're gonna get out of that is a really cool TikTok video of electrocuting a dead body.

• 2:39:18Robert Evans?

  Absolutely, and then you get a fuckload of followers, and then you start selling brain pills.

• 2:39:24Speaker 09

  It's a perfect plan.

• 2:39:27Robert Evans?

  So, yeah, um, so I can't blame the college for this. I can't blame the guy for funding it. It's a reasonable thing. Why not? You know what? That's kind of my attitude is, is why the fuck not? And that's more or less what the dean of faculty of medicine at the college said, like, all right, well, we're not paying for it. Why not give it a shot? That said, a lot of medical professionals were really angry about the idea. Dr. Victor Herbert, a Columbia Medical School graduate and a professor of medicine at Mount Sinai, and a board member of the National Council Against Health Fraud, publicly lambasted the lecturers brought in by the program as con artists and sociopathic liars. And knowing the kind of people who get into the selling this shit business, I don't know if he's wrong about that. A lot of these people are fucking sociopaths, you know?

• 2:40:12Robert Evans?

  He says, quote, "I am nasty. I call practitioners of fraud, practitioners of fraud. It's my feeling that the Rosenthal Center has been promoting fraudulent alternatives is genuine." Um, and I get his critiques, you know, that is one of the, like, I can say on one hand, what's the harm? But also, maybe the harm is that people hear this stuff is being done in a hospital, so it must help? When it doesn't, and maybe some of those people do that, not the way Dr. Oz is doing it, where we're going to do the normal medical procedure, we'll have this done. Maybe some people decide, I just want to have the energy work done, and then they drop dead of a heart attack, because it doesn't

• 2:40:43Speaker 09

  Right.

• 2:40:44Robert Evans?

  replace a valve, you know?

• 2:40:45Speaker 09

  I'd like to think that even at a, uh, hospital or a research facility with Western medicine, that they still peer review and try out different, you know, like, alternative medicines, right?

• 2:41:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, some of them, some of them work.

• 2:41:02Speaker 09

  Some of them work. Like, there was a time when, you know, acupuncture was seen as kind of like a crock, and now it's like, kind of just a standard part of Western medicine. It's just, uh, you know, so...

• 2:41:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and there's a, there's a lot to be said about even acupuncture, you know? I, I went through a lot of it as a kid, and it did nothing for me, but my grandpa swore by it for his Parkinson's. And even if it was, I don't know, you could say it's like fucking, uh, whatever placebo, but he experienced relief, so I don't care.

• 2:41:28Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:41:29Robert Evans?

  Um, I don't know, I'm not going to get into like, uh, because I don't know, I don't know all of the, I know it's one of those things where there's a number of divergent opinions on acupuncture, but a number of things that were initially considered alternative medicines have been found to have medical, you know, benefits. Not that that's the norm, but it has happened in history, you know, different kind of traditional or whatever treatments.

• 2:41:50Robert Evans?

  So this is very controversial, though, is the point I'm making. And a number of people even picketed the college when the Rosenthal Center opened. None of this dissuaded Dr. Oz from participating in it. His explanation as to why he embraced alternative medicine was, to be quite honest, kind of brilliant. He said that his, by this point, vast experience as a real doctor had really informed him of the limits of medical science. Specifically, he said that while he could sew bypass grafts and even implant a new heart into someone's chest, he couldn't change the habits that had made them sick in the first place, nor could he cure the emotional issues that they were dealing with. Depression, he pointed out, was a major risk factor in heart patient recovery post-surgery. And things like meditation, right? That's kind of considered woo, new age. Right.

• 2:42:35Robert Evans?

  That can help with depression and that can help with healing. And he's right about that. No, 100%. That's not a bad point to make. Yeah. So he seemed to insinuate, when he was talking to the New York Times, why wouldn't a caring physician want to try everything possible to improve his patients' odds? He could point out that meditation had shown some benefit for heart disease patients. Who was to say that other stuff wouldn't work? Dr. Oz told the New York Times that he felt ethically obliged to experiment in new directions in medicine. The article makes it clear that Dr. Oz had not let up one bit in the workaholic tendencies that he inherited from his father as well. And I'm going to quote from the Times again here. Mehmet Oz is one of those rare beings who seem incapable of sloth. He's doing a heart transplant right now, his secretary says on the phone,

• 2:43:18Robert Evans?

  and he's got a double lung transplant waiting. And those are in addition to his two regularly scheduled open hearts. And then at 3:00, he's supposed to fly to Boston to deliver a lecture. So exceptional is Oz's energy that some of his colleagues use him as a benchmark, correlating their own vitality as a fraction of a full Mehmet unit. He runs down lobs, sizes tennis partner, mentor and department chairman, Dr. Eric A. Rose, who at 44 is one of the top heart transplant surgeons in the world.

• 2:43:45Speaker 09

  So I can't tell you how nervous I would be going into a lung transplant procedure and then hearing like this doctor's got to do a heart after you and then got to fly to Boston. I'd be like, you think you could maybe take your time with this, bro? Like, could you?

• 2:44:01Robert Evans?

  I get that. I do. It is a matter. We'll talk about this in two. We don't have enough of these guys. It's actually a major health problem. How few people there are that can do this.

• 2:44:11Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:44:12Robert Evans?

  But it is exhausting. Everything you read about this guy's day, like, you're just one of those people who I think I kind of get the feeling. I don't want to psychoanalyze someone, but you get the feeling he can't be alone and still like he has to always be moving towards

• 2:44:28Speaker 09

  Yeah, he's got his dad in the back of his head, you know, telling him to murder that kid in the ice cream shop.

• 2:44:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, to kill that fucker. Kill that fucking kid. He doesn't know what he wants to be.

• 2:44:38Speaker 09

  Just like, I mean, I imagine that would create a bit of a problem later in life with stillness.

• 2:44:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I feel for him a little bit in that.

• 2:44:49Speaker 09

  Sure.

• 2:44:50Robert Evans?

  Now, the article also goes into more detail about how Dr. Oz's wives, Dr. Oz's wife's family piqued his interest in alternative medicine. His father-in-law was one of the surgeons on the first heart transplant team in Texas. He'd also been nicknamed the Rock Doc by Rolling Stone for playing music in the OR to relax patients. His mother-in-law had developed a special low-fat diet for her husband's cardiac patients, and this was really before it was accepted that low-fat diets would be good for heart patients. She once refused surgery for her own inflamed gallbladder and handled it instead by altering her diet. She taught her son-in-law, Dr. Oz, about using arnica for sore muscles and herbal tea for stomach aches. So he gets brought in, in part to

• 2:45:34Robert Evans?

  alternative medicine by these people who have a real medical background and are doing things that aren't widely accepted, but also may help. You know, music, I think there's there's some data now on how music can help with certain aspects of the healing process.

• 2:45:46Speaker 09

  Right.

• 2:45:48Robert Evans?

  Mother-in-law seemed to be on the cutting edge of that.

• 2:45:50Speaker 09

  When you said the Rock Doc, I got concerned. I thought he was gonna like, replace people's hearts with crystals and shit. And I was like, oh, no. Oh, no.

• 2:45:59Robert Evans?

  They all die, but my God, their hearts are pretty.

• 2:46:03Robert Evans?

  So this is how Mehmet gets introduced to the wide world of quack cures. And it makes sense. He enters it through largely reasonable ways, alternative treatments that have some positive impact on people. That's in, there's extremely reasonable stuff in the article in general. Like Dr. Oz points out that in 1995, American hospitals had only recently allowed family to stay in the hospital with a patient. While in Turkey, it was common for families to do this. And of course, having loved ones nearby can help a patient's morale, which can influence how well they heal. No one, I think today would even like think to disagree with that. It didn't used to be common. It changed. So he's, he's in medicine during a time when a lot of stuff that like just wasn't, that is kind of now common sense medicine wasn't.

• 2:46:47Robert Evans?

  And I think that kind of opens his eye to like, well, maybe all this other shit works.

• 2:46:51Speaker 09

  Yeah. Maybe everything in my head is correct.

• 2:46:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:55Speaker 09

  We're slowly getting to him turning into a complete narcissist.

• 2:46:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And the article kind of veers right from, yeah, having loved ones in the room can, can influence how well you heal to Dr. Oz's love of energy work, particularly his work with a lady named Mots, who believed she could sense the energy of heart transplant patients. The Times article certainly does not portray this woman in a particularly positive light. Quote, "She now has her surgical sea legs under her, but the first time Mots observed open heart surgery, she had a shaky debut. She had been standing at the patient's head outside the sterile field, periodically telling Oz what changes she was able to sense in the patient's energy. The patient was obviously not awake, but probably had some awareness, most likely smell and perhaps hearing. Open heart patients are often fitted with headphones and provided with tapes to listen

• 2:47:41Robert Evans?

  to, including if they want Oz's own specially recorded soupy trance music. For the bypass team, it was quite a novelty to hear Mots report that she was registering the patient's moods in her body. Various states of fear, anger, or satisfaction perceived as roughness in her chest or turbulence in her stomach. At one point, seeing that Mots was not looking so good herself, Oz asked the burly assistant to take her outside for some air. When he returned, he said, "I sense a change in my stomach. It's a tenseness. No, it's a growling. No, wait a minute. I'm just hungry."

• 2:48:14Speaker 09

  My God, I swear she's like, she seemed like she is just describing her own feelings and then just ascribing them to an open heart.

• 2:48:24Robert Evans?

  But yeah, it's, it's one of those things. I'm not sure exactly what type of energy work this person is doing. Um, cause there's a few different kind of categories of it.

• 2:48:33Speaker 09

  She's checking the vibes, dude. She's checking the vibes. Just making sure, you know, the vibe dipstick is filled with oil.

• 2:48:40Robert Evans?

  I, I should note, if I'm going to be totally fair, that reiki, uh, which has its origins in Japan, has been shown in some early scientific studies to help diminish the symptoms of chemotherapy and to significantly alter people's experience of physical and emotional pain. Um, and I have some friends who swear by it for kind of physical and emotional pain in particular. Um,

• 2:49:01Speaker 09

  I don't know what reiki is. I've heard of it. Is it like when Mr. Miyagi rubs his hands together and then he puts his warm hand?

• 2:49:07Robert Evans?

  It's like energy work, I guess. I don't know. It, it's not a kind of thing that I particularly believe in. And I kind of think in a lot of cases, it's that you have a good relationship with the practitioner and you trust them and it can be, you know, an emotionally soothing thing, which I don't know. Um, there were early studies, scientific studies that showed that it could diminish the symptoms of chemotherapy and reduce people's experience of pain. Now, further studies were commissioned after these early studies, which starting in the early 2000s were more negative. A number of hospitals did, however, add reiki practitioners to their stable of available, of available providers. In part as a, as a result of like the work that Dr. Oz and the center at Columbia was doing.

• 2:49:48Robert Evans?

  You can find these people in hospitals now. And it's worth noting that a number of the positive studies about reiki and other similar things were conducted by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Their work is problematic, to say the least. And I'm going to quote now from an analysis of several studies conducted by this organization by Professor Dr. Edvard Ernst, quote,

• 2:50:12Robert Evans?

  Three studies suggested that energy medicine had an effect, but their authors either applied statistics inappropriately, confounded the effects of energy healing by adding unrelated interventions to the experimental condition, or failed to design or blind equivalent placebo controls. Their results are therefore untrustworthy. The two studies that were well-designed failed to demonstrate effects from energy and healing. The odds of generating a useful result of a clinical trial of energy medicine are small. Moreover, what impact would negative studies have? Scientists will simply say, "We could have told you so." And proponents are unlikely to change their mind. Proponents may then claim that the negative study must have been flawed, or that energy medicine cannot be investigated by the tools of science.

• 2:50:54Robert Evans?

  Or they might rely on the NCCAM, that organization I talked about, funded studies that generated biased but apparently positive results. The NCCAM's approach encourages a self-perpetuating cycle of misinterpreting research and conducting flawed research, which inevitably generates some studies that erroneously claim positive effects and give the false impression that the efficacy of energy medicine is still scientifically unresolved.

• 2:51:19Speaker 09

  Man, we are just veering into anti-vax territory and like anti-mask territory. People who just, they Google stuff and then they go, "This article right here says that masks actually caused COVID."

• 2:51:32Robert Evans?

  They can't analyze, and it's from a government science organization. You know, these guys like, and here's a study that's, and it's like, well, okay, but you actually look at scientists who don't have a vested and often financial interest in this, and they point out all these very obvious flaws in the study. It's worth noting that the NCCAM was founded in 1998, three years after the New York Times article about Dr. Oz and the Alternative Medicine Center at Columbia was published. Now, Dr. Oz at this point was not yet on Oprah's show, but he had been featured on TV several times for his pioneering work with mechanical hearts, as well as his embrace of alternative medicine. You can draw a direct line. I don't know if we would have an NCCAM without Dr. Oz. I don't know. You can't say that for certain.

• 2:52:16Robert Evans?

  But he is someone who before his embrace of alternative medicine starts to be well known as an exceptional doctor and scientist. He embraces this stuff. Columbia starts studying this stuff and even though everything they find is pretty inconclusive, the fact that it's in an actual hospital lends it legitimacy. This organization is started in order to test this stuff. The organization is filled with people who already believe in it, carrying out tests that are flawed. And it helps prepare this culture believing too much in this stuff.

• 2:52:47Speaker 09

  My God, it's just like, it's a real life Facebook group, you know? It's just like everyone already believes in all the stuff and they just keep like just cosigning each other's bullshit.

• 2:52:57Robert Evans?

  And it's one of those things like I, again, I know people who swear by Ricky who gain, you know, emotional benefits from it, who think it helps with, you know, a number of things, including like, including emotional pain. And like, if you find something that helps you alleviate your emotional pain, more fucking power to you, you know? You're never gonna hear me say a damn word against it.

• 2:53:18Speaker 09

  You know, go with God. That's, that, that's all great. But I mean, you want to relieve pain? Yeah. Try some morphine though, dog. Cause that shit, oh my God.

• 2:53:28Robert Evans?

  And there's no downsides to morphine. That's the best part of it.

• 2:53:31Speaker 09

  I can't think of one downside to morphine.

• 2:53:33Robert Evans?

  Not a single one.

• 2:53:34Speaker 09

  Yeah. It just feels good the whole time and you just need to take more.

• 2:53:39Robert Evans?

  My issue is not so much with any particular treatment. Not that, not, not even an issue that people would like. It's number one, a lot of people will eschew actual medical treatment in favor of some of this stuff. And it's not going to, I, I, I'm trying to be as fair as I can. Ricky is not going to solve your blocked cardiac pathways, you know? Like, it's not gonna fix it.

• 2:54:04Speaker 09

  Yeah. I mean, energy is great, but Plavix works wonders.

• 2:54:08Robert Evans?

  Plavix is a lot better. And it's, it's, it's more to the point, even more than that, is it, it gets us on this, this road of increasingly accepting and legitimizing things that there's no, there's not a scientific basis for. And that leads us to shit like, let's drink bleach to cure the coronavirus. Like, you know, it's where the road ends I have more of a problem with than Dr. Oz experimenting with an energy worker during a surgery. Like, it's where that leads to, and he plays a major role in legitimizing that. He's, he, he helps put, he helps put our national foot on the, the gas pedal into the, the post-science age.

• 2:54:50Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's a slippery slope to that, you know, downing that brain octane oil, you know?

• 2:54:56Robert Evans?

  Exactly, exactly. So, yeah, at this point, though, we're talking still in the mid 90s. Everything Dr. Oz is saying is reasonable from a certain point of view. He's not claiming that Ricky's going to cure cancer. He's not even claiming it's going to cure your heart disease. He's saying it could help with recovery and a lot of recovery is mental. And he's not, you know, it's possible he's right, you know?

• 2:55:18Speaker 09

  He's not yet a bastard.

• 2:55:20Robert Evans?

  It's certainly not impossible for this kind of stuff to have a mental impact, which can positively affect recovery. Okay?

• 2:55:25Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:55:26Robert Evans?

  So, yeah, he's not a bastard at this point. Nearly all of his alternative medical claims were things that you could argue were at least to some extent reasonable, based on the way he framed them. And he was, most importantly, regardless of whatever kind of woo woo stuff he got into, an exceptionally gifted medical perfection professional who was performing something like 250 heart surgeries a year. You know, that's 250 lives a year.

• 2:55:48Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:55:48Robert Evans?

  Extended. That's, that's great. He's not a bastard yet.

• 2:55:52Speaker 09

  Yeah, he's doing great work so far, you know? Despite the

• 2:55:56Robert Evans?

  Little weird, but

• 2:55:57Speaker 09

  Heart stuff.

• 2:55:57Robert Evans?

  Fine.

• 2:55:58Speaker 09

  A little bit of energy, a little bit of heart surgery, it works out.

• 2:56:02Robert Evans?

  And the thing, though, that is, I think, is happening during this period, and I don't know how conscious a choice this is by Dr. Oz. I think it is because of the fact that he gets an MBA as well, and the fact that he's very good at getting press, very good at getting on TV, at getting in the news. I think he is, at this point, crafting his career to make himself into an ideal candidate for famous TV doctor. I think he is building a background that will allow him to establish his celebrity career later. It is not hard to see how a handsome doctor with TV experience, a New York Times profile talking about alternative medicine, and a seriously impressive resume was going to wind up eventually on Oprah

• 2:56:42Robert Evans?

  Winfrey's radar. He almost built himself perfectly for that to happen. And he tried in the early 2000s, he tried with his wife to start a TV show. They, like, filmed a pilot episode. It didn't really take off. But he succeeds, and I think he's pushing, and his wife is pushing him to get into, he's very much his business partner, to develop himself into a media personality. And he eventually succeeds in 2004 in getting invited to Oprah Winfrey's show. Now, Mehmet immediately endeared himself to Winfrey's audience with his willingness to discuss frank health details in a way that was demystifying and humorous. He most famously explained that healthy poops tended to be shaped like an S and should hit the

• 2:57:26Robert Evans?

  water like an Olympic diver with very little splash. Oprah herself later recalled, "When he made it okay to talk about the shape of a good poop, I knew he could talk about anything. He always found ways to make the human body endlessly fascinating."

• 2:57:40Speaker 09

  Man, that is, I mean, I'm low-key impressed that he impressed Oprah with doo-doo shapes.

• 2:57:47Robert Evans?

  It's mom stuff, you know? Moms love poop.

• 2:57:50Speaker 09

  They do. They love talking about doo-doo. That's the thing.

• 2:57:53Robert Evans?

  And that's what, like, Oz does exactly the right things to endear himself to, like, millions of middle-class moms.

• 2:58:00Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:58:02Robert Evans?

  The best market in the country.

• 2:58:03Speaker 09

  It's an incredible market.

• 2:58:05Robert Evans?

  You can make all of the money if you can get a few million middle-class moms to love you.

• 2:58:10Speaker 09

  Yeah, I worked at this, this, uh, digital, uh, what do you call it? Like a digital production company. And the, the most famous person that we dealt with was a famous Facebook mom who had millions of followers. And I would watch her stuff and I was like, this is, you know, maybe the most awful shit I've ever seen. It was just a, you know, lady in a car yelling at people about kids.

• 2:58:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:33Speaker 09

  And, uh, it, but the, she was a famous mom. I mean, if you can become a famous mom, you will be one of the most famous people in the country.

• 2:58:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's the power of, of particularly middle-class moms can't be exaggerated. Like in Portland, the cops and the feds were able to fuck over as many people as they wanted until they started gassing moms.

• 2:58:55Speaker 09

  Right, exactly.

• 2:58:56Robert Evans?

  The whole country's pissed.

• 2:58:57Speaker 09

  Yeah, they're like, like, hey, listen, you can do that to people of color, but those are moms.

• 2:59:03Robert Evans?

  Those are white moms. No sir.

• 2:59:05Speaker 09

  White moms. That could be my mother.

• 2:59:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:12Robert Evans?

  You know what else?

• 2:59:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, where are you going with that? Where are you going with that, Robert? I thought you were gonna say, you would know what else is your mom. That's where I thought you were going with that.

• 2:59:21Robert Evans?

  You know what else is your mother? The products and services that support this podcast.

• 2:59:31Robert Evans?

  We're back.

• 2:59:32Speaker 03

  So we've, so we've all just agreed that Matt is very funny. That, that's, that was the discussion over the break.

• 2:59:39Robert Evans?

  You made this one into a two-parter, Matt, so you, the audience can thank you for two episodes about Dr. Oz this week.

• 2:59:45Speaker 09

  All right.

• 2:59:46Robert Evans?

  Or they can blame you. And if they blame, uh, blame him, Matt's home address is.

• 2:59:53Robert Evans?

  We love to dox our guests, don't we, Sophie?

• 2:59:56Speaker 09

  Baby.

• 2:59:57Robert Evans?

  So Oprah had Dr. Oz on her show 55 times over the course of five years. She gave him the nickname America's Doctor, which stuck. And although I'm not saying this in a positive sense, is unfortunately accurate. He's definitely America's doctor.

• 3:00:15Speaker 09

  Just appealing to the lowest common denominator, the stupidest human beings on earth.

• 3:00:20Robert Evans?

  Doctor. And if you look at the health of the average American, you can tell the quality of job he's done.

• 3:00:28Speaker 09

  Eat more bread. Everybody eat bread.

• 3:00:31Robert Evans?

  Well, actually, that's the one thing he is. He's actually pretty good about like weight law. Well, I don't know. That's still debatable.

• 3:00:37Speaker 09

  Stop defending Dr. Oz, Robert.

• 3:00:38Robert Evans?

  I'm not gonna defend. I just love to be fair, you know?

• 3:00:41Speaker 09

  I know you do. You're very fair.

• 3:00:43Robert Evans?

  Look, say what you will about Hitler.

• 3:00:46Speaker 09

  Say what you will. He was a vegetarian and that's good for the environment.

• 3:00:50Robert Evans?

  The man cared about animal rights.

• 3:00:54Robert Evans?

  By 2009, it was clear that Dr. Oz had more than enough star power to justify a shot at his own show. Oprah's production company had little trouble finding a buyer for what was sure to be a blockbuster new series. Her show celebrated the launch of Dr. Oz's show with an entire episode dedicated to Dr. Oz, which acted as something of a coming out party for his brand. From a press release on Oprah.com, this is talking about the special Dr. Oz episode. Moving personal stories and extraordinary surprises are featured throughout the hour as Dr. Oz meets viewers who share how his advice saved their lives. From those who noticed life threatening diseases their doctors missed, to those who lost weight thanks to his diet tips from Dr. Oz. Real

• 3:01:38Robert Evans?

  people step forward to offer their thanks to America's doctor. Plus, it's the reunion that Dr. Oz never imagined would happen as Oprah show producers tracked down a young boy he cared for in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the two reunite for the first time. He's like the fucking perfect, perfect guy for this.

• 3:01:55Speaker 09

  I mean, I love that it's literally sounds like an hour long special of people just thanking him, which might be the most narcissistic thing I think I've ever heard.

• 3:02:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:07Speaker 09

  I mean, like, it's one thing for Oprah to do that because I think America does legitimately owe her thanks for just years of content, you know, but...

• 3:02:16Robert Evans?

  Years of mostly dangerous health-based content.

• 3:02:20Speaker 09

  Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it's awful content, but the fact is it's it's quantity over quality in America and, you know, but an hour of just thanking Dr. Oz and having people come up to him like, "You saved me." It's fucking wild.

• 3:02:34Robert Evans?

  It's worth noting in terms of his bastardry that... And kind of the acceleration from, hey, maybe energy healing works to becoming a monster. The early 2000s is the period in which Oprah becomes aware of a Brazilian healer named John of God, who believes he can do psychic surgery and like remove tumors.

• 3:02:52Speaker 03

  John of God.

• 3:02:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Oh, of the, of the Brazilian of gods. Yeah. And on the episode in which she introduces John of God to America, Dr. Oz comes on and gives his professional opinion that like, he seems like he's really having an effect on people and I can't explain it. I don't think medical science can explain what this man is doing. Basically giving a real doctor's opinion that this guy's gotta be legit. Yeah. John of God later turned out to be a mass rapist on these, on a scale, hundreds of victims, on a scale almost incomprehensible. We did a two parter on John of God. You can listen to it. It's a fucking nightmare. Wow. This guy never gets half the following that he has if it's not for Oprah and Dr. Oz. So.

• 3:03:37Robert Evans?

  Wow. Holy shit. Oh, it's good shit. Good shit. I found a fascinating New York Times article written a few months into Dr. Oz's new show. It notes that in transitioning to his own series, Dr. Oz had to spice up his act for a daily, for a daily daytime audience, quote, "potentially distracted by the tantrums of a toddler or the yelping of a labradoodle." They go on to summarize his early episodes. "His show tackles topics as diverse and diversely weighty as skin cancer, kitchen burns, sleep eating and pubic hair loss, returning constantly to the same television mother lode winfrey profitably mined, weepy overweight guests who vow and often fail to get in shape, and it has taken its star far away from any sort of traditional medical practice."

• 3:04:22Robert Evans?

  He explains that transition as the product of frustration. "Too often," he told me, "he would sit in an office and be telling you stuff too little, too late, that if you'd been able to lose a little weight or if your diabetes had been managed more aggressively, then it would have dramatically altered your destiny, which is now to go downstairs and have open heart surgery. With his TV show, he can exhort Americans to end all aspect, to tend to all aspects of their health, head to toe, before they reach a point of no return. Lose weight, go to Brazil and get sexually assaulted by a con man."

• 3:04:54Speaker 09

  Oh, wow. You know, there's always that point, you know, I've listened to your show and there's always that point in the episode where the comedian or the guest has no other option but to just say, fuck, that sucks, dude. There's no other comment, but what? Oh, that's crazy. But, you know, hey, John of God, Dr. Oz, they're, they all sound like great people.

• 3:05:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's going to get worse, you know, he, this is kind of the period, one of the things he's supposed to do in this period is he starts cutting back on his surgical practice and performing fewer surgeries.

• 3:05:33Speaker 09

  Yeah, because he's got to keep up all those TV dates.

• 3:05:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah. In order to tell people about John of God, the mass rapist, and in order to tell people about, I don't know, some stuff that's good, right? Telling people to eat healthier is a good, America's diet sucks. His diet advice, I think, is, well, we'll talk about that later. It's also problematic. Anyway, he's trading objectively useful medical work for being a nonsense doctor, but he's making millions of dollars.

• 3:06:02Speaker 09

  Yeah. And, and in America, that is the ultimate marker of doing the right thing.

• 3:06:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah. That's the only thing that tells you whether or not you're doing the right thing.

• 3:06:11Speaker 09

  Yeah. If you're making a lot of money, then whatever you're doing is the right thing to do.

• 3:06:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:15Speaker 09

  It's morally correct to make a lot of money.

• 3:06:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Morally righteous, righteous wealth.

• 3:06:23Speaker 09

  Yes.

• 3:06:24Robert Evans?

  You know what else is righteous, Matt?

• 3:06:28Speaker 09

  Is it the products and services?

• 3:06:30Robert Evans?

  No, my man. It's you. Because the episode's over. Part one is over. And we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna sail out. But first, you've got to plug your pluggables. And I just decided to compliment you before we.

• 3:06:42Speaker 09

  Yeah, that's very nice. Here, here, I thought you were just trying to get me to talk about products and services. Well, I, thank you for having me on. I have a product and or service called Pod Yourself a Gun. It's a Sopranos podcast. And, yeah, if you like The Sopranos, or even if you don't, check it out on the, you know, wherever the podcast store is.

• 3:07:04Robert Evans?

  Podcast. All right. Well.

• 3:07:07Robert Evans?

  This is the show that it is, and we're done doing the things that we do. So go out into the world and I don't know, find Dr. Oz and scream at him. Give him a good screamin'.

• 3:07:37Speaker 10

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• 3:08:05Speaker 01

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• 3:08:38Robert Evans?

  This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we neg our audience in order to make them more closely drawn to us. It's a tactic I learned. From pick-up artists. From pick-up artists, yes. Really, this whole show is based on the lessons I learned as a pick-up artist. You can't see it, but I'm wearing an enormous hat with ostrich plumes coming off. Made out of purple felt. It's an incredible hat. The most fuckable hat. The most fuckable hat. Yes, that was actually the first name I pitched for this podcast.

• 3:09:14Robert Evans?

  That that means nothing and no one will listen to it. So we went with Behind the Bastards.

• 3:09:17Speaker 03

  He always puts lies on my name and saying that I turn down his ideas. That's just not the case.

• 3:09:23Robert Evans?

