Maintenance Phase - May 09, 2023


Oprah v. Beef Part 1： The Rise of ＂Veggie Libel＂

Topics
ALAR and cancer debate
The 10,000 Steps Myth Oprah v. Beef Part 2： Apocalypse Cow

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 3 minutes

Words per minute

172.79

Word count

11,042

Sentence count

356

Harmful content

Misogyny

22

sentences flagged

Toxicity

144

sentences flagged

Hate speech

56

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 hi everybody and welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that dares to answer the question
00:00:16.240 where's the beef oh no you did one of the puns i was gonna read you all the headlines with the
00:00:21.940 puns i figured i should bring the timeliest reference that i could to this show the other
00:00:29.040 really good timely one is a lot of the headlines are like cattlemen's association has a cow over
00:00:34.580 april's comments like that wouldn't even make sense to people anymore well this is also the
00:00:38.900 early 90s when people are like woo bart simpson he's animated but he's bad incredible you can
00:00:46.100 tell by his slingshot and his haircut i am michael hobbs i am aubrey gordon if you would like to
00:00:52.260 support the show you can do that at patreon.com maintenance phase you can also subscribe through
00:00:57.220 apple podcasts and you can get t-shirts mugs tote bags all manner of things at t public we will link
00:01:03.880 all of that for you in the show notes michael i am at a loss because i was steeled for tiny 0.98
00:01:09.880 interrupting machine and it didn't happen that was my i was like the best way to fuck with her 0.97
00:01:15.020 is to not do anything to let her do it you were 100 right i am on my heels one step ahead of you 0.97
00:01:24.420 nice try uh michael ombre today we are talking about a thing that i actually know almost nothing
00:01:34.860 about i'm so excited which is the oprah v cattleman's association court bout of the 1990s
00:01:43.440 right oprah v beef yes i made the mistake of telling one of my family members last night
00:01:50.020 what our show is about and they were like oh that's how she met dr phil and i was like
00:01:54.240 shut up shut up oh no you got a spoiler for something that happened 30 years ago i did 0.97
00:01:58.400 and it really fucked me up what do you what do you actually know if you like if you were forced 1.00
00:02:02.720 to put a chronology together what would you say i believe the cattlemen's association 0.95
00:02:08.380 or like beef ranchers or something came after oprah and filed suit against her it was a big
00:02:17.440 lawsuit but i don't know why my understanding was that it was around something relating to 0.98
00:02:23.720 talking about mad cow disease yes my assumption is that she did a show where she was like mad cow 0.90
00:02:30.080 is a thing and they were like get out of town that's basically it ari we can close now roughly
00:02:34.920 you're not thanks for joining us on our shortest episode of maintenance you're not gonna get a
00:02:39.000 huge twist in this but this is a two-part episode and like all two-part episodes this is basically
00:02:47.000 just an excuse to talk about a bunch of other shit and put oprah in the title of the show so
00:02:52.180 that you download it thinking it's gonna be fun but it's mostly about uh mad cow disease and the 0.87
00:02:58.240 ins and outs of american libel law which is actually like weirdly interesting okay so to
00:03:04.420 get to the beef in 1996 we have to talk about the apples in 1989 here's what i know about apples in
00:03:12.380 the 80s okay there were three kinds and they were all bad red yellow green bad so in february of
00:03:21.320 1989. 60 Minutes runs a segment that was warning the U.S. population about the dangers of pesticides.
00:03:29.700 There was a pesticide called alar that farmers sprayed on apple trees to keep the apples from
00:03:35.800 falling down and getting bruised. The segment opens with a graphic of a red delicious apple
00:03:43.180 like morphing into a skull and crossbones it's like morphing technology the audacity of news
00:03:52.780 graphics in the 80s is unparalleled i love this so much they never should have given you 0.93
00:03:59.840 motherfuckers morphing that was like that was remember the michael jackson video and it was 0.78
00:04:03.640 like let's put morphing in there oh my god yes so the segment begins with ed bradley saying 0.99
00:04:12.140 the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep
00:04:18.180 them on the trees longer and make them look better that's the conclusion of a number of
00:04:22.300 scientific experts and who is most at risk children who may someday develop cancer from
00:04:28.160 this one chemical called alar and then this is the rest of the segment oh my god you know this
00:04:37.340 is one of my other favorite things is watching an extremely dated news segment dude i know i know
00:04:43.040 wellness what is it so here's the clip they're gonna say demenazide which is like the official
00:04:49.160 name for the pesticide which is sold as alar janet hathaway's organization the natural resources
00:04:55.840 defense council has just completed the most careful study yet on the effect of demenazide
00:05:00.980 and seven other cancer-causing pesticides in the food children eat just from these eight pesticides
00:05:07.020 what we're finding is that the risk of developing cancer is approximately 250 times what EPA says
00:05:15.960 is an acceptable level of cancer in our population. Kids are at a high risk from UDMH because they
00:05:22.440 drink so much apple juice. The average preschooler drinks 18 times more apple juice than his or her
00:05:28.480 mother. If those apples were treated with Domenizide, the cancer risk is perilously high.
00:05:37.020 It sounds pretty damning.
00:05:38.660 Pretty bad.
00:05:39.320 But also, I know that the science around carcinogens is squishier than we like to talk about.
00:05:46.620 And I know that the news media loves a story like this.
00:05:50.360 Yeah.
00:05:50.640 And I know that the number one way to sort of take something down is, say, it causes cancer.
00:05:55.060 I feel like what you're really saying is, Mike, I know the premise of the show, so it's probably more complicated.
00:05:59.180 Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:06:00.160 I'm approaching this with caution because I've been recording this show with you for three years.
00:06:03.520 You know, the only reason we're going to talk about this is if it's like a little bit more complicated than it seems. 0.94
00:06:08.260 But also, like, listen, if I just saw this on TV, I'd be like, holy shit. 0.98
00:06:12.880 Yeah. 0.99
00:06:13.040 I got to stop buying apples.
00:06:14.180 So this segment is basically a preview of a report that is about to come out from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is an environmental NGO, where they tested a bunch of different pesticides for their, like, carcinogen-ness.
00:06:29.340 Like, how dangerous are all of these pesticides?
00:06:31.660 and Alar turned out to be by far the most dangerous one.
00:06:36.740 And it's very convincing in that it's like,
00:06:38.620 okay, there's this evil chemical which has this scary name
00:06:41.100 and then we cut to footage of kids
00:06:42.920 and it's like, well, in their little kid bodies,
00:06:46.060 every carcinogen is more concentrated.
00:06:48.420 And kids are drinking, they say,
00:06:50.600 18 times more apple juice than adults.
00:06:53.020 This also taps into a very real track record
00:06:57.260 of chemical companies doing horrible things right yes this is a little bit like if someone tells
00:07:03.720 you that big pharma did something that was trash you're like yeah that tracks this is like the
00:07:08.320 central tension at the heart of this entire episode on one hand this is obviously like a 0.99
00:07:14.180 little overblown this report but on the other hand it's like a fucking pesticide company 0.94
00:07:17.860 which is like like lying to us constantly because like profit motive is the number one thing that 0.97
00:07:24.460 they operate based on and also listen at this point i was a kid watching a tv show called
00:07:31.400 captain planet right where the villains were polluters god that show was such great propaganda 0.96
00:07:36.980 i love that shit i mean that in the most complimentary way i loved it so much so as 0.97
00:07:43.740 you would expect right after this 60 minutes segment comes out and the environmental ngo 0.99
00:07:48.400 publishes this report there's like mass panic 10 large school districts around the country
00:07:53.740 like new york chicago la they pull apples from their cafeterias whoa the apple industry just 0.86
