Pod Insights Behind the Bastards CZM Rewind: Part One: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard About this episode It's a CZM Rewind week! Enjoy this old, but prescient, episode where Robert is joined by Matt Lieb to discuss Dr. Oz.
FOOTNOTES:
https://www.oprah.com/pressroom/oprah-bids-farewell-to-dr-oz-as-he-launches-his-own-show-september-14#ixzz6ryQsKlGx https://www.oprah.com/pressroom/oprah-bids-farewell-to-dr-oz-as-he-launches-his-own-show-september-14#ixzz6ryQsKlGx%C2%A0 https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/02/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-doctors-and-the-dr-oz-show-what-our-analysis-reveals/ %C2%A0https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/02/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-doctors-and-the-dr-oz-show-what-our-analysis-reveals/%C2%A0 https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/the-dr-oz-health-quiz/all#ixzz6ryqeqPD3 https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/the-dr-oz-health-quiz/all#ixzz6ryqeqPD3%C2%A0 https://www.nature.com/articles/nn0412-497 https://www.nature.com/articles/nn0412-497%C2%A0 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6167233/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6167233/%C2%A0 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-dr-oz-effect-has-hooked-american-consumers-n134801 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-dr-oz-effect-has-hooked-american-consumers-n134801%C2%A0 https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18Oz-t.html https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/reiki-cant-possibly-work-so-why-does-it/606808/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/reiki-cant-possibly-work-so-why-does-it/606808/%C2%A0%C2%A0 https://quackwatch.org/nccam/research/energy/ https://quackwatch.org/nccam/research/energy/%C2%A0 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/case-dr-oz-ethics-evidence-and-does-professional-self-regulation-work/2017-02 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/case-dr-oz-ethics-evidence-and-does-professional-self-regulation-work/2017-02%C2%A0 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dr-oz-slammed-for-suggesting-it-may-only-cost-us-2-to-3-of-american-lives-to-reopen-schools-2020-04-16 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dr-oz-slammed-for-suggesting-it-may-only-cost-us-2-to-3-of-american-lives-to-reopen-schools-2020-04-16%C2%A0 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/business/media/dr-oz-apology-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/business/media/dr-oz-apology-coronavirus.html%C2%A0 https://www.businessinsider.com/dr-oz-false-misleading-baseless-medical-claims-coronavirus-2020-4#a-strawberry-and-baking-soda-mixture-can-whiten-teeth-oz-said-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/dr-oz-false-misleading-baseless-medical-claims-coronavirus-2020-4#a-strawberry-and-baking-soda-mixture-can-whiten-teeth-oz-said-8%C2%A0 https://www.vox.com/2015/4/16/8412427/dr-oz-health-claims https://www.vox.com/2015/4/16/8412427/dr-oz-health-claims%C2%A0 http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/01/can_you_trust_dr_oz_his_medical_advice_often_conflicts_with_the_best_science.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/01/can_you_trust_dr_oz_his_medical_advice_often_conflicts_with_the_best_science.single.html%C2%A0
See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript 11,990 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04 Speaker 01 Games on a break? Don't doom scroll. Try rips on Underdog. Buy a digital pack, rip it open, and reveal a real, physical card. Football, basketball, even Pokemon. Packs start at just $5. Ship it straight to your door or sell it back instantly at full market value. Max value up to $125,000. Download Underdog and get in on the chase. Deposit $5, get five free packs. Real rips, real cards, real cash. Only on Underdog. Unleash your dog. 18 plus, terms apply. Top grails are extremely rare.
0:35 Robert Evans? Picture this. You're listening to the Sniffy's Cruising Confessions podcast and suddenly, wait, what did they just say? Well, the questions raised in those show-stopping moments will be answered in the all-new bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor. Hosts Gabe and Chris will dive deep on a specific topic covered in that week's Tuesday episode. From sexual health and HIV prevention to finding the right doctor. Listen to this special bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get podcasts. Sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences.
1:06 Speaker 03 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
1:36 Robert 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 Lieb.