  Sophie, I think we can all agree that one of the best things to do is to lie about things your colleagues didn't do because it's funny.

• 3:09:31Speaker 09

  I agree with it.

• 3:09:32Robert Evans?

  Thank you.

• 3:09:34Robert Evans?

  Onto the show. We're talking about Dr. Oz. And as we left the last episode off, he had just, you know, gotten Oprah'd, right?

• 3:09:45Speaker 09

  Started his TV career.

• 3:09:47Robert Evans?

  Got an Oprah'd hard. So he started his TV career and he also starts right around the same time he gets on TV for the first time. He starts a daily morning radio show on Oprah Winfrey's Sirius XM channel.

• 3:09:59Speaker 03

  Never a good idea.

• 3:10:01Robert Evans?

  Sirius XM? No, terrible idea.

• 3:10:03Speaker 09

  What is it about giving people three hours of uninterrupted airtime? You know, there's just something about it.

• 3:10:10Robert Evans?

  I, you know, and this is an opinion that's pretty controversial within iHeartRadio. I think radio should be illegal. And I think it should be a felony punished by prison time for, for being on the radio or having a radio or thinking about the radio.

• 3:10:25Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:10:25Robert Evans?

  I think the only form of entertainment that should be legal is specifically my podcast.

• 3:10:30Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:10:31Speaker 03

  And ads.

• 3:10:33Speaker 09

  And ads. Yeah. And, and there should legally only be one Sopranos podcast allowed, which as it turns out is the case. So.

• 3:10:41Robert Evans?

  I think if we, if we could get Chuck Schumer's ear, we can make this happen. We'll tack this onto the pot bill. No one will notice. So Dr. Oz has the Dr. Oz Show. He's got a radio show on Winfrey's XM channel where he covers very scientific topics like how God changes your brain and the happiest people in the world. Now, I found a New York Times article that was written just a few months into his tenure with his TV show, kind of at the start of his, his burst into stardom. And the interviewer who talked to Oz for this article seems as impressed as everyone always is by the manic, somewhat inhuman pace at which Mehmet Oz works. By this point,

• 3:11:24Robert Evans?

  he'd also written six books with titles like You, The Smart Patient, You, On A Diet, and You, Having A Baby. It's like the series is the.

• 3:11:33Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah. The famous You series.

• 3:11:35Robert Evans?

  Colon, whatever. And he, he co-writes these books with another doctor. I can't tell you how much of. Writing was a lot of times, I'm not saying this is the case with Dr. Oz, because he's a wild workaholic. But a lot of times when you have a guy that's his kind of famous and they write a bunch of books, they write like 10% of the book and they have someone else, a co-author or a ghostwriter do the rest. I don't know if that's the case here.

• 3:11:56Speaker 09

  There's always one, one Matt Damon who's writing most of Good Will Hunting. And then there's a Ben Affleck who gets top booking.

• 3:12:03Robert Evans?

  And I, I do believe Matt Damon writes most of his books.

• 3:12:07Speaker 09

  Oh, 100%.

• 3:12:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, uh, nine million copies of his various titles are in print by this point, like the first year of his show. So he is, he is a very wealthy and successful man, pretty much out the gate, like

• 3:12:19Speaker 09

  Money machine.

• 3:12:20Robert Evans?

  Getting the start on Oprah kind of guarantees it. Basically, if Oprah likes you, um, enough to put you on her show more than once, you're going to get rich.

• 3:12:29Speaker 09

  Damn.

• 3:12:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:31Speaker 09

  I just, I just should have spent my, my youth trying to get on Oprah.

• 3:12:35Robert Evans?

  We all should have, we all should have. So, um, Dr. Oz gets a semi-regular column for Time Magazine. Uh, cause again, they, they see this guy get famous and like, we gotta get some of that Oprah money too. We get this guy on time, people will start reading Time again.

• 3:12:52Robert Evans?

  And yeah, it's interesting. They, they give him a column. Um, and in 2008, they included him on their list of the world's most, uh, 100 most influential people. So before they hire him to a column, they call him one of the world's most influential people. And as soon as he gets listed as one of the hundred most influential people on the planet, Dr. Oz calls his dad, right? Like finally, this is gotta, yeah, this has gotta be the thing. How could he not be impressed by this?

• 3:13:17Speaker 09

  Am I enough for you, Papa?

• 3:13:20Robert Evans?

  So when he tells his dad, his dad's first question is, what number?

• 3:13:26Robert Evans?

  How high are you on the list? And this is not a ranked thing, like it's not the top hundred, like going to one. It's just all these hundred people are all very influential.

• 3:13:36Speaker 09

  It's not a listicle, bro.

• 3:13:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's not a listicle.

• 3:13:42Robert Evans?

  But Dr. Oz, in this interview, seemed to acknowledge that the fact that his dad reacted that way, said a lot about both, you know, his dad and about their relationship. He told an interviewer, quote, "He wants to know what number." Are you kidding me? There are six billion people on the planet. It's a rounding error.

• 3:14:01Speaker 09

  Oh god, but but like but like what number though? Cause you do wonder.

• 3:14:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah, seriously, what, how high are you, motherfucker?

• 3:14:07Speaker 09

  Yeah, come on, how influential are you?

• 3:14:10Robert Evans?

  You're basically me. Yeah. So that interviewer, along with the New York Times, wrote, quote, "It's also the kind of thing that goads a son to climb mountain after mountain, seldom pausing to enjoy the view." The good doctor did admit to engaging in a number of time-saving measures. Over the years, he did numerous columns, which were often just recycled from other columns or chunks of his books. He'd provide the same list of skin-moisturizing or metabolism-boosting tips in different magazines or online articles. Even so, his workload was enormous. The Dr. Oz Show was instantly one of the most popular shows on the planet, and Mehmet was contracted to record 175 hour-long episodes per year, which is a fucking brutal work schedule on its own.

• 3:14:53Robert Evans?

  And the man continued to practice as a surgeon, albeit at a reduced rate. The New York Times interviewer who visited him in 2010 seemed to find his behavior and kind of his compulsive workaholism somewhat unsettling.

• 3:15:05Speaker 09

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:15:06Robert Evans?

  "I never saw him without a portable larder of baggies, plastic containers and thermoses of food and drink. And all of it, every crumb, every drop, was healthful. Low-fat Greek yogurt mixed with brightly colored berries, spinach, slaw, raw almonds, raw walnuts soaked in water to amplify their nutritional benefit, a dark green concoction of juices from vegetables, including cucumber and parsley. Roughly every 45 to 60 minutes, as if on cue, he would ingest something from his movable buffet, but only a little bit. His portions assiduously regulated, like an intravenous drip of nutrition. It was the most efficient, joyless eating I have ever seen."

• 3:15:44Speaker 03

  That is so weird, I'm sorry, that's so weird. That makes me so uncomfortable to just listen to.

• 3:15:52Speaker 09

  He's cool, dude, like that's, you know, he's living life in the in the most drab way possible, just trying to, just trying to make TV shows and do heart surgeries, you know?

• 3:16:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:02Speaker 09

  Who has time to enjoy anything when your daddy?

• 3:16:04Robert Evans?

  Joyless, efficient evening, eating.

• 3:16:07Speaker 03

  He's like, I don't eat or drink anything that I would enjoy.

• 3:16:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:13Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 3:16:14Robert Evans?

  That's just so unsettling. I mean, you know what? I have known a couple of people in my lives, all very skinny, who have told me like, I just don't really like eating. Like, yeah, there's some foods that I prefer to others, but I just don't really enjoy it one way or the other. Like, I've known, like, some of those people wound up on the soylent thing. And I guess, like, I mean, yeah, fine. It's like, it's whatever, you know?

• 3:16:32Speaker 09

  It's your life. If you want to eat monkey food, eat monkey food. But don't, you know, be surprised when I judge you, you know?

• 3:16:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:38Speaker 09

  Like, it's, uh, that's weird.

• 3:16:40Robert Evans?

  At the start, the Dr. Oz show was broadly inoffensive from a medical perspective. He gave a lot of fairly good, common sense health advice, health advice, and provided a lot of people with a friendly medical face, willing to explain things their doctors might not have the time or the bedside manner to properly lay out. But Oz's fascination with alternative medicine was present from the beginning. And as time went on, he veered more and more in that direction, following both the topics that consistently drew the most viewers and the topics that were easiest to put together, because 175 hours of content a year is a lot.

• 3:17:12Speaker 09

  I mean, really, though, like, at some point, you run out of shit to talk about.

• 3:17:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:16Speaker 09

  And you have to just be like, oh, pendulums over the heart. Do they work?

• 3:17:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Punching people in the dick. Could it improve your bowels?

• 3:17:25Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:17:26Robert Evans?

  Why not? Yeah.

• 3:17:26Speaker 09

  Try it.

• 3:17:27Robert Evans?

  Try it. I mean, you know, we, we have to do, I don't know how much content we have to do per year. 52 weeks, two hours a week. Uh, yeah, we, we do like 110, maybe like, with some of the episodes that go over, 120 hours of content a year for this show. And that's a lot. Um, 175 hours of video content is huge. Like, you can't, there's, there's not that much good and also entertaining medical advice that you could give in a year, let alone every single year.

• 3:17:54Speaker 09

  I mean, just like, there's only so many organs to talk about, you know? After a while, you just got to invent shit.

• 3:18:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And it's this thing. It's this kind of, this inevitable churn of capitalism, leading us all into this, this specific kind of nonsense, because you can't not.

• 3:18:13Robert Evans?

  Have content legally you're contracted to, but also you have this whole team of people whose ability to pay their rent, whose ability to, to, to afford their homes, to, to keep their kids in school is dependent upon you doing this show outside of just the fact that he's rich. Like, like he's fine, but he like, it's this thing. You have to keep putting out the thing and you will never have enough meaningful shit to put out to do it.

• 3:18:35Speaker 09

  Right.

• 3:18:36Robert Evans?

  So you start in his case, doing nonsense about mediums and shit. And in our case, doing episodes about Dr. Oz.

• 3:18:47Speaker 09

  When you run out of bastards, eventually you just gotta find one on TV.

• 3:18:50Robert Evans?

  We're not out of bastards, but like last week, I spent 30 hours reading about the protocols of the elders of Zion. I needed an off week, you know?

• 3:18:58Speaker 09

  God.

• 3:18:58Robert Evans?

  We all need off weeks.

• 3:19:00Speaker 09

  That is, that is one of my favorite, absolutely real documents to read.

• 3:19:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah. That's why we brought you on, actually.

• 3:19:08Speaker 09

  Yeah. I'm actually one of the elders of Zion and I got some protocols for you.

• 3:19:15Robert Evans?

  Oh, good times. So for an example of the kind of nonsense creep, I guess you'd call it, but like advanced upon his show. In March of 2012, Dr. Oz did a show titled Medium versus Medicine. Oz's guest was a psychic who claimed she could communicate with the dead. This was one of several, and by this point, probably dozens of episodes dedicated to people who claimed to talk to the dead. Energy healing was, you know, on the fringe, certainly, but at least it was something that when he started doing it, there were scientific studies saying there might be something to it. Those studies have since been to, to a large extent discredited, but when he started doing that, there was some evidence, it was a thing to try, you know, he wasn't completely out of left field.

• 3:20:00Speaker 09

  Yeah. People were at least testing it out.

• 3:20:02Robert Evans?

  Doing episodes on mediums, talking to the dead is well outside of plausible deniability territory, right? Like you're just doing nonsense at this point.

• 3:20:12Speaker 09

  You know, it depends how they're talking. If you go up to a dead body and start talking to it, you are technically talking to the dead.

• 3:20:19Robert Evans?

  Now that would be a fun show. Dr. Oz breaks into morgues and talks to corpses. Yeah.

• 3:20:24Speaker 09

  Hey, how'd you die?

• 3:20:27Robert Evans?

  Just, just, just having his bodyguards, mace, police officers rolling into a crime scene be like, who did this?

• 3:20:36Robert Evans?

  How'd this go down?

• 3:20:38Speaker 09

  Are you okay?

• 3:20:41Robert Evans?

  I am a doctor.

• 3:20:44Robert Evans?

  Do you want some almonds?

• 3:20:48Speaker 09

  They're soaked in water for more nutrition.

• 3:20:52Speaker 09

  All right, someone get me a crystal.

• 3:20:56Robert Evans?

  So, yeah, he had, yeah, Dr. Oz had among his psychic guests, famous grifter king, John Edwards, on his show, not the politician.

• 3:21:06Speaker 09

  No, no.

• 3:21:07Robert Evans?

  The talks to dead TV show guy. Yeah. And he praised the reading that he received from John Edwards, saying, quote, "Let me tell you what changed my life. I've learned in my career that there are times when science just hasn't caught up with things, and I think this may be one of them."

• 3:21:25Robert Evans?

  Which is almost exactly what he said about John of God, the guy who raped hundreds of people.

• 3:21:31Speaker 09

  Yeah, that's how you know, like, to stay far away from anything, when he's just like, "Man, this is, uh, this is a brand new groundbreaking territory." And you can go, "All right, guys, it's a rapist. Run."

• 3:21:42Robert Evans?

  It's, it's one of those things, part of how he's, like, the intelligent way to frame this is, you start with the true thing, which is there are things science can't explain. One of those things is the nature of consciousness and what happens to it after, you know, vital sciences. We don't know. There's not an objective answer to that. But it, going this way is kinda like being like, "Yeah, you know, we can't explain, like, the slit box experiment." Like, there's a bunch of shit in physics. I don't know. I'm not a science guy, but like, you know, particle and wave shit, you can't explain that, so...

• 3:22:11Speaker 09

  There's a bunch of shit you can't explain. Magnets.

• 3:22:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah. How do they work?

• 3:22:15Speaker 09

  How do they work?

• 3:22:16Robert Evans?

  It's this, it's this jump from, "Yes, there are things we can't explain," to, "So let's listen to this man talk to the dead."

• 3:22:24Speaker 09

  Millions of people, gather around.

• 3:22:27Robert Evans?

  Gather around. He's going to channel your dead aunt. Yes.

• 3:22:32Robert Evans?

  Maybe not, not a reasonable way to take a reasonable starting point.

• 3:22:37Speaker 09

  Yeah, especially when you're a doctor on TV.

• 3:22:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And I want to quote from a write-up I found in the Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association, quote...

• 3:22:47Robert Evans?

  During another show, Oz interviewed Dr. Mosar Rafali, a miracle healer to Sylvester Stallone, Prince Charles of England and others regarding his use of iridology. According to the widely debunked bizarre belief, each part of the iris corresponds to a specific area of the body and a person's state of health could be diagnosed by examining particular regions of the iris. After expressing his amazement at Dr. Ali's diagnostic abilities, Oz stated, "I want to applaud Dr. Mosar Rafali because these are ancient traditions and they have been around for centuries. So who am I to dismiss them?"

• 3:23:20Speaker 09

  Other than a very well-educated man.

• 3:23:23Robert Evans?

  A doctor. You're a doctor, Mehmet.

• 3:23:26Speaker 03

  You had me at Prince Charles.

• 3:23:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's like, you know, there's a lot of cultures who say that you should remove the clitoris surgically because it's healthier and it stops dangerous masturbation. It's ancient. Who are we to say this is a bad idea?

• 3:23:42Speaker 09

  Who are any of us to say anything's wrong?

• 3:23:47Speaker 09

  Oh, my God. I love it too. Just like, I was amazed by his ability to look into my eyes and diagnose that my dad will never love me. How did he know? How did he know?

• 3:23:57Speaker 03

  It does bring me joy that Prince Charles got fucked with because fuck Prince Charles.

• 3:24:02Robert Evans?

  I wonder what his eyes said. It's funny.

• 3:24:04Speaker 09

  It said the same thing. It said, "Your dad will never love you." That's all he does. He goes to famous people and he goes, "Your dad will never love you. Your dad will never love you."

• 3:24:10Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 3:24:13Robert Evans?

  There's this, one of the big aspects of this guy's success and of the success of the things he pushes is Orientalism, right? Like this idea of like the forbidden and strange and wondrous and magical east and all of the, we don't understand all of these like, oh, India is so mysterious, yada, yada, yada.

• 3:24:34Robert Evans?

  What if you were to say like, well, for centuries, tobacco companies have said that tobacco can cure like different lung ailments. Who are we to dismiss these ancient traditions?

• 3:24:45Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:24:45Robert Evans?

  The Q zone could be real.

• 3:24:47Speaker 09

  Exactly. Like it stops people from stuttering. Do more cocaine.

• 3:24:55Speaker 09

  I mean, yeah, the, just the idea, and I've always found this in general to be the biggest load of horse shit is when people have, have said, you know, this is like an ancient healing technique. And it's like, you mean like bleeding people with leeches? You know, you mean like cutting off someone's leg because he got a fucking, a small infection on his toe?

• 3:25:16Robert Evans?

  Ancient. It's this fucking thing with Dr. Oz. Like, it's one thing if you're just like traveling to another part of the world, you see some sort of medical or treatment you've never seen before. And you're like, well, who am I, who am I to say anything about it? Right? Like, I don't know. Dr. Oz is a doctor on TV talking to millions. You're literally the person who should be saying something about the legitimacy of this.

• 3:25:39Speaker 09

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're the guy. You're the person.

• 3:25:42Robert Evans?

  You are, in fact, the person who should say something about this.

• 3:25:46Speaker 09

  Who am I? You're you. He's the most famous doctor in America.

• 3:25:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And that's what that, that write up in the Journal of Missouri State Medical Association notes, quote, "Who? Dr. Oz is a trained clinician and scientist, someone who can read a scientific article with a critical eye. He is someone who can filter out the noise of the placebo effect or discern the simple carnival tricks of a charlatan. The problem is that most people in his audience cannot."

• 3:26:11Speaker 09

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, he has a literal responsibility to tell people that these guys are full of shit. But he also has a responsibility to his show sponsors and to, to the network for ratings, you know?

• 3:26:26Robert Evans?

  You know who else has a responsibility to the show sponsors? Wow.

• 3:26:30Speaker 09

  That was, I think that's gotta be the first time. That's gotta be the first time it's ever actually been a relevant segue.

• 3:26:37Robert Evans?

  So fucking good.

• 3:26:39Speaker 09

  So good.

• 3:26:40Robert Evans?

  Anyway, here's products.

• 3:26:47Robert Evans?

  Ah, we're back, talking about Dr. Oz, having just a great time. Um, so obviously the fact that Dr. Oz, I mean, probably the fact that most of his audience couldn't discern whether or not any of these nonsense treatments were real, um, is a big part of why the Dr. Oz show became an overnight success.

• 3:27:05Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:27:06Robert Evans?

  Before very long, it was being watched by four million viewers every single day.

• 3:27:10Speaker 09

  Geez.

• 3:27:11Robert Evans?

  Over the next half decade or so, he won two Emmys. His guest list included First Lady Michelle Obama, who loved Dr. Oz for his focus on healthy diets for children and in general, his crusade to get Americans to lose weight. Dr. Oz claimed through medicine, through math that I cannot verify, that his show inspired Americans to lose three million cumulative pounds per year.

• 3:27:34Robert Evans?

  I don't know, maybe.

• 3:27:35Speaker 09

  Yeah, they based that on what? Like, did people call in to say how many pounds they've lost to the show?

• 3:27:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm sure he found some way to like, make the claim or whatever, but it's, it's very, it's, I don't know, maybe. It is one of the things that he does that is, we'll talk about, there's problems with some of the diet tips he gives people, actually, significant ones. Um, but telling, like, inspiring people to lose weight is not usually bad for their health, although it can be.

• 3:28:04Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:28:05Robert Evans?

  Sometimes people take it too far and it causes significant health problems, you know? It's a mixed bag, I guess we'd say.

• 3:28:11Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:28:12Robert Evans?

  But the other stuff isn't a mixed bag, so I guess we'll call that his, his great success. Um, so, yeah, uh, it is good. I will say it is unequivocally good that Dr. Oz continually pressed his audience of millions of people to eat more fruits and vegetable, fruits and vegetables, to get better sleep, to exercise regularly, and to get their flu vaccinations. That's all right, right?

• 3:28:34Speaker 09

  Yeah, but shit, I could have told you that. Give me a TV show.

• 3:28:37Robert Evans?

  You don't have to, you don't have to be a doctor to say that.

• 3:28:39Speaker 09

  No, that shit, yeah. Eat better, piggies. I mean, it's.

• 3:28:43Robert Evans?

  But he's charismatic, people like him. It's good that he, he does that, at least.

• 3:28:47Speaker 09

  They don't trust me, so they won't give me the show, but they should, cause.

• 3:28:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the unfortunate part is that this guy gained. Because he's handsome, a lot of, lot of, lot of ladies out there think Dr. Oz is hot.

• 3:29:01Speaker 09

  He's a doctor.

• 3:29:02Robert Evans?

  He's very charismatic. He's very charming and he gains this enormous influence with Middle America and he uses that influence to do some really fucking questionable shit. And I'm going to quote now from a write-up in the AMA's Journal of Ethics. He has told mothers that there were dangerous levels of arsenic in their child's apple juice. There weren't, and suggested that green coffee is a miracle cure for obesity. Federal regulators discovered altered data in hyped coffee bean evidence. The Food and Drug Administration tested for arsenic in apple juice and found the vast majority of apple juice tested contained to contain low levels of arsenic, and given these levels was confident in the overall safety of apple juice consumed in this country. Dr. Oz also featured two guests on his show

• 3:29:47Robert Evans?

  who claimed that genetically modified foods were cancer-causing, despite repeated safety reports that found no adverse effects.

• 3:29:54Speaker 09

  Man, I mean, he's like, he's very, he's getting there. Like, I'm watching him slowly go from Mehmet to Mangala, you know?

• 3:30:08Speaker 09

  Come on, let him be Mangala.

• 3:30:11Robert Evans?

  It is too good a pun to.

• 3:30:12Speaker 09

  I get that you want to be fair, Robert, but let's go for it.

• 3:30:16Robert Evans?

  All right, we're doing it.

• 3:30:17Speaker 09

  But no, we're watching him like turn into a snake oil salesman and it's, it's very exciting.

• 3:30:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, Dr. Oz's enthusiasm for alternative medicine has had the effect of creating instant fads over any health product he even vaguely suggests on his show. When he mentions the purported health benefits of white mulberry, red palm oil, or brown seaweed, all of which he's claimed can do things like cut weight, reduce aging, or beat the flu, those products fly off the shelf. Oz often doesn't endorse specific brands, but he doesn't need to. Online retailers watch closely and immediately slap "as seen on Dr. Oz" on their pseudoscientific products.

• 3:30:55Speaker 09

  Yes, I've seen this.

• 3:30:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:57Speaker 09

  I've seen this.

• 3:30:58Robert Evans?

  This is where we get to the big harm. He did one episode that focused on so-called relaxation drinks and included a close-up shot of five cans of beverages he said might help calm you down.

• 3:31:09Speaker 09

  Just a Miller High Life?

• 3:31:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:13Robert Evans?

  He just puts a can of Colt 45 on the table. Billy Dee Williams walks out.

• 3:31:21Speaker 09

  It's a steel reserve. Trust me, you'll be relaxed.

• 3:31:25Robert Evans?

  You'll be calm as shit.

• 3:31:27Speaker 09

  Exactly. You might yell at your mom, but it'll be fun afterward.

• 3:31:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you will very calmly put your hand through a taxi cab window.

• 3:31:40Robert Evans?

  As soon as the episode aired, a quote liquid sleep aid called iChill bragged on their website. Dr. Oz is talking about a new way to wind down with relaxation drinks. They are the newest trend in helping you relax and calm down. And the best news is they contain natural ingredients already known to promote relaxation.

• 3:32:00Speaker 09

  Mulberry, laudanum.

• 3:32:04Speaker 03

  I remember the iChill. That turned into like an entire thing. There's so many.

• 3:32:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we're about to, we're about to talk about it. Yeah.

• 3:32:12Robert Evans?

  And, and also if there was a laudanum drink, I would be buying it. So the problem with all with this is that all of these different relaxation drinks are filled with a variety of chemicals like melatonin and theanine and taurine. These drinks are unregulated as they are not medicines or dietary supplements. But the chemicals they include all have actual impacts on the central nervous system. Pregnant women and children are often advised to avoid products with some of these chemicals. But the beverages in question rarely note this. No data exists on how these chemicals might impact people and the quantities they are added to in these beverages, or when combined with other chemicals, or when combined with medications people drinking them might be taking.

• 3:32:54Robert Evans?

  Responsible doctors writing for the journal, for the journal Nature Neuroscience, wrote a warning about these beverages that specifically called out iChill by name. Quote, existing research on the potential benefits and harms of some components of relaxation drinks suggests that they may not always be safe. Indeed, the FDA issued a warning last year to the manufacturers of melatonin laced brownies, citing safety concerns from the literature, including effects on the autonomic nervous system and visual system, and increased expression of symptoms in a sleep disorder. Other components of relaxation drinks such as L-theanine or amino acids such as taurine may be considered safe for consumption only at some doses by the FDA. But relaxation drinks are not subject to such regulations,

• 3:33:36Robert Evans?

  nor are they required to disclose the amounts of their ingredients.

• 3:33:40Speaker 09

  Oh my God. I mean, first of all, did you say melatonin brownies?

• 3:33:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah, buddy.

• 3:33:47Speaker 09

  What the fuck? Like, I want to eat and just get tired immediately. Like, that is very strange. It like, here's the thing about brownies. I've never eaten one and been like, I just want to relax. Like, no, I'm trying to get a little sugar rush.

• 3:34:01Speaker 03

  To be honest, to be honest, a sleepy time brownie delightful. I would be very down.

• 3:34:06Speaker 09

  Listen, pot brownies are very different. It's not, it's not the same as relaxation brownie. Like, one is like an Ambien brownie and the other one is like a brownie that makes you hungry for more brownies. Pot brownies make sense.

• 3:34:20Speaker 03

  If Ambien brownies exist, I would love one. Thank you very much.

• 3:34:23Speaker 09

  I mean, I guess I'd rather do that than just swallow an Ambien, but man, that is a

• 3:34:27Speaker 03

  I'm like, I'm like, gets to sleep and also got a brownie. I'm, sounds awesome.

• 3:34:33Speaker 09

  It's bad for your health. I'll tell you that much.

• 3:34:35Speaker 03

  Apparently. Um, am I remembering this correctly, Robert? But wasn't the eye show like, like the bottle and the marketing, like similar?

• 3:34:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:34:42Speaker 03

  Style to like an energy drink, similar to like a five hour energy? That was like the aesthetic?

• 3:34:48Robert Evans?

  No, no, no. I think those were, those were, they had like a weird, different shaped plastic bottle. But like, the, the problem is that, again, number one, you've got a lot of people with like, who are on medications that this shit interacts with.

• 3:34:58Speaker 09

  Which is crazy that like literally a, a relaxation drink could be contraindicated for your prescription medication.

• 3:35:07Robert Evans?

  Okay, so, everything Dr. Oz recommends, I guess outside of like death psychics, comes with this caveat. Some of the herbs and natural medicines that he recommends do have health impacts, but they also have consequences. Medications they might not interact well with. Dr. Oz does not bring this up when he shotguns half-assed advice out to an audience of millions. That article in Nature Neuroscience that I referenced, warning about the relaxation drinks Oz recommended? It's been read 10,000 times. So the article, warning people that these things can be contraindicated and might have impacts on your health and your central nervous system, read 10,000 times. Dr. Oz's episode suggesting these drinks, listened, watched 4 million times.

• 3:35:51Speaker 09

  God damn.

• 3:35:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, people started to notice that this was a problem by the mid aughts. Doctors had been complaining for a while, but in 2013, Forbes wrote a listicle laying out the silliest things Dr. Oz has suggested on his show, including the fact that having 200 orgasms a year would extend your life by six years. Here's how he explained that bit of math on his website.

• 3:36:14Speaker 09

  Dude, I'm about to live to 200 years old.

• 3:36:17Robert Evans?

  I ain't never dying, motherfucker.

• 3:36:19Speaker 09

  I ain't never died. I get one out at least once a day.

• 3:36:24Speaker 09

  365.

• 3:36:26Robert Evans?

  Here's his website. If you have more than 200 orgasms a year, you can reduce your physiologic age by six years, Dr. Oz says. He bases the number on a study done at Duke University that surveyed people on the amount and quality of sex they had. They looked at what happened to folks that are receiving a lot of intercourse over time, and the fact is, it correlated.

• 3:36:45Speaker 09

  Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is it sex? Because he didn't say nothing about sex. He said orgasms. And I do that on my own.