00:07:59.680 like completely fucking tanks there's reports of a parent calling poison control and asking if it's 0.90
00:08:07.860 safe to pour apple juice down the drain like it's like it's hazard it's not paint guys yeah i know 0.99
00:08:16.520 people people really took this stuff like very seriously there's also a report of a mom chasing
00:08:22.900 after her kid's school bus and being like i packed him an apple in his lunch give me the lunch pack 0.99
00:08:27.860 people were just losing their minds about this shit she was confused she thought it was the 0.97
00:08:32.260 snack wells cookie man callback so eventually the manufacturer pulls alar from the market so like 0.98
00:08:41.920 you cannot get alar in america anymore this is why we don't have any apples because they're all
00:08:46.960 in the ground but then the the apple industry is so mad about this that they file a lawsuit
00:08:55.120 against 60 minutes and cbs and the local affiliates for libel big apple big apple and they the lawsuit
00:09:03.840 is like kind of funny so the first problem with this lawsuit is that it's not clear like who can
00:09:12.240 sue over a claim like this right because this is something that affects the entire apple industry
00:09:16.600 And the lawsuit is filed by a couple of essentially random apple growers in Washington State.
00:09:24.100 In their lawsuit, they say,
00:09:26.360 60 Minutes did not employ the term red apples,
00:09:29.760 but the visuals accompanying the spoken word left no doubt that red apples constituted the subject matter.
00:09:36.700 Nor was Washington State referenced by name,
00:09:39.300 although thanks to a long-standing aggressive marketing approach taken by the Washington State Apple Advertising Commission,
00:09:44.560 it is commonly known throughout the country, if not the world, that Washington is the prime
00:09:48.900 producer of red apples. Is that widely known? It's not even like apple farmers. It's like
00:09:54.420 red apple farmers. And they're like, you have libeled the good name of red apples.
00:09:59.100 I'll tell you what, at this point, red apples are red delicious. And those things come pre-libeled.
00:10:04.620 Those things are already bad. Their product is libeled against their product.
00:10:10.920 So, the Washington State Apple industry files this huge lawsuit.
00:10:18.020 One of the judges in like, sometimes judges are like trying to be cute with their decisions.
00:10:24.000 One of the judges says, apples haven't received such bad press since Genesis.
00:10:29.220 Okay.
00:10:29.900 I get it.
00:10:30.340 That's a cute little zinger.
00:10:31.340 But I don't know that I love judges doing like schtick, like in their little opinions.
00:10:36.580 Yeah.
00:10:37.140 So in their lawsuit, the apple growers list three false claims that were in the 60 Minutes
00:10:42.200 segment that they're basing this lawsuit on.
00:10:44.360 The first is the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is a substance known
00:10:49.740 as ALAR.
00:10:51.080 The second is we know that ALAR causes cancer.
00:10:54.940 And over a lifetime, one child out of every 4,000 will develop cancer from these eight
00:11:01.880 pesticides.
00:11:02.700 Those last two seem potentially really hard to prove.
00:11:05.580 I will say, like, in defense of this lawsuit, first of all, a lot of Apple growers were, like, genuinely, like, put out of business by this.
00:11:13.500 The Apple industry, like, was decimated for a couple months.
00:11:16.780 Like, it eventually came back.
00:11:18.140 But this is a perishable product.
00:11:20.040 And so it just sort of sits there and rots because you can't sell anything because the price crashes. 0.99
00:11:25.580 And, like, the segment is, like, straightforwardly, like, scaremongering bullshit. 1.00
00:11:29.580 bullshit. Like the actual context of ALAR and the EPA and everything that was going on was this 0.99
00:11:37.160 pesticide had been approved in 1968. There was a whole approval process in which they did a bunch
00:11:43.320 of studies to determine whether it was a carcinogen. So it's not like it was just put on
00:11:47.200 the market with like no process behind it, right? It's on the market for a couple of years. And then
00:11:52.780 there's essentially one lab at a university in Oklahoma that does a test in 1973 on a bunch of 0.63
00:11:59.060 rats where they give rats like a fuck ton of alar they give them the apple growers will later say 0.99
00:12:06.660 that to be exposed to this much alar you would have to eat 28 000 apples a day holy shit this 0.99
00:12:13.780 is like the diet coke rat studies where yeah exactly we just injected it into their brains 0.98
00:12:18.940 at twice their body weight exactly all right they're just blasting them right and they do
00:12:23.980 one study in 1973 on rats that finds it's a carcinogen. They do another one in 1977 that I
00:12:29.920 believe is on hamsters, which also finds that it's a carcinogen. After these two studies come out in
00:12:34.080 the 1970s, the EPA forms a panel. They look at this evidence and they're like, we don't know that
00:12:39.960 this is like all that big of a deal. There's actually a really interesting debate going on
00:12:44.100 in science at the time about whether you can determine whether something is a carcinogen by
00:12:50.260 blasting animals with high doses of it because the toxicity of a substance is oftentimes
00:12:56.840 totally dependent on the dosage. So like if you have too much alcohol, you can die. If you have
00:13:02.440 too much caffeine all at once, you can die. But when you're getting these substances at like much
00:13:08.180 lower doses, the idea is that your body kind of repairs itself. It's not necessarily the case
00:13:14.760 that getting something in small amounts will have the same effects as getting something in like dump
00:13:20.820 truck amounts. Yeah. It's interesting as you're talking about this, I'm just thinking about how
00:13:25.080 much of our sort of like health and wellness conversations and conversations about like
00:13:29.720 specific ingredients or components of food are really stuck in this kind of binary mode that
00:13:37.600 you're describing, right? Which is just like any amount of this equals cancer. Right. I actually
00:13:42.680 read a really interesting content analysis of the 297 articles published about this in 1989, 0.84
00:13:49.340 which is just a fucking huge number of articles. And what it said is that like very few of the
00:13:54.540 articles told people this, that it's like the EPA is looking at it. They did more studies.
00:14:00.800 The EPA then forms a panel and the EPA is like, we don't know that this data is all that good,
00:14:06.220 but we're going to now order the manufacturer of ALAR to perform more tests. And two weeks
00:14:12.440 before the 60 Minutes report, the EPA had ordered the manufacturer to pull it off the market.
00:14:17.760 The whole report coming from this environmental NGO is about like, you should be phasing it out
00:14:23.940 faster. It's difficult to see this as like a total breakdown of like government regulators when it's
00:14:31.080 like, no, they looked at the data, they ordered the manufacturer to do more tests, and they were
00:14:35.540 like, hey, let's be careful and pull this off the market. It's kind of already happening.
00:14:39.720 Does that get covered in the 60 Minutes story?
00:14:41.840 Yeah, they mention it, but with these things, it's all about, like, the emphasis, right?
00:14:46.300 Oftentimes the facts are in there if you look at each sentence of the report in this very, like, what is the information that it contains?
00:14:53.820 But it's very easy for your eyes and your ears to kind of skip over this stuff depending on what the emphasis is, right?
00:14:58.600 The emphasis in the report is, like, kids are eating this, and this causes cancer, and kids could get cancer at any time.
00:15:03.980 And everything that comes after an apple morphs into a skull and crossbones.
00:15:08.540 Yeah, exactly.
00:15:09.140 Like, this is the number one thing you're going to take away from that. 0.93
00:15:11.580 That graphic should have been the grounds for their lawsuit. 0.99
00:15:14.440 Yeah, yeah, no shit. 0.57
00:15:15.880 But then the other thing that the lawsuit mentions is that not only does the segment not really prove that this causes cancer in kids, it doesn't even really prove that this causes cancer in humans. 0.97
00:15:28.820 This is literally based on these two studies from the 1970s of like rats and hamsters.
00:15:35.700 And another thing I thought was fairly irresponsible about the segment is that by 1989, Alar had been on the market for almost 20 years.
