A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Dr. Phil： From Nice Guy to Nazi (with Aubrey Gordon)

00:00:00.000 It begs the question, what if you had limitless money and were also completely out of your mind?

00:00:10.840 Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity. I'm Matt Bernstein. Do you want to give me like

00:00:17.400 an I'm Aubrey Gordon? I'm Aubrey Gordon. Wow. I've been waiting my whole life for a

00:00:22.260 Aubrey Gordon maintenance phase, a bit fruity. That felt really good.

00:00:26.300 i'm really excited to be here buddy i'm so stoked i i told you beforehand i'm coming in so

00:00:32.560 fresh on this topic uh and i can't wait to hear everything you've got to tell me about it well

00:00:37.480 i have spent the last two days doing nothing not even sleep nothing but watching dr phil all i have

00:00:44.160 on dr phil is sort of like uh you know the sort of ambient kinds of events like bad baby getting

00:00:50.840 her start on his show uh the sort of like you teach people how to treat you kind of stuff and

00:00:58.420 like the general vibe that he's a guy who would maybe defend like the troubled teen industry or

00:01:05.040 something oh yeah he's sort of like a tough love kind of a guy seems to be his pick yourself up by

00:01:11.180 your bootstraps baby oh lord so dr phil the tv doctor put a pin in that that we all grew up with

00:01:19.320 in our homes has a new hobby, ice raids. Since the start of Trump's second term, Dr. Phil and

00:01:26.720 his camera crews have been attending immigration enforcement raids where modern-day Gestapo

00:01:32.000 kidnap human beings off the street and send them away for deportation. Dr. Phil insists he isn't

00:01:38.200 political, describing himself as, quote, the least political person I know. He has repeated that

00:01:44.760 claim over and over, including in a speech he gave at Trump's pre-election New York City rally

00:01:50.500 at Madison Square Garden, where he said he doesn't know or care much about politics.

00:01:55.760 Politico described Dr. Phil's frequent participation at ICE raids as, quote,

00:02:01.140 an unusual turn for a therapeutic media personality who got his big break with Oprah Winfrey and for

00:02:07.280 most of his career fastidiously avoided partisan politics. But having spent the last few days

00:02:13.980 taking a look at the entirety of the TV mogul's career from a bird's eye view, I'm not so sure

00:02:20.540 how unusual this turn is. Today, I want to look at Dr. Phil as one of the most ubiquitous artifacts

00:02:28.040 of the American entertainment industry in the 21st century and try to draw a line from the

00:02:33.720 carefully constructed, kind-hearted, but tough father of America figure he was in the early 2000s

00:02:39.900 to the open far right punisher he's become to do that i am so excited when i announced this episode

00:02:48.620 on the a bit fruity podcast instagram i was like i want to talk about dr phil but i don't know where

00:02:53.540 to start and everyone was like start with aubrey gordon aubrey gordon is the host of the podcast

00:03:03.440 maintenance phase which i think i've said this before last time we did an episode together but

00:03:07.800 maintenance phase was the podcast that i started listening to a few years ago that really made me

00:03:13.340 realize i wanted to enter the ring on this medium i think it's like the most elevated version of like

00:03:19.980 an analytical left-wing culture podcast rooted in compassion you are such an inspiration to me

00:03:27.540 and uh and i'm so happy that you're here oh buddy what a joy and likewise it is such a treat to be

00:03:33.800 here uh i can't wait to hear all of the garbage and i'll tell you this i already didn't was not

00:03:41.240 tracking the ice raid stuff and i feel like i already need to go like take a lap around the

00:03:46.820 block or something to just like get it out get it off uh i too have been hoodwinked by the dean

00:03:55.480 canes and the steven seagals who are doing the cosplaying and not the dr phils who are televising

00:04:02.500 the cosplaying my god if you would like to support the show you can do that over on patreon

00:04:08.660 cat ten barge and i are working on a bonus episode over there about eugenia cooney and the online

00:04:15.540 internet spectacle that follows her that i have been following for years and i'm deeply

00:04:20.160 confused by i am gonna be fascinated to hear that i'm gonna be fascinated to hear that

00:04:28.580 Aubrey, before we get into the chronology of Dr. Phil and try to make sense of where he's at based on who he was throughout the entirety of all of our lives, I just want to get your like broad strokes. How do you feel about Dr. Phil? What has his impact on your life been?

00:04:45.040 My intro to Dr. Phil was through the Oprah elevation of Dr. Phil in the I'm thinking late 90s, early 2000s, maybe. It seemed to me at the time pretty quickly got his own show. And what I remember about his persona at that time was that it was very much in line with the sort of like, hey, I love you. So I'm going to tell you the truth.

00:05:09.100 tough love kind of stuff the the refrain that i remember hearing a lot sort of surrounding dr phil

00:05:16.060 was that you teach people how to treat you which i don't think is terrible advice but i think once

00:05:22.240 you start applying that to multiple situations right if you're talking to someone who's in like

00:05:27.660 an abusive relationship yeah that may not actually be the frame you want to land on right if you're

00:05:33.420 talking to someone who's in like other kinds of like sticky or power loaded situations it may just

00:05:40.560 not work the way that uh he seems to propose so that it will work uh the vibe that i got from him

00:05:48.340 was also i would say like a backdrop of like cop energy right that there's something about the

00:05:55.600 close cropped hair and the big mustache and kind of like a lumbering guy in a suit right where

00:06:01.980 you're like oh hello detective very sort of the vibe um so i also it feels unsurprising to me

00:06:09.700 that he landed in like ice territory and in sort of these like cop adjacent uh frameworks or just

00:06:16.960 straight up cop frameworks because that definitely was like the energy that he was bringing yeah his

00:06:22.660 approach to psychology which again we have to put like heavy air quotes around all of this because

00:06:28.200 He's like, Dr. Phil is not a licensed practitioner of psychology and has not been for 20 years.

00:06:34.380 And we will talk about that.

00:06:36.060 Did you know that?

00:06:36.520 Oh, hey.

00:06:38.120 Oh, hey.

00:06:39.500 We're diving into the deep end.

00:06:41.800 It's very fun to come into this fresh.

00:06:44.040 I'll tell you that.

00:06:44.760 His approach to televised psychological advice is very much pick yourself up by your bootstraps.

00:06:52.220 And it's very capitalist in that way of like everything is in your control.

00:06:56.140 So every good thing that happens to you is a product of your own work. And every bad thing that happens to you is a product of something you're doing wrong, which I think is also, you know, not to get into the deep end too quickly, but it to me really makes sense how he ended up so committed to the ideology that he is in now.

00:07:13.780 Yeah, it's very individualistic, right? It's very American in its way, right? The sort of

00:07:21.140 bootstrapsiness of it all. And it is like, I think that we do a lot of lionizing of rugged

00:07:27.800 individualism and of doing it by yourself and of no one helped me when those things are generally

00:07:34.020 not true, right? Like most of the people who say no one helped me got a fair amount of help in one

00:07:39.340 form or another and are just inherently conservative ideologies right like the idea is you should be

00:07:46.240 primed not to need any help because we are not going to provide you with any help yeah yeah

00:07:51.280 exactly so again like conservative sort of political alignment makes a lot of sense like

00:07:55.880 tracks with his public persona to me shall we get into dr phil early life oh my god we haven't even

00:08:02.320 gotten into the lore let's go let's go dr phil or as he was known at the time philip mcgraw

00:08:10.860 was born in oklahoma in 1950 i just gotta say whenever i make these episodes about people who

00:08:19.900 like turned out to be far-right conservatives it's always like so this person was born in a

00:08:26.480 sundown town or like gwen stefani being born in orange county it's like yeah well i get it right

00:08:31.940 anyone who's been to orange county is like yeah yeah uh-huh he later moved to kansas with his dad

00:08:37.540 who was also a psychologist phil was a star football player in high school which got him

00:08:44.660 a scholarship into the university where he would get his bachelor's in psychology he went on to get

00:08:50.800 a master's and a phd also in psychology and briefly worked at his father's private practice

00:08:56.820 but it seems like from the beginning he always wanted to make more money than just like being

00:09:02.820 a private psychologist would allow and so in the mid 80s he starts selling self-help seminars

00:09:10.340 does he also sell timeshares it's worse he started the dr phil show

00:09:15.460 a television timeshare but before we get to the dr phil show in 1990 he co-founds a trial

00:09:26.180 consulting firm which i didn't know what a trial consulting firm was is it like jury consulting

00:09:31.420 what kind of consulting is he doing it's basically like these companies of psychologists usually who

00:09:38.080 will advise lawyers on like how to build a better case for their clients through the lens of

00:09:44.080 psychology i don't really know how valid the field is so i won't comment on that yeah i also don't

00:09:50.140 But I will say, if you had a mind to grift, I could see that this would be an appealing

00:09:57.800 field.

00:09:59.520 Do you know what I'm saying?

00:10:00.980 Like where you're like, oh, someone turned on the money spigot.

00:10:04.000 We're talking about trial attorneys, right?

00:10:07.220 Criminal trials famously are extremely expensive.

00:10:11.560 You're a consultant.

00:10:12.860 That's often a pretty big line item in budgets for criminal trials.

00:10:17.300 So, like, I could see that if you were like, wait, where's the money that you would go, oh, there's a lot of money over there.

00:10:24.260 Yeah, right.

00:10:24.920 You know who pays you a decent amount of money?

00:10:27.640 Clients who are who who need psychotherapy.

00:10:30.920 But you know who can pay you even more money?

00:10:32.920 Law firms.

00:10:34.100 Yeah, that's right.

00:10:35.080 That's right.

00:10:35.740 And while he was working as a trial consultant advising lawyers on how to build their case, who was one of his clients, Aubrey?

00:10:43.680 Uh-oh, who?

00:10:44.420 Oh, my God. 1.00

00:10:45.940 Was it fucking Oprah? 1.00

00:10:47.300 It was fucking Oprah. 1.00

00:10:48.540 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

00:10:49.780 Are you kidding me? 1.00

00:10:50.980 Yes.

00:10:52.120 Oh, no.

00:10:53.500 Dr. Phil's relationship with Oprah Winfrey began when he worked for her as a trial consultant.

00:11:01.480 Oprah was being sued in Texas for food libel.

00:11:04.660 Oh, sure.

00:11:06.320 This is the beef ranchers.

00:11:08.800 This is the beef ranchers.

00:11:10.160 So basically, Oprah was being sued by Big Beef for comments that she had made about mad cow disease that beef executives believed were responsible for the decline in beef sales, which I just noted on this on my outline.

00:11:27.200 LOL.

00:11:29.960 Yeah.

00:11:30.920 So my co-host, Michael Hobbs.

00:11:33.360 Who we love and who one day I will blackmail into doing this show with me.

00:11:37.040 Yes.

00:11:37.720 Make it happen.