• 3:36:54Robert Evans?

  No, he talked to him about the amount and quality of sex they had, but like, it's correlated. So again, he's basically lying here.

• 3:37:02Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:37:04Robert Evans?

  Because you, number one, what is the possibility that people who are having a lot of good sex are in better health? And that's why they're able to have a lot more good sex? Because they're like, they're physically healthy, and so it's easier for them to like, what are the odds that like, if you're having more sex, you're more social, you're more likely to have a long-term romantic partner, that increases your lifespan? Yeah. Again, I'm of all people, never going to be the guy to say there's not health benefits to sex. There sure is.

• 3:37:33Speaker 09

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:37:33Robert Evans?

  But Dr. Oz is exaggerating this. He's taking an actual study that showed some interesting stuff, and he's turning it into a lie.

• 3:37:43Speaker 09

  Yeah, he's turning it into like pretending he has quantifiable data and that like correlation and correlation is causation like that. Yeah, that's, that's what he's trying to do.

• 3:37:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there, there is data that suggests that regular intercourse reduces men's mortality risks by 50%, which doesn't mean that fucking stops men from dying, particularly because it's men who benefit in this way. It means that men are less healthy than women, tend to die faster. And when men have partners that they live with, they are more likely to have a medical problem noticed. If they have a heart attack, someone's going to be there to call the, like, there's a lot of reasons why this is the case.

• 3:38:19Speaker 09

  Yeah, they're not dying alone, you know?

• 3:38:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's not the fact that just fucking magically adds, like, reduces your age by six years if you do it enough. Like, that's nonsense.

• 3:38:30Speaker 09

  It's nice to think it, though. It makes, you know?

• 3:38:32Robert Evans?

  It is nice to think it.

• 3:38:34Speaker 09

  I'm going to print out that article, show it to my girlfriend and say, hey, you gotta help me live longer, you know?

• 3:38:41Robert Evans?

  Not coming enough, I'm gonna die.

• 3:38:42Speaker 09

  We gotta do this more.

• 3:38:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, just start fucking in public and when the cops come be like, this is medicine.

• 3:38:49Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's like, do you want me to die six years earlier than I should?

• 3:38:53Robert Evans?

  I have a right to this.

• 3:38:55Speaker 09

  Doctor Oz said I should fuck more.

• 3:38:58Robert Evans?

  Now, on its own, recommending that people get more sexes is, you know, fine. I'm, I'm very pro-sex, but I am anti-encouraging people to misunderstand health science. The nature of Dr. Oz's audience and the sheer breadth of things he suggests makes it difficult to analyze the total health impact of his show. But there are some dire case studies, as Vox notes in their write-up, quote, "There's the case of a man who followed Oz's suggestion of curing insomnia by pouring uncooked rice into socks, heating them in a microwave and wearing them to bed. The man got second and third degree burns on his feet." And the reason he got burned is because he was diabetic. He didn't have the same level of feeling in his feet.

• 3:39:37Speaker 09

  Oh, my God.

• 3:39:38Robert Evans?

  If he had gone to a doctor and said, hey, I heard about this thing that might help with insomnia, the doctor would say, well, you're diabetic, you don't have as much feeling in your feet. I'm worried you might call it burn yourself. Dr. Oz is just saying, hey, this'll help you sleep. Do it, whoever you are. Again, it's a problem.

• 3:39:55Speaker 09

  Do it, idiots.

• 3:39:55Robert Evans?

  You're talking to four million people. It will be bad advice for some of them.

• 3:39:59Speaker 09

  I mean, it's like, this all feels very much like.

• 3:40:04Speaker 09

  When Trump was telling everyone about the wonders of hydro.

• 3:40:09Robert Evans?

  Hydroxychloroquine. Oh, yeah, we're gonna talk about that later.

• 3:40:12Speaker 09

  And then people are eating fucking fish food or like fish tank cleaner and dying. And people are like, how could, how could people be so stupid? And it's like, people are stupid. You, you can't tell them to eat the fucking fishbowl cleaner.

• 3:40:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:26Speaker 09

  They'll do it.

• 3:40:27Robert Evans?

  It's, they'll fucking do it. So this guy sued, but the case was thrown out because the judge determined that Oz cannot establish the physician-patient relationship through TV. I agree with the judge. That's my problem with his show.

• 3:40:41Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:40:41Robert Evans?

  Is that he is a physician purporting to be giving medical advice, but is also not taking anyone's individual circumstances into account. And more to the fucking point, not liable if he does any of the irresponsible things that would lend a physician doing their job traditionally in trouble.

• 3:41:01Speaker 09

  I mean, it is medical malpractice, whether or not he's legally liable for it or not.

• 3:41:07Robert Evans?

  I, I would agree.

• 3:41:08Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:41:09Robert Evans?

  Um, and I'm going to continue that quote from Vox. Not everyone agrees with the judge's reasoning. Rochester, New York, medical student and blogger Benjamin Mazer has been publishing anonymous stories sent to him from health professionals about the impact Oz has had on patient care. One reported that her dad had a heart attack and five stents placed in his heart, which required him to take aspirin and Plavix to prevent blood clots. He was watching Dr. Oz, who said Plavix was not necessary, so he stopped taking it. About a month later, he had another massive heart attack and coded and had to be shocked back to life.

• 3:41:40Speaker 09

  Wow.

• 3:41:40Robert Evans?

  Continued, "My dad admitted to following Dr. Oz's advice and not asking his own cardiologist."

• 3:41:46Speaker 09

  Man.

• 3:41:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's really bad.

• 3:41:49Speaker 09

  Did he have, did he have like an alternative? Or was he just like decided one day that Plavix was gonna be the thing?

• 3:41:55Robert Evans?

  Sure it was, if I know my Dr. Oz, I'm sure it was, you don't need to take Plavix. Eat these different heart-healthy foods and avoid these foods and that'll do all that Plavix will do.

• 3:42:04Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah. Eat some beans and put your face in some boiled water and you should be fine.

• 3:42:09Robert Evans?

  I, I suspect it was dietary advice that if you're someone who doesn't really need Plavix is fine, or might even help you to not need it later in life. If you adopt healthier habits. But the problem is, again, the way he's framing it, there's gonna be a lot of people who are like, just had stents placed in their heart. I don't need Plavix, fuck it, you know?

• 3:42:26Speaker 09

  Yeah, Dr. Oz, the, the TV doctor said, I don't need this medicine. I just need more acai in my belly.

• 3:42:33Robert Evans?

  The TV doctor also said he can talk to ghosts. So I'm gonna go talk. I mean, you will be talking to ghosts faster if you follow all of Dr. Oz's advice.

• 3:42:43Speaker 09

  I want to talk to ghosts. I'm gonna stop taking my Plavix and die of a stroke.

• 3:42:48Robert Evans?

  Now, on his show, Dr. Oz claims that the trust of his audience is the entire reason for his relevance. Quote, "The currency that I deal in is trust, and it is trust that has been given to me by an audience that has watched over 600 shows." He repeatedly references the fact that he is responding to the very real and very understandable, unfilled needs of Americans who feel alienated from modern healthcare, which is an expensive and often inhumane labyrinthine bureaucracy.

• 3:43:14Speaker 09

  True.

• 3:43:15Robert Evans?

  Is true. Yeah, absolutely.

• 3:43:17Speaker 09

  100% true. Yeah. How you exploit it is a very different thing.

• 3:43:23Robert Evans?

  But the thing he is replacing it with is by and large nonsense. And I'm gonna quote from that right up in the Journal of Ethics again. "When it comes to epistemic boundaries, Dr. Oz admits he applies different standards of evidence compared to those accepted in the medical establishment. When challenged by a reporter for The New Yorker about his questionable evidentiary standards, he replied that all data could be differentially interpreted. You find the arguments that support your data, he said, and it's my fact versus your fact." It's not that he doesn't offer data. It's common for Dr. Oz to offer some plausible mechanism from test tube experiments conducted by manufacturers, combined with personal anecdotes from his own or consumers' experience, to support the products he's promoting. A study of 80 recommendations made on the Dr. Oz show in early 2013

• 3:44:08Robert Evans?

  found that published evidence supported 46% of recommendations, contradicted 15%, and did not support 39%.

• 3:44:15Speaker 09

  Gotta love a good like coin flip on whether or not he's fucking lying to you and having an adverse effect on your health.

• 3:44:24Robert Evans?

  If your doctor said, hey, you know, 46% of the time I get pretty good advice. You would be like, I think I'm gonna get another doctor.

• 3:44:32Speaker 09

  But he would reframe it to be like, I'm batting 500 here. And you're like, 500? That's a good batting average.

• 3:44:38Robert Evans?

  If you assume medicine is like baseball, I'm a great doctor.

• 3:44:41Speaker 09

  No, he's crushing it. Yeah.

• 3:44:44Robert Evans?

  Doing a great job. Now, to his credit, the journal does note that a decent chunk of the blame for Dr. Oz's success lies in the very, very flawed state of mainstream medical science. Quote, "We settle for incomplete selectively published data in journals heavily subsidized by pharmaceutical companies and for outcomes that don't give firm answers. While not on par with offering anecdotes as evidence, the fact that debates persist about what constitutes sufficiently high, unbiased quality evidence to support decisions in the profession as a whole, creates a wedge that Dr. Oz seems to exploit." Mm hmm. So again, this is the Journal of Ethics being like, the fact that you can pay to get a study done, the fact that we pharmaceutical companies lobby to allow them to market things

• 3:45:29Robert Evans?

  in dishonest ways, the fact that doctors are bribed by companies like Purdue Pharmaceutical with vacations to recommend people take medication that is not in their best interest to take. That's why this motherfucker has a job. And the fact that healthcare is expensive, right? The fact that we don't have single payer healthcare. It all combines to the fact that a lot of people who are not idiots, I'm not saying is, you can be, I'm sure there's people who are brilliant electricians who fucking, or brilliant at whatever, who are great at whatever it is they do, but they're not fucking doctors because most of us aren't. And it's hard to get, I am very fortunate in that I have a couple of good friends who are doctors and I am luckier than I can, one of them is a guy who was on the show recently,

• 3:46:11Robert Evans?

  Cavahoda, I'm luckier than I can, that I can say to be able to like, every now and then send them a message being like, hey, what should I do here? You know, it's a question of like, I'm having this problem. I don't know what kind of doctor to see to like, get this dealt with. I don't know whose job this is and I don't want to like, my, um, my ex a while ago had a non-cancerous brain tumor and it was a fucking nightmare figuring out, it took a series of different doctors and tests to figure out what kind of doctor she needed to go to, to get the medication that would help. And it's, of course, people are like, well, this guy is explaining things and he's nice and he's saying that I have the power to deal with this. If I change my diet, if I do this, if I do that.

• 3:46:52Speaker 09

  Um, he's giving us alternatives to dealing with the bureaucracy of medical institutions in this country. I, I have a Kaiser and um, I, I had to go to a rheumatologist and I tried to get ahold of him on the phone and they sent me through six different call centers to finally get to his specific office. And then I asked the lady, oh, can I get the extension so that I don't have to deal with that? And she's like, oh, sorry, we're not allowed to do that. And so now, now I'm just, uh, recording every phone call and just, you know, freestyling to the whole music because it's the only thing I can do. I'm like, you know what? I might as well turn this into content because this is fucking ridiculous.

• 3:47:34Speaker 09

  You know, there's like, the, the amount of bullshit you have to go through makes people like Dr. Oz feel like a good alternative, you know?

• 3:47:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it fucking sucks. It's just really fucking sucks. Um, and it fucking sucks because there's a lot of wonderful people who are part of the medical system, like the fucking doctors, um, in the, in the ER who were with my mom in her last days, like incredibly competent and compassionate and like amazing people who in their entire careers will never be able to do as much good as Dr. Oz does harm because he has four million people watching him every day. It's a bummer.

• 3:48:16Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's

• 3:48:18Robert Evans?

  You know what's not a bummer?

• 3:48:19Speaker 09

  Oh.

• 3:48:20Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 3:48:21Robert Evans?

  Capitalism is actually a bummer, but it's the water we swim in. So here's some fucking ads. We're back. So in 2014, Mehmet Oz was called before a Senate Subcommittee to answer questions about his unfounded claims about dietary supplements. Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill went off on him, saying, "I don't know why you need to say this stuff because you know it's not true. Why? When you have this amazing megaphone and this amazing ability to communicate, would you cheapen your show by saying things like this?"

• 3:48:57Speaker 09

  And then he just pulled out a wad of money and he just started making it rain all over Congress.

• 3:49:02Robert Evans?

  Do you know how many houses I have? She pointed out several examples of the things he cheapens his show by saying. He had called green coffee extract a quote, "magical weight loss cure." Recent research has, recent research has suggested that long-term use of green coffee extract causes bone density loss in animals.

• 3:49:24Robert Evans?

  But you are, in fairness, you're losing weight. Your bones are lighter. That's weight. Bones are heavy as hell.

• 3:49:31Speaker 03

  It was, it was everywhere when that came out. It was at literally not just like, it felt like Bed Bath and Beyond, everywhere. It was.

• 3:49:39Speaker 09

  Get light bones. You can fly like a bird.

• 3:49:42Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:49:43Speaker 03

  Horrible.

• 3:49:44Robert Evans?

  Um, and again, those are studies in animals, but it's the kind of thing where a responsible doctor would say, well, some studies in animals have shown that this might call bone, cause bone density loss. So unless, you know, your weight is a really disastrous health situation and your bone density is fine, I wouldn't recommend this. Dr. Oz is just saying it's a magical weight loss cure.

• 3:50:03Speaker 09

  I mean, he's not wrong. He's not wrong.

• 3:50:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Oz called raspberry ketone, quote, "the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat." This is a fun one. First of all.

• 3:50:15Speaker 09

  It's all gasoline.

• 3:50:16Robert Evans?

  Part of why people, well, actually, part of why, part of why people are attracted to stuff like this is that like raspberry ketone, that's natural. It sounds like, oh, if I just like getting raspberries, that's going to help me lose weight. This chemical in a natural, healthy fruit. Of course, it makes sense that like some wonderful plant-based medicine would be able to help me lose weight.

• 3:50:35Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:50:36Robert Evans?

  Raspberry ketones don't come from raspberries. They can, but it takes 90 pounds of fresh raspberries to produce a single dose. As a result, they are manufactured synthetically, a fact Dr. Oz did not feel the need to explain because again, he's really critical of GMOs. And it might seem hypocritical to note that raspberry ketones are actually synthetic lab nonsense.

• 3:50:58Speaker 09

  I love when people say things like it's it's natural. It's like, I think cyanide is natural. There's like, there's a lot of like, natural poisons out there. Fucking snake venom is natural.

• 3:51:10Robert Evans?

  The fucking arsenic in the apple juice that he's worried about is natural.

• 3:51:14Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:51:15Robert Evans?

  It is possible, based on animal studies, that these ketones may have some ability to reduce or slow weight gain. But no studies have ever been conducted on how raspberry ketones impact human beings. There have been reports that they increase blood pressure and heart rate in humans. Dr. Oz does not warn about this. Likewise, when Dr. Oz told his viewers that garcinic hambosia may be the simple solution you've been looking for to bust your body fat for good, he did not also warn them that it can interact negatively with diabetes medications, painkillers, and psychiatric medications.

• 3:51:51Speaker 09

  Oh, my God.

• 3:51:52Robert Evans?

  Why would you need to warn people that? Look, what are the odds someone looking to lose weight has diabetes medications? Zero.

• 3:52:00Speaker 09

  What are the odds that someone who has diabetes is sitting around watching Dr. Oz's show?

• 3:52:06Robert Evans?

  Zero. What are the odds that a middle-class American is addicted to painkillers?

• 3:52:12Speaker 09

  Zero.

• 3:52:13Robert Evans?

  Zero.

• 3:52:15Robert Evans?

  During the Senate inquiry, Senator McCaskill pointed some of this out, and she told Dr. Oz, quote, "When you feature a product on your show, it creates what has become known as the Dr. Oz effect, dramatically boosting sales and driving scam artists to pop up overnight using false and deceptive ads to sell questionable products."

• 3:52:33Speaker 09

  Hmm, yeah.

• 3:52:35Robert Evans?

  In the wake of this, which was a fairly bad day on Capitol Hill for him, Dr. Oz released a somewhat contrite statement where he noted, "I took part in today's hearing because I am accountable for my role in the proliferation of these scams, and I recognize that my enthusiastic language has made the problem worse at times." We're good so far?

• 3:52:53Speaker 09

  Yeah, no, not bad.

• 3:52:54Robert Evans?

  Pretty good so far. Oz added in his statement, "To not have the conversation about supplements at all, however, would be a disservice to the viewer. In addition to exercising an abundance of caution in discussing promising research and products in the future, I look forward to working with all those present today and finding a way to deal with the problems of weight loss scams."

• 3:53:12Speaker 09

  God, I, I, yeah, I, it's amazing. Yeah. I'm just talking about, I'm just asking the question.

• 3:53:17Robert Evans?

  We have to have conversations about this. You know, a conversation would be noting, for example, green coffee extract causes bone density loss in animals and perhaps be worried. Yeah, that's a conversation. What you and I have had about these things is a conversation.

• 3:53:33Speaker 09

  Yeah, I love it. I love people who are like, "I'm just asking the question."

• 3:53:37Robert Evans?

  And I'm not a doctor. I'm a guy who's addicted to an unregulated plant.

• 3:53:45Speaker 09

  Oh, my God.

• 3:53:46Robert Evans?

  Which I just took more of while standing next to my unregulated gun.

• 3:53:49Speaker 09

  Yeah, dude, you're living the unregulated dream right now.

• 3:53:55Robert Evans?

  So, Dr. Oz, also making this statement, pointed out that he believed the greatest disservice he'd done to his audience was to not recommend specific products, which had provided room for a wide industry of shysters to stick his name on their website. So like, "Oh, I was just saying green coffee extract and a bunch of companies I couldn't verify started selling with my name on it. I should have recommended a specific brand."

• 3:54:19Speaker 09

  Yeah, what I need to do is cut deals with specific companies so that you can only be taking their bone density loss drugs.

• 3:54:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:54:31Speaker 09

  Good call.

• 3:54:32Robert Evans?

  Fucking amazing.

• 3:54:34Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:54:35Robert Evans?

  So, in the wake of this day on Capitol Hill and this amazing response, physicians across the country asked Columbia University in a letter, basically, "What the fuck? Why is this guy still on your faculty?" Columbia claimed it was because of their commitment to, quote, "The principle of academic freedom and to upholding faculty members' freedom of expression for statements they make in public discussion."

• 3:54:57Speaker 09

  Hell, yeah, dude. There, that's like, yeah, of the like, anti-cancel culture letter. You know, they're just like, "Stop trying to cancel Dr. Oz. It's freedom of speech."

• 3:55:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, freedom of speech. Yeah, I mean, doctors also are held to different standards than the rest of us.

• 3:55:13Speaker 09

  They take an oath. Come on.

• 3:55:16Robert Evans?

  If like your Uncle Jimbo says, hey, you know, take some green coffee extract. It'll help you lose weight.

• 3:55:21Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:55:22Robert Evans?

  Nothing wrong with that.

• 3:55:23Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:55:23Robert Evans?

  It might not be good advice, but

• 3:55:25Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:55:25Robert Evans?

  that's just a guy saying a thing. Doctors are held to a different standard.

• 3:55:30Speaker 09

  Yeah. It's on you if you listen to your crazy Uncle Jimbo. It is definitely on the doctor. If he recommends you lose some bone density so that you look better in that dress.

• 3:55:41Robert Evans?

  Mm hmm. It's, it's, it's awesome.

• 3:55:44Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:55:47Robert Evans?

  So on April 15th, 2015, 10 prominent physicians sent a letter to Columbia University calling Oz's faculty position there unacceptable and citing his, quote, egregious lack of integrity. The only change wrought by the congressional inquiry and the flood of condemnation from the medical community seems to be that Dr. Oz started endorsing specific supplements and pseudo medicines.

• 3:56:08Speaker 09

  God, he's Alex Jonesing it.

• 3:56:10Robert Evans?

  He's Jonesing it hard. He's so much smarter than Alex, though.

• 3:56:14Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:56:15Robert Evans?

  You focus it just on the health. None of this nonsense, like political shit. Everybody's gonna love you and you'll make way more money.

• 3:56:23Speaker 09

  Mm hmm.

• 3:56:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah. A 2018 analysis of his show by the Health News Review found, quote, "In the Dr. Oz show, 13 out of 19, 68.4% shows had ads relating to general show content. 57.9% had specific products mentioned by the host using their commercial name. And 36.3% of shows mentioning products by name named more than one product." It also found that 78% of the medical statements made on the Dr. Oz show did not align with, quote, "evidence-based medical guidelines." So

• 3:56:59Speaker 09

  If those guidelines mattered, they'd make more money, dog.

• 3:57:03Robert Evans?

  Half a decade earlier, 46% of his statements are more or less fine.

• 3:57:08Speaker 09

  Mm hmm.

• 3:57:09Robert Evans?

  Now it's down to, what, Jesus, 22%?

• 3:57:13Speaker 09

  Wow.

• 3:57:14Robert Evans?

  So we're seeing, again, he mad the quality of the, uh, cause again, you're running out of good content. You only have so much good medical advice you can give when you're doing an hour a day, 175 times a year for fucking 15, 16 years.

• 3:57:28Speaker 09

  Eat fruit.

• 3:57:29Robert Evans?

  Exactly. The actual amount of things that an average person can reasonably do to improve their own physical health doesn't really take that long to explain to you, you know? It's pretty simple stuff and most of us know a lot of it already. We know when we're, I know that pounding kratom and Coke Zero isn't a wise healthcare decision.

• 3:57:49Speaker 09

  No, no, but you know it and you can, you know, fucking, you don't need a Dr. Oz to tell you that, you know, you just, you know.

• 3:57:57Robert Evans?

  I know that the fact that I bought the hundred dollar entire smoked leg of, of, of pig from Costco, the giant prosciutto leg that you can grab. I know, I know buying that and not also purchasing, uh, I don't know, salad, uh, in order to have sufficient fiber by diet. I recognize that was a poor health decision.

• 3:58:18Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 3:58:19Robert Evans?

  No one tricked me about this and at no point did I think this hundred dollars worth of smoked ham is a solid healthcare move, you know?

• 3:58:27Speaker 09

  It's smoked. What could be so bad with smoking?

• 3:58:31Robert Evans?

  It's good for my Q zone. It's traditional medicine.

• 3:58:34Speaker 09

  Yeah, this is really good for all of my kidney meridians. I need all the smoked hams I can get.

• 3:58:40Robert Evans?

  My meridians are fucking rocking right now.

• 3:58:43Speaker 09

  I am peaking in meridians, bro.

• 3:58:45Robert Evans?

  Let me fucking tell you, my meridians are as hard as a goddamn rock.

• 3:58:50Speaker 09

  Feel my kidneys, feel my kidneys. It's just like, why is your kidney swollen?

• 3:58:56Robert Evans?

  The Dr. Oz show is still on the air. In 2018, President Trump appointed Dr. Oz to a council on sports, fitness and nutrition as part of the Department of Health and Human Services. He is still on that council under Joe Biden. Bipartisan, baby. Two years later, oh, no politician is dumb enough to want to piss off Dr. Oz. You're never gonna hear Joe Biden throw it. Well, except for, except for Claire McCaskill, God bless her. Um, like.

• 3:59:23Speaker 09

  She was the only one who had the guts to stand up to Dr. Oz.

• 3:59:27Robert Evans?

  I think other people did. I'm not an expert on what went down in that congressional thing, but she was seems to be the main one who was really angry at him, which good on you, Claire.

• 3:59:35Speaker 09

  I love that a bipartisan decision is just like, let's share this grifter, you know, between administrations, like, good, you know, gotta love it.

• 3:59:45Robert Evans?

  We all agree that you should be able to lie about healthcare as an MD. That's, that's, so 2018 is when he gets appointed to this council. Two years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he endorsed hydroxychloroquine. Later that year, he endorsed reopening schools, saying, I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2% to 3% in terms of total mortality.

• 4:00:13Speaker 09

  What the fuck?

• 4:00:15Robert Evans?

  I said 2% to 3% of the country. That's barely anybody dying. That's barely hundreds of thousands of deaths.

• 4:00:21Speaker 09

  He said 2% to 3% as if that's not a huge number of people. He's losing his goddamn mind.

• 4:00:27Robert Evans?

  And it's one of those things, not making a point pro or against gun control either way, but if somebody against gun control said, what, keeping these things legal is only going to cost us 1% of the country, you'd be like, you're a fucking maniac.

• 4:00:41Robert Evans?

  You are a dangerous person. But he's like, we gotta, and he didn't, yeah, this outraged a lot of people and Oz apologized. As he apologized for vaxing hydroxychloroquine. Yeah, he oopsie dazed it. He, he claimed regret that his comments had confused and upset people and basically pointed out The Lancet wasn't saying 2% to 3% of the country was going to die. It was, I think, more like 2%, 3% of like, I don't know, people's friends or something, like would get sick and like, it, it was, he, he, but the way he phrased it was, it's only going to cost us 2% to 3% of the country. Like, I don't care what the actual study, again, I don't care what the study is. I care what you said to your audience of millions. And also I care about the fact that in any case, that's, Fucking evil.

• 4:01:25Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 4:01:26Robert Evans?

  Like, that's an evil thing to say.

• 4:01:28Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's pretty wild to just look at two to 3% of the country as like expendable if it means that my fucking dirtbag ass fifth grader can be stuck inside in a school all day. And listen, I get it. People with kids, they want their kids to go back to school. But you, you, that's, you don't say the quiet part out loud, you know?

• 4:01:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's one thing to say, hey, look, living in a society, there's all, all kinds of, of, of cost benefit sort of analysis.

• 4:01:56Speaker 09

  Sure.

• 4:01:56Robert Evans?

  We have to do, like, right, cars improve a lot of efficiencies in certain ways and people like have them. They're also going to cost X many lives, you know? We could change these sorts of laws, but it would, it would lead to this sort of problem. You know, we have certain freedoms that may cost lives and like,

• 4:02:13Speaker 09

  Right.

• 4:02:13Robert Evans?

  to be like, that's just living in a society, right? There's no, we, our society is not angled around absolutely reducing mortality in every way.

• 4:02:21Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 4:02:22Robert Evans?

  And there's a cost to not having these schools open and it's a very real cost. And like, we have to, like, that's a way to say that. I'm not saying that's the argument I'm making because I'm not. I'm thinking, I don't think we should open schools out until we actually have, I don't know, like 80% of the fucking country vaccinated or whatever.

• 4:02:37Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:02:37Robert Evans?

  But like, um, but that's a way you could, that's a way you could make that argument and not sound like a, a gibbering sociopath.

• 4:02:46Speaker 09

  And it's weird to like, you know, be like, all right, it was a poor choice of words. And it's like, bro, at this point, saying words out loud to millions of people is your job.

• 4:02:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you're choosing to do the job. You could never work another day in your life and you would never, you, you, you're rich. You, you don't need to do this. You're choosing to. So go fuck yourself with that explanation.

• 4:03:07Speaker 09

  Fucking fix some hearts already. Stop talking.

• 4:03:10Robert Evans?

  We're getting to that. So today, Dr. Oz works to continue to monetize his brand with his wife and business partner, who he also writes books with. His daughter seems to be getting in on the grift too, with books like The Dorm Room Diet, which she wrote when she was in college, I think.

• 4:03:25Speaker 09

  The Dorm Room Diet. It's just free pizza and dick.

• 4:03:28Robert Evans?

  The Dorm Room Diet. Hey, you know, if you pour coffee into instant ramen?

• 4:03:33Speaker 09

  Yeah, right, exactly.

• 4:03:34Robert Evans?

  It's an efficient breakfast. I've done that, by the way.

• 4:03:39Speaker 09

  Hey, we've all been there.

• 4:03:40Robert Evans?

  Kind of proud of it. It's real good if you add in vodka. Um, he is worth tens of millions of dollars and is not in any danger of being worth less anytime soon. We've talked a lot about the harms of his specific recommendations and the disinformation he spreads, but at the end of this all, I keep coming back to that 2010 New York Times article, specifically its end, when I think about what may be his worst crime against medicine. Quote, "On the stairs at Columbia Presbyterian, apropos of nothing, he began talking about certain Japanese, Sardinian, and Costa Rican populations that live unusually long, and said that their shared trait was activity, activity, activity." His first column for Time Magazine, "Living Long and Living Well," ran in a

• 4:04:23Robert Evans?

  section called "How to Live 100 Years." At another point, in his Rockefeller Center office, he said that so many people thrill on being, to being on television because, quote, "There's an element of eternity to it. You are storing you. You are taking your life force for that brief moment when you're on camera, and you're storing that for all eternity, which makes you someone who will never truly die." That is a fucking bonkers way of looking at being on TV.