2:07 Speaker 04 Hey, what's going on?
2:09 Robert Evans? Matt? How are you doing?
2:11 Speaker 04 I'm doing well. I'm excited to be here. A big fan of the pod. Love me some bastards.
2:17 Robert Evans? And you are, you do a Sopranos podcast and the name is, I believe, Pod Yourself a Gun?
2:21 Speaker 04 That's right.
2:21 Robert Evans? That's right.
2:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, we're the world's only Sopranos podcast. Don't go looking for any other ones because they do not exist.
2:29 Robert Evans? Little known TV show, The Sopranos. You might have heard of it. Very obscure.
2:33 Speaker 04 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.
2:42 Robert 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.
2:51 Speaker 04 You bought a gun?
2:52 Robert 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.
3:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, you woke up with a blue moon in your eye and you decided, I'm gonna go get myself a gun.
3:09 Robert Evans? And then I'm gonna commit crimes in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.
3:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
3:13 Robert Evans? They do that a lot in the show, right? A lot of Pine Baron crimes?
3:15 Speaker 04 They do it at least once and, and it's great.
3:19 Robert Evans? Yeah, that they're chasing that guy through the, yeah.
3:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, the Russian.
3:22 Speaker 05 Yeah, and they leave their DNA everywhere.
3:25 Speaker 04 Well, they pee everywhere and, you know.
3:28 Robert Evans? Look, we Italians are not a subtle people.
3:31 Speaker 04 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.
3:47 Robert Evans? Oh, it's just a gun. Um, but today we have something much more exciting than a gun. We have a bastard and our bastard. Are you ready for this?
3:56 Speaker 04 I'm so excited.
3:57 Robert Evans? Are you settling in?
3:59 Speaker 04 Yes.
4:00 Robert Evans? Doctor. Mehmet Oz. I never introduced them like that. We're talking about Dr. Fucking Oz today. Yes, that's right.
4:08 Speaker 04 Who'd have thought he'd be a bastard? A TV doctor?
4:11 Robert Evans? Who would have thought a TV doctor could be a bad man?
4:14 Speaker 04 No, they, they, they take an oath, TV doctors. They say do no harm and get good ratings. That's the, the Hippocratic oath.
4:22 Speaker 05 Do they, do they also oath to be bad guest hosts on Jeopardy? Because he sucked and I didn't enjoy it.
4:29 Robert 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.
4:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, immediately.
4:37 Robert Evans? I'm not going to compete with LeVar Burton.
4:39 Speaker 05 Respectfully fuck off, sir.
4:41 Robert Evans? Fighting Jordy, fighting Kunta Kinte, fighting whatever the reading rainbow guy's name was? No, sir. No, sir. LeVar, yeah.
4:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, I did not watch him on Jeopardy, but I have seen the show and had no idea he was a bastard.
4:59 Robert 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.
5:07 Speaker 05 Fuck Dr. Phil.
5:08 Robert Evans? 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.
5:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. I, yeah, I agree. They're not hot. I've always said doctors, the problem with them. They're not hot. I look at them and I'm like, ew, like.
5:44 Robert Evans? We need to put a couple of billion dollars into a national program for more fuckable doctors. Come on.
5:50 Speaker 04 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.
5:59 Robert 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
6:39 Robert 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.
7:22 Speaker 04 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.
7:35 Robert Evans? It's always surgeons. Which, you talk to doctors, they'll be like, yeah, of course, it's always surgeons.
7:40 Speaker 05 Yeah.
7:42 Speaker 04 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.
7:53 Robert Evans? I think good surgeons are so prone to being also, like, nonsense, like, so many of our nonsense public doctors are 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.
8:11 Speaker 04 That's cra- it's, it just makes me glad that I never, you know, got really proficient in any one skill.
8:17 Robert Evans? Never gain skills.
8:19 Speaker 04 I never, never.
8:20 Robert Evans? Ever learn how to do things.
8:21 Speaker 04 You'll become too smart for yourself and think that you are God.
8:25 Robert 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?
8:32 Speaker 04 Snake oil salesman?