00:11:40.160 he researched and did a whole episode on the uh oprah beef libel case four or five years ago and

00:11:48.300 my recollection was that she covered mad cow the mad cow outbreak on her show and one of the things

00:11:54.100 that she said was she was like well knowing this i'm never eating a burger again or something like

00:11:58.300 that that is like a thing that people say you know the sort of casual kind of hyperbole that

00:12:04.760 people use in everyday conversation and then she got sued for it for beef sales taking a hit rather 0.52

00:12:12.000 than beef sales taking a hit because there is an outbreak associated with your product right right

00:12:17.580 but oprah did win that case with the help she says of dr phil oprah was so obsessed with dr phil

00:12:27.620 by the end of that case and so satisfied with the work that he had done for her that she started

00:12:32.660 having him on her show the oprah winfrey show in 1998 first introducing him to the world as quote

00:12:39.380 one of the best psychologists she's ever run into i think from the beginning it's very interesting

00:12:45.440 that all of this is motivated by like rich people making each other rich yeah you know i was just

00:12:51.560 um doing some research into uh gwyneth paltrow and tracy anderson the tracy anderson method

00:12:57.380 and was thinking about how much tracy anderson's a personal trainer who has i think really made a

00:13:02.580 name for herself by pushing folks really really really hard and uh being uh i would say at times

00:13:10.740 mean to them uh and i think a lot of this stuff is also like formed by the unique wants and needs

00:13:18.660 of public figures right that like oprah's like i was in this trial and this psychologist was very

00:13:25.100 helpful to me in this multi-million dollar trial right or gwyneth paltrow's like i'm surrounded by

00:13:32.040 people who say yes to me it feels refreshing to have someone who says no or who's like really

00:13:37.420 strict with me or whatever and i think that folks then go well i have a platform i could platform

00:13:42.820 this person right without really thinking about like how does that actually play out in the broader

00:13:48.860 population like nor to normal people to people who are not in a beef libel trial to people who

00:13:55.800 are not running goop aubrey you know who among us hasn't been in a beef libel trial oh there but

00:14:03.020 by the grace of god go i living in a glass steakhouse over here not about to cast a stone

00:14:10.280 oprah begins to feature dr phil in weekly segments on her show where he would give advice to people

00:14:16.960 struggling in relationships here's what i want to ask you because you're somewhat of an oprah

00:14:21.920 expert yourself i feel like a big part of oprah's legacy now is that she launched the careers of so

00:14:28.800 many dubious figures quack scientists wellness gurus and now right-wing leaders like dr phil

00:14:35.760 dr oz why do you think she was so attracted to these people i think a couple of things one again

00:14:45.000 I do think some of this is like the unique sort of public figure-ness of it all. I think some of

00:14:52.200 it is that she is a businesswoman and that launching more careers expands her business 0.91

00:14:59.040 reach and her influence as well. And I also think like, listen, I think this comes up with

00:15:05.120 Dr. Oz as well. I assume it will come up with Dr. Phil, that when you are making, right, like when

00:15:11.780 people talk about Saturday Night Live as an hour and a half show that happens once a week. They're

00:15:16.400 like, it is a slog. It is like famously one of the most difficult shows to put together. These are

00:15:22.260 people who are putting together five hour long shows a week. And I think even if you are doing

00:15:31.380 your level best, booking guests for five hours of TV each week means you are just going to need

00:15:39.940 such a quantity of people that some of those people are going to end up being not good right

00:15:47.340 like you just sort of are going to end up having some folks who are like if the priority is just

00:15:53.020 push out a ton of content all the time like your quality control is going to have to drop i think

00:16:00.160 the thing that i find perplexing about oprah is continuing to platform right like not just having

00:16:04.940 Dr. Oz on once but having him on I think it was like dozens of times that she had Dr. Oz on right

00:16:11.580 many many many times with Dr. Phil many many many times with like lots of sort of quacky people

00:16:17.980 that part I don't totally understand I mean I think part of that has to do with like she's

00:16:22.220 Oprah I don't know how many people are saying no to Oprah if she gets excited about somebody

00:16:26.240 I think some of that is having been a very wealthy person for a really long time and

00:16:30.660 having lost some amount of touch with like, what do actual people actually need? Yeah,

00:16:36.240 I think it's sort of rangy. What do you think? Oh, God, I mean, I agree with all of that. I also

00:16:41.880 think, you know, Oprah is someone who I don't know, I look at a lot of this through the lens

00:16:48.340 of class. And I think Oprah, despite all of her, you know, endearment to the American public for

00:16:54.460 how empathetic and compassionate she is on her show and whatever, like, she just went to Jeff

00:16:59.900 bezos's wedding you know yeah yes yes like france or wherever it was so i think this is someone who

00:17:06.540 is loyal over anything else to capital and i think a lot of these people she was surrounding

00:17:14.020 herself with were too and they were able to do it together yeah that makes a ton of sense to me

00:17:19.200 so anyway dr phil does well on the oprah show and dr phil the show airs as a standalone talk show

00:17:26.960 in 2002 produced by oprah i grabbed like a statistics bit from the wikipedia page about

00:17:35.880 the dr phil show because it really is stunning how popular this show gets by 2008 the only talk

00:17:43.240 show more popular than dr phil was the oprah winfrey show on december 11th 2018 dr phil was

00:17:49.720 the top syndicated show with a 2.9 live plus same day national nielsen rating ranking first among

00:17:56.380 talk shows for the 117th consecutive week his ranking improved and by 2020 he was in the 22nd

00:18:03.540 spot on the forbes list with earnings of 65 and a half million dollars for the year how much of

00:18:09.740 that rating boost is just being played in every nail salon and every like uh oil change waiting

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00:20:20.680 okay now let's get back to the episode so i want to talk a little bit about the dr phil show actually

00:20:30.180 more than a little bit about The Dr. Phil Show. And I have curated what I'm calling in the outline

00:20:35.460 The Dr. Phil Show Selected Works. I have pulled a number of episodes that we are going to talk

00:20:42.040 about that I see as representative of the show's ethos at large. And before I talk about those

00:20:48.500 episodes with you, I want to take a pin out of the doctor in Dr. Phil. And note here that Dr. Phil

00:20:56.680 lost his license to practice psychology, which he held in Texas in 2006. He stopped renewing it

00:21:03.120 because he had a show at that point and he was based in California. And he was like, I don't

00:21:06.780 need this Texas license to practice psychology, so I don't need to be a doctor anymore. He has

00:21:11.420 never held a license in California where the show is filmed. So on a technical level, he was never

00:21:17.820 providing psychological diagnostics on that show. He was just giving glorified peer-to-peer advice.

00:21:24.340 And I know that sounds like a technicality, but I think it turns out to be very important as the behavior that he exhibits on that show would be derided as extremely unethical by the medical community at large, you know?

00:21:37.660 Yeah, that was what I was going to say is like, I think that not being licensed means that there's nothing you can threaten to take away from him on the grounds of ethics, on the grounds of, you know, just sort of like how he ran that show in general.

00:21:51.180 Again, I don't know that it's possible to run a sort of, like, psychology show or, like, a therapy show or whatever that is five days a week and stay within the ethical bounds of the profession, right?

00:22:06.040 Like, I don't know that you can do all those things.

00:22:09.000 At least not, like, I don't think that would yield the result that he wanted, which was just to get people to watch.

00:22:13.880 yeah if you were watching just actual psychological advice all the time like it might not be as

00:22:18.800 interesting as what the dr phil show turned out to be yeah i think that's right i think that's

00:22:23.440 right he wanted to make jerry springer and that's exactly what he did yeah 100 the other thing i was

00:22:28.400 thinking of while we were talking about this was like uh dr drew and the celebrity rehab of it all

00:22:33.060 right that that was sort of another chapter of just like oh you made a tv show uh and i'm not

00:22:40.280 sure that you can do that super ethically on this topic at that scale, right? If you're trying to

00:22:47.460 compete with at the time, Jerry Springer, you're coming out of the era of like Ricky Lake, Jenny

00:22:54.680 Jones, and just like a sort of era of daytime talk shows that was like, find low income people who

00:23:01.860 you can goad into physically fighting each other on stage, right was sort of the vibe of like a lot

00:23:07.240 of daytime talk shows. Like, it seems to me that what he was doing was trying to do that sort of

00:23:13.380 thing with this little like patina of like, actually, I'm certified. Actually, I'm educated

00:23:18.860 on this. Actually, you're in good hands in some way or another, while still doing the thing that

00:23:24.120 people absolutely rightly derided Jerry Springer for doing. Exactly. And I was putting together my

00:23:31.360 notes for the show and i was like oh like this was just jerry springer this was just maury but

00:23:37.580 the difference is he called it dr phil at least with the jerry springer show they were honest

00:23:42.300 about what they were doing yeah and jerry springer was very much like yeah i'm a dirt bag what are

00:23:48.160 you gonna do about right like he just sort of owned that and again like i am definitely not

00:23:54.160 here to be a defender of jerry springer but i do think there's like a level of honesty

00:23:59.060 in just sort of being upfront about who you are and what you're doing, right? I think the same

00:24:06.080 is true of like a lot of reality TV. A lot of my beloved reality TV is a similar sort of thing that

00:24:11.540 like when things try to get a little highbrow is when you get sort of hoodwinked into thinking

00:24:16.620 it might be safer than it is. It might be more respectful than it is. It might be more consent

00:24:22.460 based than it is. All of that kind of stuff, right? Shall we get into the selected works?

00:24:27.280 Let's do it.

00:24:28.520 So the first episode that I wanted to bring up was the episode of Dr. Phil that has actually stayed with me in all of the years since I saw it as a child because it was really fundamental to the way that I grew up thinking about eating disorders.

00:24:45.200 So, you know, for the next however many minutes we talk about this, there is, you know, a general content warning for eating disorders because that's what this episode was about.

00:24:53.260 This episode of Dr. Phil, which aired in 2008, chronicled the struggles of a woman named Amy Moore, who was a woman in her late 20s.

00:25:03.880 She had anorexia, she had bulimia, and she also struggled with binge eating.

00:25:10.140 And I remember watching this episode during a time where I was really fixated on eating disorders.