00:15:43.280 Yeah.
00:15:43.660 Have the kinds of cancers that we would predict gone up in the population during that time?
00:15:48.520 If not, I feel like that's something to, like, at least tell the audience at some point.
00:15:52.900 Right. And also, like, could you compare it to other places that don't use this substance?
00:15:57.420 Right.
00:15:57.560 There's like a bunch of ways that you could look at it, all of them imperfect, but could point you in a direction or not.
00:16:03.920 Right.
00:16:04.040 Another thing that they didn't really mention is that this pesticide was already basically being phased out.
00:16:09.920 So the EPA estimated that it was only being used on about 5% of apples by the time this report came out.
00:16:18.080 The environmental NGO says that it's closer to 30%.
00:16:21.200 The industry says it's 10%.
00:16:23.580 It's not like every single apple you buy is going to be doused with this pesticide.
00:16:29.100 5% to 10% to 30% of apples?
00:16:31.860 That's a big range.
00:16:32.840 Huge range, I know.
00:16:33.720 But it's also not the same thing as every apple might be poison for your child, right?
00:16:39.140 And also, we know this now.
00:16:41.020 We didn't know this then.
00:16:42.400 But, you know, ALAR has been looked at by a bunch of other countries.
00:16:45.980 And, like, the UN and the WHO have both said that it's, like, not a carcinogen.
00:16:49.900 And there's been more tests now.
00:16:51.720 What?
00:16:52.240 Yeah, it's not clear that this actually is dangerous. 0.92
00:16:57.840 I don't really fucking care that the U.S., like, banned a pesticide, like, needlessly.
00:17:03.220 like just like the mcdonald's thing in last episode i'm like i don't like who cares over 0.98
00:17:07.680 the fate of a fucking pesticide company won't someone think of the shareholders yeah exactly 0.84
00:17:13.300 no we're fine but then the real legacy of this case is not about alar it's about what happens 0.97
00:17:21.320 to libel laws so the apple growers sue cbs for libel and the case is thrown out because they
00:17:31.120 can't prove that any of these claims are false they say well we know that alar causes cancer
00:17:36.920 well there's some evidence that it's a carcinogen in rats yeah that is a factual statement or at
00:17:42.340 close enough to a factual statement that 60 minutes is justified in saying it sure and also
00:17:49.120 when you pair it with b-roll of children eating apples right it's also leading you in a direction
00:17:55.460 right so it's like factually correct but also omitting important information well this is
00:18:02.320 this is the central case of the apple growers is they basically say that like yeah there's no
00:18:08.600 specifically false claim like at the sentence level in this segment but the overall impression
00:18:15.960 that it leaves you with is that apples are fucking dangerous to eat and this is an actual thing in 0.74
00:18:21.200 libel law. It's called the substantial truth requirement. The idea is that you can't go after 0.98
00:18:27.020 a news organization for like one false claim in a longer, you know, segment or book or article
00:18:34.080 whose overall message is not libelous. But the problem is that because they sued in Washington,
00:18:41.620 we don't have the substantial truth requirement. You have to prove that the actual like sentence
00:18:46.380 level claims were false so again i i i have some sympathy with the apple growers right because
00:18:53.280 basically there's like this tv show that is the number one most watched tv show at the time 0.99
00:18:58.100 that is saying your fucking product is poison yeah to children to children yeah and like a lot 0.99
00:19:03.680 of apple growers weren't even using fucking alar right they're like well nobody's buying my product 1.00
00:19:07.760 either even though i already phased out this fucking pesticide yeah right like it is pretty 0.99
00:19:11.380 fucked up and unfair on the other hand when it comes to laws that are governing things like food 0.98
00:19:17.460 safety you kind of want to err on the side of like being able to warn people that a product might be 0.97
00:19:24.820 dangerous yeah right there's there's this balance here between like protecting the interests of an
00:19:29.720 industry and protecting like free speech when does the evidence rise to the point where you can say
00:19:35.640 like hey we think this product causes cancer when should the media be able to do that we're also just
00:19:41.080 in like weird hinky territory where claims about free speech are almost always like about white
00:19:48.420 supremacy or like people saying and doing horrific things to people with considerably less power
00:19:55.040 even though free speech is like you know generally a good thing i like it it has been sort of hijacked
00:20:02.840 yeah but i'm like conceptually and legally right if we're talking about interpretations of the
00:20:08.500 first amendment i could absolutely see that there would be a ton of tensions in that exactly and
00:20:13.260 this is this is a tension that has existed since the beginning of like the journalism industry
00:20:17.680 so this case is thrown out mostly because in america it's just very difficult for public
00:20:27.160 figures and for companies to win defamation lawsuits and to understand what happens next
00:20:35.280 we have to talk about the ins and outs of libel law which i think is actually like pretty interesting
00:20:43.120 i know that you know an attorney and i suspect that you talk to an attorney about this
00:20:49.140 a charming little attorney yeah i host a podcast with a fat lady and a little tiny lawyer 0.98
00:20:55.140 those are my jobs that's his job and that's my job my job is fat lady
00:20:59.180 so yeah how much do you know about libel law aubrey my greatest fear is that i learn more about 0.99
00:21:07.260 that you learn it against your will shit from this goddamn show yes yes yes so basically you 0.98
00:21:16.940 know america's like kind of famous at this point for having like very strong libel laws it's really 0.99
00:21:21.740 hard to win a libel case in america and one of the reasons for that is there's a totally different
00:21:26.860 standard of libel protections for public figures if you're just a random person and a newspaper 0.96
00:21:34.240 prints like you're cheating on your wife or something that's like pretty fucked up because
00:21:38.440 it's not like a matter of public concern and it's much easier to win a libel lawsuit but public 0.96
00:21:44.380 figures have much more ability to respond than a private figure does so if we say on this show
00:21:51.380 that like Gwyneth Paltrow is like faking her organic certification. Her products are from
00:21:57.280 sweatshops or something. She's a massive celebrity. She can go on Instagram. She can 1.00
00:22:02.340 call a press conference. She can like have a video produced about how much we suck in her 1.00
00:22:07.240 organic practices. The state doesn't really need to get involved. So the first bar that public 1.00
00:22:14.580 figures or companies have to clear to win a libel lawsuit is it has to be about a specific
00:22:21.280 individual. Right. So if somebody says on their podcast that like lady podcasters in Portland
00:22:28.620 are the worst, like you can't sue for that. I've tried, Michael. I know. 1.00
00:22:34.860 What are your legal updates, Aubrey? I sued McDonald's for the coffee not being hot enough.
00:22:42.640 So the other bar too clear is that libel has to be a fact, not an opinion. So if we say on the
00:22:50.140 show like gwyneth paltrow sucks and like you should never order anything from goop again
00:22:54.760 that's not libel because that's just our our opinion and opinions are protected by the first 0.98
00:22:59.780 amendment so even if we're kind of going out of our way to like put her out of business that's
00:23:04.760 not libel unless we're saying you know gwyneth paltrow is an axe murderer and she's murdered 14
00:23:09.860 people and she's been convicted in nine states hang on i'm just lifting that out of context
00:23:14.660 the funniest case that i came across this is like how this gets entrenched in law is you know the
00:23:24.100 speaker company bose yeah they tried to sue consumer reports for publishing a bad review
00:23:29.920 but this this was in 1984 consumer reports said their speakers seemed to grow gigantic proportions
00:23:40.080 intended to wander about the room which like isn't even like that sick of a burn yeah but 0.94
00:23:45.900 bows was like this shall not stand and then the court was like you gotta be fucking kidding me 0.96