8:33 Robert Evans? Oh, yeah. Or, or that. We would have very little at all.
8:39 Robert 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.
8:52 Speaker 05 You don't know that.
8:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, he could be immaculate conception.
8:55 Speaker 05 Yeah.
8:56 Speaker 04 You know?
8:57 Speaker 05 Robert.
8:57 Robert Evans? Possible. I would say right now, the most likely theory is that they fucked sometime in October.
9:02 Speaker 04 Oh, all right.
9:03 Robert 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?
9:17 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:18 Robert Evans? You're, you're dealing with a different kind of poverty than even like our grandparents dealt with here.
9:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
9:24 Robert 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 of us, even as difficult as our present times are.
9:49 Speaker 04 He's like a true, uh, lift yourself up by your bootstraps kind of guy.
9:53 Robert 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.
10:10 Robert Evans? That's, that's an achievement.
10:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, good for him. Started from the bottom and now he's on TV selling fake cures.
10:16 Robert Evans? That's his dad. Um, that's his dad. That's not Mehmet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Mustafa. 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.
10:58 Robert 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."
11:27 Speaker 04 What the fuck? Like, he said, so that's way too much stock into the year of what animal he was 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.
11:42 Robert Evans? You really gotta just shove your face into food as hard as you can.
11:46 Speaker 04 You roll around in the shit and then you hope that someday you find another piggy to fuck and then you have little piglets.
11:52 Robert 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.
11:59 Speaker 04 Well, that's a, it's a nice take on year of the rat for him.
12:04 Robert 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.
12:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, he just wants that cheese.
12:19 Robert 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.
12:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:51 Robert 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.
13:04 Speaker 04 Cool dad.
13:06 Speaker 05 Sounds like a fun guy would hang.
13:09 Robert 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.
13:39 Speaker 04 Yeah, like, straight having like nervous breakdowns just from like trying to get good grades.
13:45 Speaker 05 Right.
13:46 Speaker 04 Once again, don't get good at anything. It's not worth it.
13:49 Robert Evans? Develop skills.
13:50 Speaker 04 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-
13:58 Robert Evans? He won't love you no matter what.
13:59 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly. Stop caring about your dad, you know, just coast, coast through life.
14:04 Robert Evans? Find some dirt, eat some grubs, you'll be fine.
14:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, start a Sopranos podcast.
14:09 Robert Evans? Start a Sopranos podcast.
14:11 Speaker 04 That's all you gotta do, dude.
14:14 Speaker 05 Really bringing it back there.
14:19 Robert 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."
14:49 Speaker 04 Mehmet, go kill that kid.
14:50 Robert Evans? Kill that kid. Fuck it, cut him.
14:54 Speaker 04 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 too much.
15:02 Robert Evans? Yeah, that's so much pressure to put on a kid.
15:04 Speaker 04 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.
15:18 Robert 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. Yeah. 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.
15:37 Speaker 05 Jesus, that sounds horrible.
15:39 Robert Evans? I know. It sounds like a fucking nightmare. Sounds. The fancy boy prep.
15:43 Speaker 05 Yeah, uniforms, ties.
15:46 Robert Evans? Yeah, probably like weird shorts during the summer.
15:50 Speaker 05 Yeah.
15:51 Robert 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.
16:18 Speaker 04 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 you're like, cool. And that was the whole thing.
16:43 Robert 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, not a high end educational.
17:06 Speaker 04 Wait, they paddled you in a, in a public school?
17:09 Robert Evans? Yeah, yeah.
17:10 Speaker 04 Oh damn.
17:11 Robert Evans? They still did that in Oklahoma back in them days. Yeah.
17:15 Robert Evans? You got to sign the paddle afterwards too.
17:17 Speaker 04 Nice.
17:19 Robert Evans? But when I was in, I don't know, third grade or so, um, I moved to Plano, which is a, 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 and I was in ROTC. So me and all my friends, I think we all kind of assumed we're all going to join the army, you know?
17:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. I, 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.
18:05 Speaker 05 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, and I'm like, la la la, no idea.