00:25:16.440 you know i was like a young like very very skinny like naturally scrawny gay boy who was made fun of

00:25:23.480 a lot and i just had a you know hyper fixation on my body and bodies in general as i think a lot of

00:25:29.340 kids do and all i remember from the show was the imagery and how it made me feel they filmed this

00:25:37.980 woman in her home very graphically engaging in all of the behaviors associated with her eating

00:25:45.680 disorders did they show her purging they showed her they showed her binging and they showed her

00:25:50.460 purging holy so yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna just pause for a second and say my earlier read on

00:25:57.380 this was it would be really tough to do things within sort of ethical the ethical bounds of

00:26:03.380 being a psychologist uh and run this show i feel like what you're telling me in this show is just

00:26:08.760 just hurling ethics out the window oh a hundred percent just like gleefully throwing them away

00:26:16.680 because both as a person who has dealt with eating disorders of my own and as a person who is a fat

00:26:23.580 person who shows up on camera periodically the public response to seeing a body that people

00:26:30.480 don't automatically clock as desirable is like one of the most horror show things you can sort of

00:26:37.840 experience i kind of think just in terms of like interpersonal behavior with strangers it's really

00:26:44.940 astonishing so and uh for a person dealing with this much disordered eating and this much

00:26:52.400 like of a psychological load to carry piling that onto that person with i'm presuming no support

00:26:59.540 after the show airs is not just depicting their situation without care it's i would say actively

00:27:07.760 putting them in a much worse position for their eating disorder to worsen a thousand percent i

00:27:13.760 mean like so many of the subjects of the show they they depicted her like like you would look

00:27:18.020 at a zoo animal you know there were videos of her in her own kitchen it like almost cartoonishly 0.73

00:27:24.840 like screaming at the food like yelling at people around her it felt like a caricature of a

00:27:31.700 caricature of a person with an eating disorder not to mention she was obviously very very very

00:27:37.280 very very very very very thin and they really really focused on showing her body in the most

00:27:42.700 you know contorted lighting and like making her sure a lot of ribs a lot of ribs jutting out bones

00:27:50.240 a lot of yes all of that sort of aesthetic exactly and they like recorded her like yelling

00:27:55.280 at herself that she was fat like it was it was a it was a it was a freak show and i remember

00:28:01.360 growing up knowing people with eating disorders you know a girl in my grade a friend of my mom

00:28:06.920 and this segment made me more like as a child it made me more judgmental of them well and it's also

00:28:13.320 like if you situate this wouldn't you say it was 2007 2008 yeah so 2008 is four years after the

00:28:21.860 attorney general of the u.s richard carmona uh told the press that in terms of threats to national

00:28:28.400 security uh that terrorism was the threat from without and that obesity was the threat from

00:28:33.880 within right this is also uh around the time that michelle obama starts talking about the let's move

00:28:40.200 campaign this is around the time that um stories about the quote-unquote obesity epidemic are at

00:28:46.720 a fever pitch right this is also the era of like treating jessica simpson like a fat person right

00:28:54.440 like this is i would argue like a decade of like national enforced body dysmorphia right like just

00:29:02.680 like as a as an agenda so the idea of taking someone who has taken that message to heart

00:29:09.080 too much and also ridiculing that person there's like a darkness there's like a real

00:29:16.840 deep deep deep darkness in that well and there were so many dr phil episodes that focused on

00:29:21.760 weight loss and fat people sure and then you went on the other hand and you were like you're too

00:29:25.740 thin you know he really attacked it from all sides yeah again i'm just thinking about like

00:29:31.760 the sort of soup strainer mustache and the lumbering guy in the big suit being like the

00:29:37.300 arbiter of like bodies and particularly women's bodies and i'm like just time out everybody

00:29:42.700 let's just take a minute take a breather what are we doing here what's the plan

00:29:46.420 and like you said there's such a thin veneer on all of these episodes of care you know you have

00:29:53.120 this man with this like homely southern accent and he's like why are you afraid of food and he's

00:30:01.360 like pretending to be invested in like the well-being of his guests but it was very clearly

00:30:06.640 you know what i would call like humilitatingment yeah yes but you could feel good about the fact

00:30:12.020 that you were judging and and disgusted by the people on screen because you had this man who

00:30:16.800 you were identifying with pretending to care about them right i mean so like if we're painting this

00:30:22.060 cultural picture of the time also this is the era of american idol where they would spend like

00:30:29.100 multiple episodes on the initial terrible auditions this was the William Hung era this was

00:30:36.580 the like we are going to spend weeks showing you terrible singers who think they're good

00:30:41.240 and dunking on regular people who thought they had a shot at this thing that is like regular

00:30:47.600 people might have a shot right that this kind of just like plucking people out of obscurity

00:30:52.600 just to make fools of them in public was sort of a pastime at the time so it makes sense that that

00:31:00.740 would like if that's already our lens when you're like watching tv is like who's gonna be a real

00:31:05.560 dummy that i can make fun of today then like of course stories like this also get slotted into

00:31:11.460 that lens right oh god before we move on to my next selected work i do want to note that amy

00:31:19.340 died 10 years later and you know i'm not gonna sit here and be like it was dr phil but you know

00:31:27.320 i'd be hard-pressed to argue that dr phil like helped interestingly like i watched all of these

00:31:33.160 in the early years of youtube because they were uploaded to dr phil's channel and they were

00:31:37.080 widely widely viewed this particular episode has been scrubbed from all of his media channels

00:31:42.940 because i think that they were probably like yeah this one's this one's bad this one's bad this one

00:31:47.680 i think we gave the game away a little bit with how reckless we were yeah but it still stayed with

00:31:53.620 me and i remember finding her obituary through reddit when i looked this up good lord the one

00:32:00.100 thing that i will say that your listeners may or may not be aware of is that uh it is a widely

00:32:05.220 known thing if you even just sort of dip a toe into eating disorder world one of the first things

00:32:11.720 that you will hear um is about eating disorders having one of the highest death tolls of any

00:32:17.080 mental illness i just want to really underscore that this was not only knowable to dr phil but

00:32:21.760 likely already known to him right in going into this episode if there was anyone on his staff

00:32:28.400 who sort of knew the world of eating disorders if he himself had treated people with eating disorders

00:32:34.700 you know that you are on a high wire right that you are trying to balance all of these things

00:32:41.820 without this person just tipping off into the abyss right so to play with fire this way in a

00:32:49.200 way that is like someone else's mental health is at stake in a way that really could conceivably

00:32:55.460 lead to or contribute to their death is uh i just want to really really really underscore

00:33:01.760 that like dying is part of the conversation when you talk about treatment of uh eating disorders 0.98

00:33:07.340 and like he wouldn't he would have known that is my guess he would have known that god damn

00:33:13.300 should we should we move on to the next selected work let's do it this one's a little lighter

00:33:17.900 obviously dr phil kind of like runs the gamut of like really really awful to like awful but

00:33:23.620 kind of dumb this falls into the latter which is fun so this is a segment from a dr phil prime

00:33:31.660 time special family first from 2004 and the segment begins with dr phil looking into the 0.67

00:33:38.940 camera and saying actually i'm gonna send this to you because i want you to read it am i gonna say

00:33:43.720 it yes great he says the most important signs parents need to look for could you be raising

00:33:51.020 a criminal what does that even mean uh jaywalker i'm assuming it's jaywalking

00:33:56.860 i'm assuming it's about returning your library books on time could you be raising a criminal

00:34:04.100 so this segment is about eric a nine-year-old who is filmed in his home by dr phil's camera

00:34:12.420 cruise while his mother kind of tearfully narrates about how eric hurts animals how eric

00:34:19.220 hits his sister and seems to not feel remorse about it and the one that they really fixate on

00:34:25.200 i think for obvious like tv humilitatingment reasons is that this kid wipes poop on the walls 0.97

00:34:30.660 oh jesus hell do they do bedwetting is bedwetting a part of the you beat me to it did i really well

00:34:37.200 i'm just thinking about the like serial killer checklist right the sort of psychopathy checklist

00:34:41.400 you're beating me to it sorry i've watched simply too much criminal minds so you know this mom is

00:34:50.000 talking to dr phil about how she fears leaving this nine-year-old alone she says she feel she

00:34:56.180 fears leaving him alone with knives and i'm like you probably shouldn't leave any nine-year-old

00:35:00.060 alone with knives like that's not that uncommon of a fear to have uh but you know she's saying

00:35:05.320 she's terrified and she wants dr phil's help to save her marriage and family and son dr phil's

00:35:11.680 diagnosis based on like footage from his film crew spending time with the family is that the boy needs

00:35:18.440 more male approval and essentially blames the dad who's sitting there on stage and the dad is like

00:35:24.480 what what what what what me you know oh my god and then and then he goes into you guessed it

00:35:34.340 the 14 characteristics of a serial killer he says quote your son has nine of the 14

00:35:41.560 jeffrey dahmer had seven and then he flashes side by side photos of this nine-year-old 0.94

00:35:48.800 and jeffrey dahmer surprise you're raising a gay cannibal what are we doing truly what are we doing 0.85

00:35:56.880 like here's the thing wait before you tell me what the thing yeah tell me tell me tell me tell me i 0.97

00:36:01.320 screenshotted from that episode three of the 14 serial killer traits do you want to read them

00:36:05.860 uh male intelligent and bed wedding male intelligent and bed wedding well great i

00:36:13.380 have two of the three male and bed wedding i was gonna i was gonna say this is bad news for so many

00:36:19.360 adult men that i know uh-oh so what do you make of this look i think you can look at this from

00:36:26.360 like one of two directions right either you can look at this from the perspective of like we're

00:36:30.380 making a tv show and we're trying to decide what's best for the audience or you can look at this from

00:36:34.840 the perspective of we're dealing with this family system and this kid and we have to decide what's

00:36:38.980 best for this kid either way if you're deciding hey what's best for this kid first of all i one

00:36:45.360 million percent understand how a parent with a child that they were afraid of would be very

00:36:51.540 quickly at wit's end and would be trying like just reaching for kind of anything uh to figure

00:36:57.940 out how to address this kind of situation that feels very much like a there but for the grace

00:37:02.220 of God go I kind of situation, far be it from me to judge. And in the mental health care system

00:37:09.400 that we have in this country, not a lot of great options for treatment for lots and lots of folks,

00:37:15.500 right? You would be hard pressed to say, ah, yes, the best thing for this nine year old with

00:37:23.120 purported violent tendencies is to go on TV and be sort of, as you say, sort of exhibited as like

00:37:31.560 a freak show right in this in this case again i can't fathom that that is the best thing for the

00:37:37.440 kid i can't fathom that it uh was the best thing for the parents but also even if you're just

00:37:42.920 looking at it from the tv side okay you want to create something that's instructive to your

00:37:47.860 audience what is instructive to your audience about this that again hasn't already been on like

00:37:53.940 40 episodes of law and order svu or what right like it is not as if this sort of traits of a

00:38:00.000 serial killer stuff hadn't already been hammered into the ground at this point. So I just it's

00:38:05.540 really difficult to imagine what the value proposition of this is aside from salaciousness

00:38:13.560 ratings, all of that at the expense of a family system that's genuinely struggling and at the

00:38:18.340 expense of a kid who very clearly has some kind of psychological something going on.

00:38:24.320 You know, I included this one because it's absurd and awful for all the reasons you've stated. But I also think the focus on criminality is so interesting. And really, like, I'm trying to pick up these, like, breadcrumbs, right, of this, like, conservative ideology that's flowing through his career the entire time.