00:23:51.060 like you you gotta be able to say that like these speakers suck i'm gonna start suing people who 0.97
00:23:55.920 leave like lukewarm reviews of my book yeah exactly i appreciated the first half the second 0.99
00:24:02.400 half was not totally for me but yeah like lawsuit yeah it was totally for you god damn it another
00:24:09.640 thing that's really interesting is I think a lot of the public thinks that libel law is really about 0.80
00:24:14.660 like you've made a false claim about somebody. But in the United States, there's all kinds of
00:24:19.760 false claims that are actually protected. So, I mean, there's an infinite number of false claims
00:24:25.040 that you can publish about somebody. Like somebody could publish that like Michael Hobbs is right
00:24:28.240 handed. That's a false claim, but it's not actionable as libel because it doesn't damage
00:24:32.380 my reputation. Left hand hive, rise up. Yeah. It's actually very interesting how few libel
00:24:39.260 trials actually hinge on whether or not the claims were true. A lot of libel trials hinge on whether
00:24:45.940 it was the kind of false claim that it's okay to make. So the reason for this balancing act in the
00:24:52.740 law is that journalism is kind of messy. If you're a journalist acting in good faith, you're going to
00:24:58.200 get tips. And sometimes those tips are about sort of like urgent issues, right? If you get a tip
00:25:02.480 that like, okay, this pizzeria is poisoning people and there's been 75 cases of food poisoning,
00:25:07.480 and you have some reason to think that that is accurate,
00:25:10.660 you've reached out to the pizza place,
00:25:12.100 you're actually allowed to print that
00:25:13.780 as long as you've kind of done your due diligence.
00:25:17.420 And for a public figure to win a libel lawsuit
00:25:21.240 against a false claim,
00:25:23.460 the bar they have to reach is extremely high.
00:25:25.520 So you have to prove that the journalist was acting
00:25:28.480 with what's called actual malice.
00:25:30.480 Yeah, you don't want any of that fake-ass malice.
00:25:33.280 Yeah, exactly. The real shit. 1.00
00:25:34.760 The real malice. 0.99
00:25:36.200 And it means that not only is the claim that we made about Gwyneth Paltrow false, but we knew it was false or we just had a completely reckless disregard for whether it was false, right?
00:25:47.640 Like I saw graffiti on a trash can that said like Gwyneth Paltrow has murdered a bunch of people and so I put it on my podcast.
00:25:54.580 Like no, that's not real.
00:25:56.640 The whole kind of idea is that like in a robust free speech, free media environment, false claims are going to get published, right? 0.81
00:26:05.060 Like things are going to fall through the cracks and we can't have a legal system that protects fucking celebrities from like every single false claim, right?
00:26:14.560 Like we have to be able to kind of err on the side of informing the public about important issues rather than erring on the side of like no one should hurt Gwyneth Paltrow's feelings. 0.90
00:26:24.980 I'm really delighted, I have to say, that Gwyneth Paltrow is your example of a public figure and murdering people is your example of a false claim.
00:26:33.840 I'm trying not to get sued because I I'm using an example that's like so outlandish that no one is going to think that this is true.
00:26:42.620 Also, this is actually a super bad example because there's certain claims about individuals that are always libelous.
00:26:47.300 And one of them is that somebody has committed a crime.
00:26:50.700 So I'm I'm I'm technically libeling Gwyneth Paltrow by saying that she murdered a bunch of people with an axe.
00:26:56.100 You're making my greatest fear come true.
00:26:57.860 Thank you.
00:26:58.300 Exactly. It's happening.
00:26:59.000 sorry so basically these are all of the reasons why these apple manufacturers growers are like
00:27:07.520 really mad about the fact that they can't win this case right because to a normal person i think you
00:27:12.440 look at this and you're like okay these guys said this thing that was like on kind of dubious grounds
00:27:16.360 they destroyed our industry and then when we try to sue them it doesn't go anywhere because like
00:27:22.900 We can't prove that they acted with malice.
00:27:26.560 Yeah.
00:27:26.780 So in 1992, after this case is thrown out, the agricultural producers, not just the Apple
00:27:33.520 people, but like the everything people, start lobbying state governments to pass special
00:27:40.620 laws to protect agricultural industries from libelous claims.
00:27:45.220 Boy, I'll tell you what, for every wacky news story, there is some kind of extremely reactionary 0.90
00:27:51.740 set of state level policies it's really something exactly some fucking nightmare epilogue that like 0.68
00:27:58.160 no normal person is paying attention to so these laws go by various names the kind of official 0.57
00:28:04.200 name or the one that the media uses the most is veggie libel laws but people also refer to them
00:28:10.400 as banana bills or sirloin slander i think that's the first one because it's a lot of like meat 0.89
00:28:17.960 producers sirloin slander is an amazing name for a drag king that's a free one and so the the logic 0.95
00:28:27.200 that the agricultural producers use is it like you know there's the set of libel laws we're already 0.99
00:28:32.280 protected by ordinary libel laws right those work for you know Gwyneth Paltrow because somebody says
00:28:37.420 something mean about her and she engages in the debate and she holds a press conference and like 1.00
00:28:41.500 six months later her reputation is back where it was right that that works for ordinary public
00:28:46.120 figures. But our products are perishable. So if we get libeled right before a harvest, 1.00
00:28:51.140 by the time the record is corrected, we've lost hundreds of millions of dollars and we're now
00:28:57.800 vulnerable to this. So we need an extra special set of protections. So in the first years of the
00:29:04.080 1990s, 13 states pass veggie libel laws specifically to protect agricultural producers
00:29:12.140 from defamatory claims.
00:29:14.200 So I'm not going to go through each of these laws individually because they differ in the
00:29:17.000 specifics, but every single one of them has like a far lower standard of evidence than
00:29:22.120 the existing libel laws.
00:29:23.440 So the first modification is the veggie libel laws get rid of the actual malice standard.
00:29:32.160 A lot of them just prohibit journalists from making a false claim, which seems like reasonable.
00:29:40.280 Like, well, journalists shouldn't publish false claims.
00:29:42.140 but the problem with the way that a lot of these laws are worded is that it's not clear how you
00:29:48.880 would determine whether something is false i've read a lot of like legal analyses of these laws
00:29:53.580 and a lot of them point out the fact that this would prohibit publishing reports about how
00:29:58.700 cigarettes cause cancer in like the 1940s and 1950s because we didn't like know that yet the
00:30:04.060 other big thing about this is that right now if gwyneth paltrow sues us for libel she has to prove
00:30:10.920 that our claims were false under the veggie libel laws we would have to prove that they're true
00:30:17.000 whoa so the burden of proof shifts from the public figure with all the power and money that go along
00:30:22.960 with that to the journalists the other thing that these laws do is they allow anyone to sue so if
00:30:30.760 you're growing apples if you're processing apples if you're shipping apples if you're wholesaling
00:30:35.740 apples anybody wow which basically means that it would be really easy to venue shop right because
00:30:41.780 like i think it's ohio has one of the worst ones where it's a criminal act to libel any
00:30:48.600 agricultural producer like if we say on the show like oh broccoli is full of chemicals or something
00:30:54.020 then some random fucking person in ohio could sue us under like the most strict version of these 0.95
00:31:00.140 laws and we could go to jail boy a paradise for the incompetent except unless you're going after 0.97
00:31:08.660 veggies that was extremely libelous aubrey save your cease and desist orders that's a quote from
00:31:16.180 a thing yeah that's on our t-shirt store don't don't worry about it we're just libeling you in
00:31:20.900 merch yeah so a lot of these laws are just like straightforwardly unconstitutional but of course
00:31:28.420 because they're kind of under the radar like you don't really notice 13 states passing these obscure