18:18 Speaker 04 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.
18:36 Robert 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's, I guess that's his gap year is being in the Turkish army.
18:58 Speaker 04 I'm just gonna take a break, have a gap year and join the military of a foreign country.
19:03 Robert Evans? Yeah, helps suppress, you know, Kurdish liberatory movements and stuff, whatever.
19:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, they gotta stop trying to have their own thing.
19:10 Robert Evans? Yeah.
19:13 Robert 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.
19:28 Speaker 04 Yeah, this is, it's very, there's a lot of foreshadowing going on.
19:32 Robert Evans? Yeah, there's some foreshadowing. He earned both, obviously, with flying colors. 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 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.
19:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:54 Robert 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.
20:22 Speaker 04 It's at least three boards.
20:24 Robert Evans? It's at least three boards. That's three more than I've been certified with.
20:27 Speaker 04 I got zero boards under my belt.
20:29 Robert Evans? Not a one. Not a single board between the three of us. So.
20:33 Speaker 04 We really should find a board just to get us some certifications, guys.
20:36 Robert Evans? Just to get certified. If you're a board, if you're a medical board, hit us up.
20:40 Speaker 04 A board out there.
20:41 Robert Evans? Well, actually, you know what? The state of New Jersey has certified me as a reverend doctor. So I'm one board certified. I assume that counts.
20:48 Speaker 04 Is there a board in the Universal Life Church? Cause I am a minister slash Jedi knight.
20:54 Robert Evans? I'm gonna say that counts.
20:55 Speaker 04 All right, I'm board certified.
20:57 Robert Evans? Can you get me painkillers?
20:59 Speaker 04 I, you know, I know a guy.
21:03 Robert Evans? That sounds legal enough.
21:07 Robert 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.
21:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:36 Robert Evans? 11 patents is pretty good.
21:38 Speaker 04 Seriously. One might say he's the wizard of Oz.
21:43 Robert Evans? There, I think I read like six articles with variations of that title on the guy.
21:47 Speaker 04 All right. Well, I gotta go then. Bye guys.
21:51 Robert Evans? It's just a thing. Journalists can't fucking help themselves.
21:54 Speaker 04 Oh, you can't help yourself if you're anybody. You see Oz and you're like, oh, I gotta call him a wizard.
21:59 Robert 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.
22:17 Speaker 04 How old is he at this point?
22:19 Robert Evans? He's in his 30s.
22:20 Speaker 04 Oh, man.
22:21 Robert Evans? Yeah, like, everything I've read right now on its own would be a career trajectory any doctor in medicine would envy.
22:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
22:30 Robert Evans? You could die happy with that being your fucking resume. Like, that's a hell of an achievement.
22:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, my god.
22:36 Robert 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."
22:46 Speaker 04 Jesus.
22:47 Robert Evans? He might be the best at what he does in the entire United States at this point.
22:51 Speaker 04 I mean,
22:51 Robert Evans? I don't know how to measure that, but he's, he's very good.
22:55 Speaker 04 I mean, I don't know any other heart surgeons by name, so fuck. Yeah, I mean, he's the guy.
23:01 Robert 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.
23:44 Robert Evans? As Oz 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 scropula, and as Jesus is said to have done, and as shamans and mothers in 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."
24:25 Speaker 04 The kidney meridian?
24:26 Robert Evans? Yeah, you gotta get that meridian. That's the best part of the kid, he's the meridian.
24:31 Speaker 04 That's the most delicious part of the kidney is the meridian.
24:34 Robert 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, which is a little bit of, little bit of char, you know?
24:51 Speaker 04 The, I, 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.
25:04 Robert Evans? So, yeah, that's, that's, that's silly. I, I, I think that's silly.
25:09 Robert Evans? 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.
25:19 Speaker 04 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.
25:31 Robert 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, you're guaranteeing everybody's taking proper sanitation procedures, fucking whatever.
25:46 Speaker 04 And it seems like, from what I can tell, that sounded, uh, non-invasive. It sounded like
25:51 Robert Evans? Yeah, yeah, they were just doing energy work or whatever.