• 4:04:50Speaker 09

  Holy shit.

• 4:04:51Robert Evans?

  That is out of its goddamn mind.

• 4:04:55Speaker 09

  He is literally one year away from wanting to be buried with his cats, you know? Like, this dude wants some pyramids and some live cats in a casket with him. This is, he's a pharaoh.

• 4:05:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I'm going to continue the quote. And he described his own investment in television by saying, "I've always felt that, when I looked at my tombstone, it shouldn't say, 'Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 Open Heart Operations.' I've probably done 5,000. Am I any better at it than 10,000?" He shook his head. "It's just a different number on the tombstone." No, it's not! It's 5,000 other people whose lives you've extended.

• 4:05:34Speaker 09

  Those are actual human beings' hearts.

• 4:05:36Robert Evans?

  Those are human beings! It's not about... Like you're how better it you're already great at it. It's about saving additional lives.

• 4:05:43Speaker 09

  My God, that it's that's wild.

• 4:05:46Robert Evans?

  One of the he has dramatically, he still does perform surgery, I think, sometimes. He certainly was in the late aughts because he's a doctor. He just doesn't do nearly as much. He used to do a lot more and he's he's cut it by more than half the amount of actual heart.

• 4:06:01Speaker 09

  And it's the one thing he's good at. I mean, I almost.

• 4:06:03Robert Evans?

  And he's amazing at it. So one of the things that I should note here is that right now, even with the assumption that every available training position for cardiothoracic surgeons is filled. We are looking at a projected shortage of 1,500 cardiothoracic surgeons or 25% of the workforce by 2025.

• 4:06:25Speaker 09

  Fuck, fuck.

• 4:06:27Robert Evans?

  There is a desperate need for the thing that he's definitely one of the best in the world at. A tremendous and terrible need for it. And he has stopped doing that in order to give people bad medical advice that will hurt some of them on TV. And I want to be really clear here. I am not saying that just because you become a cardiothoracic surgeon, you have to do that until the day you drop. You don't, you can quit. You can, and that's not immoral. It's not evil to be like, I've done enough. A good friend of mine was a cardiologist for 30 something years and quit to travel around the world as a photojournalist. And I don't think there's anything immoral. You do not owe the world. Yeah, doing just because it's valuable and there aren't enough people doing it forever. I am not, and you don't, you don't have to quit to do some other valuable job.

• 4:07:11Robert Evans?

  You can just quit to enjoy your life, be with your family. I'm not saying that.

• 4:07:15Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 4:07:15Robert Evans?

  But he didn't quit to be with his family. He quit to give people bad health advice.

• 4:07:22Speaker 09

  He quit to do crimes.

• 4:07:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he is. He is doing something that should be illegal instead of performing an additional 5,000 life-saving surgeries.

• 4:07:30Speaker 09

  Right, yeah.

• 4:07:31Robert Evans?

  That's evil.

• 4:07:32Speaker 09

  Yeah, no, that, that, that is bad. That is, that is definitely immoral to, to like have the ability. It's like being Superman and having the ability to save someone from a burning building. But being like, fuck dude, I'm kind of on my way to do this TV interview that's going to get me more.

• 4:07:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, but I'm going to sell people pills instead. Lex Luthor can suck it, you know? I got pills to move. And the way that he phrases that is incredibly telling, right? Like, it shouldn't say Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 open-heart operations. Am I any better at it than 10,000? It's like, that's not, I care that you get better at it to the extent that it improves patient outcome. But like, I don't care. Like, the thing that's good about performing 10,000 open-heart operations is presumably somewhere near 10,000 people have had their lives extended because of you. And that's amazing.

• 4:08:23Robert Evans?

  That's tens of thousands of cumulative years you've added to the lives of people who are loved and who do things themselves, who do incre- like, who have their own ways of contributing to society, who have children, like.

• 4:08:36Speaker 09

  It's such a sick way of looking at it, too.

• 4:08:39Robert Evans?

  It's really fucked up.

• 4:08:40Speaker 09

  It's like, I'm already really good at it, so I decided.

• 4:08:44Robert Evans?

  I want to go get into TV now. It's like, if he'd been like, I, you know, I did my car, I performed 5,000 surgeries, now I want to become an actor. Like, fine, you have that right, absolutely. I'm never gonna say that's a rule, right?

• 4:08:55Speaker 09

  I mean, it depends on the movie, but yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 4:08:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, if you're in Michael Bay movies, we might have another talk.

• 4:09:00Speaker 09

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 4:09:01Robert Evans?

  But that's, again, it's not that he's decided he wanted to go into TV. It's not that he decided to go into entertainment. It's that he decided to do a job, to go from doing a job where he was unequivocally saving lives, to doing a job where he often gives people advice that could shorten or at least reduce the quality of their life.

• 4:09:18Speaker 09

  I mean, I guess he got tired of helping people and was like, you know?

• 4:09:23Robert Evans?

  Time to make some fucking bank.

• 4:09:24Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's, I mean, it's not just make some bank, but he's like, man, I saved 10,000 lives, I'm gonna have to kill 10,000 just to fucking net neutral this shit, you know?

• 4:09:36Speaker 09

  You know, he's just trying to, he's trying to balance the scales of his good and evil.

• 4:09:41Robert Evans?

  It's so fucking frustrating. I really dislike this man.

• 4:09:46Speaker 09

  Yeah. He's so handsome, though, dude. I mean, that's the thing. He's very handsome. He made a lot of money, so that's good. And, you know, he's, he's, he's out there every day, giving, giving hope to people who are currently dying of a very, very treatable ailment and saying, nah, dog, put your feet in some hot rice.

• 4:10:08Robert Evans?

  Some hot rice.

• 4:10:09Speaker 09

  And see what happens, dude. Just see what happens. You know, like, someone's got to be doing that job.

• 4:10:16Robert Evans?

  It's this fucking thing. Part of the Dr. Oz problem and the part of it that that he is he is leaning into, but it's not his fault is this thing that's a broader problem that I've gotten trapped in that a lot that everyone who's a public figure is at risk of getting trapped in. Which is the fact that if you're good at something and also have some measure of fame or popularity, you start to think you can extend your skills to everything. I was in the gym the other day since I'm in Texas with my family. And since I'm vaccinated and, you know, everyone wears a mask, but I've been going to a gym.

• 4:10:50Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 4:10:51Robert Evans?

  And my family's vaccinated. It's like, it's the thing we get to do now. Okay?

• 4:10:54Speaker 09

  Yeah, you're allowed.

• 4:10:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I've been going to a gym and the gyms have like news programs on, right? And I saw Dr. Oz on and it was Dr. Oz's true crime because I guess Dr. Oz has added a true crime thing where he's like, talking about this woman who murdered her kids and interviewing like the ex-wife of the husband of the woman who murdered her kids and like, dude, this thing is like, you don't have any, why are you doing this? Like, oh, because because it's popular with the same people who like your show. And why, why, like, why not? Why not stick your hand into this thing that is is is deeply painful for a lot of people? And make money off of it. Why not do it? Because if you're if you're famous and good at one thing, there's no reason not to do absolutely everything. I

• 4:11:40Robert Evans?

  I just hate it.

• 4:11:42Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's especially since it's it's, again, he he has the God given skills to actually do good and help people. And he chooses, you know, this shit. And I gotta say, I blame his dad.

• 4:11:57Robert Evans?

  I blame his dad too. Fuck you, Mustafa.

• 4:12:01Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 4:12:01Robert Evans?

  Son of a bitch.

• 4:12:02Speaker 09

  You fucked up, dude. I mean, you did a great job by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and what yada yada. But, you know, maybe you should have, maybe you should have maybe been more encouraging for him to just maybe, you know, pick one thing and stay with it rather than, you know, venture off into television. I will say at least with the true crime stuff that like. I know he's like, he's a little bit kind of like getting into kind of our territory here with the podcast business and I don't like that. But I'm glad I don't have a true crime podcast that he's currently cannibalizing. If he starts a Sopranos one, I will lose my fucking mind.

• 4:12:41Speaker 09

  If Dr. Oz decides one day, like, I want to do a prestige TV rewatch show for CNN, that'll be it, dude. Oz, you'll be on my goddamn list.

• 4:12:52Speaker 03

  I don't think his podcast publishers anymore, the one that he was doing. I don't see any new episodes. That's 2019.

• 4:12:59Speaker 09

  Well, I mean, he's, he's doing a true crime show. That's, that's as close as you get to, to the podcast business.

• 4:13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:13:07Speaker 09

  You know what I'm saying? Those are the number one pods out there, dude. Pisses me off.

• 4:13:12Robert Evans?

  Casts my pods. All right, guys. That's the episode.

• 4:13:21Speaker 03

  Do you have any, any plugs?

• 4:13:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:13:24Speaker 03

  Plug the plugs?

• 4:13:26Speaker 09

  Uh, my name is Matt Lieb and, uh, you know, I'm on Instagram, Matt Lieb Jokes.

• 4:13:31Robert Evans?

  The Gram.

• 4:13:32Speaker 09

  Yeah, I'm on the Gram. Uh, I'm also on Twitter at Matt Lieb, but, uh, follow me on Instagram. Uh, and yeah, and if you like The Sopranos, uh, pod yourself a gun.

• 4:13:41Robert Evans?

  It's, uh, Pod yourself a gun, baby. Well, get out there and again, find Dr. Oz in the streets. And Sophie, what, what is the legal definition of incitement?

• 4:13:53Speaker 03

  I'm not, for legal reasons, I'm not going to answer that question.

• 4:13:59Robert Evans?

  All right, well, uh, just, just go out and wander the streets, um, angry and, and, and agitated. Yeah.

• 4:14:10Speaker 03

  So we're already doing it.

• 4:14:11Robert Evans?

  Without any clear goal. Yeah.

• 4:14:13Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 4:14:14Robert Evans?

  Angryly wander the streets, agitated with an unclear goal. That's what I want all of my listeners to do.

• 4:14:33Speaker 05

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• 4:15:03Speaker 01

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• 4:15:36Robert Evans?

  Fuck you! That's the introduction. Just, just fuck you, people who listen and give us an income, allow us to-

• 4:15:47Speaker 11

  Nice to see you, too.

• 4:15:49Robert Evans?

  Live a comfortable life. Not you, Jamie, just the audience. Just, just the people who support us with their ears. I'm in, so I'm just out the gate. Fuck 'em. That's right. What are you gonna do about it? You gonna listen to another podcast? Like there are other podcasts? Like you have other options? Like there's a flooded marketplace of things exactly like what I do that you could just turn to? Ha!

• 4:16:12Speaker 11

  I don't think so, and don't investigate otherwise.

• 4:16:16Robert Evans?

  No, please don't search podcasts on Spotify.

• 4:16:20Speaker 11

  I feel like what you just said all could have come out of Dr. Phil's mouth at one point, the second the cameras turn off for his show.

• 4:16:28Robert Evans?

  Well, Jamie, the orca is out of the tank, because that is the subject of today's episode. And also, you're Jamie Loftus, my guest on the show that this is, which is Behind the Bastards.

• 4:16:41Speaker 11

  Yes, it is Behind the Bastards. And I'm, I'm here. I'm mainly here to bring the Dr. Phil ASMR videos this week.

• 4:16:49Robert Evans?

  Excited is the wrong word. Dreading? Dreading is the right word. I'm dreading that, Jamie.

• 4:16:55Speaker 11

  You're gonna either really love them or really hate them. And I can't figure out which it's gonna be.

• 4:16:59Robert Evans?

  I can't imagine loving them because they involve Dr. Phil and

• 4:17:03Speaker 03

  I think he's gonna love them.

• 4:17:05Robert Evans?

  You know, it's one of those things.

• 4:17:06Speaker 03

  Hot take.

• 4:17:08Robert Evans?

  We just did the Dr. Oz episodes. And Dr. Oz, also bad, obviously, he was on this show. But you have to respect him because he is a brilliant doctor. Like, he's a man who, for all of the harm he's done by spreading pseudoscience, has performed like 5,000 successful open heart surgeries, which is an achievement, you know, and has patented a bunch of useful medical devices and stuff. He's a person who's made like bafflingly selfish decisions that I don't respect. But as a person, I have to have some level of respect for the things that he has achieved because he's impressive. Dr. Phil is just a piece of shit. Dr. Phil is just straight up trash.

• 4:17:46Speaker 11

  We were, we were talking about this off mic. There, there was some Dr. Drew drama in Los Angeles this week that actually like for once ended well and online bullying pers- like persevered. And Dr. Drew was like nominated to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, like, board?

• 4:18:08Robert Evans?

  And what is, okay, I don't know Dr. Drew. What is, what is Dr. Drew do? I'm assuming he's a nonsense doctor, like all of the other doctors we talk about.

• 4:18:16Speaker 11

  He may be technically a doctor. I'm not totally sure. But he, I think he's a radio doctor.

• 4:18:21Robert Evans?

  Oh, that's the best kind of doctor.

• 4:18:22Speaker 03

  He also mediates the reunions of Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2 and 16 and Pregnant, and causes damage to lots, lots of young minds.

• 4:18:35Speaker 11

  All the time. He technically does have, he is a, a doctor. I don't know if he's currently licensed, but I know him from VH1. Yeah. In like middle school where he had. He's been around for so long. Drew, Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew, Celebrity Rehab Presents Sober House and.

• 4:18:57Robert Evans?

  Oh, that sounds like my nightmare. Like that sounds, that sounds like the hell that I would go to is Sober House. Oh, no.

• 4:19:05Speaker 11

  I could have, I could have shortened my description and said he's Adam Carolla's best friend, which is also true, which is like.

• 4:19:10Robert Evans?

  Oh, wait, really?

• 4:19:11Speaker 11

  You know of him.

• 4:19:11Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah, no.

• 4:19:13Speaker 11

  Yeah, he hosted like a famous radio show called Love Life Forever and Adam Carolla was also on the show and they're, they're close. And so, yeah, he was nominated to serve on the Homeless Authority Board and it took, it only took about a day where like activists just bullied him into, bullied people into withdrawing the nomination pretty quickly. And he had a few spicy little comments about it. Um, he was like, I can't like, he basically was like, these online bullies are trying to cancel me for, for not being a good doctor and irrelevant for this job. So, you know,

• 4:19:57Speaker 11

  sometimes bad doctors fall. I like, I love to see it.

• 4:19:59Robert Evans?

  Well, that's fascinating. I'm so happy to have learned about Dr. Drew, but today we're talking about Dr. Phil and it's, it's time to get in, get into the, it's time to have us a Philgasm.

• 4:20:11Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 4:20:13Robert Evans?

  A McGraw-asm, a McGraz-asm, McGraw-asm.

• 4:20:16Speaker 11

  A McGraw-asm.

• 4:20:17Robert Evans?

  McGas-asm, yeah. Um, so Philip Calvin McGraw was born on September 1st, 1950 in Veneta, Oklahoma, about four hours from where I grew up. Uh, his father was Joseph and his mother was Ann Geraldine or Jerry, uh, is what she preferred to go by. He had two older sisters and one younger sister. When he was a kid, his father moved the family down to the oil fields of North Texas, which are about as unpleasant a place as I've ever encountered. On this earth, not a, not a good place to just exist. You don't wanna, as a general rule, stay away from oil fields. Um, not nice places. So his, his, his kind of like southern desolation

• 4:20:57Robert Evans?

  is, is Phil McGraw's early childhood. Um, which, you know, I, I can tell you from experience what that does to a kid. Uh, and it, it, it makes you either, um, a, a washout or ambitious and angry. One of the two.

• 4:21:13Speaker 11

  Love it.

• 4:21:14Robert Evans?

  Wind up an alcoholic working on an oil derrick, uh, or you do everything possible to escape the, the, the desolate south. Anyway, Phil's gonna take that second one.

• 4:21:24Speaker 11

  I like where you went with it. Yeah.

• 4:21:26Robert Evans?

  I have strong feelings about that part of Texas and that part of Oklahoma. Uh, Phil was a precocious child and his parents seemed to agree that he basically raised himself. He expressed a hunger for money from a young age, uh, and he was coddled. His mother thought he could do no wrong. Young Phil was the center of attention for everyone but his father, who was himself obsessed with work. The elder McGraw would end up moving the family half a dozen times for the sake of his career. By age 11, Phil was spending summers driving a freight truck owned by his grandfather in Monday, Texas. By age 12, he was flying planes illegally, without a license as he traveled with.

• 4:22:02Speaker 11

  Oh my God. Okay.

• 4:22:04Robert Evans?

  I mean, the, the driving, uh, driving at age 11, not as uncommon as you might think in certain rural parts of the world, still a bit young. Driving a freight truck is a bit, is a bit odd at age 11.

• 4:22:17Speaker 11

  That is a shark jump. And then unlicensed.

• 4:22:21Robert Evans?

  Pilot at age 12?

• 4:22:24Speaker 11

  Honestly, if I, I looked up, uh, Dr. Phil Young, because sometimes you, it's shocking and you're like, whoa, Dr. Phil used to be hot. Not the case here. But there's a, there's a, there's a picture of him as a kid. And now I'm like, that does look like a kid that would steal a plane. It just does.

• 4:22:40Robert Evans?

  It's, he's not even stealing a plane. His dad needs to fly to these desolate airstrips in the middle of nowhere to deliver oil field equipment. And he, Phil goes with him and flies the plane sometime. My guess is that his dad is just like, I'm taking a nap. You're flying this oil field equipment across Texas.

• 4:22:58Speaker 03

  I trust you.

• 4:22:59Robert Evans?

  Land the bastard. Okay, Dad.

• 4:23:04Speaker 03

  Child Dr. Phil looks like adult Chris Cuomo.

• 4:23:08Speaker 11

  Whoa, I see it. I see it. Okay, it's honestly shocking that he was not a bald baby.

• 4:23:16Robert Evans?

  No, if someone wants to make a comic book, Dr. Phil Child Pilot, um, it's a pretty decent premise. There's, I've, I've heard worse. So yeah, this is how Phil spins his childhood, um, up until the point when his dad, Joe turned 40 and decided apropos of nothing, that he was going to abandon his family and become a psychologist.

• 4:23:37Speaker 11

  Wait, hold on. We, we truly don't have more info than that.

• 4:23:41Robert Evans?

  I have not found more info than that. His dad's like, I'm going to become a psychologist. You guys can keep doing your thing, you know, like, that's basically how it's set. And so Joe leaves his wife and three daughters behind. I think they stay in Texas. And he brings Phil with him to Kansas where the two started a new life together.

• 4:23:58Speaker 11

  I don't like this, the closeness of father and son here. It sounds like, why is it, oh, I hate, because every time we go over stories like this, you're like, it can't be daddy issues. Everything can't be just daddy ish, but then, but then it always is.

• 4:24:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's interesting. One of the things that's just interesting to me is like the, the, the ways in which Dr. Phil and I's early background are similar and then diverge. And this is a big divergence point because when I was a kid, my dad left for like a couple of years, um, to work somewhere else, but it was because we had no money. We were at like the edge of bankruptcy. And the only job he could get was in New York, living on a friend's couch and like working at a radio station. So he could send back money to us. So he wasn't like, and like, I didn't go with him. He like had to go alone to New York to support the family and stuff, but it is this weird, grew up in the same area, moved around a bunch when we were little, our dad leaves, you know, but in Phil's case, he goes with his dad and they just abandoned all the women.

• 4:24:58Speaker 11

  Right, right. Like Dr. Phil's dad is like, you're my wife now.

• 4:25:03Robert Evans?

  You're my wife now, boy. My wife pilot.

• 4:25:07Speaker 11

  Blame the plane, Phil. You're my wife now.

• 4:25:10Robert Evans?

  Dr. Phil, child, wife pilot.

• 4:25:14Speaker 11

  The pitch is getting better and better and better. It's gonna be sold by the end of the

• 4:25:18Robert Evans?

  I actually just got an email from Netflix and it's a check for $112 million. So we are now contractually obligated to make this show, Jamie.

• 4:25:28Speaker 11

  I would honestly rather do that more than anything else.

• 4:25:31Robert Evans?

  I know. That would be a dream. Let's leave this life behind.

• 4:25:36Speaker 11

  Okay, so we're abandoning podcasts.

• 4:25:40Robert Evans?

  To do Dr. Phil's childwife pilot, yes.

• 4:25:43Speaker 11

  I think that would put a lot of positivity back into the world. So they just, they just bail. And it's not for financial reasons.

• 4:25:50Robert Evans?

  I mean, it is. They're, they're poor as shit. His dad wants to go to school and is like, I can't take care of this family anymore. Bye. Is, is what it, the way it's been described in the articles I've read. Now, maybe Dr. Phil could, could give us a more detailed story, but I have not run across it yet.

• 4:26:06Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 4:26:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Um, most of the info I have on his childhood comes from a Dallas Observer article, uh, and they explained the whole abandoning of Phil's mom and sisters as a financial move.

• 4:26:18Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 4:26:18Robert Evans?

  Um, Phil apparently told the Dallas Observer, quote, "There just wasn't enough money to do otherwise." So we can only feed two members of this family. So, girls, you're on your own. Phil and I are going to Kansas.

• 4:26:31Speaker 11

  Phil, okay.

• 4:26:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:26:32Speaker 11

  Extremely, very, very, it sounds like a really healthy family dynamic so far.

• 4:26:38Robert Evans?

  You get the feeling he grew up in a healthy environment. That's true.

• 4:26:41Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 4:26:44Robert Evans?

  Healthy families are all alike. They allow 12-year-olds to fly planes.

• 4:26:48Speaker 11

  That is how the famous quote goes.

• 4:26:50Robert Evans?

  That's, that's how Anna Karenina starts.

• 4:26:52Speaker 11

  I love that book so much. And it turns out that's the key to the statement of the whole thing. How did you just pronounce that, Robert?

• 4:27:00Robert Evans?

  I don't know. Anna Karenina? What is it?

• 4:27:02Speaker 11

  I was gonna let it fly. Yeah, I wasn't. I, I honestly, I think that if had Anna Karenina been a child pilot, maybe she wouldn't have gotten crushed by that train.

• 4:27:13Robert Evans?

  No, no. And she could have been Dr. Phil's dad's childwife.

• 4:27:18Speaker 11

  I actually don't know what happens in that, but I pretended to read it when I was like 11. I just stared at every page really hard over a course of months.

• 4:27:27Robert Evans?

  Per the results of a 2006 court case, I am not allowed to read Russian literature. So,

• 4:27:34Robert Evans?

  in more recent post fame interviews, Dr. Phil claims those early days with his father were a humbling experience. Quote, "We were so poor, we couldn't even pay attention," which is, I don't, I think is less a true statement, not that I'm saying they weren't poor. I think he just said that because he knows it was a pithy thing and he makes his whole living off of like saying stupid Dr. Phil witticisms. Yes.

• 4:27:57Speaker 11

  We couldn't even pay attention.

• 4:27:58Robert Evans?

  And I've heard that a thousand times. Like I have heard a thousand different people say, explain their origins that way. So I don't know. Fuck you, Dr. Phil.

• 4:28:07Speaker 11

  But does it make the moms absolutely lose it?

• 4:28:11Robert Evans?

  I bet it does. I absolutely bet it makes the moms lose it.

• 4:28:15Speaker 11

  The moms love when Dr. Phil quips. They love it.

• 4:28:18Robert Evans?

  Someone on Reddit during the Dr. Oz episode, you know, I noted a couple of times that his, his audience and the people that he makes money off of is like middle aged moms. And that that's a great business because they have all the money or at least control all the money. Like middle aged moms are, are one of the most profitable demographics to get in your corner in the entire world.

• 4:28:36Speaker 11

  Right.

• 4:28:38Robert Evans?

  And someone was like, you're being like unfairly negative towards middle aged moms. I was like, it's just a statement of fact. Like, look in the audience of a Dr. Oz show. Like, it's not 16 to 30 year olds, like men. It's, it's, it's a bunch of moms. Like, my mom loved Dr. Oz. It's that, that's who his audience is. It's not like a negative statement.

• 4:28:57Speaker 11

  My mom loves Dr. Phil. No, yeah, I don't think that that's a negative.

• 4:29:01Robert Evans?

  No.

• 4:29:02Speaker 11

  State. So if anyone's hearing that, and that's not like what they're intending to say.

• 4:29:06Robert Evans?

  That's just who the audience is. Yeah.

• 4:29:08Speaker 11

  It's the target audience. Yeah.

• 4:29:09Robert Evans?

  It's like saying, like, men 18 to 35, listen to Joe Rogan. That's not like, I'm not even, it is negative to listen to Joe Rogan, but I'm not being negative when I say that. I'm just accurately describing his audience. Yes.

• 4:29:23Speaker 11

  Right, right.

• 4:29:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:29:25Speaker 11

  Fuck you, Joe Rogan. Dr. I, as someone who was raised by Dr. Phil moms, I, I am fully, and it's like not, but, but I mean, it is the primary demographic.

• 4:29:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:29:37Speaker 11

  At least at the peak. I don't know who's watching Dr. Phil now.

• 4:29:40Robert Evans?

  No matter your demographic, there's a grifter for you. Look, I've been honest about the fact there was a period of time in my life when I liked John McAfee, before I knew about, you know, the murder and the rape and stuff.

• 4:29:51Speaker 11

  Right.

• 4:29:52Robert Evans?

  Like, we all, we all have a grifter we're vulnerable to. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You just need to acknowledge it. And in the case of middle-aged suburban moms, it's Dr. Phil and Dr. Ross.

• 4:30:02Speaker 11

  Mine was, I think the grifter that really that got me was Lou Pearlman, who made all the boy bands that made me want to kiss.

• 4:30:10Robert Evans?

  Oh, my God.

• 4:30:11Speaker 11

  I mean, one of my, not my favorite, but one of the most legendary bastards.

• 4:30:16Robert Evans?

  Absolutely amazing person, like.

• 4:30:19Speaker 11

  Mr. Blunt himself.

• 4:30:21Robert Evans?

  No, without any sort of joking, like, a genius, just, just has, a genius in terms of knowing exactly what a specific age group of people want.

• 4:30:32Speaker 11

  Right. It doesn't mean that we were like, not smart, but we were clearly targeted by, by.

• 4:30:38Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 4:30:38Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 4:30:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we all have a thing we're vulnerable to. Anyway, we're getting off topic, which is fine, because it pads the runtime. And that's what I do as a grifter, is I pan the runtime in order to make more money off of you fucking, sorry.

• 4:30:53Speaker 11

  Robert Evans exposed.

• 4:30:58Robert Evans?

  Shameful. So, yeah, the details that Dr. Phil gives about his childhood, like, he gives that kind of pithy, "We were so poor, we couldn't even pay attention" quote. But in the interview with Dallas Observer, the details he actually gives make it seem like the issue for Phil was less a matter of crushing poverty. Like, I think they were kind of poor, but I think they were like, my kind of poor, like, which was not crushing poverty. It was not, you're malnourished. It's just, there's no money for anything but the basics, you know?

• 4:31:24Speaker 11

  Right, you're absolutely breaking even, yeah.

• 4:31:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, but you're not like, you're not like, in absolute destitution, you know, like, not to exaggerate it, but like, you're poor. Like, that's kind of what I think is really happening. And part of why I think that is because his real complaint about that time in his life is that he couldn't buy any cool shit. Quote, from the Dallas Observer, "It didn't help that he was fiercely competitive," he says, "and he lacked the clothes and the car to compete for girls." So I think that's more the big thing for him, right? Like, you're not that poor, you just don't have enough money to impress girls with possessions.

• 4:32:02Speaker 11

  Right. Okay.

• 4:32:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:32:04Speaker 11

  I I I get that level of poverty.

• 4:32:07Robert Evans?

  Yes. Yeah. I think most of us had more or less that level of poverty. We're like, yeah, especially like I I I was like one of the poorer kids in a school that was not poor. There were kids in my school who drove BMWs. Um, and like I had a beat to shit Ford Taurus. Um, I'm not complaining.

• 4:32:23Speaker 11

  Ford Taurus?

• 4:32:23Robert Evans?

  I had a Ford Taurus. Like, I'm not complaining. I had a car. But like you see that you see the kids who's like, parents are rich and you're like, ah, shit, I feel so poor because they have like a brand new Jaguar. That that's, I think, the kind of poor he is.