00:31:33.060 libel laws like the public is not really paying very much attention to this but sure it's a little
00:31:38.840 weird that there's like this special set of defamation laws for like farmers why shouldn't
00:31:44.840 the auto industry get this why shouldn't like the aviation industry is also really important to 0.96
00:31:49.660 washington state should they just have their own fucking set of laws like the the problem here 0.86
00:31:55.580 is that politicians have an incentive to protect their industries. Like the preamble to a lot of 0.98
00:32:02.820 these statutes is like, the agriculture industry contributes 40% of GDP to Ohio, da-da-da.
00:32:09.120 Right? If we libel Gwyneth Paltrow and she's mad, that doesn't really affect the economy of 0.52
00:32:14.700 California. Right? But if we libel like almond producers, right, then all of a sudden like tax
00:32:20.240 revenue goes down. Michael, I think you're underestimating how much Gavin Newsom loves
00:32:26.740 goop. That's true. I've seen his skin. It's glowing. So all of this brings us finally to
00:32:35.980 Oprah Winfrey and April 16th, 1996. A day that shall live in infamy. I mean, kind of.
00:32:43.520 what happened on april 16th oprah did an episode called dangerous foods in which she talked about
00:32:51.120 the rapidly moustache test sizing leave it in
00:32:57.960 so we have to sort of set the scene of 1996 this is oprah i don't know if it's like at the height
00:33:05.460 of her powers but this is the moment when people are realizing how much power oprah has it sounds
00:33:12.880 like we are post book club but pre remember your spirit yeah i think she hasn't done the turn
00:33:20.420 into like more kind of highbrow stuff there's a really interesting excerpt from kitty kelly's
00:33:26.300 biography of oprah where she talks about this moment where she's kind of straddling these two 1.00
00:33:30.500 worlds actually why don't i send this to you uh okay oprah was at the top of her game in 1996 0.99
00:33:36.040 making more than 97 million dollars a year and stacking up daytime emmys like firewood 1.00
00:33:42.500 she ruled talk show television then because she gave her viewers compulsively watchable programming 1.00
00:33:48.920 it was not all celebrities all the time but a combination of pop culture and dramatic first
00:33:54.560 person stories of abuse and survival intermixed with books movies music videos beauty makeovers
00:34:01.540 fad diets and psychics plus pressing issues of the day yeah that is absolutely the oprah of my
00:34:10.600 like adolescence i looked up a bunch of old like oprah episodes that have ended up on youtube from
00:34:17.200 this era the mix is incredible so one of them is called wife comes face to face with husband's
00:34:24.080 secret second family holy shit maury povich there's one called the two-headed baby miracle
00:34:31.060 bat boy escapes from chicago lab real tabloid stuff that one's from like 2003 which is like 0.75
00:34:38.640 pretty bad there's also but then there's an interview with the cast of friends there's an
00:34:43.640 interview and a performance with prince there's something called spring training where it's like
00:34:49.080 how to exercise and lose weight for spring there's a reunion of all my children which is very funny
00:34:55.780 to think about like how much daytime tv was like a big deal back then she's also starting to move
00:35:00.280 into this like inspiration porn thing so she has an episode called bouncing back from tragedy
00:35:04.540 and it's just like people who like something bad happened to them and like now they're fine
00:35:08.460 yeah the unifying theme is like appealing to your most purion interests it's like it's like here's
00:35:14.120 a bunch of weirdos and a bunch of celebrities and how to lose weight yeah it's like yeah just
00:35:18.240 the worst parts of myself totally and because oprah was doing like not none but less of the
00:35:25.580 like maury povich jenny jones stuff she was seen as a cut above right oh yeah yeah because she would 0.93
00:35:32.280 talk about things and be like this diet works because of science and people would be like 1.00
00:35:36.220 this talk show mentioned science yeah and also she's big enough that she can get big celebrity 1.00
00:35:41.140 guests too absolutely so we are going to dive into the mad cow situation much more deeply next
00:35:50.340 episode but what do you know about like mad cow disease and the whole kind of outbreak and panic
00:35:55.580 in 1996 i remember that i was 13 and i kept hearing jokes about it yep jay leno i don't
00:36:01.700 really know anything about mad cow i remember that it was a huge freak out it's similar to the
00:36:07.520 e coli outbreaks at jack in the box and sizzler and all of those yes right i was aware ambiently
00:36:13.920 and the way that kid is aware ambiently that this thing is happening and it seems scary and adults
00:36:18.220 freaked out but i didn't really know anything about it and i haven't gone back and learned
00:36:24.560 about it the mad cow panic is one of the few things that i've looked into for the show where
00:36:28.880 like the more details you get about it you're like oh it was like a good idea to panic about
00:36:33.280 this oh it's genuinely fucking terrifying so it's something called a prion which is like your
00:36:39.520 proteins are folding in your brain and it's like a little error that gets like folded in and then 0.86
00:36:45.380 the error sort of like copies itself and just like folds and folds and folds and it over time 0.94
00:36:50.960 it causes literal fucking holes in your brain oh so we're in like syphilis territory and the 0.94
00:36:58.140 scariest thing about the mad cow stuff is that there's this years long incubation period where 0.99
00:37:03.420 there's no symptoms and there's no test for it so when cows get mad cow it's like four years
00:37:09.860 of just like totally normal cow and they start getting these like really fucked up symptoms like
00:37:14.780 they're sort of trembling they fall asleep on their feet they rub themselves against the wall 0.74
00:37:19.300 it's like i don't know if you ever saw that footage as a kid no of a cow like stumbling
00:37:23.500 and like trying to walk it's really grim yeah so there's this long incubation period followed by
00:37:29.980 mad cow disease in cows and then humans it's the same thing it can be like seven years that it's 0.96
00:37:36.720 just like happening in your brain no symptoms and no way to fucking know if it's happening to you 0.93
00:37:41.680 once you start getting mad cow as a human it's like your brain gets foggy you start losing your 0.95
00:37:47.300 short-term memory you fall down you're super fatigued and once people get it there's a 100 0.96
00:37:54.720 percent fatality rate you just die like within a year holy shit and then i read i read three books 0.97
00:38:01.680 on mad cow disease i'm gonna bore you to fucking tears next episode with the detail that we're 0.99
00:38:06.880 gonna get into i will bore you to tears in the next episode is the single greatest cliffhanger 0.99
00:38:12.240 we will ever have threat slash promise yes i love it so gonna suck shit two hours long 0.92
00:38:20.240 what i remember about this time is one of my brother's like stoner friends telling me that 0.93
00:38:28.240 like it's possible that like literally everybody has this right because of the long incubation 0.95
00:38:33.100 period oh my god it could have been the case that like 50 of the population has fucking mad cow 0.58
00:38:38.440 and we won't know for like 10 more years yeah this is um a more grounded version of my childhood 0.79
00:38:44.440 fear which was the thing about swallowing a watermelon seed and then a watermelon growing
00:38:48.480 you think you're pregnant but it's not kicking like oh my god it's a watermelon and i'm nine
00:38:55.420 yeah yeah it's perfectly round so oprah's episode is in april of 1996 in march of 1996
00:39:02.180 britain announces that there's been at least 10 people who've been infected with mad cow
00:39:07.320 and at the time no one really knew anything and this was the first that anyone in america had
00:39:14.360 heard about mad cow right and there's all kinds of panic going on mostly because of this like 0.99
00:39:19.600 incubation period it's like well how many fucking cows have it in america how many fucking people 0.98
00:39:23.620 have it and there were projections coming out of the uk that up to like 130 000 people were going 0.99
00:39:31.320 to die wow and also america has a much larger beef industry per capita than britain and we eat
00:39:37.100 a lot more beef than britons so it's like all of the elements coming together for just like a total