25:54 Speaker 04 They were throwing, you know, crystals and doing fucking pendulums over, over him.
25:59 Robert 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?
26:11 Speaker 04 I don't.
26:11 Robert 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.
26:30 Speaker 01 Games on a break? Instead of doom scrolling, try rips on Underdog. Rip real player cards worth real money right there in the app. It's instant cash in the palm of your hand. Buy a digital pack, rip it open on your phone, and reveal a real, physical card. Football, basketball, Pokemon, yes, Pokemon, and more. The best part? Packs start at just $5. And if you pull something you don't want to let go of just yet, have it shipped straight to your door. Want the cash? Sell it back instantly at 100% of its fair market value. No listing, no negotiating, no stranger asking if you'll trade it for a used jet ski, even though jet skis are super sick. Best part? There are some serious grails in the mix, with maximum card values reaching up to $125,000, depending on your pack tier.
27:16 Speaker 01 You can also check the live odds and see what you could pull before you rip, and what other cards are being pulled by fans. Download Underdog and get in on the chase. Get five free rips packs when you deposit $5. Real rips, real cards, real cash. Only on Underdog. Unleash your dog. 18+, terms apply. Top grails are extremely rare.
27:36 Robert Evans? This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Devoto Dolutegravir Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devoto. Devoto is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devoto was right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto.
28:00 Speaker 06 It is unknown if Devoto is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devoto without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devoto if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devoto and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.
28:35 Robert Evans? Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devoto.com or call 1-877-844-8872.
28:45 Robert 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.
29:09 Speaker 04 Mm hmm. Doctors fuck and teach. That's what they do.
29:12 Robert 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, 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.
29:44 Speaker 04 Just gifted money and just said, "Start a magic doctoring school."
29:51 Robert Evans? And they're like, "All right." 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, I think, "Okay, well, let's try other shit," you know?
30:31 Speaker 04 Yeah.
30:32 Robert Evans? 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?
30:38 Speaker 04 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. It makes sense.
30:49 Robert Evans? I will blame the snake oil salesman. I'm never gonna blame someone who's like, "Well, doctors said they..." They can't cure me, so I'm gonna eat this root, you know? Fuck it, why not?
30:57 Speaker 04 Go for it.
30:58 Robert Evans? Who gives a shit? Like, it can't hurt if you're definitely gonna die.
31:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:03 Robert Evans? Um, 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.
31:27 Speaker 04 Shock the shit out of them.
31:28 Robert 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.
31:41 Speaker 04 The worst thing you're gonna get out of that is a really cool TikTok video of electrocuting a dead body.
31:45 Robert Evans? Absolutely, and then you get a fuckload of followers and then you start selling brain pills.
31:52 Speaker 04 It's a perfect plan.
31:55 Robert 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?
32:40 Robert Evans? He says, quote, "I am nasty. I call practitioners a fraud, practitioners a fraud. It's my feeling that the Rosenthal Center has been promoting fraudulent alternatives is genuine." 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 dropped out of a heart attack because it doesn't
33:11 Speaker 04 Right.
33:12 Robert Evans? replace a valve, you know?
33:13 Speaker 04 I'd like to think that even at a hospital or a research facility with Western medicine, that they still peer review and try out different, you know, like alternative medicines, right?
33:28 Robert Evans? Yeah, like some of them, some of them work.
33:30 Speaker 04 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, you know, so.
33:40 Robert 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, whatever placebo, but he experienced relief. So I don't care.
33:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:57 Robert Evans? Yeah. I don't know. I'm not going to get into like, cause 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.
34:18 Robert 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.
35:03 Speaker 04 Right.
35:03 Robert Evans? That can help with depression and that can help with healing. And he's right about that.
35:06 Speaker 04 No, 100%.
35:07 Robert Evans? Bad point to make.
35:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
35:09 Robert Evans? 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, and he's got a double lung transplant waiting, and those are in addition to his two regularly scheduled open hearts.