• 4:32:35Speaker 11

  Yeah, our our school is like the kid with the Ford Taurus was like, oh, my God. He has a car. What a cool boy.

• 4:32:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was just for my senior year. But yes, I did. I did eventually get a car. Um, so thankfully, the young Dr. Phil was huge, uh, quickly crossing six feet. He's a massive man. If you've ever like seen him next to normal sized people, he's a very large person.

• 4:32:59Speaker 11

  I forget that. But yes, yeah, is he like six?

• 4:33:03Robert Evans?

  He's like, he's, yeah, he's like an inch or two taller than me, and I think quite a bit broader. Like, he's a big motherfucker.

• 4:33:08Speaker 11

  But uh, but most of that's mustache, Robert. Most of that's.

• 4:33:11Robert Evans?

  A lot of it's mustache now, but when he was younger, he was in good shape and he was, he was very like muscular. And as a result of how big and strong he was, he was a shoe in for the high school's football team.

• 4:33:21Speaker 11

  Classic.

• 4:33:21Robert Evans?

  He later recalled, quote, "I was Phil the Jock, and that was my currency." And by currency, he means that's how he got girls, right? He didn't have the car. He didn't have, but he was able to like get girls because he had, you know, he was, he was on the football team.

• 4:33:34Speaker 11

  He was tall.

• 4:33:35Robert Evans?

  He was tall. He was, and he was apparently quite good at football. Uh, in Phil's senior year, his father moved to Wichita Falls to start his psychology practice. Not yet a doctor, Phil, spent his entire senior year living alone. He didn't go with his dad this time. He supported himself and he played football because he he was like, he he, there was a period of time where he might have made it into the NFL. So he didn't want to leave his high school and like disrupt that. Um, he said, quote, "It wasn't what you were supposed to do, but I was pretty independent."

• 4:34:02Speaker 11

  Interesting.

• 4:34:03Robert Evans?

  College scouts had started eyeing him pretty early on and he had, it seems like he had a real chance of getting at least picked to play college ball. Um, he did get picked to play college. His dad had gone to the University of Tulsa on a football scholarship and in short order, Phil was picked by scouts for the same college. So he gets a college scholarship to the University of Tulsa. He becomes the captain of the freshman football team and he says he was very good. A lot of articles you'll say were very good. We're gonna talk about this in a little bit because his team at least was shit. Like, like not just, it's not just a bad, not just like not good in the year, but like one of the all time least successful college football teams in the history of college football.

• 4:34:43Speaker 11

  No.

• 4:34:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:34:45Speaker 11

  I'm trying to think of other, there's, that is like such a like celebrity that grows to be evil. I feel like that is a pattern of like, I, I could have been a big sport.

• 4:34:55Robert Evans?

  That was his Hitler's art school, right?

• 4:34:57Speaker 11

  Right, right, right. That is like, and you just know that's parties. He doesn't let people forget it. Like, yeah. I'm looking up celebrities who played high school sports. Matthew McConaughey. It just seems like not making it big in college sports can potentially a villainous origin story.

• 4:35:17Robert Evans?

  I mean, I never had any, I was on the high school. I did like, sorry, I did one year of football in junior high. I never had any chance of, of, of going pro and I didn't like football. There was a period of time where I might've been able to like, do, do, do well at fencing. Um, I did, I was in like a special pro. I was pretty, I was pretty good at fencing.

• 4:35:36Speaker 11

  That's cool.

• 4:35:38Robert Evans?

  But no, I, I got bored eventually.

• 4:35:40Speaker 03

  I love that for you. I could see that for you.

• 4:35:42Speaker 11

  I'm just saying, take it back up.

• 4:35:44Robert Evans?

  If you're really tall, it helps. Yeah. But never like, never, never at the college level or anything.

• 4:35:50Speaker 11

  Sorry, I ran track in junior high, but then I grew up one time and I quit permanently. And to this day, I do not run.

• 4:35:58Speaker 03

  I was captain of the varsity basketball team and I'm really, really short. So I had no. So I'm the most athletic of our bunch.

• 4:36:06Robert Evans?

  Sophie is the most successful athlete in, in, in this call. Amazing, amazing. Yeah.

• 4:36:14Speaker 11

  Send pics.

• 4:36:15Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, there are.

• 4:36:16Robert Evans?

  That's great.

• 4:36:17Speaker 03

  There are pics, Jamie. I will personally send them to you.

• 4:36:22Robert Evans?

  You know, I will say, having watched the video of that guy shot putting a fucking, uh, uh, bobcat, I, I think that should be an Olympic sport.

• 4:36:29Speaker 03

  That was the most amazing thing I've seen in such a long time.

• 4:36:32Robert Evans?

  That was, that was, that, you know what that was, is the greatest example of like quality husbanding that I think I've seen on Twitter. Like,

• 4:36:40Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 4:36:41Robert Evans?

  That's, that's, that's a, that's a, you did, you did good, man. That's exactly what you're supposed to do. Like, that's, that's, that's wholesome masculinity right there is shot putting a wild cat away from your wife.

• 4:36:55Speaker 11

  Wait, that's so, what a hero.

• 4:36:57Robert Evans?

  Well, and it's also, you know, it's not going to do any damage to the cat. Now, he did get out his gun to shoot the cat, but it charged back at the family. And I feel at that point, the cat had chosen violence. You know, he gave, he gave the animal a chance to end the interaction.

• 4:37:12Speaker 11

  Thank you for that, uh, that fine forensic analysis.

• 4:37:15Robert Evans?

  That's my, that's my opinion on the by now weeks old video of a guy hugging a bobcat across the yard.

• 4:37:22Speaker 11

  To be fair, he chose violence.

• 4:37:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the cat chose violence. That's my, that's my end statement here. So, um, yeah. Anyway, Dr. Phil, a lot of interviews, you'll see he was very, very good, could have, maybe could have gone pro. Um, I don't know how accurate that is. I'm not great at football, but I found an incredible analysis on the sports website, Grantland, about a game that he played in, that his freshman football team played in, that is like one of the most famous games in college ball history because of how badly his team did. Um, yeah. Uh, Grantland calls it one of the craziest games in NCAA history. Uh, for starters, the bulk of Phil's team were like actively dying of the flu while they played. Quote, "An especially virulent

• 4:38:06Robert Evans?

  strain of flu had been cavorting through the Tulsa Athletic Dorm, somehow overcoming the formidable sanitary standard those three words imply. And 15 of Tulsa's 22 starters were shivering feverish wrecks. They tried to act energetic, but they were so weak, Tulsa coach Glenn Dobbs remembered in 1985. My sons Glenn III and John were on the team. Their eyes were glazed with fever."

• 4:38:29Robert Evans?

  The team doctor pleaded with the coach to call off the game, but Dobbs, a former Tulsa star, who, because the world just does whatever at once, had been an icon for the Saskatchewan Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League, refused to surrender. "I just never liked backing out," he said afterward. Tulsa had two defensive linemen who were well enough to travel. One of them passed out before the coin flip. So this game is a fucking disaster from the beginning.

• 4:38:54Speaker 11

  I love this shit so much.

• 4:38:56Robert Evans?

  Oh, it's so good.

• 4:38:57Speaker 11

  Finally, a sports movie for me.

• 4:39:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, everyone's just puking shit into death. Also, someone named Glenn III is involved, like, just the funniest fucking thing.

• 4:39:11Speaker 11

  Passing out before the game starts. Oh, that is just...

• 4:39:14Robert Evans?

  And kudos to the Grantland writer. It's a very entertaining article.

• 4:39:18Speaker 11

  Grantland, I miss Grantland, yeah.

• 4:39:20Robert Evans?

  By the end of the first quarter, Phil's team was down 14 to 0, which is a significant, like, they're getting, it's not a great start to a game, but it's not insurmountable. However, by the end of the game, they were down by a record-breaking 100.6.

• 4:39:36Speaker 11

  Oh, my Jesus. Did Phil get any of the points?

• 4:39:41Robert Evans?

  No, I don't believe so. Not at all. I think it's one of the greatest ass-kickings in college ball history.

• 4:39:47Speaker 11

  Wow.

• 4:39:48Robert Evans?

  Like, in the entire history of the sport. Like, Dr. Phil's team got their asses beat almost the worst.

• 4:39:53Speaker 03

  Way to lose, Phil.

• 4:39:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's like a famously, a famous ass-kicking.

• 4:39:59Speaker 11

  So it does, like, several rounds of, like, going back to being sad, and then going back to being funny, and then going back to being sad, and then going, and finally landing on being the funniest shit I've ever heard.

• 4:40:08Robert Evans?

  It's incredibly funny. So Dr. Phil brags about this game today, saying that it and that football in general helped awaken in him an interest in psychology by teaching him that people with advantages don't always win. That said, the author of that Grantland article takes pains to point out that there is actually no evidence whatsoever that Phil played in this game. And the facts that do exist from this time make it seem kind of unlikely. I don't know how to, like, it was far enough back that there's not any comprehensive way to know for sure, really. But the doubt thrown onto it by this investigation might mean that as a grown-ass multimillionaire, Dr. Phil lied to David Letterman about playing in one of the worst ass-kickings in sports history, and I have no idea what this says

• 4:40:52Robert Evans?

  about him. Like, I don't even know how to analyze that.

• 4:40:55Speaker 11

  There are so many levels there. Cause if he did play in it, you're like, oh, what a

• 4:41:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Okay. That's fun. Yeah. You like, I can see like, if I was, if I, if I played in, if I partook in a famous ass kicking in a sports history, I would brag about that as an adult. It would be funny, you know, you get enough distance from it. Sure.

• 4:41:14Speaker 11

  Lying about it.

• 4:41:16Robert Evans?

  Lying about it is baffling.

• 4:41:20Speaker 11

  That's like a game of 4D chess. I can barely conceive of.

• 4:41:23Robert Evans?

  I have no idea what's going on with the, with Dr. Phil, but, um, and for the most part, I do know what's going on with him. This is just baffling to me because he's clearly a narcissist. It's very strange as a narcissist to lie about this, you know?

• 4:41:38Speaker 11

  To lie about one of the greatest failures.

• 4:41:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah. To just, to lie about just getting just like fame historically wrecked.

• 4:41:46Speaker 11

  Anything for clout, baby.

• 4:41:50Robert Evans?

  Speaking of clout, you know, who has all of my clout, Jamie?

• 4:41:55Speaker 11

  Does it happen to be a product or maybe even a service?

• 4:41:58Robert Evans?

  It is the products and services that support this podcast. I sacrifice all of my clout to them. Like members of the ancient cult of the old ones sacrifice virgin babies to Nyarlothep, the crawling chaos. Much like that.

• 4:42:14Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 4:42:14Robert Evans?

  Here's some ads for dick pills.

• 4:42:20Robert Evans?

  All right. We're back.

• 4:42:22Speaker 11

  We're back.

• 4:42:23Robert Evans?

  We're back.

• 4:42:24Speaker 11

  We're back.

• 4:42:26Robert Evans?

  Worshipping the old gods. I don't know. Might deliver up some of my bodily fluids to a shoggoth later. Who knows? Who knows? We're talking about Dr. Phil. Anything can happen. Mm hmm. So anyways, after this, at some point, I don't know the exact year, but at some point, pretty soon after this disastrous game, because Phil was definitely on the team. At some point after this, Phil had another sports disaster. He went in to tackle a running back and he got hit really hard. Um, and I don't mean just like, you know, spraying something. I mean, he woke up blind.

• 4:42:58Speaker 11

  Oh my god.

• 4:42:59Robert Evans?

  The kind of head injury where when you come to your eyes don't work, which is medically speaking, bad.

• 4:43:06Speaker 11

  It shouldn't be allowed.

• 4:43:09Robert Evans?

  It absolutely, like, I don't know, I think adults should, I think if you're like 22 and older, you should be allowed to play football, but certainly 18 year olds should not be, nor should they be allowed to join the military, by the way.

• 4:43:21Speaker 11

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 4:43:22Robert Evans?

  So, uh, he's still, yeah, it was, the head injury was bad enough, his eyesight came back, obviously, but it was a serious head injury, um, and it ended, there was no chance of him continuing his career after that, right? Like, it's one of those things where, like, you don't get to ever play football again because you get hit in the head one more time, that might be fucking it for you, you know? Um, once his eyesight, yeah, and he still suffers, like, he's, there's after effects of this today, like, it's, it's a lifelong injury. Um, he got really messed up. It's a bad thing to do. Yeah. Yeah, it's bad. Um, once his sight came back, Phil returned to Wichita Falls to heal and to plot his next move. He decided to put his college education on hold now that he couldn't do a football scholarship,

• 4:44:06Robert Evans?

  uh, and he decided, you know, the thing to do now, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna think about college later, I'm gonna make some money now, right? Which is not an unreasonable call to make in this situation. Um, and I'm gonna quote from a write-up in the Dallas Observer. He worked at a health club selling memberships and wound up owning a partnership interest in that club and a half dozen others. That was typical of the way he did things, says Scott Madsen, who went into the building business with his future brother-in-law. He is the smartest guy I ever met, a born leader. Even at a young age, he had the insight to figure out how things work. Others took a more damnable view of his business practices. I didn't know of anyone who had a business deal with Phil at the time who felt they came out on top, says David Dickinson, a former friend of McGraw's from Wichita Falls. It's like playing golf from someone who moves the ball around all the time.

• 4:44:52Speaker 11

  So how young is he when he gets into business?

• 4:44:54Robert Evans?

  He's like, maybe 20 at the most, like 19 or 20. And very quickly, he's a part, becomes a part owner in the sports club he's working at, becomes part owner in like a half dozen other clubs like he's

• 4:45:05Speaker 03

  So he doesn't have, he doesn't have a degree yet of any kind.

• 4:45:08Robert Evans?

  No, but he's clearly very good at, is that specifically the thing that Phil is objectively, one of the best people in the world at is negotiating.

• 4:45:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:45:17Robert Evans?

  Like he is a terrifying negotiator. I haven't run into any disagreement about that.

• 4:45:21Speaker 03

  He's got all the grift, he's got all the like the strong straits grifters have.

• 4:45:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And he's, he's very good at, um, at negotiating in a legal manner, which is a separate skill just from grifting, you know? And is honestly like the best kind of grifting because you can't get in trouble for that shit.

• 4:45:36Speaker 11

  Yeah, yeah. If he's willing to go into this game that young, that's so.

• 4:45:41Robert Evans?

  His brain, he's, he's wired for it, you know? Or at least maybe with the football injury scrambled his wires and made him wired for it. I don't know.

• 4:45:48Speaker 11

  His reality is stressing me out. Okay.

• 4:45:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:45:50Speaker 11

  He's triggering my, my fight or flight response. This is good, feeling good.

• 4:45:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's how Dr. Phil works. He really, really triggers a lot, a lot of responses. Um, now the article notes that when you interview, that Dallas Observer article notes that when you interview a bunch of people who have known Dr. Phil over the course of decades, you tend to get two very different pictures of the man. One from the people who like him is of an incredibly gifted expert in practical psychology, who has a passion for helping people.

• 4:46:17Speaker 11

  And?

• 4:46:17Robert Evans?

  The other picture you get of Dr. Phil is a quote charismatic opportunist, who achieved great things by betraying the people closest to him in order to make a quick buck. One of these spurned former friends is Eldon Buck, who claimed to the Observer, I put Phil in a couple of oil field deals and everyone pays me but him. Phil is a smart, smart, smart son of a bitch, but he's only out for one thing and that's Phil. Now, Phil denies all of this, but it is worth noting as we've just heard that Buck is not the only person with allegations like this against him. He's not even just one of two, but we're going to get to that story in due time.

• 4:46:55Speaker 11

  So he's also involved in in oil fields down the line.

• 4:46:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, in anything that'll make him money like this is like kind of all happening over a period of a couple of years. He's just, he starts making money and he immediately reinvests that money. He's in a bunch of businesses. You know, I have a, I have a good, a very, very close friend who has that kind of brain, who's just always spinning off their money into one business or another. And I don't know how they do it, but they just are able to keep track of like the fact that like I've, I've got an investment in this business. And through that business, I have an investment in this business and an interest in these other three businesses. And those give me an interest in this. And like, this is how all of that, like, I don't, I don't understand it, but like, it's kind of like being an engineer, you know? Some people have the kind of brain where you can open up like a fucking HVAC system or, or like the flight control system on an airplane.

• 4:47:43Robert Evans?

  And know what all of the little cords and all of the lights go and do and how to, how to, how to work all of that. Some people have a brain that allows them to just business, you know?

• 4:47:53Speaker 11

  I respect people who use it for good, but holy shit, what an exhausting.

• 4:47:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:47:57Speaker 11

  Sounding.

• 4:47:58Robert Evans?

  It, it, it sounds like a nightmare. Um, I keep all of my money in a pile. Um, and I, I will never have investments. Like I will never, like, I keep it in a bank, but like, I have no, I have no investments and never will, because the idea of investing money is terrifying to me and makes me want to huddle around a fire with a spear and stab outsiders.

• 4:48:20Speaker 11

  I spent my, all my savings on Dilbert NFTs.

• 4:48:24Robert Evans?

  Well, that's gonna, that's gonna appreciate, you know, Jamie.

• 4:48:28Speaker 11

  Good feeling.

• 4:48:30Robert Evans?

  The only thing they're not making any more of.

• 4:48:33Speaker 11

  There's, that's a real thing. They, the, the, you know, the sashy Dilbert guy, um, made Dilbert NFTs and the only difference from a regular Dilbert is that he says fuck in this one. And so I paid too much money. Anyways.

• 4:48:47Robert Evans?

  I would pay good money for a Dilbert NFT where he admits responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombing.

• 4:48:53Speaker 11

  Oh my God.

• 4:48:55Robert Evans?

  I think that would be a good NFT. If you're listening, Scott Adams, I'll invest in that one. Dilbert Dilbert admits to making a 6,000 pound fertilizer bomb and parking it out in front of the Murrah Building. That's the NFT I want.

• 4:49:08Speaker 11

  I can guarantee that Kathy Geisway, creator of Kathy Comics, does not know nor care what an NFT is. And that's why she is, she is really, she is, she's my strength in this world.

• 4:49:19Speaker 03

  Stan Kathy.

• 4:49:21Speaker 11

  Stan Kathy.

• 4:49:22Robert Evans?

  Stan Kathy. You know who else I stan? Jamie. No one. That was like, it's not time for an ad pivot.

• 4:49:30Speaker 03

  He loves to do the like fake ad thing and then he thinks about it.

• 4:49:34Robert Evans?

  I can't help it. I can't stop myself.

• 4:49:36Speaker 03

  He's just so good at it.

• 4:49:37Robert Evans?

  I mean, you know who I actually stan, who I have an unreasonable affection for and can't be convinced otherwise. No, no, I think, I think I have a reasonable love of LeVar Burton, as everyone does, right? It's like a cappy bar, right? You know, it's like loving a cappy bar. Like it's LeVar Burton, of course. No, Verner Herzog. Herzog is my, my unreasonable love.

• 4:49:59Speaker 11

  Robert, I would love, you should start making Verner Herzog fan cams.

• 4:50:04Robert Evans?

  I don't know what that means, Jamie.

• 4:50:07Speaker 11

  I'm gonna make one of you and you're gonna be horrified. If there, I wonder if Robert fan cams exist. Listeners.

• 4:50:14Robert Evans?

  What the fuck is a fan cam?

• 4:50:16Speaker 11

  It's, how do I describe a fan cam? It's usually like, it's, it's a short video made on an app. I don't know what the app is, but it's just a series of clips of you and they have, they put a glittery filter over it and there's like a cute song on in the background.

• 4:50:31Robert Evans?

  I don't think there's a lot of video of me where like you can actually see me. So that might be hard to do.

• 4:50:38Speaker 03

  Robert, you would, you would absolutely hate it, my friend.

• 4:50:41Robert Evans?

  I know I would.

• 4:50:43Speaker 11

  There's enough video footage of you for a fan cam. You need like three clips.

• 4:50:47Robert Evans?

  Well, all, all I'm interested of is a fan cam of Verner Herzog diving into a bunch of cactuses because he promised a group of little people that if they made it through the filming of a movie without injury, he would horribly hurt himself by diving into a bed of saguaros from 12 feet up.

• 4:51:02Speaker 11

  Is that true?

• 4:51:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he absolutely did it. And they begged him not to. They were like, please don't do this. Like, we don't want you to hurt yourself. And he said, I made a promise. And if I don't fulfill my promise, there's no reason for me to be alive. And then he dove into a pile of cactuses because he's a fucking lunatic. And I love him so much.

• 4:51:20Speaker 11

  Wow, okay, Werner.

• 4:51:22Robert Evans?

  Oh, Werner Herzog. Watch Aguirre, The Wrath of God.

• 4:51:26Speaker 11

  So, Dr. Phil, Robert?

• 4:51:28Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm. Dr. Phil, yeah, sorry. We're, phew, off the topic a little bit. So, after three years as a business slash con man, Phil McGraw decided to return to the education system to study psychology. He started off at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, where his father had gone, and then transferred to the University of North Texas, which is where the people who gave me huge amounts of drugs went to school. I don't think Phil spent his time half a mile outside of campus downing 100mg of 2CI and 15 to 20mg of 5meo MIPT and vaporizing DMT, which is probably why he graduated UNT with a PhD while my friends and I all dropped out of college to go, you know, do stupid shit. Anyway.

• 4:52:10Speaker 11

  Punk rock. Yeah, Dr. Phil's not fucking punk enough.

• 4:52:13Robert Evans?

  No, he's not. In his recollection, Phil both hated and excelled at college. He later recalled, "I almost quit every day. The faculty just jacked with you all the time. I remember telling one professor, 'Either kick me out or get off my ass.'" He did succeed in impressing other professors, though. His mentor at UNT was Dr. G. Frank Lawless, who still considers Dr. Phil, quote, "By far the most brilliant psychologist I ever worked with," which is meaningful praise, but also, we are talking UNT here, you know, we're not talking like one of the famous psychology schools in the country. So, not a nothing compliment, but not like a doctor, not like people saying Dr. Oz is the best heart surgeon ever, you know, because that motherfucker's working at Columbia, right? They know from heart surgery.

• 4:52:58Speaker 11

  Right. Okay.

• 4:52:59Robert Evans?

  Guys, I don't know. I'm not throwing shade at Frank Lawless. I'm just saying, I don't think Dr. Phil is the most brilliant psychologist ever to exist.

• 4:53:07Speaker 11

  I haven't gotten past the fact that Frank Lawless sounds like a made-up person. That sounds like a cartoon character.

• 4:53:13Robert Evans?

  I'm assuming he's Xena's father. So McGraw got his doctorate in 1979 and returned to Wichita Falls for reasons that are impossible to explain. Any, any person who returns to Kansas, I just don't, I don't understand. He started a business partnership with his dad and together the two veered their practice towards treating the mental ailments of the rich and socially prominent, circulating among country clubs to cater to doctors, lawyers, bankers, and their wives. One of Dr. Phil's, Phil's friends later claimed, quote, "Phil moved right into the money circles. If there wasn't a buck in it, he wasn't much interested." So, you know, that's, that's the, that's the, the field he gets into is, is dealing with like rich people who are neurotic or whatever.

• 4:53:57Speaker 11

  Okay. So he comes to being a charlatan early.

• 4:54:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I mean, you know, at this point, again, if you're grifting rich people, I don't care.

• 4:54:06Speaker 11

  Who cares? Yeah.

• 4:54:07Robert Evans?

  Sometimes I might find it interesting for an off week, but I don't consider that evil behavior, right? They have too much money, whatever. He specialized in cognitive behavioral therapy, which Phil at least claimed was a cause and effect therapy that treated thoughts and behavior the same. Quote, "People would come in and say, I had a hard childhood, therefore I am not doing well as an adult." A Freudian would say, "Let's work through your childhood." I would say, "That's fine, but right now you are an adult. You have a choice to stop yelling at your kids."

• 4:54:34Speaker 11

  I've done, I've done CBT.

• 4:54:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's not, that doesn't sound bad, right? Like that is a reasonable take, which is like, okay, it's fine to like, you know, work through a difficult childhood, but you can't be shitty to your kids just because you had a bad childhood.

• 4:54:46Speaker 11

  Right. Past trauma doesn't excuse current bad behavior.

• 4:54:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Perfectly valid statement. Absolutely. And this kind of no nonsense approach was very popular with some of his clients. I can see how it would have been useful in a number of cases. But Dr. Phil himself admits that he was, quote, "Probably the worst marital therapist in the history of the world. I was teaching what they taught me, but I was real impatient. Everybody was getting divorced." The way he relates it, realizing the shortcomings of his education convinced Phil to seek out less traditional ways to practice his profession and to market it. And I should note here as an aside that during this period, Dr. Phil got married and was briefly with a woman before cheating on her repeatedly and then leaving her.

• 4:55:26Speaker 11

  Oh.

• 4:55:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So. Anyway.

• 4:55:29Speaker 11

  Well, maybe he should have been a little more patient. Maybe he should have taken some of his own medicine.

• 4:55:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, he, he does. I mean, to be fair, he admits he was a bad marriage therapist. So I can't call him like a hypocrite. If you're saying, I was a, I, I was a shitty husband and a shitty marriage therapist. That all scans.

• 4:55:46Speaker 11

  Right.

• 4:55:46Robert Evans?

  You know, like,

• 4:55:50Robert Evans?

  that's, I, yeah, he's being honest here, so we won't belabor the point.

• 4:55:54Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 4:55:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he started holding pain clinics, weight loss clinics and executive, giving executive recruiting advice and even expert legal testimony for court cases. He was like an expert witness. Yeah.

• 4:56:05Speaker 11

  For what?

• 4:56:06Robert Evans?

  This is like for court cases, right? Like you need someone to come in. You know, you have like somebody who's claiming like, oh, you know, I can't be held responsible for this because I'm, I, you know, like mentally ill or whatever, like, you know, not guilty by reason of insanity. He comes in and he's like, yes, that's valid or no, that's not valid, depending on who pays him, you know?

• 4:56:27Speaker 11

  So just a general mental health professional.

• 4:56:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's the kind of, we just, we just finished the Chauvin trial. You know, we had all these kind of use of force experts. There's a bunch of people in different fields whose main job is to take that, that expertise in another field and testify about it in court because it's relevant, right? You have like engineering specialists who are like, I'm going to go testify about this bridge that collapsed to either defend the people who made it or explain how irresponsible they were, whatever. Like that's a whole,

• 4:56:56Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 4:56:56Robert Evans?

  there's a whole industry. Dr. Phil gets into the.

• 4:56:58Speaker 11

  Yeah, there's a lot of money in that industry.

• 4:57:00Robert Evans?

  There's a fuckload of, you can get real goddamn rich doing that. Yeah.

• 4:57:04Speaker 11

  Well, yeah, especially if you're willing to lie about your area of expertise. Yeah.

• 4:57:09Robert Evans?

  And by the way, lawyers listening, I will testify as an expert witness on literally anything. As a certified Reverend doctor in the state of New Jersey, my purview is wide. So you know what? 12 grand an hour.

• 4:57:23Speaker 11

  The podcast is just gonna disappear one day and it's

• 4:57:26Robert Evans?

  Oh, the instant. I'm fucking done. You know, like, fuck, fuck this podcast. I'm gonna go lie under oath about, I don't know, whatever. Anyway, Dr. Phil started, yeah, holding, you know, so he starts, he gets into like the whole, the business of if I really want to make money at scale as a psychologist, having individual, even if they're rich, individual clients isn't the thing to do. I'm gonna do a bunch of clinics on like dealing with pain, dealing with weight loss, you know, recruiting people, I'll do like, so he gets very quickly into the, I'm less about helping people and more about making money as a psychologist.

• 4:57:58Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 4:57:58Robert Evans?

  In 1984, he meets Thelma Box, an insurance and real estate agent from Graham, Texas, who asked him to go into business with her to create a brand new motivational seminar. Now, we're talking again, like the seventies, eighties, which is the golden age of motivational seminars. That's when this whole thing really explodes. Motivational seminars are basically short-term cults. For two to five days, several dozen to several hundred to sometimes even a couple of thousand people will pack into an auditorium where a charismatic frontman and a handful of his buddies will coach them. Usually by hyping the room up, using simple crowd work tactics to make people feel temporarily elated and tricking them into having like cathartic experiences and thinking they've learned something, you know?

• 4:58:41Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 4:58:42Robert Evans?

  That's the whole idea. Have people get like people, the mania of a crowd kind of going, make people cry or laugh and think like something significant has happened.

• 4:58:51Speaker 11

  Ask probing, personal questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:58:54Robert Evans?