00:38:43.660 and this framing of could you be raising a criminal as if criminal is an identity marker

00:38:50.320 and something that like you know something that some kids are biologically destined to become

00:38:55.480 and stay forever right this sort of connects back to there's a long gross history in criminology

00:39:02.640 of like race science playing a big role there right um the the big example that i always go

00:39:09.000 back to is a criminologist from 1800s i believe named cesare lombroso who believed that there

00:39:14.360 was a subspecies of humans called homo criminalis who were defined by wide noses and sloping brows

00:39:22.520 you're like got it hey got message received champ right so it is it really is sort of historically

00:39:30.360 sort of a hop skip and a jump from this kind of like are criminals born this way to just like

00:39:36.800 straight up race science and like fodder for eugenics kind of stuff dr phil also tries to

00:39:44.300 really involve himself in sort of the the medical processes of struggling celebrities because

00:39:51.080 what could be better for ratings than that he tries to like visit britney spears in rehab to

00:39:58.480 what end was he he was just like going to say hi or he was trying to get her on the show or he was

00:40:03.120 probably trying to get her to like come on the show there isn't any footage to my knowledge of

00:40:08.420 this happening but it's just like he visited her at her rehab or in her hospital room or something

00:40:14.140 this is the buzz cut umbrella attack era of britney spears yes is that right okay gotcha

00:40:20.160 the people representing her were not happy about this at all but someone that he does successfully

00:40:25.180 get on his show in 2016, I believe, is Shelley Duvall. My love! You didn't know about this?

00:40:33.460 No! I love Shelley Duvall. What? No! When Shelley Duvall later in her life was struggling with,

00:40:41.420 you know, mental illness and paranoia, Dr. Phil gets her to come on his show in a segment he

00:40:49.200 called from Hollywood star to near isolation, helping The Shining's Shelley Duvall. He frames

00:40:56.340 this interview as like this, you know, previously famous and beloved actress has been living in

00:41:02.080 isolation for years, which to my understanding was true. But then he's like, we need to help her.

00:41:08.740 He says, quote, this was a woman forgotten by the world, and we just could not walk away from her.

00:41:15.480 like he really positions himself in all of these situations throughout the entirety of his show

00:41:19.800 as like some sort of like gandhi figure in a way that even like real i would say and especially

00:41:24.600 real therapists and psychologists don't because that's not how psychotherapy works totally and

00:41:30.860 also like there are writers on his show he is still presuming like i'm presuming he's an executive

00:41:36.180 producer as the host of the show even if writers are writing lines for you you can still push back

00:41:41.920 and go hey i don't think this is quite it the the process of making a show is an inherently

00:41:46.400 collaborative one and so you're in a constant state of like giving each other feedback and

00:41:50.400 all of this kind of stuff a woman forgotten by the world is so needlessly mean and also

00:41:57.760 like clearly needling someone who used to be a public fake do you know what i'm saying like

00:42:02.240 just like well and it's i i actually have a really big issue with this in general when you see

00:42:08.680 you know people who were at one point very famous public figures who then become reclusive whether

00:42:15.460 by their own decision or they have some medical problems mental or physical you know there's this

00:42:21.940 framing of like oh like we let them go but it's like no you don't know this person you as you as

00:42:27.780 a stranger and perhaps a former fan don't have an obligation or a right to like stalk someone

00:42:34.800 whose movie you loved and see how they're doing medically well and we're like decades in now to

00:42:42.380 like a very clear very public understanding that when famous people are asked about their fame

00:42:48.360 they're like it's bad i don't like it it feels bad people are boundaryless i'm afraid for my

00:42:56.160 safety in some baseline ways right like i think there is um part of this like a woman forgotten

00:43:01.200 by the world that is like uh presuming that there's not some rational decision making that

00:43:06.160 goes into deciding to step away exactly from public life it's like i i didn't forget shelly

00:43:12.180 duvall i'm just leaving her alone right she decided to do something else and i'm deciding

00:43:18.360 to let her yeah this is a really painful watch that i honestly only watch like 10 minutes of

00:43:24.620 it's dr phil just kind of like poking and prodding what seemed to be her delusions and letting her

00:43:32.020 just kind of like talk and talk and she's clearly not well dr phil just continues to like be like

00:43:38.000 well explain that and elaborate on that and oh are they in the room with us right now like that 0.99

00:43:41.680 kind of shit for an hour and it and it just sucks and he was widely criticized for doing this 0.97

00:43:48.920 interview good because it again it's one of these examples that it kind of gives the game away it's 0.99

00:43:53.720 like oh there's no care here there's just exploitation for capital for profit that's

00:43:59.280 all this is yeah that's right and it's like how far away are we now from just fully like

00:44:05.680 the national inquirer or fully like beach body garbage right like it's just full sort of like

00:44:12.820 tabloid style exploitation is what it feels like i want to take a break from the show to give a

00:44:20.420 shout out to Ground News for sponsoring this episode and truly just being a great service.

00:44:25.320 A big part of my job is reaching people where they're at information-wise, and a big part of

00:44:31.180 figuring that out is understanding their information diet and my own. You know, a straightforward event

00:44:37.720 can be reported, as we all know, in a lot of different ways depending on the ideological goal

00:44:43.520 of the people who are publishing that story. For example, a trans woman running in the London

00:44:49.440 Marathon could be reported as, as it was in the New York Post, trans runner beats 14,000 women

00:44:56.060 in London Marathon. Or it could be reported as it was by the advocate, trans marathoner places

00:45:02.380 6,159th in women's category. This is a real story. She really did come in 6,159th place.

00:45:14.960 And there was so much outrage that she was pressured to apologize to the London Marathon itself and offered to return her participation medal.

00:45:24.740 Are eggs cheaper yet?

00:45:26.060 Anyway, this is where Ground News comes in.

00:45:28.780 Ground News is a website and app that aggregates all different news articles about a single story.

00:45:34.980 And organizes their left, right, and center biases, gives you information about the owners of the platforms publishing those stories and any conflicts of interest therein, and so many more news transparency tools that make it easier to understand your own information diet and maybe your dad's or your brother's.

00:45:55.100 Ground News has been a really helpful tool for me in understanding how our reality, how our shared reality has gotten so fractured, especially in the last couple of years, based on how people are reading about the same events.

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00:46:31.220 Thanks so much to Ground News, and now let's get back to the episode.

00:46:36.660 What I want to get to next is, you've been waiting for it, we've arrived, bahad, bahabi.

00:46:45.020 It's upon us!

00:46:46.080 If you are not familiar with the cultural artifact of Bahad Behabi, Bahad Behabi, I can't stop pronouncing that.

00:46:55.420 I really, I really love your commitment to this bit.

00:46:58.820 Bahad Behabi is the rapper name for the woman at the time, girl named Danielle Bregoli, who at the time she goes on Dr. Phil is an unknown to the world 13 year old.

00:47:14.040 her mother takes her onto dr phil to try to rectify her behavior which included stealing and

00:47:21.000 quote twerking sure you gotta get that kid in line she's twerking when danielle is having her

00:47:31.320 interview with dr phil about how she's kind of unruly and you know acting out in all these ways

00:47:36.180 the audience is kind of jeering at her at which point she coins the iconic catch me outside

00:47:43.060 how about that the public's understanding of bad behavior really started there and then evolved 0.73

00:47:50.740 into her spinning this into a career kind of as a media mogul she has a number of successful rap 1.00

00:47:56.920 hits she starts like a makeup line to my understanding she's extraordinarily wealthy now 1.00

00:48:02.280 she's beefing with travis barker's daughter yeah she's beefing with alabama barker the the daughter 1.00

00:48:09.700 in law to Kourtney Kardashian. These people are too young for me to have any business 1.00

00:48:15.580 being invested in that. But notable to Dr. Phil, what I will say, and what I think a lot of people

00:48:21.580 don't know or include in their memory of this woman's come up, was that after she appears on

00:48:28.260 the show, Dr. Phil sends her to Turnabout Ranch, which was a troubled teen camp in Utah, where

00:48:36.800 she later said she was abused in the form of not being allowed to sleep for three days straight

00:48:42.860 standing outside in the cold and having to pick up horse feces for hours as a 13 year old she

00:48:50.240 watched staff physically restrain kids who tried to escape from this troubled teen camp and while

00:48:56.680 she was staying there a murder occurred when jesus one of the fellow you can't even really

00:49:04.120 call them like campers or student like you're essentially child prisoners at these troubled

00:49:09.580 teen camps someone trying to escape killed a staff member by bludgeoning them i will say this

00:49:17.380 even in the absence of a murder even in the absence of all these sorts of things uh i have

00:49:23.840 number of friends who went to facilities that were part of the quote-unquote troubled teen industry

00:49:30.360 Do you want to like talk a little bit about what those are for people who don't know?

00:49:34.060 Yeah, the idea is essentially that like, this was particularly big in the 2000s and into the 2010s.

00:49:41.200 It also stretches back to the 90s and 80s from the DNA of sort of scared straight kind of programs.

00:49:46.640 But the troubled teen industry is something that Paris Hilton has actually spoken out about quite a bit.

00:49:52.780 it is uh for the most part i think the most uh well-known facilities are essentially like boot

00:49:59.040 camps where you send kids who are acting out who are having behavioral issues often uh just

00:50:06.260 anecdotally i will say from the people in my life those are like queer kids whose parents uh were

00:50:12.060 opposed to them coming out those were kids who were dealing with like really significant trauma

00:50:17.300 or had experienced sexual assault and were acting out as a result of that because they didn't know

00:50:21.320 how to process it right these were kids who had really significant underlying issues and the way

00:50:27.400 that that was showing up was through acting out and i think the sort of cultural narrative at the

00:50:33.480 time was you have to address the behavior and the idea was these kids are just acting this way

00:50:38.440 because nobody's told them no and they're kind of soft and like they just really have to get out of 0.98

00:50:43.080 the real world and have some people who don't take their shit and uh kids would get sent away to these 0.97

00:50:48.080 residential programs um where you know people will say it sort of later came out i would argue 0.98

00:50:53.460 it came out at the time but no one was listening to the kids at the troubled teen camps um that

00:50:58.800 there was a profound abuse happening in those spaces i will say as someone who both attended

00:51:05.480 and has done some research into fat camps i think there are some really meaningful through lines

00:51:10.160 there which is like you have already proven that you're not willing to try in sort of the perception

00:51:16.820 in both cases, right? That fat kids are not willing to try. Like if you just put some effort 0.86

00:51:21.620 into it, you'd be thin. If you just put some effort into it, you would be acting better or

00:51:26.140 behaving more. And the response to that is sort of deeply incurious, right? From adults. And it

00:51:33.840 presumes that the issue is that you haven't been punished enough. It's carceral mindset.