35:52 Robert Evans? And then at three, 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.
36:13 Speaker 04 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?
36:29 Robert 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.
36:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
36:40 Robert Evans? But it is exhausting. Everything you read about this guy's daily, 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 something.
36:56 Speaker 04 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.
37:01 Robert Evans? Yeah, to kill that fucker.
37:02 Speaker 04 Kill that fucking kid. He doesn't know what he wants to be. Yeah, it's just like, I mean, I imagine that would create a bit of a problem later in life with stillness.
37:13 Robert Evans? Yeah, I feel for him a little bit in that.
37:17 Speaker 04 Sure.
37:18 Robert Evans? The article also goes into more detail about how 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
38:02 Robert 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 some data now on how music can help with certain aspects of the healing process. Low-fat mother-in-law seemed to be on the cutting edge of that.
38:18 Speaker 04 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."
38:26 Robert Evans? They all die, but my god, their hearts are pretty.
38:31 Robert 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. 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 in medicine during a time when a lot of stuff that,
39:10 Robert Evans? like, just wasn't, that is kinda now common-sense medicine, wasn't. And I think that kind of opens his eye to, like, well, maybe all this other shit works.
39:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. Maybe everything in my head is correct. We're slowly getting to him turning into a complete narcissist.
39:26 Robert Evans? Yeah, and the article kind of veers right from, "Yeah, having loved ones in the room 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.
39:47 Robert Evans? 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 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
40:31 Robert Evans? 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."
40:41 Speaker 04 Oh 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 surgery patient.
40:52 Robert 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, because there's a few different kind of categories of it.
41:01 Speaker 04 She's checking the vibes, dude. She's checking the vibes. Just making sure, you know, the vibe dipstick is filled with oil.
41:08 Robert Evans? I should note, if I'm going to be totally fair, that Reiki, 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. And I have some friends who swear by it for kind of physical and emotional pain in particular.
41:29 Speaker 04 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?
41:35 Robert Evans? It's like energy work, I guess. I don't know. 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. 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 RIKI practitioners to their stable of available providers, in part as a result of like the work that Dr. Oz in the center at Columbia was doing. You can find these people in hospitals now.
42:18 Robert Evans? And it's worth noting that a number of the positive studies about RIKI 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. Edzard Ernst, quote, "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
43:00 Robert Evans? 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. 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
43:43 Robert Evans? the efficacy of energy medicine is still scientifically unresolved."
43:47 Speaker 04 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 cause COVID."
44:00 Robert 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. But he is someone who,
44:45 Robert Evans? 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.
45:15 Speaker 04 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.
45:24 Robert Evans? And it's one of those things, like, again, I know people who swear by Reiki, 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.
45:46 Speaker 04 You know, go with God. That's, that's all great. But, I mean, you want to relieve pain, try some morphine, though, dog, because that shit, oh my God, morphine.
45:56 Robert Evans? And there's no downsides to morphine. That's the best part of it.
45:59 Speaker 04 I can't think of one downside to morphine.
46:01 Robert Evans? Not a single one!
46:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, it just feels good the whole time and you just need to take more.
46:07 Robert Evans? My issue is not so much with any particular treatment, not that, not even an issue that people would like. It's number one, a lot of people will eschew
46:18 Robert Evans? Actual medical treatment in favor of some of this stuff and it's not going to I I I I'm trying to be as fair as I can. Ricky is not going to solve your blocked cardiac pathways, you know?
46:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
46:30 Robert Evans? Like it's not gonna fix it.
46:31 Speaker 04 Yeah. I mean, energy is great, but Plavix works wonders.
46:36 Robert Evans? Plavix is a lot better. Um, and it's, 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 it, he helps put our national foot on the, the gas pedal into the, the post-science age.
47:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's a slippery slope to that, uh, you know, downing that brain octane oil, you know?
47:24 Robert Evans? Exactly. Exactly. Um, so yeah. Uh, at this point though, we're talking still in the mid nineties. Everything Dr. Oz is saying is reasonable from a certain point of view. He's not claiming that Ricky's gonna cure cancer. He's not even claiming it's gonna 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?