00:39:44.500 freak out so on april 16th oprah does an episode called dangerous food one of my like greatest
00:39:52.480 frustrations and obsessions in the last like three weeks that i've been researching this is i could 0.98
00:39:57.060 not find this fucking segment. It does not exist on YouTube, Vimeo, or like the sketchy Chinese 0.93
00:40:03.140 websites that are streaming like episodes of Seinfeld. I could not get a transcript of it.
00:40:08.820 The transcript was originally in the court documents, but it's now been redacted, which
00:40:13.740 I think is really weird. Huh. That is really weird. So I sort of had to like piece together
00:40:18.980 what was said in this segment from like various court documents. There were two or three different
00:40:25.420 biographies I had to look at. They're basically talking about like, well, this mad cow disease
00:40:30.260 thing is like a huge fucking deal in Britain. Everyone's losing their mind. Is this a risk 0.99
00:40:34.980 in America? Like how worried should we be about this? Right. And so they have three panelists.
00:40:40.400 The first is a guy named William Houston, who is with the USDA. And he's like the country's
00:40:45.920 leading expert on mad cow disease. The second guy they have is named Gary Weber. He's from the
00:40:52.040 National Cattlemen's Beef Association. So he's like the beef guy. And then the third guest is
00:40:58.220 a guy named Howard Lyman. He is like a third generation rancher. He grew up on a cattle ranch
00:41:05.000 and took it over from his folks. And in the, I believe 1970s, he had two big scares that his
00:41:12.860 brother died of cancer. And then he was diagnosed with cancer. And he linked this back to his diet
00:41:19.940 and specifically to his consumption of animal products so after he recovered from cancer
00:41:26.020 he sold the farm and became like a super hardcore animal rights activist he's been involved in all
00:41:33.900 kinds of environmental and animal rights charities throughout the years in 1996 he's a like ambassador
00:41:40.180 like something vp something something for the humane society and so he's the third guest so
00:41:46.360 they have like the academic guy the beef guy and the like animal rights guy on this oprah panel
00:41:52.000 she goes to the beef guy and the beef guy's like well we actually have a lot of safeguards in place
00:41:57.440 in america and like our our system of beef is very different than it is in britain and then
00:42:04.280 she goes to the academic guy and he's like yep our system is like very different and like we're
00:42:08.940 actually not very worried about this as a risk in america and then she goes to howard lyman and
00:42:16.200 howard lyman says that the way that mad cow spreads is through cows eating the brains of
00:42:24.340 other cows this is the way these little prion error messages spread between animals is they
00:42:30.020 infect like brains and glands and spinal stuff and when other members of the same species eat
00:42:37.220 that stuff of their own kind they also get the little error folding and so we are going to read
00:42:43.320 the exchange that follows this is as close as i could come to piecing together like the transcript
00:42:50.580 this is from a couple different sources but as far as i can tell this is what was said afterwards
00:42:54.900 i love this level of sleuthin do you want to be oprah or do you want to be howard oh i'll be
00:43:00.860 howard you want me howard okay i'm gonna send this to you i hope this comes through it's like
00:43:04.380 a massive brick this might actually have graduated from brick to two by four okay uh what it comes
00:43:12.320 down to is about half of the slaughter of animals is non-sellable to humans they either have to pay
00:43:19.100 to put it into the dump or they sell it for feed so they grind it up turn it into something that
00:43:24.380 looks like brown sugar add to it all of the animals that died unexpectedly all of the road
00:43:30.720 kills and the euthanized animals, add it to them, grind it up, and feed it back to other animals.
00:43:37.780 It's about as simple as it can be. We are doing something to an animal that was never intended to
00:43:43.520 be done. You said this disease could make AIDS look like the common cold? Absolutely. That's an
00:43:48.920 extreme statement, you know? Absolutely. And what we're looking at right now is we're following
00:43:53.880 exactly the same path that they followed in England. Ten years of dealing with it as public
00:43:59.440 relations rather than doing something substantial about it 100 000 cows per year in the united
00:44:06.180 states are fine at night dead in the morning the majority of those cows are rounded up ground up
00:44:12.700 fed back to other cows if only one of them has mad cow disease it has the potential to affect
00:44:18.740 thousands remember today 14 of all cows by volume are ground up turned into feed and fed back to
00:44:27.040 other animals. But cows are herbivores. They shouldn't be eating other cows. That's exactly
00:44:31.660 right. And what we should be doing is exactly what nature says. We should have them eating grass,
00:44:37.480 not other cows. We've not only turned them into carnivores, we've turned them into cannibals. 1.00
00:44:43.360 Now, doesn't that concern y'all a little bit right here, hearing that? It has just stopped
00:44:47.240 me cold from eating another burger. I'm stopped. Uh, footage not found of Oprah never eating
00:44:53.580 another burger you know what i mean i mean she does five shows a week they're not meant to have
00:44:57.340 like a lasting impact on you emotionally they're not meant to be read out as from court transcripts
00:45:03.620 in 2023 yeah yeah but also like i can see how people like freaked out about this yeah what 0.99
00:45:10.340 this dude is saying is like we're eating fucking cow brains and like cows are eating fucking cow 0.98
00:45:14.880 brains well even with the sort of like gross factor like i think there is like a pretty deep 0.99
00:45:20.960 and visceral revulsion at cannibalism for most folks right so even just conceptually that thing
00:45:26.600 i have i will say one of my longest standing pet peeves is uh there is a barbecue restaurant that
00:45:34.240 i drive by frequently and their mascot is a pig serving barbecue oh yeah that is dark yeah that's
00:45:42.680 really dark yeah and sometimes the animated m&ms like eat m&ms and you're like oh you're little 0.70
00:45:47.040 friends yeah as look as long as the m&ms that they're eating are appropriately feminine yeah
00:45:53.980 okay so i'm sending you another brick okay this is as close as i could come to understanding what 0.94
00:46:02.960 it like felt like to watch this segment so this involves howard lyman the animal rights guy and
00:46:10.700 also the beef guy and oprah okay so why don't you also play the beef guy i'm the beef guy
00:46:16.800 As far as I could tell, this comes after the previous segment where he's like, we've turned
00:46:21.860 them into cannibals. And then Oprah turns to the beef guy and she's like, is this true? Are you 0.88
00:46:27.400 feeding like cow brains to other cows? Let me clarify that. There is a reason to be concerned.
00:46:34.860 We've learned from the tragedy in Great Britain and made a decision here. We started taking
00:46:40.080 initiatives 10 years ago to make sure this never happened here. Number one, we do not have mad cow
00:46:46.340 disease in this country, and we have a 10-year history of surveillance to document that based
00:46:51.760 on science. Also, we have not imported any beef into this country since 1985 from Great Britain.
00:46:59.480 Are we feeding cattle to cattle? There is a limited amount of that done in the United States.
00:47:04.260 The audience groaned and booed. Hang on just a second now. The Food and Drug Administration...
00:47:10.640 I have to just tell you, that's alarming to me. This is Oprah interrupting him.
00:47:13.980 Now, keep in mind that before you view the ruminant animal, the cow, as simply vegetarian,
00:47:20.420 remember that they drink milk.
00:47:22.180 More groans and booze.
00:47:24.120 I'm saying we do not have the disease here.
00:47:26.780 We've got 10 years of data, the best scientists in the world who are looking for this.
00:47:31.600 Over 250 trained technicians and veterinarians around the country.
00:47:36.360 Everyone's watching for this.
00:47:37.880 So now Howard Lyman jumps in.
00:47:39.640 The same thing that we've heard here today is exactly what was heard for 10 years in
00:47:43.560 England. Not to worry, we're on top of this. If we continue to do what we're doing, feeding animals