00:51:39.000 One million percent. It's you will fix the thing that you've done wrong, whether that's be fat,

00:51:44.100 whether that is be a traumatized child who acts out whether whether it's you know in the case of

00:51:50.900 prisons like you've committed a crime these things will be rectified through punishment through

00:51:56.320 forced labor and in the case of troubled teen camps where dr phil was known to send many of

00:52:02.920 his guests their children and again this is another through line to like where this man ends up which

00:52:09.940 is like steeped in conservative ideology because this was his ideology in psychology where it's

00:52:15.240 like some things you just have to punish out of people you just you just have to throw kids in

00:52:20.980 labor camps in the freezing cold woods in utah also i will just say if you dear listener like

00:52:26.940 me are an adult without children i just want to return you to the concept of like what a 13 year

00:52:32.700 old actually is 13 year olds are in middle school i will say i know a handful of 13 year olds from

00:52:39.880 friends kids and such they are still very much into pokemon cards they're still like they are

00:52:45.460 children so this idea that you need to first of all just like i think there are kids for whom

00:52:52.680 going to a sleepaway camp at 13 is like too much much less this kind of gnarly garbage right it's

00:53:01.860 really sort of stomach turning to think that this was like a thing that folks convinced themselves

00:53:06.620 at a cultural level was not just worth doing but was laudable and was like for the greater good

00:53:15.460 to treat kids this way is it's genuinely sort of stomach turning to me i bring up the murder

00:53:21.820 because well if a murder occurred while she's there obviously we have to bring it up but also

00:53:26.460 because like there was press around that murder there was like widespread understanding that that

00:53:30.900 murder at Turnabout Ranch had happened. And yet, a couple years later, Dr. Phil sends another

00:53:37.420 person from his show to that very same ranch. In 2019, he films an episode with a 17-year-old

00:53:44.080 named Hannah Archuleta, who had committed the grave sin of struggling with mental illness

00:53:50.060 and suicidal thoughts because she had a terminally ill mother.

00:53:54.580 troubled teen industry for someone whose mom is on is slowly dying in front of her it's it's

00:54:04.200 actually you can't even exaggerate how evil it is but it does kind of get worse so sorry no it's

00:54:13.360 fine i'm just it's uh it's a rare thing given the nature of the work that i do the show that

00:54:20.280 mike and i make and sort of the waters that you and i both kind of swim in that something is like

00:54:25.340 dramatically worse than i thought it was gonna be yeah this is dramatically worse than i thought it

00:54:31.840 was gonna be for dr phil good lord so according to the lawsuit that hannah's family would later

00:54:37.780 file against dr phil dr phil took hannah's dad into his office before they started filming

00:54:43.980 and told him that he thought hannah should go to the turnabout ranch immediately after they

00:54:49.540 stopped filming, shouldn't even go home. She should be put in a vehicle and sent to this

00:54:53.620 troubled teen camp right after filming at his studio in Los Angeles. He said he would pay for

00:54:58.880 it and provide transportation, which he did for all of the people. It seems that he sent from his

00:55:04.340 show to these camps. And Hannah went. Hannah would end up being sexually assaulted twice by a male

00:55:12.500 staff member at Turnabout Ranch. And when she spoke up about it, she was, according to a Washington

00:55:18.080 Post article about this case, quote, punished, forced to pick up horse manure, sleep on a wooden

00:55:23.560 plank, verbally abused and deprived of sleep. It has been alleged that Dr. Phil was being

00:55:31.040 financially compensated by the trouble teen industry and perhaps by Turnabout Ranch by

00:55:36.560 sending his TV guests to them. We don't know that and I can't say it for sure, but it's been kind of

00:55:42.200 hinted at in these lawsuits that he was being motivated by something to continue sending kids

00:55:47.620 there i would argue it doesn't even matter because whether or not he was being paid by them first of

00:55:54.200 all he thought this was the best course of action and it's also like he's being paid by this entire

00:55:59.140 process he gets to make his big show he gets to you know get all of the ratings and he basically

00:56:04.980 gets to like throw these kids in the slammer after he's done his episode and you know cashed his

00:56:09.880 check right as you were reading off the list of like pick up horse manure sleep on a wooden plank

00:56:15.580 all of that sort of stuff the thing that was going through my mind is like this is very genuinely the

00:56:21.120 kind of stuff that like ruby frankie is in prison for and those were her kids right this is a

00:56:29.460 facility being run professionally quote unquote that parents are paying to send their kids to

00:56:37.080 again just like absolutely stomach turning like absolutely stomach turning not only that that

00:56:43.640 existed that it was a paid service that i'm sure it still does exist in some way shape or form right

00:56:49.400 turnabout ranch still exists yeah jesus god help us uh it's also deeply horrifying that this was

00:56:57.460 lifted up and uh i'm sure applauded by the audience of dr phil's show of one of the most

00:57:03.240 popular shows in the country that's what i was going to add here is like these aren't the private

00:57:08.300 dealings of individuals which would be bad enough you know when a parent or a guardian chooses to

00:57:13.620 send someone under their care to a place like this. That's bad enough. But this was being

00:57:18.300 broadcast to millions of people more than any other TV show in the country, as this is what you

00:57:25.400 do when people are struggling. This is this is what you do with them. This is how you rectify it.

00:57:31.080 And I feel like like I said at the beginning, you know, when I watched that episode about Amy Moore,

00:57:36.820 who was struggling with all these different eating disorders, like the net result of that was

00:57:41.540 i was more judgmental of people around me in my life who were struggling because dr phil was

00:57:48.420 judgmental of them and i feel like that's like the bigger undercurrent of all of this is that

00:57:53.420 like people who struggle are beneath us and and i think it's notable too when you mentioned this

00:57:59.680 like a lot of the people he was having on his show i would argue most people these are low

00:58:04.200 income people with oftentimes without a ton of privilege i i think the net effect was just

00:58:09.800 cruelty disguised as care absolutely i also just you know i think about this a lot with parents of

00:58:16.000 fat kids who put their kids on diets and that sort of thing um that it is both not great don't like

00:58:22.600 it don't love it uh wish they wouldn't do it and also it really is hard to reckon with the fact

00:58:29.660 that like that is the primary if not the only cultural solution that they are offered right

00:58:35.140 is like you no matter what you have to make your fat kid thin and i think there is a similar sort

00:58:41.880 of like cultural mandate around this kind of acting out and at that time and again i would

00:58:48.000 argue for years beforehand with scared straight programs and that sort of thing the answer to

00:58:54.420 your kid is having a tough time and is acting out was you need to put them in painful situations

00:59:01.520 Whether that's you directly causing the pain or whether that's you hiring someone else to cause the pain to your child.

00:59:08.560 Like, there have to have been parents who really, really, really deeply struggled with that and had to convince themselves that this was in the best interest of their kid, right, to go to these sorts of programs as a result of being platformed on Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz and all of these sorts of shows, right?

00:59:29.500 That like, if that's the only solution that you're really seeing, then you sort of go, well, hey, man, I guess that's it. I guess this is what we have to do. And I think that's where things get extra sinister to me. You know what I mean? Is the not just these individual experiences, which are shocking and horrifying, but the trumpeting out of those and the proposing those individual series of like really horrifying traumas as like a solution to a societal problem or a solution to a parenting problem.

00:59:59.500 is alarming and distressing the last episode i want to talk about of dr phil this was perhaps

01:00:07.820 the shortest dr phil segment of all time i don't think it lasted more than two minutes

01:00:13.160 and this was about a little thing called bum fights do you know about this i know about the

01:00:20.200 existence of bum fights i didn't know that there was a segment on dr phil so there hardly was allow

01:00:26.840 me to explain so tell me if you weren't there which quite frankly i wasn't bum fights was an

01:00:33.580 early 2000s video series phenomenon where these men who made the videos essentially paid people

01:00:40.760 who were experiencing homelessness to fight each other or hurt themselves do kind of like you know 0.60

01:00:47.240 it was reminiscent of like the jackass films but like the jackass people were choosing to do it 0.79

01:00:51.860 themselves and profiting themselves these people were like exploiting you know people on the street 0.80

01:00:56.820 to do it. And one of the creators of this film series, Bum Fights, he got the idea to do it

01:01:03.080 based on an experience he had when he was living on the streets and someone paid him

01:01:07.540 $5 to run headfirst into a shipping container. This was peak, peak, peak, like trauma,

01:01:14.520 exploitation, porn, humilitatingment, getting people at their lowest and offering them money

01:01:20.220 to let you film them for public spectacle. So in 2006, the owner at the time of this video series

01:01:26.700 was a guy named ty beason and he was invited on to dr phil in the segment they rolled footage of

01:01:34.220 ty beason talking about this like gross enterprise he has right which included paying an unhoused man

01:01:41.120 who was struggling with tooth decay to take a wrench and pull out his own teeth jesus god and

01:01:47.380 then it cuts to dr phil who is like stop stop the tape stop the tape you know very performatively

01:01:53.780 because he obviously planned to do this from the beginning he's so disgusted by the conduct

01:01:59.260 in bum fights that he doesn't even want to do the interview with ty he says i don't want to

01:02:04.120 talk to you you're despicable leave and then it cuts to ty beeson who i'm going to send you a

01:02:10.020 photo of what ty beeson showed up on the show looking like well well that is this that is dr 0.63

01:02:17.720 phil minus a mustache well there's a little bit of a fake mustache there oh is there yeah yeah

01:02:23.480 yeah yeah there is a little shadow huh if you squint yeah yeah that's right but basically

01:02:28.000 ty beason comes to the show dressed like dr phil he has the gray suit he's wearing a bald cap there

01:02:34.440 what the sideburns and the mustache are fake as he's being ushered off by like dr phil's like

01:02:41.140 production and security he goes quote if you think i exploit people every time you have a guest on

01:02:47.060 this show you exploit whatever problems they have to the whole world who do you think you are and

01:02:51.760 it's like it's really the the spider-men pointing at each other yeah yeah you know what i mean where

01:02:57.280 you're like he's not wrong i don't know that he can claim the moral high ground here but he's not

01:03:03.020 wrong but i don't even think he is claiming the moral high ground he's just he's basically just

01:03:07.040 like we're in business together buddy we're two sides of the same coin and it really like punctures

01:03:12.740 the the veil of like dr phil being like no i just want everyone to do better and get these families

01:03:19.040 back together what you need to something that i love about dr phil is his like he really

01:03:24.320 pronounces the h what are you doing here you know what i mean i i'm a little bit upset that we're

01:03:31.340 like halfway through and we're just getting to your very excellent dr phil voice i feel like

01:03:38.800 you've been holding out you gotta get off this stage you're despicable no guards get them out

01:03:44.940 yeah which also like what a showy way to i mean i'm sure they aired all of that right they did and

01:03:50.920 the whole thing was like over in two minutes right which is like so then you have this guy

01:03:55.840 again who's doing like dr phil who's doing these like extremely not even morally questionable but

01:04:01.160 like morally bad yeah yeah things on this show who then gets to appear to be taken the high road