47:45 Speaker 04 He is not yet a bastard.
47:48 Robert Evans? It's certainly not impossible for this kind of stuff to have a mental impact, which can positively affect recovery. Okay?
47:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
47:54 Robert Evans? Um, 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.
48:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
48:16 Robert Evans? Extended. That's, that's great. He's not a bastard yet.
48:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, he's doing great work so far, you know?
48:23 Robert Evans? Despite the Little weird.
48:24 Speaker 04 Heart stuff.
48:25 Robert Evans? Fine.
48:26 Speaker 04 A little bit of energy, a little bit of heart surgery. It works out.
48:30 Robert 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 Winfrey's radar. He almost built himself perfectly for that to happen.
49:15 Robert Evans? 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 to get in. She'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 water like an Olympic diver with very little splash.
49:57 Robert Evans? 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."
50:08 Speaker 04 Man, that is, I mean, I'm, I'm low key impressed that he impressed Oprah with the doo doo shapes.
50:15 Robert Evans? It's, it's mom stuff, you know, moms love poop.
50:18 Speaker 04 They do. They love talking about doo doo. That's the thing.
50:21 Robert Evans? And, and that's what like Oz does exactly the right things to endear himself to like millions of, of middle-class moms.
50:28 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:29 Robert Evans? Which is the best market in the country.
50:31 Speaker 04 It's an incredible market.
50:33 Robert Evans? You can make all of the money if you can get a few million middle-class moms to love you.
50:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, I worked at this, this digital, 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.
51:01 Robert Evans? Yeah.
51:01 Speaker 04 And, uh, 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.
51:10 Robert 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. And then suddenly the whole country's pissed.
51:25 Speaker 04 Yeah. They're like, like, hey, listen, you can do that to people of color, but those are moms.
51:31 Robert Evans? Those are white moms. No, sir.
51:33 Speaker 04 White moms. That could be my mother.
51:37 Robert Evans? Yeah.
51:39 Robert Evans? Yeah. You know what else?
51:42 Speaker 05 Yeah. Where are you going with that? Where are you going with that, Robert? I thought you were gonna say, you know what else is your mom? That's where I thought you were going with that.
51:49 Robert Evans? You know what else is your mother? The products and services that support this podcast.
51:56 Speaker 01 Games on a break? Instead of doom scrolling, try rips on Underdog. Rip real player cards worth real money right there in the app. It's instant cash in the palm of your hand. Buy a digital pack, rip it open on your phone and reveal a real physical card. Football, basketball, Pokemon, yes, Pokemon and more. The best part? Packs start at just $5 and if you pull something you don't want to let go of just yet, have it shipped straight to your door. Want the cash? Sell it back instantly at 100% of its fair market value. No listing, no negotiating, no stranger asking if you'll trade it for a used jet ski, even though jet skis are super sick. Best part? There are some serious grails in the mix with maximum card values reaching up to
52:39 Speaker 01 $125,000 depending on your pack tier. You can also check the live odds and see what you could pull before you rip and what other cards are being pulled by fans. Download Underdog and get in on the chase. Get five free rips packs when you deposit $5. Real rips, real cards, real cash. Only on Underdog. Unleash your dog. 18 plus. Terms apply. Top grails are extremely rare.
53:03 Robert Evans? This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Devoto Dolutegravir Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devoto. Devoto is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devoto is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto.
53:27 Speaker 06 It is unknown if Devoto is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devoto without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devoto if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devoto and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.
54:02 Robert Evans? Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devoto.com or call 1-877-844-8872.
54:12 Robert Evans? We're back!
54:13 Speaker 05 So we've all just agreed that Matt is very funny. That was the discussion over the break.
54:19 Robert Evans? You made this one into a two-parter, Matt, so the audience can thank you for two episodes about Dr. Oz this week.
54:26 Speaker 04 All right.
54:27 Robert Evans? Or they can blame you. And if they're going to blame him, Matt's home address is...