  In public in front of a bunch of people. It's a whole big grift.

• 4:58:58Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 4:58:58Robert Evans?

  Thelma Box was a, well, I don't know, grift. I think a lot of people just like them. I've known people who like admit that they did never got anything long-term out of it, but just enjoy the experience. And I guess if that's your thing.

• 4:59:09Speaker 11

  It kind of depends.

• 4:59:10Robert Evans?

  Whatever.

• 4:59:10Speaker 11

  Like some people are just like, they're like, yeah, I know Tony, well, Tony Robbins is maybe not the best example, but like, no, this person's like basically full of shit, but you know, I had a couple hundred dollars to burn and a weekend to burn and.

• 4:59:22Robert Evans?

  It made me feel good. You know, I don't care, I guess, if that's your thing. We all have.

• 4:59:25Speaker 11

  Take joy where you can get it.

• 4:59:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah, every, there's a lot of people who like, there's people who like to climb the ice-filled sides of mountains with crampons and fucking like pythons and stuff and a lot of them die. There's people who like to do cave diving, which is the deadliest thing you could possibly do to relax. So like, I don't know, people do shit. I don't care. But most of the people doing these seminars are actually like people at some kind of like crisis point in their life, having a difficulty and that, that's, that's the problem with it.

• 4:59:53Speaker 11

  And it's like, it depends on how you sell it too. Like if you're like promising, oh, if you come this weekend, you're going to leave and make a million dollars in the next, you know, that, that, there's varying degrees of bullshit.

• 5:00:02Robert Evans?

  There's varying degrees. Some of them are just like, I'm going to make you feel good about yourself. So you can go out and attack the world. And I guess that's kind of less problematic where it's like, okay, like, whatever, you know, it's basically expensive church.

• 5:00:12Speaker 11

  Good fucking luck.

• 5:00:13Robert Evans?

  Okay. Yeah. Like you will not make me not hate myself, friend. Better men than you have tried.

• 5:00:20Robert Evans?

  So, uh, Thelma Box, um, who, you know, is Phil's friend, is a huge fan of these kind of motivational seminars. She's done all the big ones. Zig Ziglar, actual guy out there. Uh, you can find his books at any given estate sale. Uh, Dale Carnegie, you can also find his books at any given estate sale. Uh, Tony Robbins, you can also find his books at any given estate sale. All the estate sale greats. She does their seminars.

• 5:00:44Speaker 11

  With like boogers on the side of the books. Yeah.

• 5:00:47Robert Evans?

  Most of her classes had been focused on, uh, her career. Like they'd been like focused on helping salesmen, right? Cause that's a big subset of this industry. She sold insurance and real estate. So there'd been conferences to help real estate and insurance salesmen sell better. Uh, Box felt that there was a market for a seminar focused instead of financial stuff on personal growth, on how to actually be a better person. Now Box had gotten to know Dr. Phil because her son had hired him to renegotiate a bunch of bank loans. She decided Phil was the best negotiator she'd ever seen. Quote, "He has a God-given gift, a combination of charm and charisma that can mesmerize a room full of people." And again, people disagree about a lot of stuff about

• 5:01:29Robert Evans?

  Dr. Phil. Nobody disagrees about this part. He's apparently just an incredible negotiator. Um, so she, she decides he's going to be a great front man for this life improvement seminar. She wants to host. Now, her initial plan had been to lead a success seminar for single women, but McGraw pushed back against this. He didn't want to limit himself to just female customers. Instead, the, uh, the plan that he made was for, or instead he was like, we should do like a general, like life improvement for everybody. Like come here and I'll, I'll help you deal with whatever things are holding you back in your life. Right? Like that's kind of how Phil innovates the pitch. Um, now initially the plan that Box had fronted was for Box and Phil to be 50 50 partners in this venture, but right before they started going, yeah, exactly. Right before they

• 5:02:14Robert Evans?

  started going, Dr. Phil demanded that he was going to walk if she didn't bring his dad in as an equal shareholder. Um, yeah.

• 5:02:21Speaker 11

  Bringing daddy into it?

• 5:02:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And this, this was a negotiation tactic from Box, quote, getting his dad involved would give Phil control. I didn't want to be a minority owner, but he threatened to do the seminars without me. Now, since Box was not a doctor and she'd already given Phil all of her ideas, she didn't feel like she could do the seminar without him, but he could do it without her. So she was kind of in a tight spot here. So she agreed. She claims that she basically,

• 5:02:46Speaker 11

  That's brilliant.

• 5:02:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah. He's, this is the guy he is. She claims she built the, um, the, the curriculum of the program from the ground up, designing most of the games and all of like the different like worksheets and shit you had to do. And basically in fairness, like, I don't think Box is a great person. She's taking all of the information for this from other seminars she attended and is just modifying them enough to avoid plagiarism.

• 5:03:07Speaker 11

  You're grifting the grifter and the grifter never likes that. Yeah.

• 5:03:10Robert Evans?

  She gets fucked over by Phil, but like, I don't particularly like her either. So.

• 5:03:15Speaker 11

  I want to, I want to take that negotiation tactic and apply it to the standup comedy world. And I'm like, all right, I know that you're supposed to be featuring for me, but actually my dad is going to be opening now. And so you're actually, so it's going to be my dad, then you, you'll be doing a shorter set. I will then be doing five hours. Like that's, oh, that would be so fun.

• 5:03:37Robert Evans?

  Uh, yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm excited for that for you, Jamie.

• 5:03:42Speaker 11

  Thank you.

• 5:03:43Robert Evans?

  But you know what isn't exciting?

• 5:03:47Speaker 11

  What is unexciting?

• 5:03:49Robert Evans?

  Life without the products and services that support this podcast.

• 5:03:52Speaker 11

  Absolutely.

• 5:03:53Robert Evans?

  Not even really worth living. Like if we're being frank, what are you even doing without these products and services? What are you? Nothing.

• 5:04:01Speaker 11

  Nothing.

• 5:04:02Robert Evans?

  All right, here's ads.

• 5:04:08Robert Evans?

  We're back. Ah, I hope you all spent money because this whole fucking wheel of blood doesn't keep turning if you don't put money into it, people.

• 5:04:16Speaker 11

  Oh, boy.

• 5:04:16Robert Evans?

  You know?

• 5:04:17Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:04:17Robert Evans?

  That's how it works.

• 5:04:18Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:04:19Robert Evans?

  That's how it works.

• 5:04:20Speaker 11

  Fine.

• 5:04:20Robert Evans?

  Would you want this to fall apart?

• 5:04:21Speaker 11

  No.

• 5:04:22Robert Evans?

  Yes. Anyway, so yeah, the basic idea of these seminars that Box mostly cooks up and Phil is supposed to present is to teach people how to find out what they want from life by making them more accountable, by expressing vulnerabilities, stripping away self deception, which all just means like making people cry in a big room surrounded by other people, you know? Like, that's the goal. That that's the goal.

• 5:04:43Speaker 11

  Yeah, with no connection to the outside world and just gaslight them into believing something that they don't.

• 5:04:48Robert Evans?

  Short-term cults, which is the kind of cult I'd like to do because it does sound exhausting having to like every time I watch my favorite TV show, which is the Waco TV show where they made David Koresh have incredible cum gutters.

• 5:04:59Speaker 03

  50 minutes, 40 seconds before editing.

• 5:05:03Speaker 11

  Good timing.

• 5:05:04Robert Evans?

  Before Waco. I just, it seems like it's exhausting. Like, we all love David Koresh, but my God, the man had to put in a lot of work just to, just to keep a cult going. Like, it just doesn't seem worth it.

• 5:05:15Speaker 11

  Where to begin with that sentence?

• 5:05:16Robert Evans?

  Short-term cults. Like, if I could just do like a limited Waco, like five or six times a year over the course of like four days, that seems much better.

• 5:05:26Speaker 11

  It's like a juicing. Yeah, it's a juicing of the spirit. You're just left like you feel like you're better off. You're probably not. It doesn't matter because you can sleep for three days.

• 5:05:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So if we take out, take down a podcast idea, the 40-minute Waco, I think we could make a lot of money with this. Anyway. Back to Dr. Phil. So what made the, uh, this, this seminar thing that he launches with Box special is the, the group dynamic, um, getting a hundred or so people together in a room crying and sharing stories and having the kind of addictive cathartic experiences that makes seminar hosts rich people. Phil and Box were good at it and Dr. Phil instantly gained a reputation as a magnetic host. One attendee recalled, quote, "His voice was mic'd and he sounded godlike. I watched powerful men crumble as he questioned them. He knew just the right buttons to push."

• 5:06:14Speaker 11

  Wow.

• 5:06:14Robert Evans?

  You know, it's not that he's a great psychologist, it's that he is an incredibly intuitive man who understands people, which is why he's a good negotiator. He does have a great voice. I'll give that to him.

• 5:06:23Speaker 11

  He do- oh, yeah.

• 5:06:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah. He knows how to manipulate people, right? He's a great manipulator and that you could make a lot of money doing that.

• 5:06:30Speaker 11

  That's the most like dangerous trade in the world is, uh, understanding people, but just not caring what happens to them.

• 5:06:35Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes.

• 5:06:37Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:06:37Robert Evans?

  "I understand people but care about what happens to them, which is why I tell them to buy machetes and bolt cutters and..."

• 5:06:43Speaker 11

  You're saving lives.

• 5:06:44Robert Evans?

  "Claymore anti-personnel mines. Yes, definitely saving lives. Um, by the way, when you're ordering your Claymore anti-personnel line, use promo code bastards for 15% off if you buy four or more. Claymore, fuck anyone in front of you."

• 5:06:59Speaker 11

  No.

• 5:07:00Robert Evans?

  Sophie?

• 5:07:01Speaker 11

  Robert, Doc- Dr. Phil.

• 5:07:03Robert Evans?

  Okay, yeah. So this seminar series was called Pathways and it became hugely popular. For a while, they were making fucking bank and the whole process of doing this awoke in Phil, or at least accelerated, a deep desire to get on TV. He started pushing for his own talks, talk show, schmoozing with a Hollywood producer who made the mistake of attending one of his seminars. Phil succeeded in talking, said producer, into filming a pilot episode of a show where three people went through Dr. Phil's training and told their stories of like, you know, how it had helped them. The show sounds incredibly boring and clearly it was not picked up. Now, over his years with Pathways, McGraw developed into a talented showman. One of his coworkers, David Dickinson, later recalled, "Once he

• 5:07:46Robert Evans?

  got in front of the room, it didn't take long to feel the power. He loved being godlike and worshipped. The only reason it didn't become a cult is because Thelma wouldn't let it." Yeah.

• 5:07:56Speaker 11

  Wow. Okay. He really does sound like, uh, like Chaos Frasier. Yeah.

• 5:08:02Robert Evans?

  Chaos Frasier? Yes.

• 5:08:03Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:08:06Speaker 11

  Dr. Phil was on Frasier. For all you Frasier heads, Dr.

• 5:08:09Robert Evans?

  Oh, God, you're right. He was.

• 5:08:11Speaker 11

  The show, the episode, The Devil and Dr. Phil.

• 5:08:14Robert Evans?

  I mean, the thing is, if you actually, Frasier was a big show for my family growing up. And so like, while my mom was, was dying, we watched a lot of episodes because, you know, there wasn't a lot that she could do. And it was kind of a thing that was nostalgic for all of us. Um, but one of the through lines of the series is that Frasier's not a good psychologist. Like, not a good psychiatrist. Like, he's bad. Like, that's why he's on the radio.

• 5:08:36Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:08:38Robert Evans?

  He's a bit of a drifter, too.

• 5:08:40Speaker 11

  More.

• 5:08:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Niles is supposed to be good. Yeah. Yeah. Niles is competent, um, although problematic. Uh, definitely some stalking behavior from Niles.

• 5:08:49Speaker 11

  Um, oh, yes. Niles is also canceled. But, oh, but.

• 5:08:53Robert Evans?

  Nobody on that show is a good person, but John Mahoney, um, the only good cop, Frasier's dad.

• 5:09:01Speaker 11

  That's absolutely true. And not even, not even Eddie is safe from.

• 5:09:06Robert Evans?

  No, no, from cancellation. And honestly, not a good a cop. John Mahoney admits to lying on the stand in order to get a man incarcerated during an episode of Frasier. It's just like an offside comment. Yes, he absolutely does.

• 5:09:21Robert Evans?

  He's just such a damn charismatic actor. I can't stay mad at the man. So by the late 1980s, pathways had moved to Dallas, where each year more than a thousand people would pay a thousand dollars each to attend a single weekend event with McGraw. That's a million bucks in a weekend. So.

• 5:09:38Speaker 11

  Geez.

• 5:09:38Robert Evans?

  Again, great money in this. Uh, yeah. So Dr. Phil is, I don't know if he's a millionaire at this point, but he is well off at this point. Um, now he unfortunately like his dad is involved in the whole thing and Dr. Phil never had a great relationship with his father. I think he was just kind of using him to get control of the thing, but like he and his dad don't get along. They're both egomaniacs and to make matters worse, the older Dr. McGraw was basically just kind of like there to cash a check. Like when he would show up on stage, you'd be like erratic and kind of say nonsense and, and not really help, uh, the business at all.

• 5:10:13Speaker 11

  So worse than nothing.

• 5:10:15Robert Evans?

  Worse than nothing. The two men started to hate each other, uh, which a number, number of employees noted as somewhat hypocritical. Quote, "Come on. Here is a guy who was running a relationship seminar and he doesn't speak to his own father in the training room for years. He didn't walk his own talk." That is a fair hypocritical criticism.

• 5:10:34Speaker 11

  Fair point. Oh, that's hilarious though.

• 5:10:36Robert Evans?

  And while Dr. Phil's relationship with his dad, uh, kind of went to shit, his relationship with Thelma Box, who had founded the program that made him rich and developed its curriculum, got even worse. The Dallas Observer writes, quote, "The McGraw and Box were partners for more than seven years and friends for more than a dozen. His treatment of her didn't seem much better. On November 16th, 1992, Box received a faxed memo from McGraw informing her that he had made a tentative deal to sell his interest in Pathways to Midland philanthropist Steve Davidson. McGraw was ready to move on, his father ready to retire. That's why his father had sold his one-third interest, the memo informed her, to a Wichita Falls businessman. Of course, the new partners, quote, 'understand yours and my relationship and know that I am

• 5:11:18Robert Evans?

  committed to you as a friend and associate and expect fair treatment.' Basically, he sold me down the river, says Box, who recalls having heated discussions with McGraw about either selling her own Pathways interest or buying him out in the two weeks prior to the memo. Phil and I hadn't been getting along. He stopped talking to me and I knew we couldn't go on that way." What he had neglected to tell her, she says, is that he had engineered this corporate takeover scheme by actually selling his interest more than a year earlier. On October 15th, 1991, he signed an agreement for his sale of Path, for the sale of his Pathways stock for $325,000. "I absolutely told her I was selling," McGraw says. "What she didn't like was who I was selling to." Now you can take whoever's word you want on this, but the author of that article was

• 5:12:00Robert Evans?

  giving a memo was given a memo that McGraw sit to the buyer of his stock in which he agreed, the buyer agreed that the sale would be kept confidential confidential from everyone, including Box. So I'm going to go ahead and say that Phil is the liar here. He basically knew like he wanted to sell out early when his stuff was worth more than hers would be like with with only a third of it left her like they she's not going to get as much money for it. And he lies to she keeps she's trying to buy it from him for a year after he's already sold it and he's just stonewalling her. Um, like he's, yeah, it's, it's, it's a shitty way to treat a business partner.

• 5:12:34Speaker 11

  It absolutely is. Yeah. It's like, it's hard to care about anyone involved in this, this whole situation, but he does sound like the party who robbed her.

• 5:12:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And he acknowledges that the material from his first bestselling book was basically lifted entirely from the pathways curriculum, but he has never acknowledged that Thelma Box actually wrote the curriculum he based his bestselling book on. So.

• 5:12:55Speaker 11

  Oh, and they definitely didn't mention whoever Thelma Box stole it from. So.

• 5:12:59Robert Evans?

  No, no. And that again, that's the thing like, right? The point is that he is a con man, not that she is particularly a victim here, you know, like I don't care about Thelma Box. In 1989, Dr. Phil was living and working in Wichita. He keeps going back to fucking Kansas, enjoying his pathways money and working as a psychologist. One of his patients was a young woman who he started and maintained a quote inappropriate dual relationship with. Again, that means.

• 5:13:26Speaker 11

  Dual.

• 5:13:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah. He is her. He is her doctor and he is fucking her.

• 5:13:30Speaker 11

  Oh, don't fuck your doctor. Come on.

• 5:13:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Shouldn't be doing that with the patient you're providing psychiatric care to.

• 5:13:38Speaker 11

  Definitely don't fuck.

• 5:13:39Robert Evans?

  Kind of a no, no.

• 5:13:41Speaker 11

  But also don't fuck your doctor.

• 5:13:43Robert Evans?

  He then made the relationship even more inappropriate when he hired her part-time while she was still his patient and lover, which is so many conflicts of interest.

• 5:13:52Speaker 11

  No.

• 5:13:54Robert Evans?

  That is.

• 5:13:54Speaker 11

  I, yeah, yeah.

• 5:13:55Robert Evans?

  You gotta give the man credit for really going out of his way to, to, to do the most unethical version of that thing he could like.

• 5:14:03Speaker 11

  You're right, Robert. I do gotta hand it to him.

• 5:14:06Robert Evans?

  Critical support to Dr. Phil for managing the fucking, the fucking, I don't know. What do you the trifecta, I guess.

• 5:14:12Speaker 11

  I will not. My spirit is worn down. I'll hand it to him.

• 5:14:17Robert Evans?

  Dr. Phil considers this transgression to just have been a misdemeanor. But the journalist from the doubt behind the journalist who wrote that Dallas Observer article looked into the situation. He found the woman Dr. Phil had the relationship with and he found out a lot more besides, and it's pretty fucking sketchy. Quote, "In 1984, she was a college student returning home after her sophomore year depressed, lonely, and suicidal. I was emotionally abused as a child," she says, "and suffered from low self-esteem. When McGraw began treating her," she says, "he became fully involved in her life, demanding to know with whom she spoke, when she went to bed at night, what she did that day. If I was depressed or anxious, his first question was, why didn't you call me? Every time I

• 5:14:58Robert Evans?

  felt bad, he insisted only he could fix me. When she wanted to spend the following summer working for a professor at the Houston University she was attending, he persuaded her to work in his biofeedback lab in Wichita Falls. He kept me totally dependent on him," she says. So that's textbook abuse. Like, that's just like literally textbook abuse. Yeah.

• 5:15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:15:20Robert Evans?

  Couldn't be clearer.

• 5:15:21Speaker 03

  Hate it. Hate it so much.

• 5:15:23Speaker 11

  On so many levels, too. Like, on multiple levels. God, that's fucking terrible.

• 5:15:29Robert Evans?

  It's really bad. It's really, he's a bad person, Jamie. He's just a real bad person.

• 5:15:33Speaker 11

  And he's your employer. Like, fucking hell.

• 5:15:36Robert Evans?

  Not to be like complimenting Dr. Oz, but by this point in the Dr. Oz story, he's performed thousands of open-heart surgeries. Again, Dr. Phil, they're both grifters. Dr. Phil never does a single good thing, like to even the scales at all. He's just a monster. Right? And you get the feeling, Dr. Oz, I have never heard a complaint that he's abusive in his personal relationships. People mostly, I've heard reports that he's kind of a narcissist, but I've never heard that he's like a monster. Dr. Phil's a monster, you know?

• 5:16:05Speaker 11

  I've already made a fan cam of him already.

• 5:16:07Robert Evans?

  I don't know. I'm just, he's a useful, he's a useful comparison. I just really hate Dr. Phil. So the formal complaint this woman filed led to a decision from the psychology board that Dr. Phil's practice would have to be supervised for a year. Before that time came up, he quit his practice and moved to Dallas to start a new company, Courtroom Sciences Incorporated, or CSI, with his neighbor from Wichita. His job was basically to use his psychology knowledge to help lawyers pick jurors. He loved the work, particularly the adrenaline that came from the high stakes of a court case. Dr. Phil's company was a hit and his clients soon included every major airline on earth, three TV networks and dozens of Fortune 500 companies.

• 5:16:50Robert Evans?

  Before long, it came to include Oprah Winfrey.

• 5:16:53Speaker 11

  God damn it Oprah! No!

• 5:16:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah!

• 5:16:56Speaker 11

  I mean, like, you know it's coming, but I wish it took longer. Why Oprah and airlines?

• 5:17:02Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, the two sacred things in our society, Oprah and the airlines.

• 5:17:09Speaker 11

  I want to know, every single time Oprah comes into the discussion, I am like, where was Stedman on all of this? Where does he?

• 5:17:17Robert Evans?

  Yes, Stedman, what were you fucking doing?

• 5:17:20Speaker 11

  Stedman, where is? Because Stedman writes books that are alleging to be about something but are actually about nothing, but he's, but he's nice, so I don't care.

• 5:17:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:17:29Speaker 11

  Oh, I hope, I hope that Stedman was like, something's not right, Oprah. And she was like, I'm, I'm not listening to you, Stedman. I'm assuming that's how their relationship works.

• 5:17:38Robert Evans?

  She was like, I'm going to make so much money, an outrageous amount of money, Stedman.

• 5:17:45Speaker 11

  Stedman, quiet, we're getting a yawn.

• 5:17:47Robert Evans?

  I will be able to clone you when you die, Stedman. That's how much money I'm gonna make off this man.

• 5:17:52Speaker 11

  Maybe that's what sold him. I used to, I used to do little fan drawings of Stedman Graham and the Barefoot Contessa's husband hanging out.

• 5:18:04Robert Evans?

  That's very unsettling, Jamie.

• 5:18:06Speaker 11

  Yeah, they would just be like sharing an umbrella. Anyway.

• 5:18:10Robert Evans?

  So Oprah had made the questionable decision to do an episode of her show on the dangers of disease in the American beef supply. A bunch of Texas cattlemen sued her for fraud, defamation, and, you know, just hurting their businesses. Now, I have no idea who's in the right here, and I really don't care. The case looked like to be going badly for Oprah until she brought in Dr. Phil to be a part of her trial team. He instantly recognized her as someone he could make money off of, and he set to work charming her. Phil did his job. He coached her and the defense team in how to respond under questioning, and he won Oprah's adoration. And to his credit, it seems like he did a good job because she was exonerated.

• 5:18:49Speaker 11

  Oh, wow.

• 5:18:49Robert Evans?

  And after the case ended in her favor, she did a verdict episode of her show from Amarillo, Texas, where for the first time, she introduced Dr. Phil McGraw to a national audience. She called him "one of the smartest men in the world." She was so impressed that she added that he was this, like, literally the most intelligent man she'd met in her 12 years of talking to medical experts. She said she wanted to share his brilliance with the world. Yeah.

• 5:19:17Speaker 11

  This hyperbole is gonna get ya.

• 5:19:18Robert Evans?

  And we are, we are going to talk about where this hyperbole gets all of us in part two of our epic series, Dr. Phil. What a, what a dick.

• 5:19:30Speaker 11

  What? Is that the subtitle of this?

• 5:19:33Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 5:19:34Speaker 11

  Perfect.

• 5:19:35Robert Evans?

  Fuck, fucking A, Dr. Phil. Come on.

• 5:19:38Speaker 11

  Hell, sir, could you not?

• 5:19:40Robert Evans?

  Could you not? Could you just go back to football? I feel like one more head injury could really solve a lot of our problems as a country.

• 5:19:47Speaker 11

  That's the thing. It's like that every single time you're like, well, goddamn, I bet that if this whole football thing had gone different, the world would be a lot less Dr. Phil.

• 5:19:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I don't even necessarily want his football career to have gone well. If he'd just gotten a hit 20% harder, you know? That would have been enough for me.

• 5:20:05Speaker 11

  Okay, okay. You know what? I see, I see your point of view.

• 5:20:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Anyway, Jamie, you got any pluggables you want to drop?

• 5:20:13Speaker 11

  Uh, yeah, just the usuals. You can, uh, listen to Bectyl Cast, the Beta Podcast, and Myur and Mensa on iHeart Radio. And then I have a new podcast coming up about Kathy Comics Woo, woo! in June. That's who's producing. I'm excited.

• 5:20:29Robert Evans?

  Check out Jamie's Erotic Kathy Podcast. I assume it's erotic, is that correct?

• 5:20:34Speaker 11

  Act, no! I mean, act. It's very, you know what? I, I, you know, I wish that Kathy was having a lot of sex, but you can't do that in the newspapers. Not them.

• 5:20:45Robert Evans?

  I mean, it doesn't, she doesn't need to be having sex for the podcast about Kathy to just be like the fundamental, the fundamental eros of Kathy is so overwhelming, you know?

• 5:20:54Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:20:55Robert Evans?

  You just, you just hear that last name Gus White and, oof.

• 5:20:59Speaker 11

  There's still time, there's still time.

• 5:21:00Robert Evans?

  There's still time.

• 5:21:01Speaker 11

  I'll, I'll, I'll let her know.

• 5:21:02Robert Evans?

  We'll fix it in post.

• 5:21:03Speaker 11

  It's going to be an erotic podcast.

• 5:21:05Robert Evans?

  Can you make it hornier Kathy? Just like 12%. Anyway, I hope the rest of you have a day that's 12% hornier. We'll be back Thursday.

• 5:21:30Speaker 05

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• 5:22:00Speaker 01

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• 5:22:35Speaker 11

  Hello?

• 5:22:36Robert Evans?

  This is Behind the Bastards podcast. That-

• 5:22:41Speaker 11

  Robert, you just sounded like a haunted house.

• 5:22:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I, I don't know. I never come into this show with a plan. Like, I write 10,000 words a week to do this show and then I, I consistently just completely fuck the introductions.

• 5:22:56Speaker 11

  I think it's nice. I think it's, I think it's fun, brand consistency. That's, that's our Robert. People are thinking-

• 5:23:04Robert Evans?

  That's our Robert. It's, you know, the, it's easy to be, have a consistent brand when your brand is being like, uh, uh, uh, uh, like, uh, brain damaged drug addict who is incapable of doing anything but writing long essays about bad people. Simple brand.

• 5:23:22Speaker 11

  I think that's, you're being reductive, but also when people hear you say things like that about their selves or about yourself, they go, that's our Robert. I go, oh, my son. So, so pure. So humble.

• 5:23:38Robert Evans?

  So probably shouldn't be trusted with large machinery. Anyway-

• 5:23:42Speaker 11

  Definitely not.

• 5:23:42Robert Evans?

  You know who else shouldn't be trusted with large machinery because of the horrible head injury?

• 5:23:48Speaker 11

  Ah.

• 5:23:48Robert Evans?

  Dr. Phil.

• 5:23:50Speaker 11

  Oh, okay. I thought that was you introducing me. I was like, this is really me.

• 5:23:54Robert Evans?

  No, no, you're Jamie. I would trust you with heavy machinery, although you don't have a driver's license, do you?

• 5:24:00Speaker 11

  I don't have a driver's license, but it hasn't stopped me from driving. Hell, yeah.

• 5:24:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, well, good for you, Jamie.

• 5:24:07Speaker 11

  I could probably get a, I, I get like, I'm like, I could probably get a driver's license if I really wanted to. I just don't want to. That's not true. I've, I've failed the test several times.

• 5:24:17Robert Evans?

  The, the key thing about cops, Jamie, and this is some free advice for all of you out there. They're never ready for you to just tuck and roll, you know? Like, if this, as long as you're driving a cheap car, if they start to pull you over, just tuck and roll and then fucking book it. Like, I guarantee you, they will not be ready. Yeah.

• 5:24:35Speaker 11

  I like it.

• 5:24:36Robert Evans?

  They're just not going to be ready. Um, and anyway, we should probably talk about Dr. Phil some, huh?

• 5:24:42Speaker 11

  Sure. Yeah, let's do it.

• 5:24:44Robert Evans?

  Probably, probably chill out with our fill out.

• 5:24:50Speaker 11

  I need to go, actually.

• 5:24:53Robert Evans?

  That's, that's fair.

• 5:24:54Speaker 11

  What if I just log out of this?

• 5:24:55Robert Evans?

  This, this has been the final episode of Behind the Bastards. I'm so sorry. All right.

• 5:25:01Speaker 11

  Yeah, let's chill out with our Phil out.

• 5:25:02Robert Evans?

  Mm hmm, mm hmm. Just a big old pudgy.