01:04:09.800 like this is too far or whatever right it makes you think he's a good guy who has standards right

01:04:15.820 that are not borne out by the rest of his programming we have been talking about some

01:04:21.680 heavy stuff and we are now done talking about the dr phil show we're going to get into the later

01:04:27.520 years of his career and get closer to where we are now but i want to do a fun little interlude

01:04:32.740 where we can laugh at something that's kind of inconsequential yes so i thought we could look at

01:04:37.000 dr phil's house i can't wait in 2020 dr phil puts his la home up for sale for just under six million

01:04:44.680 dollars uh-huh and i'm gonna send you a few pictures of the home that i want to look at

01:04:50.920 together and have you describe what it is because it is such a crazy manifestation of this man

01:04:58.800 now listen are those tentacles are they antlers on the banister what's happening here first of

01:05:06.760 let's start at image one because what chain restaurant would you say the exterior of this

01:05:11.660 home reminds you of olive garden olive garden okay i was gonna say cheesecake factory but one

01:05:15.660 in the same oh yeah yeah you can go cheesecake factory as well there's so what we're seeing is a

01:05:20.780 stucco house that has the sort of tile roof those sort of scalloped tiles on the on the roof very

01:05:29.660 la style but also like trimmed hedges and a manicured lawn and you know pedestals and that

01:05:35.400 kind of thing yeah and look i can't hate on this too much because like a lot of people especially

01:05:39.720 in la live in cheesecake factories britney spears britney spears lives in a cheesecake factory and

01:05:45.260 i can't knock that for her you know it it is what it is but then we open the doors good lord

01:05:52.300 so there's like a big uh sort of rotunda thing uh happening here like a big circular kind of

01:05:59.700 entryway there appears to be a bar with stools at it and the stools look like they have antlers

01:06:05.940 for backs is what i'm going with yeah the banister is very cthulhu there are just like endless

01:06:13.120 tentacles happening on the banister i don't understand what they are and then i am now

01:06:18.280 realizing i got so distracted by the antlers and the tentacles if you look into the next room there

01:06:24.580 is a glass case with a bunch of assault rifles on display okay we'll get to that one in a second

01:06:30.120 good god what is happening i can't tell if they're like to me i saw this and it's almost like

01:06:37.460 like weird misshapen bones it's like it's like the staircase is lined with what looked like

01:06:43.880 antler bones interior design by the yellow king from the first season of true detective

01:06:50.400 like good lord you know i gotta say as a gay guy like if this was bjork's house i would live

01:06:58.060 but it's dr phil's house and i'm like you're troubled you know yeah there's something about

01:07:05.260 it that feels also like it's like on the same continuum as like donald trump's design aesthetic

01:07:11.120 which is just like too much of everything yes just like way too much of everything and speaking of

01:07:19.620 too much of absolutely everything do you want to see the third photo we talking about the gun room

01:07:24.260 yeah it's the dining room the dining room is where you keep the guns

01:07:29.760 so what we're looking at is a is a dining room it's like an all black and gray dining room that

01:07:37.360 kind of looks otherwise just like a kind of dark but sort of standard early 2000s mcmansion dining

01:07:43.480 room and on one wall it is just covered in assault rifles but also in the same room there's like

01:07:50.980 these little like cartoony footstool-y guys yeah there's almost like like they look like like

01:07:56.020 labuboos actually kind of they do look a little bit like labuboos like they come from the world

01:08:00.920 of like labuboos but also like maybe uh uh squishmallows and like troll dolls or something

01:08:06.300 or like there's something like a little bit childlike but a little bit unsettling about

01:08:10.480 it's the little boo boo assault rifle dining room it's the combination assault rifle

01:08:14.740 dining room this just sounds like you're trying to optimize seo now assault rifle

01:08:20.180 i am someone i i found these images and the real estate article through reddit where someone

01:08:29.800 described this as a cheesecake factory that doubles as the ninth circle of hell

01:08:34.900 dante could never i included this because i felt like we needed a little levity and also

01:08:45.860 it's just a fascinating peek into his his mind do you know what this reminds me of is there was like

01:08:53.580 a run of boy if you haven't watched them matt treat yourself to some old episodes of an hgtv

01:09:00.540 show called trading spaces it was uh where like neighbors or friends would trade rooms in their

01:09:06.840 house they'd get paired up with a designer but they'd be on like an extreme budget and they'd

01:09:11.440 be like i'm gonna do a makeover of my neighbor's dining room because they hate their dining room

01:09:16.840 and it's time to change it but they would be on this like wild budget and they would have

01:09:20.840 absolutely nutty ideas and they'd be like we painted the inside of your dining room so it

01:09:25.480 looks like you're inside a circus tent or something like this feels like that level of sort of like

01:09:31.560 budget and design aesthetic where you're like why are there drapes on the light fixture like why is

01:09:37.780 that what's happening here there's just a bunch of sort of mystifying 2000s interior design choices

01:09:44.400 being made here yeah it begs the question what if you had limitless money and were also completely

01:09:49.920 out of your mind right the outside has all the taste of a cheesecake factory but it ends at the

01:09:56.860 outside yeah yeah yeah yeah just a quick break from the show to shout out rocket money for

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01:11:39.540 much to Rocket Money. And now let's get back to the show. Okay, I want to catch up with Dr. Phil

01:11:47.940 in 2020, which is when, as we know, a lot of people's brains really started to melt in different

01:11:56.720 ways. Dr. Phil was vehemently against COVID lockdowns. He did a media tour where, and you

01:12:03.860 can see we're kind of really converging on the like, oh, I'm in very outspoken, very open right

01:12:09.040 wing activists. Like we're not doing this so much. Like I want to heal the world and bring the

01:12:13.860 families back together through like teen labor camps. Like we're not even pretending anymore.

01:12:19.020 Dr. Phil does a media tour where he argues that quarantines were doing more harm to children

01:12:24.260 than the virus would. Which I noted here, even if he's ignoring the fact that there are

01:12:29.900 immunocompromised kids, one major point of closing the schools during the early months of COVID was

01:12:36.120 so kids couldn't contract COVID and then bring it home to people in their home who were older or

01:12:41.000 more vulnerable. When he was pressed on this issue, Dr. Phil said that the real thing that

01:12:46.880 he took issue with was that there were kids who were trapped in abusive situations at home who 0.97

01:12:52.420 no longer had access to counselors or outside help which again i know like that's true but then

01:13:00.000 the broader issue there is homeschooling i feel like which you don't see dr phil speaking out

01:13:04.880 against you know like covid lockdowns for school only lasted a few months and then kids started

01:13:10.360 going back in for hybrid learning and now obviously kids are entirely back in school

01:13:14.220 the bigger issue i feel like when it comes to kids trapped at home in abusive situations without

01:13:18.380 outside resources or help or opinions is homeschooling. But Dr. Phil now works for the

01:13:24.260 party, which is taking money away from public schools so that more kids can be homeschooled

01:13:29.600 or in alt schooling. So it just doesn't comport. Right. This is what I was going to say is like,

01:13:35.140 look, man, if you're concerned about kids not having access to counselors and not having access

01:13:39.160 to the kinds of services that they get in schools, you have to kind of reckon with the fact that at

01:13:43.020 this point, you know, at the point that COVID hit, we're coming on 20 to 30 years of like

01:13:49.340 systematically underfunding schools of casting aspersions on teachers unions as being like

01:13:55.480 uniquely greedy and of eroding the public school system through sort of the proliferation of

01:14:02.660 charter schools and that sort of thing. Right. Um, so like the answer to this is like, if you

01:14:07.220 want kids to have that kind of support covid or no you need to have the money to hire counselors

01:14:14.000 have enough counselors that the number of students that you have mean that they can actually access

01:14:19.480 time with the counselor all of that kind of stuff but that's not uh doesn't have the same kind of

01:14:26.060 curb appeal as being like i'm at home and i'm tired of being at home ergo open the schools

01:14:30.420 totally amidst this sort of press tour that he's doing around his fight against covid lockdowns

01:14:39.080 dr phil goes on fox news and makes perhaps the most insane argument i've ever heard i'm gonna

01:14:46.280 play it for you look the fact of the matter is we have people dying 45 000 people a year die

01:14:52.660 from automobile accidents 480 000 from cigarettes 360 000 a year from swimming pools but we don't

01:14:58.880 shut the country down for that but yet we're doing it for this it's fun that he didn't mention gun

01:15:04.660 violence yeah that's a fun one when we're talking about unnecessary deaths in the u.s it feels like 0.79

01:15:11.340 that one usually is pretty close to the top of the list noticeable that mr gun dining room labubu

01:15:17.500 assault rifle dining room himself was not leading with that point strange i love how he starts with

01:15:23.720 the fact of the matter is and i'm like well i don't know if that's the fact of the matter

01:15:28.000 his whole sort of persona is he's like a tough talking dad who gives good advice and you know

01:15:35.140 is just coming after you because he cares right which i think allows him to play pretty fast and

01:15:40.740 loose with uh facts and i think as with any number of public figures who have like a pretty defined

01:15:47.460 lane of expertise when he starts getting outside of that and speaking with the same kind of

01:15:53.360 authority that he uses when he is in his lane you're like oh also just like the implication

01:15:59.360 that like we have come to accept unnecessary deaths in other realms ergo we should accept

01:16:07.760 unnecessary deaths in this realm is like really uh morally devoid kind of take so moving right

01:16:17.560 along because it does continue to get worse the sorry i'm gonna say it differently than that

01:16:24.180 i gotta keep spirits light here like what god aubrey that's your that's your response project

01:16:30.480 dan savage had it gets better you have it continues to get worse

01:16:35.000 it gets worse we've all got our lane in the community

01:16:42.360 the dr phil show runs its 21st and final season in 2023 after which dr phil up and moves his

01:16:53.720 studio from los angeles to fort worth texas and launches dr phil prime time a new talk show which

01:17:01.480 is also self-produced where he gets more overtly into politics like i said it's produced by his

01:17:08.400 own production company which is called merit street media do you know about this i don't know

01:17:13.740 about merit street media okay also this is very he's just pulling a rogan here yes he's like so

01:17:20.100 long california i'm going to texas i'm starting my own weird little empire basically yes he talks

01:17:25.680 a lot now about merit street media because he he loves to promote his own businesses sure but he

01:17:32.200 always says every time he brings it up he goes the fact that it's called merit straight media

01:17:37.080 is no accident. America is built on a meritocracy, not on DEI, not on equal outcome. That was a quote

01:17:47.880 from his Trump rally speech. We didn't choose the name for that by random. Merit Street Media. This

01:17:55.280 country was built on hard work added value and talent not on equal outcome not on dei wow

01:18:07.800 hey my camera just got too hot i have to give it do you need to take a second i have to give it

01:18:15.640 two minutes to cool off is that okay yeah absolutely i'll run to the restroom real fast