54:34 Robert Evans? We love to dox our guests, don't we, Sophie?
54:36 Speaker 04 Dox me, baby!
54:38 Robert 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.
54:55 Speaker 04 Just appealing to the lowest common denominator, the stupidest human beings on earth.
55:00 Robert Evans? America's doctor, and if you look at the health of the average American, you can tell the quality of job he's done.
55:08 Speaker 04 Eat more bread. Everybody eat bread.
55:12 Robert 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.
55:17 Speaker 04 Stop defending Dr. Oz, Robert.
55:19 Robert Evans? I'm not gonna defend. I just love to be fair, you know?
55:22 Speaker 04 I know you do. You're very fair.
55:24 Robert Evans? Look, say what you will about Hitler.
55:27 Speaker 04 Say what you will. He was a vegetarian and that's good for the environment.
55:31 Robert Evans? The man cared about animal rights.
55:35 Robert 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
56:16 Robert Evans? tips from Dr. Oz. Real 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's 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.
56:36 Speaker 04 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.
56:47 Robert Evans? Yeah.
56:47 Speaker 04 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...
56:57 Robert Evans? Years of... Mostly dangerous, health-based content.
57:01 Speaker 04 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 is fucking wild.
57:15 Robert Evans? It's worth noting in terms of his bastardry that in and in 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.
57:32 Speaker 05 Oh, John of God.
57:33 Robert Evans? Yeah.
57:34 Speaker 04 Yeah. Oh, of of the of the Brazilian of gods.
57:38 Robert Evans? 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.
57:58 Speaker 04 Yeah.
57:59 Robert Evans? 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.
58:12 Speaker 04 Wow.
58:13 Robert Evans? This guy never gets half the following that he has if it's not for Oprah and Dr. Oz, so.
58:17 Speaker 04 Wow. Holy shit.
58:21 Robert Evans? 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 motherlode 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." He explains that transition as the product of frustration.
59:06 Robert Evans? "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.
59:32 Speaker 04 Oh, boy. 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.
1:00:02 Robert Evans? Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's going to get worse, you know? He, he, this is kind of the period, one of the things he starts to do in this period is he starts cutting back on his surgical practice and performing fewer surgeries.
1:00:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, because he's got to keep up all those TV dates.
1:00:16 Robert 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.
1:00:42 Speaker 04 Yeah. And, and in America, that is the ultimate marker of doing the right thing.
1:00:49 Robert Evans? Yeah. That's the only thing that tells you whether or not you're doing the right thing.
1:00:52 Speaker 04 Yeah. If you make a lot of money, then whatever you're doing is the right thing to do.
1:00:55 Robert Evans? Yeah.
1:00:56 Speaker 04 It's morally correct to make a lot of money.
1:00:59 Robert Evans? Yeah. Morally righteous, righteous wealth.
1:01:03 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:01:05 Robert Evans? You know what else is righteous, Matt?
1:01:08 Speaker 04 Is it the products and services?
1:01:11 Robert 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.
1:01:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's very nice. Here, here I thought you were just trying to get me to talk about products and services. Well, I, uh, thank you for having me on. Um, I have a product and or service called Pod Yourself a Gun. It's a Sopranos podcast and, uh, uh, yeah. If you like The Sopranos, or even if you don't, check it out on the, you know, wherever the podcast store is.
1:01:45 Robert Evans? Podcast. All right, well, 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, give him a good screaming.
1:02:16 Speaker 01 Games on a break? Don't doom scroll. Try rips on Underdog. Buy a digital pack, rip it open and reveal a real physical card. Football, basketball, even Pokemon. Packs start at just $5. Ship it straight to your door or sell it back instantly at full market value. Max value up to $125,000. Download Underdog and get in on the chase. Deposit $5, get five free packs. Real rips, real cards, real cash. Only on Underdog. Unleash your dog. 18 plus terms apply. Top grails are extremely rare.
1:02:47 Speaker 07 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
1:03:16 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
Previous It Could Happen Here Weekly 157 Next CZM Rewind: Part Two: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard Page updated November 6, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