00:47:51.220 to animals, I believe we are going to be in exactly the same place. Today, we could do exactly what
00:47:57.700 the English did and cease feeding cows to cows. Why in the world are we not doing that? Why are 0.96
00:48:04.600 we skating around this and continuing to do it when everybody sitting here knows that would be
00:48:10.580 the safest thing to do why is it why is it because we have the greedy that are getting the ear of
00:48:17.100 government instead of the needy and that's exactly why we're doing it audience applause but you
00:48:22.960 really inhabited howard there aubrey he's a real orator that guy so you can see how howard lyman
00:48:29.240 is just a way better communicator than the beef guy i think the audience is also primed to not
00:48:34.600 trust a dude from the cattleman's association which like yes i agree completely right and like
00:48:40.200 you can see what's happening here is that they're not really focusing like on the specific risks of 0.93
00:48:46.480 mad cow they're basically zeroing in on like this thing that's fucking gross they're they're grinding 0.61
00:48:51.020 up cows and feeding them to other cows most people do not know that this is happening routinely in 0.98
00:48:55.440 the food supply yeah so oprah seizes on this thing that is like objectively fucking gross 0.79
00:48:59.800 and it's like are they feeding cows to cows or not yeah and this guy is basically called upon 0.90
00:49:05.300 to be like yeah but we've been doing that for ages and we haven't had mad cow right like this 0.95
00:49:08.900 is fucking gross but like you just don't really want to think about where your beef comes from 0.99
00:49:11.700 and like there's a lot of fucking gross shit that goes on behind the scenes well and it's also worth 0.99
00:49:15.360 thinking about what everyone is there to do right right howard lyman is there to make extremely 0.99
00:49:21.480 big claims right to get folks uh further and further on board with like not eating animals
00:49:29.520 anymore right beef guy is there to just defend his industry which never feels great right like
00:49:36.020 that's never like a welcome tv presence right and oprah the moderator of this conversation is there
00:49:42.400 to make a tv show this is an utterly abysmal way to inform the public right what you basically got
00:49:48.000 is two interested actors you've got an animal rights activist and a beef activist neither one 0.66
00:49:54.420 of whom have any incentive to give you a holistic understanding of what the fuck is going on in
00:49:59.960 britain and whether the same thing could happen here right you basically got two people who are
00:50:04.720 like leaning toward hyperbole. And then Oprah is kind of in the middle pretending to be sort of
00:50:11.140 like a moderate voice somewhere in between. That is a shitty, unbelievably shitty way to find out 0.98
00:50:15.780 the truth. But it's a great way to have a compelling TV talk show, right? Because you've 0.98
00:50:20.040 got conflict. People like watching conflict. People like tension. So you've got these like
00:50:23.660 great fireworks between like the beef guy being like, you know it, Howard, you're lying. He's
00:50:29.300 like you're the greedy versus the needy totally and then the beef guy responds with like here's
00:50:35.660 our staff structure and how many people we've assigned to the problem and you're like buddy
00:50:40.860 yeah and the milk he mentions milk for no reason they're not vegetarian they drink milk what so
00:50:48.080 again whether or not there are specific false claims within this the obvious takeaway that 0.99
00:50:54.900 any reasonable person would get from this is like, well, fuck, don't eat beef. So this is wild. The 0.99
00:51:01.220 next day, cattle prices, like the sort of wholesale price of like cattle futures or whatever,
00:51:08.340 drops by the legal limit. It's illegal for cattle prices to drop by more than a buck fifty per day,
00:51:14.640 and they drop by a buck fifty. What? Yeah, they're calling it the Oprah crash.
00:51:19.500 So if we're thinking back to that little checklist for libel laws, there's your demonstrable harm.
00:51:25.520 There's your harm.
00:51:26.340 Exactly.
00:51:26.800 That's really significant. 1.00
00:51:28.160 So in response, the beef industry loses its fucking mind. 0.99
00:51:30.860 They pull a bunch of ads and they do this huge letter writing campaign about how irresponsible it was of Oprah to publish this segment. 0.99
00:51:39.940 The Cattlemen's Association is drunk with power off of their hardcore win with the food pyramid.
00:51:47.200 And they're like, who's our next target? 0.98
00:51:48.900 We got them to change the design to be unbelievably shitty, to make it as ugly as hell. 0.95
00:51:54.100 And so this is wild. 0.92
00:51:55.360 This doesn't actually come up in the lawsuit all that much.
00:51:57.820 But a week later, Oprah then does a second episode following up where she invites back
00:52:03.600 the beef guy to like talk for another like 10 or 15 minutes.
00:52:06.920 And like, well, you were here last week.
00:52:08.840 Maybe we railroaded you a little bit.
00:52:10.480 Maybe you didn't get to say your piece.
00:52:12.260 So she does like a whole other segment about like, well, what's the beef situation?
00:52:16.880 How much is the mad cow a risk? 1.00
00:52:18.900 She's trying to do a make good, huh? 1.00
00:52:20.720 Yeah.
00:52:20.900 This seems like either a good faith effort or a damage control thing, but either way.
00:52:26.360 Exactly.
00:52:26.760 Giving them more air time.
00:52:28.000 So she tries to do the kind of correct the record, but I think it's a much more like
00:52:33.820 boring segment because there aren't really any fireworks.
00:52:37.460 And according, this also is not online, but according to descriptions of it, she's kind
00:52:42.120 of again grilling him about like, well, are they eating other cows?
00:52:45.580 What about the cow brains?
00:52:46.500 and he's like trying to talk about these like controls that they have in place for mad cow 0.98
00:52:50.580 disease and she's just fixated on like this is fucking gross like is this gross thing happening 0.91
00:52:54.720 or not which it is to her credit yeah so a month goes by and on may 28th 1996 a bunch of cattlemen 0.96
00:53:05.440 association people it's the cactus feeders incorporated which is very confusing because
00:53:12.200 it's cactus and cattle files a lawsuit against oprah winfrey and howard lyman in texas under
00:53:20.620 texas's false disparagement of perishable food products act oh which is one of the veggie libel 0.88
00:53:28.900 laws that was passed in this wave by far the weirdest fucking thing about the lawsuit do you 0.74
00:53:36.160 want to guess how much they sued her for is it in the billions or the hundreds of millions this is 0.99
00:53:41.200 the weirdest thing it's 12 million dollars what which is like nothing like for these lawsuits
00:53:46.780 that's so low the apple people sued cbs for 200 million boy oh boy it's actually very interesting
00:53:52.620 that oprah fought this rather than just paying it i mean i'm glad that she didn't but like she
00:53:57.400 will eventually spend five million dollars defending herself from this that's fascinating
00:54:01.280 before we sort of start to wrap up here these are the complicated feelings i have about this
00:54:08.640 Yes, tell me. 0.93
00:54:09.840 On the one hand, the Oprah segment was like straightforwardly really fucking irresponsible.
00:54:15.940 We find out through the lawsuit, through the entire discovery process that goes on over the next couple of years, Oprah's team wanted to do a segment on the mad cow panic in the UK.
00:54:26.320 And basically they called around like the CDC and the NIH and a bunch of experts.
00:54:30.660 And like every single expert was like, this is not really a risk in the United States for like various kind of boring structural reasons.
00:54:38.640 and they they were like expert no expert no expert no what about this random animal rights activist
00:54:45.120 and then they find howard lyman who's like willing to make a bunch of like exaggerated
00:54:50.980 and like fairly unsubstantiated claims and they're like okay great let's have this guy on yeah and
00:54:56.400 then not only do they have this guy on as like a counterpoint to people that have more expertise
00:55:02.320 in this area they also edit out a shitload of stuff from the actual expert so this usda expert
00:55:10.280 guy who's like the country's leading expert on mad cow disease apparently said a lot of the same
00:55:15.120 things as the beef guy but they cut him out because they're like oh it's redundant like he's