01:18:19.240 great my listeners know this but when my camera gets too hot i will put it in the fridge for a

01:18:23.860 couple minutes while i go to the bathroom and we'll be right back real peek behind the curtain

01:18:30.360 all right i'll be back in like two minutes great

01:18:32.380 what was the last thing i said was it about merit street media it was about merit street media uh

01:18:45.780 and uh him talking about uh america being built on uh meritocracy and not on dei yeah yeah so

01:18:53.400 you know you see this theme which i've been trying to like plug in these themes and like

01:18:58.220 you know almost like stick a stick a toothpick into i don't know if hold on

01:19:03.760 oh are we not a baker i've been trying to like i guess plant these flags right at different

01:19:12.080 points in his career and be like what is the fundamental ideology that he's exhibiting here

01:19:16.700 right it's this bootstraps it's this capitalist grind set it's this you know you have the it's

01:19:23.860 think and grow rich you know now he kind of is just nakedly saying it he's like america's 0.96

01:19:29.640 meritocracy fuck dea which again i feel like brings his past into the present i pulled some 0.90

01:19:37.420 selected thumbnail images from different segments different interview segments dr phil has been

01:19:43.980 doing on dr film primetime and i would like for you to take a look and tell us who are the guests

01:19:51.380 on his show nowadays oh my god this is a who's who of just just a true nightmare blunt rotation

01:20:02.620 right like just like an absolute nightmare the first one is a thumbnail that says uh exclusive

01:20:09.620 new interview with donald trump tried and true uh the next one is for the dr phil podcast episode

01:20:15.740 286 dr jordan peterson we who wrestle with god the man's self-importance knows no bounds i love

01:20:24.580 it and the third one is another exclusive interview on dr phil prime time one-on-one

01:20:30.720 with rfk jr and the fourth oh boy oh i didn't even see that there was a fourth my god oh my god

01:20:38.800 i'm gonna describe the thumbnail as well the fourth says exclusive interview with prime

01:20:44.680 minister benjamin netanyahu and in the background of this thumbnail is just war-torn gaza is what

01:20:53.340 appears to be in the background right like just like rubble yes is he are there i'm we're like

01:21:01.560 serial killers not available we're like what are we this is such a staggeringly terrible lineup of

01:21:08.940 people boy oh boy oh boy again it's just like i try to contextualize all of this in like what he's

01:21:15.540 been doing for 20 years yeah because to me like this is horrifying but like also i get it like

01:21:21.140 this is where this is where he was going especially now that there has been this cultural tide you

01:21:26.620 know i think for a long time he wanted to embarrass people he wanted to profit off of people's pain

01:21:32.580 he wanted to be cruel but he wanted to do all of that under the again very thin veil of like i care

01:21:39.640 for you i want to make you better we're in this cultural and political moment now where you don't

01:21:44.080 have to pretend to be nice you don't have to pretend to care about anyone and so he can just

01:21:52.100 like interview like genocide leaders and far right white nationalists and whoever else because like

01:21:59.000 like the ideology that there's a hierarchy of people and people struggling and people beneath

01:22:03.120 you deserve to be punished and deserve like that that's it's been there the whole time i don't know

01:22:09.020 well he's also following what is now like a relatively well-worn path from alex jones joe

01:22:17.240 Rogan, Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson, all of these folks who have stepped away from traditional

01:22:24.420 network media jobs or have been fired from those jobs and then have set up their own little

01:22:32.740 fiefdoms, their own little empires of media stuff that allow them much more latitude in who they

01:22:39.980 talk to, how they talk to them, and what they talk about. And I think just seeing what folks do

01:22:46.580 with that kind of latitude feels really illuminating because like either he's having

01:22:52.900 these folks on because he believes them and is supporters of them or he's having them on because

01:22:58.800 he thinks it's like red meat for his listeners and either way the outcome is sort of the same

01:23:04.680 right like it doesn't really doesn't really matter and he now doesn't even have to deal with like

01:23:10.960 the same kinds of restrictions that like a syndicated talk show would otherwise have right

01:23:15.860 a hundred percent good god in october 2024 just weeks before the general election like i mentioned

01:23:22.400 dr phil speaks at the trump rally in new york city the same one where the right-wing comedian

01:23:28.080 tony hinchcliffe called puerto rico a quote floating island of trash he spoke at that one

01:23:33.260 where he said quote celebrities don't know anything about policies or politics the only

01:23:40.000 difference between me and them is i'm willing to admit it but if you support donald trump

01:23:45.300 you're marginalized and bullied now we're talking about something i know a hell of a lot about

01:23:51.080 now you're in my wheelhouse now you're in my wheelhouse buddy

01:23:56.920 you're really a student of his speech patterns and i really appreciate that after the last few

01:24:05.420 days of consuming nothing but phil mcgraw at least i have that to show for it you know

01:24:11.400 yeah you're like a you're like a tiny bill hater just racking up impressions but only of this one

01:24:18.820 gremlin yeah yeah yeah yeah oh lord most of his speech was about cancel culture and donald trump 0.56

01:24:26.960 is the ultimate victim of bullying and you know now he's just tapping into you know standard

01:24:33.140 right-wing grievance culture of the 2020s and it is so interesting how so many of these people who

01:24:39.780 like got their careers not being explicitly political even though as we've described there's

01:24:45.040 like this political undercurrent of everything they've ever done now very naturally flowing into

01:24:51.040 this right-wing pipeline you know like like dr oz yeah absolutely part of what happens there is like

01:24:59.000 that there is a right-wing sort of media infrastructure that is generally speaking

01:25:05.200 not super concerned with facts generally speaking um embracing of the hottest of hot takes and the

01:25:13.300 most sort of fearful and fear-oriented kinds of positions and if you are willing to lead those

01:25:21.200 conversations they are so happy to have you and actually if you have been fired from another job

01:25:27.440 in media that actually makes you a little bit more enticing because now you can speak to the

01:25:32.480 perils of cancel culture right like that's actually a thing that this guy doesn't have

01:25:36.720 going for him unfortunately in this narrative right for the right wing is like a lot of folks

01:25:42.620 like alex jones and glenn beck and tucker carlson can beat a cancel culture narrative into the

01:25:50.060 ground and dr phil is like one step removed from it it's a really horrifying thing that we have

01:25:55.380 such a huge portion of our sort of media landscape that is like oh you don't know anything you keep

01:26:01.820 getting things wrong and you're being mean to people come on down yeah yeah like in an effort

01:26:09.280 to boost the profile of merit street media's merit tv i will say there's a part of me that

01:26:16.620 wants the like bizarro world where there is a merit tv and it's just round the clock screenings

01:26:22.640 of merit weaver's work sure it's just it's just a constant just like nurse jackie around the clock

01:26:30.260 yeah sure sure yeah so in order to boost the profile of merit tv dr phil first embeds himself

01:26:37.960 within ice immigration and customs enforcement as they swept chicago in january 2025 just days

01:26:46.120 after trump is inaugurated he films himself embedded in ice greeting and detaining immigrants 0.59

01:26:54.500 for a fucking made for tv special to be put on merit and i watched part of this where he is like 0.91

01:27:02.440 in the cold in his coat talking to an immigrant who is being arrested and detained by ice and 0.98

01:27:09.960 it's one of the most uncanny things i've ever watched you're just watching two people and

01:27:17.880 the person who's being arrested who's being talked to by dr phil of like are you a violent criminal

01:27:24.260 what did you do to end up here da da da da and this guy is just like wait a minute aren't you

01:27:29.720 dr phil i've seen you on tv you're dr phil and there's like it's it's heartbreaking it really

01:27:38.040 is it's like you have this one person who spent 20 years just like crafting wealth for himself

01:27:44.000 in the most evil ways imaginable and then on the other hand you just have this guy who's like being

01:27:49.100 a person there's something really still quite jarring about this turn in the last few years

01:27:55.960 which is like despite the fact that the media that dr phil was producing was never like we're here to

01:28:02.840 care for the people right was never like uh uh rooted in an ethic of community care or anything

01:28:09.900 like that right and despite the fact that like a conservative ideology was very clear and very

01:28:15.960 present in his work for a very long time there is something still really jarring and chilling

01:28:22.640 about stepping into a role as just a straightforward propagandist for authoritarian regimes

01:28:30.460 right is like that that is a new level right that like there is a ramp up here right but if we're

01:28:37.820 looking at it it's sort of like uh things are ramping up ramping up ramping up and then all

01:28:41.540 of a sudden you're like oh my god what how did we end up here right um feels like part of what's

01:28:47.140 happening here it is it is still quite jarring and troubling to watch it play out he and his

01:28:53.360 camera crews go to la during the ice raids there in june and after that he does this interview with

01:29:00.700 bill maher who to be very clear i have nothing good to say about bill maher but he happened to

01:29:06.200 be in the room with Bill Maher and Bill Maher is like what are you doing you know you built this

01:29:11.700 reputation for trying to bring families back together which again I think as we've demonstrated

01:29:16.240 in this episode that's a very dubious claim but nevertheless he was like you built a career on

01:29:21.300 bringing families together what are you doing these ice rates for why are you tearing families

01:29:24.900 apart and Dr. Phil gets so defensive and he immediately launches into this very clearly

01:29:31.880 scripted and rehearsed grievance culture camp complaint about how people who work in ice are

01:29:38.800 being doxxed you know of course they wear masks masks they're being they're being canceled and

01:29:45.000 why them he says quote are they supposed to not do their jobs the the negative actions against

01:29:53.920 ICE agents are up 1,000% in the last several months. 130% violence against them. And why them?