• 5:25:05Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 5:25:06Robert Evans?

  Bald headed Phil just flopping around. Yeah.

• 5:25:08Speaker 03

  With a nice moustache.

• 5:25:10Robert Evans?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:25:11Speaker 11

  Not even flopping around.

• 5:25:12Robert Evans?

  Like a, like a skink on a hot rock. Okay.

• 5:25:18Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 5:25:18Robert Evans?

  Later that year, so Dr. Phil helps Oprah out and, and like saves her, saves her bacon. And she brings him on her show and does her like verdict episode.

• 5:25:30Speaker 11

  Statement. Money?

• 5:25:31Robert Evans?

  She was getting like sued for a lot of money and defamation and shit like it was potentially something that would have really damaged her, her, her bottom line.

• 5:25:40Speaker 11

  I was like, I don't know this lingo. Okay.

• 5:25:41Robert Evans?

  So Dr. Phil later that year would become a regular part of her show. And this was part of a pivot in Oprah's show where she went from like doing a normal talk show to what she called Change Your Life TV.

• 5:25:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:25:55Robert Evans?

  The goal of Change Your Life TV was to take the experience people had in Phil's seminars, the very public crowd influenced catharsis of emotional change, and put that shit on television for everybody to watch. Mostly, this involves Dr. Phil confronting people aggressively about their flaws so they would cry and say they learned something. Quote, this is Dr. Phil explaining his methodology.

• 5:26:18Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:26:18Robert Evans?

  In order for people to change, there has to be a dramatic event. I think coming on the Oprah show as an event in itself is a watershed occurrence in people's lives. They get told the bottom line truth about where they are. And in that environment, I don't think they will ever forget it. If you embarrass people on national television, they remember.

• 5:26:37Speaker 11

  I mean, that's, you know, that, that's not untrue. That's.

• 5:26:42Robert Evans?

  Not untrue.

• 5:26:43Speaker 11

  Okay, okay.

• 5:26:44Robert Evans?

  Accurate. Dr. Phil. Accurate.

• 5:26:48Speaker 11

  Jesus. Okay.

• 5:26:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, um,

• 5:26:53Speaker 11

  So he's really like heading into the villain years.

• 5:26:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, he's he's all I mean, he's been in villain territory this whole time. So on Oprah's show, Dr. Phil focused on clients whose problems were fit, things he could justify yelling about to them or yelling at them for. One early case was a husband who was verbally abusive to his wife, calling her obscene names. Phil could not just condemn the man, uh, but he like, didn't just condemn the man. He made the man's wife tearfully recount everything he said to her on TV. So like, he's yelling at this guy for being a dick, but he's also demanding that this woman, like in detail, explain every horrible thing her husband said about her to millions of strangers.

• 5:27:35Speaker 11

  Right. Like the the classic air out the worst thing that's ever happened.

• 5:27:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:27:40Speaker 11

  Ratings for someone else. Love that.

• 5:27:42Robert Evans?

  I don't think is great, you know?

• 5:27:44Speaker 11

  No.

• 5:27:45Robert Evans?

  I don't think that's great behavior would be my my take on it. Not a psychologist, but Phil isn't really a psychologist either. So Phil then, after making this woman laboriously explain the horrible things her husband said to her, got to help provide some of his own homespun wisdom. In this case, he told the wife, you taught him how to treat you. Now, this is a variation of one of Dr. Phil's life laws for people to follow, which he published in his plagiarized bestselling book, Life Strategies. Quote, "We teach people how to treat us, own, rather than complain about how people treat us."

• 5:28:23Speaker 11

  My mom had that book, Robert.

• 5:28:26Robert Evans?

  Did she blame herself for people being shitty to her?

• 5:28:29Speaker 11

  For until about 2008. Yeah.

• 5:28:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, that's.

• 5:28:33Speaker 11

  Life Strategies, Self Matters, The Ultimate Weight Solution.

• 5:28:38Robert Evans?

  God, I hate all of his titles. Yeah.

• 5:28:40Speaker 11

  We had the Relationship Rescue. We had that. It wasn't on the main shelf, but it was in the house.

• 5:28:45Robert Evans?

  It was in the house. It was somewhere up in there.

• 5:28:48Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:28:48Robert Evans?

  Well, I don't know. Did it? Did it rescue you relationships?

• 5:28:52Speaker 11

  Absolutely not. I think what we got, we got more out of, uh, John Edwards. Do you remember him? Or John Edwards?

• 5:28:59Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah. The Talk to the Dead Guy?

• 5:29:01Speaker 11

  Yeah, the one who would like, uh, record people in the audience talking about the dead people they wanted to hear from and then walking out and being like, aha, I know exactly. Yeah. Uh, that, that's a, that was a fun grift. I mean, it also, but also a traumatizing one. They're all traumatizing.

• 5:29:19Robert Evans?

  They are all traumatizing grifts. That's what makes them so satisfying. Um,

• 5:29:23Speaker 11

  Wow.

• 5:29:24Robert Evans?

  Well, we all learned a lesson, didn't we?

• 5:29:28Robert Evans?

  No, no, we didn't.

• 5:29:30Speaker 11

  So what's he up to? What's he doing?

• 5:29:31Robert Evans?

  All right. So Dr. Fucking Phil. Um, so I, I want to talk a little bit more about these life laws that he, that he lays out in his first book, because this is a major reoccurring theme, especially in early Dr. Phil. Like people will, he'll, he'll critique people by explaining which life law they violated, like the one where you're responsible for other people treating you shitty, because we teach people how to treat us. Um, which is like an inversion of the truth, which is that if you're like, uh, abusers and predators are good at spotting your vulnerabilities and taking advantage of them, right?

• 5:30:03Speaker 11

  Uh huh.

• 5:30:03Robert Evans?

  And so you need to be aware of your own vulnerabilities, because you need to be aware of how dangerous people might take advantage of you. That's the non-toxic way of framing that. The toxic way is, hey, you taught him to be like that. Like, no, you didn't. He saw that you had this vulnerability and he took advantage of it. That's a fair way to put it.

• 5:30:20Speaker 11

  One of the most abuse, abusive tactics in the book. Like, well, actually, it was your fault. And if you weren't so weak, this wouldn't have happened to you. And it's like, oh, go fuck off and die.

• 5:30:31Robert Evans?

  I want to try this logic with like crimes. Like the next time I'm caught speeding, like, look, officer, you taught me how to drive this car that way. Like by, by having the road be this straight and me be this drunk, you kind of taught me to speed, you know?

• 5:30:46Speaker 11

  I will say that every time I try to teach my dog something that is a, some, it's a very low stakes version of that. They're like, well, didn't you teach him? He gets cuckoo on your floor when you don't feel like, um, standing up. And I was like, hmm, yes, I guess I did.

• 5:31:04Robert Evans?

  Christ in heaven. Okay, so here's how he introduces the concept of life laws in his book. Quote, "Life laws are the rules of the game. No one is going to ask you if you think these laws are fair, or if you think they should exist. Like the law of gravity, they simply are. You don't get a vote. You can ignore them and stumble along, wondering why you never seem to succeed. Or you can learn them, adapt to them, mold your choices and behavior to them, and live effectively. Learning these life laws is at the absolute core of what you must master in this book to have the essential knowledge for a personal life strategy."

• 5:31:40Speaker 11

  What kind of, he went from zero to being like, "My laws, much like the law of gravity." That is like, that is galaxy brain that are as unavoidable and in

• 5:31:55Robert Evans?

  As unchanging as the tide.

• 5:31:57Speaker 11

  As gravity. Oh, God, you have to appreciate the flagrancy on, on display there. Jesus.

• 5:32:06Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's good, Jamie.

• 5:32:09Speaker 11

  It's like, you being abused, being your fault to me, that's gravity. It's like, oh, I want to put you through a shredder.

• 5:32:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:32:17Speaker 11

  Wow.

• 5:32:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that would be fun. And I think we could probably get a pretty good primetime TV audience if we actually did that, Jamie.

• 5:32:24Speaker 11

  If someone put Dr. Phil through a shredder.

• 5:32:26Robert Evans?

  If we just put him through a shredder, yeah.

• 5:32:28Speaker 11

  People would watch.

• 5:32:30Robert Evans?

  Like that scene in Fargo.

• 5:32:31Speaker 11

  That's, that's kind of like, that's where his story is building towards.

• 5:32:36Robert Evans?

  Oh, fuck, we get Steve Buscemi in to present. That's a fucking hour of TV right there.

• 5:32:41Speaker 11

  There you go. There you go. And I'm sure he'd be happy to do it.

• 5:32:44Robert Evans?

  I'm sure he would. Now, I bet, Jamie, you're hungry for some more of Dr. Phil's life laws. I can see it in your eyes. You're just, you're just, you're just, yeah, absolutely. So, most of these laws are pretty self-explanatory. Stuff like "life rewards action" and "you cannot change what you do not acknowledge." My favorite is "people do what works," which boils down to the idea that we engage in bad behavior because it rewards us in some way. So Dr. Phil says, if you want to stop the behavior, stop rewarding yourself for it, which makes sense until you think about the way, say heroin or junk food works because you can't stop it from the reward is the thing, right? Like,

• 5:33:26Speaker 11

  These are also so manipulatively worded. Yeah.

• 5:33:30Robert Evans?

  The next time you take heroin, punch yourself in the dick. So you don't enjoy it as much. I don't know.

• 5:33:35Speaker 11

  See what that does.

• 5:33:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It, they, how do you? Like statistically, most of the kind of people who want advice are going to be dealing with something like weight loss and it's like, no, the reward is eating food. Like that's,

• 5:33:47Speaker 11

  Right.

• 5:33:47Robert Evans?

  That strategy isn't going to, to help, you know?

• 5:33:50Speaker 11

  It's so frustrating too, because it's like there, the way they're worded is so deliberate that it's like, oh, I understand why people fell for this too.

• 5:33:59Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:34:00Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:34:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's just all, it's just very, um, very transparent nonsense for the most part.

• 5:34:08Speaker 11

  Yeah. It's words in a, in a certain sequence and charging you, uh, you know, 1895 for a hard cover.

• 5:34:15Robert Evans?

  You gotta give the man credit. It is words in a sequence. That is undeniable that Dr. Phil.

• 5:34:22Speaker 11

  That was a sentence.

• 5:34:24Robert Evans?

  That, that's a, the man uses sentences, you know? You gotta give that to him. You can't take that from him. So yeah, some of his rules are however, a little more sinister. Probably the worst, well, one of the worst is, I don't know, there's a lot of worsts. One is you create your own experiences. Here's how he explains that one. Don't play the role of victim or use past events to build excuses. It guarantees you no progress, no healing and no victory. You will never fix a problem by blaming someone else.

• 5:34:54Speaker 11

  That's first of all, not true. And that's just like, I mean, yeah, he's just clearly not even good at the job. He's getting famous for saying he's good at. That's so backwards.

• 5:35:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's, it's, I mean,

• 5:35:10Speaker 11

  He sounds like a fucking Catholic priest. He's like, oh, push your emotions down. Okay?

• 5:35:16Robert Evans?

  It's just such bad. It's particularly all bad advice for like abuse victims because if you're an abuse victim, in a lot of cases, part of the healing process is realizing that your abuser is the person to blame and that all these things they got you to blame yourself for aren't things you did wrong. And that they like that. That's a big part of healing from that sort of thing. And he's just like, no, no, no, don't be blaming this guy because because he was beating you. Maybe you didn't do the laundry right, you know? Maybe you should have got him his beer faster. I'm Dr. Phil. I'm a doctor, you know? Like, god damn it. I really don't like this guy. Yeah, I also want to read you the, we said earlier, one of his rules is we teach people how to treat us, but the actual wording in the book of how he explains that is even creepier than you might guess. Quote, "You either teach

• 5:36:00Robert Evans?

  people to treat you with dignity and respect, or you don't. This means you are partly responsible for the mistreatment that you get at the hands of someone else. You shape others' behavior when you teach them what they can get away with and what they cannot."

• 5:36:12Speaker 11

  This is like, oh, God, you're just like, oh, God. Okay. So what did you do that you need to believe this in order to live with yourself?

• 5:36:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, right. Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, he's, he's really a bad person. I don't like him.

• 5:36:24Speaker 11

  This is my house. Wow. It was next to, I like clearly remember it being next to my mom's bed.

• 5:36:31Robert Evans?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, like, you know, it's the good book. Gotta, gotta keep it close to you.

• 5:36:35Speaker 11

  We didn't own the Bible. We own Life Strategies, the John Edward book, and that other one by that guy who said he could talk to dead people. I forget who it was.

• 5:36:46Robert Evans?

  Oh, John Edwards. There's a lot of dead people talkers. Yeah. So despite the fundamental emptiness of Phil's philosophy, or perhaps because of it, Dr. Phil became a wild success. His first episode ran in 2002 of The Dr. Phil Show, like he spun off pretty quickly, and he's been on the air ever since. He instinctively knew that the real money in this sort of TV was leaning in towards the most tragic and risque stories: drug addiction, spousal abuse, troubled teens, all that good shit. He was happy to throw medical best practices out the window. In 2004, he interviewed a nine-year-old boy whose parents said he was being abusive towards his younger sister. Dr. Phil said the child had nine of the 14

• 5:37:29Robert Evans?

  characteristics of a serial killer. Then he added, Jeffrey Dahmer had seven.

• 5:37:34Speaker 11

  Jesus.

• 5:37:38Speaker 11

  That is a very well crafted insult. That's beautiful.

• 5:37:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's, it's like, so any reputable psychologist or psychiatrist will tell you that one thing you can't do, as in like, it's forbidden in the discipline, is to diagnose a child as a psychopath. You, you're not allowed to do that because they're children. Their brains are developing and shackling a child with that diagnosis is incredibly unethical. Dr. Phil did it on national television.

• 5:38:13Speaker 11

  He did. I feel, isn't he still doing it on national television?

• 5:38:16Robert Evans?

  I mean, yes, yes, yes. He does this all the fucking time. Yes, yes. From a write-up by BuzzFeed, quote, "Dr. Phil purports to be a mental health professional, but he's diagnosing from videotape on the air," said then-executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Michael Fispatrick, to the Washington Post in a 2004 story about Dr. Phil's bad psychotherapy. "It's unethical to do that sort of, if you will, pop psychology. You don't do that for ratings. This is a human being." A spokesperson for Dr. Phil at the time said that McGraw never labeled the child as mentally ill, which is technically true. He merely brought up Jeffrey Dahmer. So there you go.

• 5:38:53Speaker 11

  This is like, just next level. It's, and it, it all rings like semi-familiar. It is kind of like interesting to think about how, how used to, as a culture, how used to we are of like, Dr. Phil saying the most fucked up thing he can possibly think of at a child because he's been doing it for 25 years.

• 5:39:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And I love how from the beginning.

• 5:39:13Speaker 11

  Yeah. I was like, oh, that wasn't an escalation. It was just always that.

• 5:39:18Robert Evans?

  No, people have been complaining about Dr. Phil in this way from the very beginning of his career, and it has never made a difference for a single second.

• 5:39:28Speaker 11

  And it's never made him less money. It doesn't seem like. This is so fucking bleak.

• 5:39:32Robert Evans?

  I think it's just made him more money, which is good. I mean, he picked a good life strategy, you know? He can get more money than I do. So, Dr. Phil stopped renewing his license to practice as a psychologist in 2006. He has never held a valid license in California, where his show is filmed. A spokesperson for his show confirmed that he stopped renewing his license because he, quote, "no longer worked as a therapist." I don't disagree with, but I would argue he is absolutely marketing himself as a therapist and is still in the business of therapy.

• 5:40:06Speaker 11

  He's presenting himself as someone who has a license.

• 5:40:09Robert Evans?

  He for sure is, and he's not just still doing therapy on his show. He is selling products to companies that make their whole, all of their money from doing therapy like he, I'll get into that now. A stat news, Boston Globe investigation several years ago, revealed that Dr. Phil and his son, some dude named Jay, started a business called Dr. Phil's Path to Recovery and the Late Oughts. This was a virtual reality addiction recovery program where a VR Dr. Phil would walk you through exercises to help you get and stay sober from BuzzFeed. Quote, users don virtual reality goggles and are placed in scenarios with Dr. Phil in one McGraw sits at a bar, arms folded across his chest, counseling his visitor

• 5:40:53Robert Evans?

  on how to avoid the triggers of an evening out when alcohol is present. In another scene, he reclines in jeans on the backyard patio of his sprawling estate, sparkling pool and fuchsia flowers behind him and a wide blue sky above and shares coping strategies. You'll leave these sessions feeling as though you just had an eye opening and insightful conversation about your life with Dr. Phil, the path to recovery website promises. The product is described as the culmination of more than four decades of experience Dr. Phil has working in the mental health profession and addiction recovery.

• 5:41:26Robert Evans?

  So that sounds helpful.

• 5:41:27Speaker 11

  That's, yeah, that would, thank you for that clarifying statement.

• 5:41:32Robert Evans?

  Now, obviously there's absolutely no evidence that this program helps with addiction in any way. A disclaimer on the website says that it is quote solely for general information purposes and is quote not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical health, mental or psychological problem or condition.

• 5:41:47Speaker 11

  The worst kind of person, the worst kind of person, because now he's just outright targeting the most vulnerable people he can. It's like, it was, I didn't care when he was targeting other grifters.

• 5:41:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And he's not even doing it in a situation where they can choose to be grifted by him. Because by the time they're in addiction recovery, like they're already paying, they probably don't even know that this fucking thing is there.

• 5:42:09Speaker 11

  Right.

• 5:42:09Robert Evans?

  Um, yeah. Now, despite the fact that there's no evidence that this thing helps in any way, a number of addiction recovery programs purchased Path to Recovery to use. You want to guess why they bought it? Because Dr. Phil gave them free advertising on their show if they bought it.

• 5:42:24Speaker 11

  No. He's a business boy.

• 5:42:28Robert Evans?

  He's a business boy.

• 5:42:29Speaker 11

  Business boy. He's really good business boy.

• 5:42:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Dr. Phil offered addiction treatment centers free endorsements on both the Dr. Phil Show and his spinoff series, The Doctors, if they first bought his program. BuzzFeed managed to get ahold of audio of one of these pitch sessions where McGraw's salesman told a customer, quote, "Our job is to get your phones to ring and the admissions hopefully follow." He bragged that Dr. Phil's viewers were older, high-income people, not the addict calling because I told my mom I'd do it.

• 5:42:58Speaker 11

  Oh, my fucking god. Okay, so we've arrived at cartoon villainy.

• 5:43:05Robert Evans?

  We sure have, Jamie Loftus.

• 5:43:07Speaker 11

  Oh, right.

• 5:43:08Robert Evans?

  We sure should have.

• 5:43:09Speaker 11

  Okay. Well, what, does Oprah ever, because I forget, because over the years Oprah has endorsed a number of questionable people. And sometimes-

• 5:43:20Speaker 03

  Shout out John of God.

• 5:43:22Speaker 11

  There, and shout out, what's his name, who wrote A Million Little Pieces?

• 5:43:26Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah, Jonathan Fray, right?

• 5:43:28Speaker 11

  Yeah, she's had to like apologize for having endorsed a lot of fucked up people over the years. Has that, that in that moment has never happened for Dr. Phil, right? She's never backed off. Did she ever back off from him at any point?

• 5:43:43Robert Evans?

  No, no, no, no, no. They're still deeply tied together. Why would she ever back off on him?

• 5:43:47Speaker 11

  I guess that's true. God.

• 5:43:50Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 5:43:50Speaker 11

  Dead man. How are you? Okay, well, that was, that was the question I wanted a better answer to.

• 5:43:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:43:58Speaker 11

  Except the truth.

• 5:43:59Robert Evans?

  The truth is that, uh, why would she care? She's, she's doing just fine.

• 5:44:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, she has, she has plenty of money. So like, what do you, what do you expect her to do, Jamie?

• 5:44:09Speaker 11

  I don't know. I don't know. It's like you can't expect anyone with that much money to be a good person. You're just setting yourself up.

• 5:44:15Robert Evans?

  You're just asking to be sad because they-

• 5:44:17Speaker 11

  Just asking to whack them all right down.

• 5:44:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they, they never will be, um, because it's not lucrative to be a good person. It's the opposite of lucrative to be a good person.

• 5:44:26Speaker 11

  That's true. That's true.

• 5:44:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. You know what is lucrative though, Jamie? Shilling the products and services that support this podcast.

• 5:44:39Robert Evans?

  Oh, we're back and I am just having a great time talking with my friend Jay Loft about Dr.

• 5:44:47Speaker 11

  Dr. Philammar?

• 5:44:49Robert Evans?

  Philammar.

• 5:44:50Speaker 11

  What's his middle name? What's his middle name? Oh, that's disappointing. Philip Calvin McGraw.

• 5:44:57Robert Evans?

  Calvin, yeah. Jamie, I just talked to you about how Dr. Phil has this VR addiction treatment thing and he basically gives people, gives like treatment centers free advertising if they buy it.

• 5:45:08Speaker 11

  I hate it. Okay.

• 5:45:10Robert Evans?

  You want to guess the quality of the facilities that take Dr. Phil up on this offer? Only the best, right?

• 5:45:15Speaker 11

  Who is it? Is it worse than nothing?

• 5:45:17Robert Evans?

  Oh, Jamie, it's a lot worse than nothing in some cases. One facility that took Dr. Phil up on this offer was Inspirations for Youth and Families, a Fort Lauderdale-based treatment center for teenagers. Phil actually highlighted the facility, run by Corcoran Walsh, on his show the day he announced his new VR program, saying, "We think outside the box in designing what addicts need. What you need is something that pops out of the noise, something that rises above the noise, like a distinctive voice, and that voice in this case is me." Dr. Phil then introduced Walsh, saying she ran "the nation's leading family addiction treatment and dual diagnosis center." BuzzFeed actually investigated the facility and found that it had a well-documented history of children escaping and getting into danger.

• 5:46:02Robert Evans?

  Stephen Sardui, a PI who was hired to find two different girls who escaped from the facility and disappeared, said, "It seems to be an ongoing problem in that particular facility. Obviously, there's a gap somewhere, a loophole somewhere in the system where they're just leaving. In the last two years, Inspirations staff members made 180 reports to police about children in their care going missing. Sometimes the teens, sometimes the teens left for days or even escaped the state. One escapee wound up prostituting herself for drugs. A number of the teens wound up finding drugs one way or another after getting out of the facility. Six were arrested, two were hospitalized. One group who escaped together later robbed a homeless man." BuzzFeed talked to Jill Walters of South Carolina, whose 17-year-old escaped from Inspirations in two

• 5:46:47Robert Evans?

  2016 and wound up on the street in Miami. She explained why she initially had chosen inspirations to help her boy. Quote, "They touted this, we were on Dr. Phil. They use that as, we must be a great facility because we were on Dr. Phil. Well, that has nothing to do with how the facility is run. You entrust your child to the care of these people and something like this happens." It's good shit.

• 5:47:09Speaker 11

  God, that's, I, that, that, that it wouldn't stop getting worse. That is so fucking off. It's like, I mean,

• 5:47:19Robert Evans?

  It's pretty bad. It's pretty, pretty bad, Jamie.

• 5:47:22Speaker 11

  It speaks to like, yeah, just the, the level of flouty, but he's, he's still upholds too. Cause it's like, yeah, I guess that if you think about it for a while, you're like, oh, well, he's not a licensed doctor and look at what he's actually saying, but it's like the, the world was reinforcing his bullshit for so long. That is so evil. Oh my God.

• 5:47:43Robert Evans?

  Yep. It is evil, Jamie.

• 5:47:46Speaker 11

  Sure is.

• 5:47:47Robert Evans?

  But you know what's not evil?

• 5:47:49Speaker 11

  What?

• 5:47:50Robert Evans?

  The products and services that I just advertised on this podcast that we're not actually cutting to again. I just, I have a problem, Jamie. I, I have a problem.

• 5:47:58Speaker 11

  Stop thinking.

• 5:47:59Robert Evans?

  And I, I can't stop, I can't stop pivoting to ads, you know?

• 5:48:02Speaker 11

  You're just, you've been, I mean, it.

• 5:48:05Robert Evans?

  I'm, you know what, Jamie? I'm an, I'm an addict.

• 5:48:09Speaker 11

  Oh my God.

• 5:48:10Robert Evans?

  Get it? Oh, oh yeah.

• 5:48:13Speaker 11

  I don't get it. Can you explain that to me?

• 5:48:16Speaker 03

  I hated it.

• 5:48:16Robert Evans?

  That one's a good one. That one's a, that's a keeper. You know what? We're done with the episode. Go home. I nailed it.

• 5:48:24Speaker 11

  Wow. Wow. We got to end with Dr. Phil ruining the lives of children. I mean, I guess that that is where the story is going to end no matter what.

• 5:48:31Robert Evans?

  It's where it began and it's where it'll end. Yeah.

• 5:48:34Speaker 11

  And it's where, it's how it will continue.

• 5:48:37Robert Evans?

  Dr. Phil.

• 5:48:39Speaker 11

  Just kill me now. I got, okay. I am gonna, I am gonna continue to advocate for, put Dr. Phil through a gigantic human sized shredder on live TV. I think that that is the kind of dystopian television. Like, we're already at Masked Singer. That's the next logical step for me is.

• 5:48:58Speaker 03

  Fair enough.

• 5:48:59Speaker 11

  Put a hated, a hated evil person through a shredder. It's the modern guillotine. Big old shredder.

• 5:49:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It's the best way to do anything really.

• 5:49:08Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 5:49:09Robert Evans?

  Is a shredder.

• 5:49:12Robert Evans?

  Anyway, Jamie, J Loft, J Loftus.

• 5:49:16Speaker 11

  Mm hmm.

• 5:49:17Robert Evans?

  Joe Loft.

• 5:49:19Speaker 11

  Joe Loft, sure.

• 5:49:20Robert Evans?

  Joe Loft.

• 5:49:21Speaker 11

  God.

• 5:49:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah. We're actually still talking about inspirations. So court records also revealed that the center's co-owner, Christopher Walsh, is by his own admission, a habitual drunkard who in 2015 sued a resort for serving him alcohol, saying they should have known he couldn't handle it. And boy, howdy, does it ever get worse. Let's talk about Todd Herzog. Yeah.

• 5:49:42Speaker 11

  Oh, yeah. Boy.

• 5:49:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's the end of the inspiration stuff. But so Todd Herzog was another, was a repeated guest on the Dr. Phil Show. Now Todd's backstory is that he won Survivor back in the early aughts. He got like a million dollars and then became a horrible, like developed a horrific addiction to alcohol, like a life threatening addiction. Now, Dr. Phil and his producers must have salivated at the combination of disastrous alcoholic and reality TV star. Here's how Stat News described what happened next. Quote, Herzog told Stat and the Boston Globe that he was not intoxicated when he arrived at the Los Angeles studio to film the Dr. Phil Show. In his dressing room, he said, he found a bottle of Smirnoff vodka. He drank all of

• 5:50:23Robert Evans?

  it. Then someone handed him a Xanax, he said, telling him it would calm his nerves. So this guy.

• 5:50:31Speaker 11

  Who handed him the Xanax.

• 5:50:33Robert Evans?

  Managed to sober himself up enough to like, try to go on TV and Dr. Phil's people basically allegedly made sure there was a full bottle of vodka and a fucking gave him a Xanax. Did you just because, you know, I think the reasoning is the more of a disaster you seem like on air, the more marketable you are. Yeah.

• 5:50:54Speaker 11

  Right, right. Which is a proven model, given the star of the show. That is like Bachelor levels of like fuck up or.

• 5:51:03Robert Evans?

  Oh, no, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.

• 5:51:05Speaker 11

  Let's get as close as we can to killing people.

• 5:51:08Robert Evans?

  Dear, dear, sweet Jamie Loftus, we are not even at the worst part yet.

• 5:51:13Speaker 11

  Oh, no. Okay, keep going, keep going.

• 5:51:16Robert Evans?

  So by the time Herzog got on stage, he was so wasted that he could barely talk or function. Dr. Phil and his assistant walked them out themselves, making a big show of helping him while highlighting just how wrecked he was. And I want you to listen to this. Jamie, I want you to watch this, obviously, but I want everyone at home. Or in your car or pooping or whatever it is you're doing.

• 5:51:40Speaker 11

  God, I can't describe the anxiety of seeing Robert Evans has started screen sharing.

• 5:51:45Robert Evans?

  I know, I know, I know. All right. Here's the Dr. Phil Show. Todd, Dr. Phil.