00:55:19.800 the closest thing you have to a referee who's like uh i've actually looked into this and my view is
00:55:24.740 much closer to the cattleman than it is to the animal rights guy totally and there's a way to
00:55:29.580 structure that conversation that's like, hey, before we dig in on this complicated topic,
00:55:34.460 we wanted to hear from the USDA about what their regulations are around something like this
00:55:39.020 and how they're enforced. It's like a much cleaner approach, but it's also not the best TV
00:55:46.040 necessarily. And they're basically, they're doing something that we see all the time now,
00:55:49.040 where they're kind of whipping a debate out of something that is not really the consensus of
00:55:54.660 experts. There's not actually that much debate among experts at the time, because due to the
00:56:00.420 long incubation period of mad cow disease, this condition was discovered in Britain in 1986. So
00:56:08.020 10 years has already gone by. The US instituted like pretty broad based testing for mad cow
00:56:15.020 disease of like every cow that like has symptoms and like looks like it's tripping balls. They send
00:56:21.300 a piece of its brain to a lab to test it for mad cow and they've never found it this is like
00:56:25.600 covid testing rules right any symptoms you get tested and then the the biggest thing that they
00:56:32.160 didn't really ever communicate to the audience is that like mad cow disease is like a very british
00:56:38.080 phenomenon so you know there's there's other countries in europe that have like very large
00:56:42.020 cattle sectors that did not have mad cow there's something specific about britain that is causing
00:56:47.720 the outbreak there and a lot of it was that britain relies on this ground-up bone meal
00:56:53.900 stuff like way more than america because america has really really really cheap soybeans available 0.97
00:57:00.960 the whole point of grinding up fucking animals and feeding them to animals is to get cheap protein 0.79
00:57:06.420 we have way cheaper protein available in the united states to the extent that cattle producers 0.99
00:57:12.760 were using like ground up cow brains they were mostly feeding them to like older dairy cows
00:57:19.360 and mad cow is not transmitted through milk it's really only transmitted through like brain and
00:57:23.860 spine all the academic reports on this are like could it happen here maybe but like in britain
00:57:30.940 due to all of the structures of their cattle sector it's like one case of mad cow becomes 10
00:57:36.360 becomes 100 and it metastasizes which i actually managed to say nailed it but in america
00:57:42.740 It's like if we had one case of mad cow, it would have become like one other case or like two cases.
00:57:48.320 And we're testing for it.
00:57:49.700 I think the thing that's interesting about this story and this sort of breakdown to me is nobody was making different strategic decisions.
00:57:58.680 There wasn't like a regulation breakdown in the UK.
00:58:02.100 There wasn't anyone skirting any laws.
00:58:04.580 There wasn't anyone making laws in bad faith.
00:58:07.280 Right. This was a case of folks working with the resources that were at their disposal.
00:58:12.740 and the protein that was most available in the U.S.
00:58:16.920 had less of a risk of this specific thing.
00:58:20.040 I'm always fascinated when we end up with these stories of like,
00:58:23.740 nobody necessarily did anything wrong or broke any laws
00:58:28.900 and we're still here and that's kind of gnarly.
00:58:31.520 I think, I mean, the place that I sort of landed on this
00:58:33.760 was that like, it was a bad and irresponsible segment
00:58:36.700 and this is very obviously a frivolous lawsuit.
00:58:40.420 At no point in this segment did Oprah mention Texas beef.
00:58:46.040 She was just talking about beef.
00:58:47.280 And then because these laws allow basically anybody to sue, these two random cattle ranchers
00:58:53.900 from Texas are like, I'm suing you for damages.
00:58:57.380 And even under Texas's veggie libel law, they still have to prove that Oprah and Howard
00:59:05.940 Lyman knew the claims were false and said them anyway.
00:59:10.420 So in the filing, they say Defendant Lyman is a vegetarian activist and lobbyist with an agenda to wipe out the U.S. beef industry.
00:59:21.960 And that Defendant Winfrey intentionally edited from the taped show much of the factual and scientific information that would have calmed the hysteria it knew Lyman's false exaggerations would create.
00:59:33.340 Boy, that part I find unconvincing.
00:59:36.660 Yeah, like...
00:59:37.620 Like, if people knew, they wouldn't have freaked out.
00:59:40.660 Like, no, no.
00:59:41.920 Yeah.
00:59:42.280 By the time someone says cows are eating cow brains.
00:59:45.240 Yeah, exactly.
00:59:46.000 You can't unring that bell, my guy.
00:59:47.580 There's no amount of, like, context that people are like, all right, I get it.
00:59:51.380 Cool.
00:59:51.820 Okay, so now we come to the ending.
00:59:53.980 Not really twist, because you already said that you know about it.
00:59:57.020 But the ending cameo.
00:59:58.800 The ending cameo.
01:00:00.180 I'm sending you a photo.
01:00:02.860 It might be sending you the file name rather than the file.
01:00:06.200 I sent you a photo.
01:00:06.960 oh no i got a photo okay good yeah see it do you see it we have an oprah winfrey press conference
01:00:14.020 in front of what looks like a courthouse she's talking into the microphone there is a wall of
01:00:19.500 people behind her and who is in that wall aubrey whose little bald head and mustachio little mouth
01:00:25.460 dead center it is texas's favorite son yeah dr phil so this is like the origin story of dr phil
01:00:36.280 according to howard lyman's book he charged them 250 000 to be like a court consultant is he a jury
01:00:46.180 consultant yeah he's a jury consultant that's like his first job this is also where he gets his sort
01:00:52.700 of tough talking thing so as she's preparing for the trial apparently oprah is just like rolling 1.00
01:00:58.800 her eyes like you gotta be fucking kidding me like you're suing me over this dumb beef shit 0.99
01:01:02.780 and apparently Dr. Phil like sat her down and was like Oprah if you do not take this trial 1.00
01:01:09.660 seriously the jury is gonna know yeah the country is gonna know if you're rolling your eyes you're 0.81
01:01:14.380 gonna fucking lose well and it looks like you don't care about the effects of your work is how 0.77
01:01:19.540 it plays right like you just get to say what you want and then you get irritated if anybody tries 0.98
01:01:24.820 to hold you to account is how is the optics of that he also warned her he said if you fight this
01:01:31.940 to the bitter end the line at the sue oprah window is going to get a lot shorter so basically he's 0.97
01:01:37.960 like if if they get you on this fucking everybody's gonna sue you you yeah absolutely you run a talk 0.97
01:01:43.140 show that is making like outlandishly false claims constantly five times a week you're on the air and 1.00
01:01:50.840 you're saying wild stuff yeah you're just you're just saying shit and like you're really not vetting 0.77
01:01:56.280 like as we see from the editing and the choice of guests and stuff like you're running a pretty 0.99
01:02:00.100 irresponsible ship oprah if you don't fight this fucking everybody's gonna sue you so like you need 0.82
01:02:06.460 to win this to prove the fact that like it's a huge hassle to sue oprah and then i've seen clips 0.98
01:02:12.840 on her show where she talks about like how we met and stuff like that and it's always like this
01:02:17.260 speech that she references his kind of tough talking persona that of course has become the 0.93
01:02:22.120 fucking odious dr phil that we know now this all comes out of him being like the only person who 0.98
01:02:27.860 like stands up to oprah and is like hey nut up and fucking try to win this lawsuit and take this 0.99
01:02:32.740 seriously i know if he said nut up that's problematic so this is where we're going to 0.74
01:02:38.060 leave it for part one next episode we are going to determine whether howard lyman's claims are
01:02:46.800 false by learning a little bit more about the mad cow outbreak and getting to the denouement
01:02:54.360 of oprah's trial so no googling to find out what happened 30 years ago i will do no googling i
01:03:01.140 will mention nothing to my family here i will go hire a lawyer because my anxiety
01:03:06.800 is it a real fever pitch at this point you've said you've said some things about gwyneth today
01:03:24.360 We'll see you next time.