01:30:04.180 They didn't make the laws. They didn't make that law. What are you expecting to do? Just not do 0.69

01:30:10.400 their job? And I'm like, oh, like, you're kind of a member of the Third Reich. Yeah. You know? 0.99

01:30:16.340 Yeah, you don't want to go right to Lenny Riefenstahl. But like, boy, oh, boy, becoming,

01:30:21.660 a again a propagandist for horrifying raids right like i just this is another one that to me feels

01:30:29.600 like it's hard not to talk about this in pretty absolutist terms it's really hard for me not to

01:30:35.680 look at folks response to ice raids and see a real litmus test of folks humanity right and the idea

01:30:43.960 that you would not only be like these are good they're good for people they're good for the

01:30:48.680 country but also like the people gotta know right like he's going like several steps further even

01:30:55.380 than like dean kane did with his weird ice cosplay yeah i'm just like send this guy off to an ice

01:31:02.780 flow man just send him off to a fucking ice flow yeah yeah we got there's nothing left to save here 0.70

01:31:09.440 my god a lot of people like i was watching these videos on youtube and there are so many comments 0.98

01:31:14.320 being like oh dr phil like being an ice agent was not on my 2025 bingo card and fair enough

01:31:20.400 it wasn't on mine either again until i started thinking like really critically about his entire

01:31:25.700 career and it's like you're making exploitation suffering porn of downtrodden people who are

01:31:32.640 being punished for existing and in a world that's hard to to live in in a world that's hard to live

01:31:39.360 with dignity and if you're if you don't have a certain level of privilege and that's also what

01:31:44.100 you've always been doing you just don't have to pretend to be nice anymore it seems like the sort

01:31:49.280 of undercurrent of rhetoric for this guy has always been if there's something going wrong

01:31:54.800 in your life it's because you're not trying hard enough right which is like an absolutely wild

01:32:01.940 thing to then see that person documenting families being split up and documenting

01:32:08.300 folks being detained and deported and it's like deeply disheartening yeah the whole arc is like

01:32:17.460 deeply deeply disheartening and the fact that he like really did build so much trust with such a

01:32:24.840 large audience right like regardless of whether or not i think that trust is merited it is really

01:32:31.660 clear whether that trust is what sorry whether that trust is merit weavered

01:32:38.260 whether or not that trust is earned or whether or not i would invest that same kind of trust

01:32:47.480 in that guy it seems um observationally true that there are many many many people who were

01:32:54.540 dedicated viewers of his show for years and remain dedicated viewers of his show

01:32:59.000 um who have been sort of further and further drawn down this garden path with him that's really

01:33:04.820 really deeply troubling the arc of dr phil's career reminded me kind of of the episode i did

01:33:12.000 about gwen stefani where she started shilling for peter teal's pay to pray app which includes all

01:33:19.240 sort of like anti-abortion stuff and this is hallow this is hallow this is hallow yeah yep and i went

01:33:25.460 into that episode and the research that i did for it thinking like what happened to like no doubt

01:33:31.320 i'm just a girl sort of this like punk feminist figure from the 90s but then you kind of scratch

01:33:36.040 it with a coin and you're just like the heart and soul of this person's personality and career has

01:33:41.720 always been vaguely right wing and it just doesn't have to be vague anymore yeah she's like what if i

01:33:48.040 married a country singer and started sponsoring a prayer like paid prayer exactly great yeah

01:33:54.500 absolutely the last thing i wanted to ask you before we wrap up here was you were just in a

01:34:01.260 documentary about the biggest loser and yeah how awful that was and how much cruelty and

01:34:08.480 humiliatainment was involved in the creation of the biggest loser and what's interesting about

01:34:13.940 the biggest loser is that one of the two star trainers on that show jillian michaels is also

01:34:21.080 now a regularly appearing Fox News far-right pundit who recently said in a CNN debate that 0.98

01:34:29.480 slavery is not entirely the fault of white people. My question is like, what about these sort of

01:34:36.560 2000s TV phenoms do you think ultimately lended itself to this and what these people have become?

01:34:44.660 So I think a couple of things. One, I think that the sort of cultural milieu at that time was

01:34:50.620 really focused on humiliation right that like the sort of core of like prime time and daytime 0.77

01:34:56.400 entertainment uh was about humiliating people whether that was uh the sort of jackass era 0.51

01:35:03.800 of like we're gonna do it to ourselves whether that was uh as we mentioned like bum fights where 0.66

01:35:10.520 it was like horrifically on its face exploitative and horror show stuff or whether it was sort of

01:35:17.460 cloaked as with Dr. Phil in sort of concern trolling and this idea of like, I'm doing this

01:35:23.000 for your own good, right? That actually I'm engaged in a high-minded endeavor here. You

01:35:28.320 just can't see it because you think I'm being too mean. Which was also the biggest loser model. 0.93

01:35:32.480 Which was absolutely the biggest loser. And I think in both of these cases, right, like

01:35:38.060 part of what allows Dr. Phil to get traction as a large-scale personality and as a TV show

01:35:45.520 is doing this kind of tough love stuff, quote unquote, heavy quotes on folks who were widely

01:35:53.840 culturally believed to have deserved it or to have needed it. Right. So like there was this idea that

01:36:01.820 if your kid was acting out, you need to send them to a boot camp or you need to just get really

01:36:05.880 extra tough on them. Similarly with The Biggest Loser, I would say Jillian Michaels, much like 0.99

01:36:12.520 Dr. Phil has a long, long history of very clearly, very conservative, and frankly, just like very mean politics. But part of the reason that she flew under the radar was that she was going after fat people, which folks thought was like, not just an okay thing to do, not just that that was acceptable, but that it was culturally celebrated, right? 0.99

01:36:32.820 she built a massive empire out of publicly abusing fat people so i do struggle a little bit now when 0.99

01:36:41.820 people are like oh my god when did she go off the deep end and i'm like baby she was always 1.00

01:36:47.300 already there she was just taking it out on people who you didn't care if she was taking it out on 1.00

01:36:53.680 right like that it was entertainment to watch folks absolutely shout at uh and humiliate and 1.00

01:37:02.360 berate and cause physical pain and damage to fat contestants on TV. And I think for certainly for

01:37:11.680 me, for a lot of fat folks that I know, it doesn't feel surprising one bit that she's like a MAGA

01:37:15.840 talking head now. And I think similarly, as you've demonstrated with the Dr. Phil of it all,

01:37:21.920 like if you're paying attention, it's not especially surprising, right? Like if you're

01:37:26.720 really sort of tuning in to the rhetoric that folks are using and who they're going after and

01:37:31.080 all of that kind of stuff. You're like, oh, yeah, in both cases, these are folks who found soft

01:37:35.620 entry points into the kinds of bigotry that they wanted to spend a bunch of time in, right? So you

01:37:41.580 start with your soft entry point of a 13 year old who's acting out of line, or a fat person who just

01:37:48.760 won't put down the Twinkies or whatever, right? And there is a great deal of cultural alignment

01:37:54.820 around like, yeah, give it to them, right? And then you build an audience who's ready to watch

01:38:00.560 you just sort of rip into and exploit uh folks who are going through terrible times in their

01:38:06.960 lives and who didn't ask for or deserve any of this and like of course you end up with things

01:38:12.340 like yeah i like ice raids yeah america's a meritocracy slavery wasn't that big a deal right

01:38:19.440 like all of that sort of stuff like of course follows because they've gotten so much sort of

01:38:24.420 affirmation for the earlier and more widely accepted forms of bigotry that they were engaged 0.54

01:38:29.600 so well said fucking aubrey gordon and this is why i think like what's the big takeaway with like

01:38:36.100 studying dr phil jillian michaels all of this stuff is that like on a granular level what these 0.98

01:38:43.440 people have been exhibiting as their priorities the entire time is cruelty it's punishment it's

01:38:50.160 carceral and i feel like what we can do as individuals on a granular level is like empathy

01:38:57.460 compassion not empathy and compassion as as a cloak for like judgment that really is like

01:39:03.720 resting underneath but like how can we actually help each other i feel like you're really inching

01:39:09.260 up on the jerry springer final thought sign off of like until next time take care of yourselves 0.80

01:39:15.460 and each other which was always the fucking sign off of the jerry springer show what i mean yeah 0.92

01:39:24.140 I think that makes a ton of sense. And I also think it's worth looking at, like, just because

01:39:29.560 that kind of, as you say, like, humilitatingment doesn't exist in the same way on network TV now.

01:39:36.500 That's not to say it doesn't still exist, right? I've been thinking a lot these last few weeks

01:39:42.080 about, I don't know if this is someone who has shown up on your FYP. She is definitely all over

01:39:47.060 mine. Kendra, who fell in love with her psychiatrist, right? Are you familiar with this story at all?

01:39:52.220 no oh lord it's just a person who is very clearly going through like a profound break with reality

01:39:59.240 on tiktok and has made like a 20-part story that is essentially like cataloging all of what appear

01:40:07.500 to be her delusions she has monetized it she's getting paid to share her delusions it's like

01:40:13.420 got tons and tons and tons and tons of views on tiktok and we now have an uh ecosystem of

01:40:20.040 YouTubers and influencers who are making videos breaking down the Kendra who fell in love with

01:40:24.840 her psychiatrist drama, right? Where you're like, hey, team, we really are amplifying someone's

01:40:33.100 mental health break right now, and making it harder and harder for them all the time to get

01:40:39.620 to meaningful treatment to get to all this sort of stuff. And there are people making lots of money

01:40:44.700 off of talking about the absolute, what will, I'm guessing, emerge as one of the worst chapters in

01:40:51.620 this person's life, right? So like, I think also just being wary, it's easy to go, that was in the

01:40:56.520 past, we did that then, we don't do it now. But I think we still do a lot of the same things now,

01:41:01.900 they just show up in different places. So I think being willing to clock that kind of stuff as well,

01:41:07.320 it can be hard to see when things get so popular and so large scale, but it is like, we are still

01:41:14.020 doing plenty of that large scale dehumanizing of people in crisis and i think that's also a thing

01:41:19.160 to just like keep an eye on and anyone with a you know microphone and a tiktok account can now be

01:41:23.800 their own smaller dr phil you know speaking as two people with microphones and tiktok which is

01:41:30.760 nothing like what we're doing here we're different we're gay

01:41:35.360 did we do it Aubrey that was that was the sign off line that was really good 0.77

01:41:52.020 yay we're different we're gay

01:41:55.260 Aubrey thank you so much for walking down this sort of treacherous memory lane with me

01:42:04.820 i i love you so much i really oh my god you're the best this was i it would be incorrect for

01:42:11.560 me to call it a joy um but i will thank you for your service of spending several days in the

01:42:17.580 trenches of dr phil research uh and thank you for nailing that voice and also just for being

01:42:23.620 like an absolute joy in this world this was like such a treat do you want me to here here i'm gonna

01:42:28.660 do i what aubrey where can people find more of your work and glean more of your wonderful insights

01:42:36.860 uh i am at yr fat friend uh across platforms um and folks can listen to maintenance phase

01:42:47.040 the podcast wherever you get your podcast you can buy my books wherever you buy books

01:42:50.780 and you can uh watch a documentary about me and my family at uh yrfatfriendfilm.com

01:42:58.660 and if you've made it this far in the episode i do thank you so much i love you and i appreciate

01:43:04.880 you we all need each other to get through to the other side and uh just be kind to yourself that's

01:43:11.160 all i ask i feel like the next time i see you you're gonna be in a bald cap and like a tan suit

01:43:17.640 and some uh and some prosthetic sideburns yeah you're gonna have the mustache the whole thing

01:43:24.060 the nails will be gone oh the nails will be there i'll be dr phil with nails the nails that would be

01:43:28.280 amazing

01:43:29.320 happy halloween

01:43:34.220 i love you all

01:43:36.280 and until next time

01:43:38.060 stay fruity

01:43:39.620 is that good

01:43:42.480 nailed it

01:43:43.920 boy oh boy what a dark 1.00

01:43:46.400 ass fucking set of things 1.00

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - September 05, 2025

Dr. Phil： From Nice Guy to Nazi (with Aubrey Gordon)

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