• 5:51:51Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Todd. Nice to meet you.

• 5:51:54Robert Evans?

  How you feeling, man? Can you walk?

• 5:51:56Speaker 04

  Barely. I have to have help. Sorry, I'm very.

• 5:52:03Robert Evans?

  That's all right. Brandon, why don't you get over there and take Debbie's spot?

• 5:52:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll, I'll go.

• 5:52:13Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, I'm crying because I just can't believe this is happening, so.

• 5:52:22Robert Evans?

  Just come turn around.

• 5:52:25Speaker 04

  One, two, three.

• 5:52:26Robert Evans?

  So that's all I want to play of that. Um, he can barely move. It is fundamentally unethical to have someone in that state on your television show.

• 5:52:36Speaker 11

  Even if, even if they had been inebriated of their own volition and not being like fed drugs, that is.

• 5:52:44Robert Evans?

  Even if they had consented earlier, I don't think you can consent to that.

• 5:52:52Speaker 11

  No, absolutely not. Like, God, that is like the, the worst situation imaginable. That is fucking evil.

• 5:53:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's not, it's not good, Jamie.

• 5:53:05Speaker 11

  It's just not a good thing to do, I would say.

• 5:53:07Robert Evans?

  I would recommend not doing that. If, if I was, if someone asked me, should I take someone who has a problem with addiction and give them drugs and then film them disastrously wrecked? Um, I would say, no, that sounds like an evil thing to do.

• 5:53:25Speaker 11

  That is absolute cruel. Oh, God.

• 5:53:30Robert Evans?

  It's cruel and good, Jamie.

• 5:53:32Speaker 11

  Having seen that.

• 5:53:33Robert Evans?

  Cruel and good.

• 5:53:36Speaker 11

  And they just had that on in waiting rooms. That was just what you watched while you were waiting to see the dentist.

• 5:53:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:53:44Speaker 11

  Fuck.

• 5:53:45Robert Evans?

  So when questioned, representatives of the Dr. Phil Show deny that they provided Herzog with alcohol and drugs. They said junkies lie, in essence, about his claims. And then they pointed out that they weren't a medical facility and couldn't watch their guests at all times. The director of the treatment facility where Herzog agreed to go for help at the end of the show, however, was horrified when he saw him on television. He was so upset by the condition that Dr. Phil let Herzog appear on air in, that he refused to ever have anything to do with the Dr. Phil Show again. So this was so outrageous that it convinced the head of a treatment program that all of the free advertising the Dr. Phil Show could provide was not worth the ethical compromise of dealing with that man.

• 5:54:28Speaker 11

  I can't, I mean, I can't, you can't really hand it to him for that. But that's, I mean, that's fucking something. That's, that's so bleak. Yeah.

• 5:54:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's just, you have to really, like, you have to really do bad to convince someone of that, I think. Like, that's a, yeah, like, that's throwing a lot of money out. And I don't know, I'm not going to say all people in the rehab facility business are sketchy, but there's a lot of sketchy motherfuckers in that industry, you know?

• 5:54:57Speaker 11

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 5:54:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's cool and good, Jamie.

• 5:55:03Speaker 11

  Wow, I feel really not very good.

• 5:55:06Robert Evans?

  Aw, Jamie, that's, thank you so much for saying that. You know, if you're at Behind the Bastards, that's exactly what we go for at all times.

• 5:55:15Speaker 11

  Every time I convince myself that this is gonna be a fun one, and every time, except the one time, I'm dead wrong.

• 5:55:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:55:23Speaker 11

  And even worse than I could have conceived.

• 5:55:25Robert Evans?

  All I ever want is for you to feel bad.

• 5:55:30Speaker 11

  Thank you so much.

• 5:55:31Robert Evans?

  That's my whole goal, you know?

• 5:55:33Speaker 11

  You're a successful person. You're really successful.

• 5:55:35Robert Evans?

  I'm not a hero. I'm just, I'm a hero. Okay, I'm a hero, you know?

• 5:55:40Speaker 11

  I'm not a hero. Period.

• 5:55:43Robert Evans?

  Todd Herzog's story does not appear to be an isolated one.

• 5:55:46Speaker 11

  No.

• 5:55:47Robert Evans?

  Jordan Smith appeared on the Dr. Phil Show in 2012 in an episode titled, "Young, Reckless, and Enabled." Smith's aunt claimed she contacted the show to help get her niece off of heroin. When they arrived in LA from out of state, Jordan started going through withdrawal. Her aunt told a show producer that her niece needed heroin and something or something else to help with the withdrawal. The producer suggested that they go to Skid Row and buy heroin together. She then told them not to say who made that suggestion later. Now, guests like Smith receive free addiction treatment at an expensive center after their appearance on the show, which is why many do it. But prior to taping, no medical treatment is provided or offered.

• 5:56:30Robert Evans?

  Smith and her family were in Los Angeles alone for two nights before taping. A less trusting person than me might suggest that the show does this so that these people will be extra fucked up and sad when it comes time for them to be on television.

• 5:56:42Speaker 11

  Sure, sure.

• 5:56:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's very ethical.

• 5:56:45Speaker 11

  That is extremely like, you have to be thinking so hard to come up with something like that. It's so innocuous to me. Wow.

• 5:56:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, these people's lives are already off the fucking rails. How can we make it a little worse? I'm Dr. Phil. Joel King Parish brought her 28-year-old daughter Caitlin to Dr. Phil for help kicking a heroin addiction. Caitlin was six months pregnant at the time. Her mother assumed that when they landed, they would receive medical attention, since withdrawal could endanger the fetus. But when Caitlin's mom asked the staff for help, they told her to, quote, "take care of it." She took her daughter to the hospital, which she left without receiving treatment. Next, from Stat News, quote, "The producer texted to say she should stay at the hospital, but Caitlin would not, and King Parish was terrified the baby would die if her daughter did not get medicine or drugs.

• 5:57:35Robert Evans?

  King Parish and Caitlin went to the Dr. Phil studio, where another show staffer joined them. All three got into a cab headed for Skid Row. The staffer shot video, which later aired on the show. In it, King Parish tells the camera, 'I am scared to death right now.' The camera follows Caitlin from behind as she walks towards homeless encampments. King Parish said Caitlin was gone for about a half hour while she shot up heroin." So they just like went out to go buy horse at Skid Row and filmed it?

• 5:58:03Speaker 11

  That's, I mean, and that's like...

• 5:58:05Robert Evans?

  That's good TV is what that is.

• 5:58:07Speaker 11

  This is genuinely really upsetting. I mean, yeah, I mean, on, on top of the fact that that's an extreme disservice to her, that's also like yet another example of like bullshit, high rated TV heading into unhoused encampments to just frame people in completely contextless, fucked up way. I hate that shit so much. That is awful. It's fucking vile.

• 5:58:30Robert Evans?

  I think it's cool and good, Jamie.

• 5:58:32Speaker 11

  Wow.

• 5:58:33Robert Evans?

  I think it's cool and good. What?

• 5:58:37Speaker 11

  I hate this shit so much. Okay.

• 5:58:40Robert Evans?

  Oh, Loftus. We do have fun on this show, though.

• 5:58:43Speaker 11

  We sure do. We sure do.

• 5:58:46Robert Evans?

  We sure do.

• 5:58:47Speaker 11

  You know, it's time to bust out the Franzia and really dial this up.

• 5:58:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Franz out with our glands out. I don't know. I'm, I'm stuck. I'm stuck making that exact kind of joke repeatedly.

• 5:59:00Speaker 11

  I'm, I'm still chilling, chill, chill.

• 5:59:02Robert Evans?

  Chilling with Philin?

• 5:59:03Speaker 11

  Chilling with my Philin.

• 5:59:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:59:05Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 5:59:06Speaker 11

  That's gross. No, no, no, I do not.

• 5:59:09Robert Evans?

  It's all deeply uncomfortable. Oh.

• 5:59:12Speaker 03

  Robert, you know what's not deeply uncomfortable?

• 5:59:15Robert Evans?

  The products and services that support this podcast?

• 5:59:18Speaker 03

  Facts.

• 5:59:19Robert Evans?

  No, every one of them will gently cradle your head or whatever other part of your body. You, you would like them to cradle. Absolutely. Or wherever. They'll just kiss you, you know? They're just gonna kiss you. That's, that's the behind the bastards' promise. Random kisses from a product.

• 5:59:36Speaker 11

  Mm hmm.

• 5:59:37Robert Evans?

  Yep. Here's some ads.

• 5:59:44Robert Evans?

  Okay, so there are a bunch of stories like this, and one of the saddest parts of all these stories is that the people who will, like, who, the people who Dr. Phil clearly takes advantage of will still claim that his show helped them because they were able to receive free addiction recovery care that they couldn't have afforded without the Dr. Phil Show. Almost no aspect of his show works if there's single payer healthcare that covers addiction treatment. The Dr. Phil Show profits off of sadness porn, the shock and embarrassment people feel watching the ruined lives of his guests, and the sassy, no bullshit advice Dr. Phil gives them. He earns between sixty and eighty million dollars a year. Of course, the Dr. Phil Show, I know, right? That's an obscene number, isn't it?

• 6:00:28Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 6:00:29Robert Evans?

  Fucking absurd. Just makes you wanna light some shit on fire, doesn't it?

• 6:00:32Speaker 11

  Yep. Yeah, it does.

• 6:00:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it sure does, Jamie. It sure does. So, of course, the Dr. Phil Show would get boring pretty quick if he only dealt with people suffering from drug addictions and abusive spouses. From the beginning, a major source of content for McGraw was so-called troubled teens. Kids in crisis are big business for grifty TV therapists because, being children, those kids have no ability to regulate their emotions and no sense of proportion. This leads to TV-friendly explosions of rage. In 2016, Dr. Phil interviewed Danielle Brigoli for an episode titled "I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me For A Crime",

• 6:01:14Robert Evans?

  which is just a title meant to show up on a like, like throwing twerking in there with fucking car stealing? Shameless.

• 6:01:22Speaker 11

  The word twerking, there was, there was a cultural hat to it.

• 6:01:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, sure. Now, Brigoli now goes by the stage name Bad Baby, B-H-A-D, B-H-A-B-I-E, was a primetime-ready delinquent. She spoke in a ridiculously affected hood accent and pretended to basically be a gangster in the kind of confrontational, like, nonsense teenage way that gave Dr. Phil a lot of openings to mock her with his witty rejoinders. I don't want to play much of her appearance because she was a child, and I think what Dr. Phil does by having her on is fundamentally abusive. But I do think it's important to play how the episode starts so you can see how he introduces this segment and hear it, you listening will

• 6:02:06Robert Evans?

  hear it. Jamie, I want you to pay attention to the looks on the faces of the people in his audience.

• 6:02:12Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 6:02:13Speaker 12

  She's defiant.

• 6:02:14Speaker 08

  Hi!

• 6:02:15Speaker 11

  Stop it. Oh, who are you?

• 6:02:16Speaker 12

  But has she met her match?

• 6:02:17Speaker 08

  You wanna do it again?

• 6:02:18Speaker 12

  Sit down. With Dr. Phil. You can threaten them.

• 6:02:21Speaker 08

  Good!

• 6:02:22Speaker 12

  But I'm your worst nightmare girl.

• 6:02:26Speaker 12

  Well, thank you, thank you. Well, you know, I've been doing this show for 15 years and I've met some truly remarkable people. And I have heard thousands of stories. Now, in that time, you get to thinking that you've seen and heard just about everything. That was until today.

• 6:02:47Speaker 12

  Meet Danielle. Now Danielle's mom, Barbara Ann, has written to me every year for the past three years about her daughter, who has stole thousands of dollars, framed her mother as a drug user, and then called 911 to report her, and is currently facing grand theft charges. Now, I answered her call for help and I sent my film crew across the country to capture what was going on inside this home. Needless to say, while my team was there, something shocking and unexpected happened. Shortly after they had finished filming, one of my crew members noticed that Danielle had vanished

• 6:03:32Speaker 12

  with the keys to my crew member's car.

• 6:03:38Speaker 12

  Now, sure enough, when Danielle's grandmother Barbara went outside, she found out that Danielle had stolen the car, which had the crew member's handbag, wallet, ID, and cash inside.

• 6:03:52Speaker 12

  Now, that's not bad enough, Danielle's only 13 years old!

• 6:03:57Robert Evans?

  So, you see, the thing that's most interesting to me about that is the faces of the women in the audience. Because they are particularly the glee, right? Like, that's the thing that's most unsettling to me, is like how excited they are with every new aspect of this story that Dr. Phil reveals.

• 6:04:17Speaker 11

  Well, and I also think that those reactions may not even be, I mean, those reactions in themselves are extremely coached where I like, I used to do like, audience work when I first had moved here and had like, no money to my name. And you're so extremely coached. And like, before the show even starts, you're told to do a series of facial expressions for the editors to work with. And so it's, it's like manipulation, top to bottom with how it's handled. Because it's like, not only is he obviously not, has no vested interest in the wellbeing of this kid. Like, he also, like, I, I, I would argue probably that editing is completely fucking doctored as well.

• 6:04:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I have no idea if that's the, if those, if those face expressions match, like, what was actually going down. But like, it's all, I guess, specifically the idea that they wanted to show those reactions. Because I think they're trying to coach your response, they're trying to coach a response from the people watching at home, too, right? This like, this voyeurism, like, it makes it clear, none of this is about helping anyone. It's about laughing at quote unquote, low-class people and their problems. You know, that's, that's what Dr. Phil really makes his bread doing.

• 6:05:26Speaker 11

  For sure. Yeah.

• 6:05:27Robert Evans?

  That's great.

• 6:05:28Speaker 03

  But fuck him. Like, she went on to like, have a successful, like, she's 18, she's, she was nominated for an American Music Award.

• 6:05:35Robert Evans?

  Oh, she was? I didn't know that.

• 6:05:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:05:37Robert Evans?

  Well, good. I'm glad there's a happy ending to that. I don't know much about Bad Baby.

• 6:05:41Speaker 03

  She's 18 now, and like, she's, you know, signed to a record label. I mean,

• 6:05:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 6:05:47Speaker 03

  And she is standing up for, for what happened to her, which I think you're gonna get into.

• 6:05:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we're about to get into that. Yeah. So, Brigoli went viral. And within the confines of the episode, Dr. Phil positions himself as a dispenser of tough love. His prescription was to send Brigoli to one of his favorite therapeutic boarding schools, Turnabout Ranch in Utah. This is an actual working ranch, where troubled teens are sent under the impression that working in the country and raid, riding horses will get them off of drugs, premarital sex, and petty crime. In subsequent episodes, Brigoli filmed an update from the ranch where she dropped her fake accent and claimed, "To feel okay with who I am now." But she was not being honest, understandably so. In 2018, she released an original song and gave a different view of her experience at Turnabout.

• 6:06:34Robert Evans?

  Quote, "I was, it was pretty miserable. I did not know what was going on in the real world. This place was far away from anything. There wasn't even service there," she says in the song. "A couple of weeks after being home, I finally decided that I wanted to meet up with my best friend again, somebody who was not good for me at all. Instantly, I'd say it was the next day, we got back to doing our old shit again. Smoking, trying to finesse people for money, just doing really, really dumb shit." Her reintegration into society was made all the more difficult by the fact that when she returned to school and the internet, she realized rather suddenly that she'd gone viral for being a ridiculous train wreck of a person on a nationally syndicated TV program. She claims that this basically made her decide to, quote, "lean in to the bad behavior that had made her famous."

• 6:07:20Robert Evans?

  "Once you become a meme, there aren't a lot of ways to get a clean slate. There's no right to be forgotten in the US, so why wouldn't Brigoli just keep being the person everyone already thought she was?"

• 6:07:31Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 6:07:31Robert Evans?

  This gets to one of the things I think is worst about the Dr. Phil Show. It's one thing to shamelessly milk the worst moments and the greatest shames in the life of an adult. It's another thing entirely to do that to a child who has no real way to understand the long-term Yeah, no way that she could have possibly understood the long-term consequences of being coming that kind of famous.

• 6:07:52Speaker 11

  It's completely, it's like violent every level and it's like, whatever. I mean, clearly Dr. Phil does not give a fuck.

• 6:07:58Robert Evans?

  No, no, not a, not a third of a fuck, yeah.

• 6:08:01Speaker 11

  But it is, and it also, I think, like speaks to how, especially for a kid, which is like, that should, doing what he does to children should be illegal.

• 6:08:12Robert Evans?

  It should be a crime, yes.

• 6:08:14Speaker 11

  You should not be allowed to do shit like that. And on top of that, it speaks to like how, I don't know, it's like, I remember that clip when it first came out and there was no popular conversation about like, The well being of the child who's clearly being exploited by a multimillionaire.

• 6:08:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 6:08:33Speaker 11

  And, and it's, and, and I, I see that, I mean, it's when you're introduced in the public that way and you are coming from a place of poverty and you are not being empowered at all or protected, like, what are you supposed to do? Like, that is a miserable, cruel situation to be put in. It's, oh.

• 6:08:53Robert Evans?

  It's fucked up.

• 6:08:55Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 6:08:55Robert Evans?

  Now, Jamie, that's all pretty bad, right? Everything we've talked about happening to Brigholi is bad.

• 6:09:01Speaker 11

  Yes.

• 6:09:01Robert Evans?

  But to make matters worse, the ranch Dr. Phil sent her and a bunch of other kids to was about as ethical as, oh, I don't know, the drug rehabilitation treatment programs he was also sending kids to. I'm going to quote again from BuzzFeed. "It's not clear if Turnabout is actually helpful to the kids who go, or if it's just another facility that takes advantage of the minors who are sent there to get better. Just last week, 19-year-old Hannah Archuleta sued the school for an alleged sexual assault that she said happened to her while she was staying at Turnabout at just 17. This is likely to be a high-profile case, too, with Gloria Allred representing her. Turnabout administrators provided a statement to me saying they took immediate action after Archuleta claimed she had been assaulted, but that her father removed her from the facility before we could

• 6:09:46Robert Evans?

  conduct a full inquiry. The statement continued, "We would never take lightly an allegation of mistreatment to any of our students. Now that this incident is the subject of litigation, we must withhold our full response for a later date." Now, the owner of this ranch is Aspen Education Group, which was then bought by CRC, which is now owned by Acadia Healthcare. In an email statement to BuzzFeed News, Acadia's Director of Investor Relations, Gretchen Hommerich, said, "It is my understanding that Turnabout Ranch and Aspen Educational Group were closed or sold prior to Acadia's acquisition of CRC Health. In any event, Acadia never operated either of the facilities." Turnabout has gone through multiple owners and since 2014 has been owned by current and former employees of the ranch. But Aspen Education has been accused of multiple infractions

• 6:10:31Robert Evans?

  by former attendees, including lawsuits that claimed psychological torture, abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking. The torture suit was dismissed, but CRC, the owner of Aspen Education at the time, declined to address specific allegations. Arcadia did not answer our questions about these allegations either."

• 6:10:50Robert Evans?

  Just not only like a bunch of people involved in this have been alleged of things, including human trafficking. There's been sexual assault allegations at the ranch, but it like goes this revolving carousel of owners because it's like a shady fucking, it's just like they're pumping a quick amount of cash out and then selling it to somebody else. It's so fucking shady.

• 6:11:06Speaker 11

  I'm sure that that's, yeah, I'm sure that that's integral to it being able to survive at all. Like it needs to be constantly changing hands. That's.

• 6:11:14Robert Evans?

  I mean, the whole teen treatment industry, like I've done a number of art back when I was at Cracked, I did a number of articles with survivors of these facilities. Like all of these facilities are basically child molestation factories and like child abuse factories in general, not always molestation. Sometimes they just kill them from neglect, you know?

• 6:11:29Speaker 11

  There was, there was a.

• 6:11:31Robert Evans?

  The good ones.

• 6:11:31Speaker 11

  That reached the point where like Paris Hilton made a documentary about it last year. Yeah.

• 6:11:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's Paris Hilton and actually Danielle Bregoli, Bad Baby are involved right now with going against Dr. Phil about this exact place. So it's very interesting that you mentioned Paris Hilton.

• 6:11:46Robert Evans?

  It does. I don't know much about her.

• 6:11:48Speaker 11

  I'm always mentioning her.

• 6:11:49Robert Evans?

  But besides the stuff that was like famous about how shitty she was 15, 20 years ago, but it seems like she's been doing some like good socially responsible stuff lately.

• 6:11:58Speaker 03

  Paris? Yeah.

• 6:11:59Robert Evans?

  I don't know. Yeah.

• 6:12:00Speaker 11

  Yeah. It seems like, it seems like she has, uh, I mean, also I'm like, I'm not, I'm not about to.

• 6:12:06Robert Evans?

  I'm not gonna go to bat for the stop being poor lady, but yeah.

• 6:12:10Speaker 11

  Right. Right. Right. Uh, but, but yeah, that, that specific instance, I'm, I'm glad she did.

• 6:12:15Robert Evans?

  If you have wealth and prominence and you use it to take a swing at the teen treatment industry, that gets you a couple of points in my book.

• 6:12:21Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 6:12:21Robert Evans?

  Cause it's a fucking nightmare. Um, maybe we'll do a deeper episode about it at some point, but a lot of the allegations that we just listed about this facility and its many owners predate the episodes of Dr. Phil where he gave free advertisements to the ranch. This means that McGraw and his staff were well aware of the allegations against Aspen and the ranch when they sent children there. When questioned about this, a spokesperson for the show said, we're aware and we're monitoring things. Since Archuleta went public with her allegations, Bregoli has come forward with more detail about her own experience. She now says she was denied food at times and that camp administrators often refused to. Let inmates change their clothes for days on end.

• 6:13:02Speaker 11

  Inmates.

• 6:13:03Robert Evans?

  You're, yeah, and I, that's my framing, but yes. You're helpless. You can't call your parent. You can't email your parent. If the state says they have to give you two pebbles, they're going to find the smallest fucking pebbles to give you. That's supposed to help kids get over trauma. I would have rather went to jail. Like I, one of the girls I talked to who did this when she was like 14 or 15, like one of the punishments they gave her was she had to dig up the, the stump of a mature tree on her own, which if you've never had to remove a stump, it's something like three to four large adult men usually do with a fucking truck and power tools. She just spent days in 120 degree heat, like slowly dying as she tried to force the stump out as a child. Like, these places are all nightmares.

• 6:13:46Speaker 11

  Horrible.

• 6:13:48Robert Evans?

  Bragoli is of course, not the only teenager featured on the Dr. Phil show. BuzzFeed writer Scotchy Cowell announces, announce, uh, sorry Scotchy. I don't know if I'm getting that right. Alleges that while McGraw is healthy, is happy to feature children of all genders. He gets particularly aggressive with teenage girls. Quote, their most vulnerable private moments, screaming and crying at home are used on the show until the very end, when their parents decide to send them to turn about. Every episode of the Dr. Phil show ends with an after the taping segment where the kids find out they're going to a ranch in the middle of nowhere and usually cry, which is of course, great television. Most kids featured in this way do not get any updates on the Dr. Phil show, or at most mentioned briefly once more.

• 6:14:32Robert Evans?

  Daytime TV moves too fast for the doctor to actually check back in with most of his patients. In 2008, Dr. Phil spun off and created a new show, The Doctors. Every episode of this show features a plastic surgeon, an obstetrician and an ER doc who talk about different health topics.

• 6:14:49Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 6:14:49Robert Evans?

  This sounds like it might be.

• 6:14:50Speaker 11

  Some shop waiting room classic.

• 6:14:53Robert Evans?

  We're not going to go into a lot of detail about this, but a 2014 study of the show determined that about 37% of their recommendations were not credible, which honestly means they're doing better than I, yeah, I expected worse.

• 6:15:05Speaker 11

  Some of the better report card than I expected.

• 6:15:07Robert Evans?

  If your doctor, for example, said 37% of the time, I'm going to give you bad advice, you would find a new doctor.

• 6:15:14Speaker 11

  That's fair. I was like, oh, wow. D plus. That's not the worst thing.

• 6:15:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Imagine a mechanic saying that, yeah, 37% of the time the brakes I put in work, you know, your odds are pretty good.

• 6:15:26Speaker 11

  Okay, fair enough. I was like, there's no way they're somewhat correct.

• 6:15:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 6:15:32Speaker 11

  63% of the time. Why?

• 6:15:34Robert Evans?

  Yes. And again, somewhat being the operative word.

• 6:15:37Speaker 11

  Sure.

• 6:15:37Robert Evans?

  We could go into a lot of other case studies, in particularly egregious guest choices, but going over all these sad people and the way Phil exploits them ad nauseam kind of runs the risk of being sorrow porn itself. I do think it behooves us to look at one last case study, perhaps the most nauseating guest choice of the whole series. 24-year-old Gabby came on the Dr. Phil Show in February of 2020. She had promised to act as a surrogate womb for two different couples. Gabby had not taken any money from them, and she could not bear children. She is infertile and chronically ill. Her father claims she has psychosis, bipolar disorder, and learning disabilities. In the show, it's revealed that Gabby's mom died right around the time she started pretending

• 6:16:21Robert Evans?

  to be a surrogate, which was also a period where she was the victim of constant bullying at school. From BuzzFeed, quote, "Her scam wasn't illegal because Gabby never asked for money or items from the couple she lied to. It's just tragic, hurtful behavior from someone deeply isolated and in dire need of mental health care from multiple past traumas. Most of the episode focuses on the producers following Gabby around backstage, begging her to come on stage when she clearly doesn't want to. They call her difficult and volatile, and though she signed an appearance release, it's not clear to the audience that she has read and understood it. When a producer asks her on camera to confirm she understands the waiver, she doesn't respond and covers her face with the pages of the release. But she's certainly remorseful and seems to feel guilty.

• 6:17:06Robert Evans?

  In a pre-taped interview, Gabby cries to the producers, "I just want to say sorry to everyone that I've hurt." When she walks off the stage in anguish, McGraw merely sips his water in sighs. The episode is near unwatchable.

• 6:17:19Speaker 11

  Yeah, I mean, that doesn't sound like consent was gained at all. I mean, there were so many red flags.

• 6:17:25Robert Evans?

  It doesn't sound like she's capable of consenting to that. Yeah.

• 6:17:30Speaker 11

  I don't even know what to think. I mean, that entire though I because I don't trust any of the information that anyone is presenting in this in in this way. But that's just, I mean, very clear, there's not an issue that should be handed handled on television.

• 6:17:44Robert Evans?

  National TV, yeah.

• 6:17:46Speaker 11

  To say the very fucking least, that is, yeah, that is just fucking disrespectful.

• 6:17:51Robert Evans?

  So Dr. Jeff Sugar, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at USC, provided a description of the Dr. Phil show that I think acts as as good a coda to this episode as anything. Quote, "It's a callous and inexcusable exploitation. These people are barely hanging on. It's like if one of them was drowning and approaching a lifeboat, and instead of throwing them an inflatable donut, you throw them an anchor." And that's Dr. Phil, baby. D Phil.

• 6:18:18Speaker 11

  I am so upset about like, I just, this was like, one of my, like, the toughest listens of all time. Maybe because he's just still such a real, present, public disgrace and danger, but like, holy shit. I can't even enjoy Dr. Phil needs. I was gonna show you Dr. Phil needs. I'm not gonna. Not worth it.

• 6:18:39Robert Evans?

  Fuck it.

• 6:18:40Speaker 11

  Fuck it. Fuck him. Put him through a shredder.

• 6:18:43Robert Evans?

  Put him through a shredder. And you at home, put yourself through a shredder. But a good kind of shredder that makes you healthy.

• 6:18:53Speaker 11

  A cool, life-affirming kind of shredder. You know, in a way, in a way, I've read, is that, isn't that just capitalism? Put your tuxers, friend?

• 6:19:02Robert Evans?

  Well, with that, Jamie, I think it's time for you to plug a pluggable and get the, get the fuck out of this Zoom call and go live your, your goddamn life, Jamie. Go live your fucking life.

• 6:19:12Speaker 11

  You know, I'm, I'm dying to live my life. So you can just, you can, you can listen to the podcast. You can listen to Veto Pass. You can listen to the Oliva Podcast. You can listen to my year in Mensa. And you can listen to my new show about Kathy Comics that comes out in June. God damn it.

• 6:19:27Robert Evans?

  God damn it. And all of you at home.

• 6:19:30Speaker 11

  This was miserable.

• 6:19:31Robert Evans?

  Damn god yourself. Yep. It was, Jamie. It really was. All right. Well, fuck the internet and fuck life.

• 6:19:46Speaker 03

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com/AtBehindTheBastards.

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