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March 17, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:03:27
Dr. Phil McGraw | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 42
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Time Text
Do I have a history that predisposes me to a certain thing?
Yes.
That just means it's harder for you to do what you need to do, but it is still up to you.
The past is over.
The future hasn't happened yet.
The only time is right now.
And the only question is, what are you going to do?
Hello and welcome.
This is the Sunday Special with Dr. Phil McGraw, the host of the Dr. Phil Show and the brand new podcast, Phil in the Blanks.
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Well, Dr. Phil, thanks so much for stopping by.
Well, Dr. Phil, thanks so much for stopping by.
Not sure why you're slumming it with us, but I'm glad you made it.
Listen, nice digs you got here.
I appreciate it.
And you're a solid liar.
I can only tell because I've been watching your show and you've told me how to spot a liar.
See, I need to stop doing that.
People can pick it out now.
It's dangerous.
So let's start from the very beginning.
For folks who don't know your story, how did you become the Dr. Phil that is a household name?
Everybody knows who you are.
How did you go from point A to point B?
Well, Oprah has a big part of this.
There would be no Dr. Phil without Oprah, of course.
I was working as a trial consultant.
I had a trial science firm in Dallas called Courtroom Sciences, and I represented Oprah as part of her trial team in the Mad Cow case.
People might remember the Mad Cow case up in Amarillo.
She was sued by the cattle growers.
People think it's a bunch of ranchers.
Not a bunch of ranchers.
A bunch of cattle growers.
I mean, these are with 100,000 cows in a feedlot.
She made a comment that they alleged disparaged her about beef and sued her in Amarillo.
And that's behind enemy lines for her.
So I helped defend her in that case up there.
And after that, she asked me to be on her show.
And after a while, I did.
And then she asked me to be on again and then again and again.
And then I started doing every Tuesday for five years.
And from that, Came the Dr. Phil Show, and I'm now in my 17th season.
I never intended to be on television at all.
In fact, in all the years that I worked as a trial scientist, I never gave one interview, not one time.
You know, people would come to trial and say, you know, who are you?
Answer was always the same, I'm not here.
Because we didn't want to be in the spotlight then.
We wanted to be behind the scenes.
So it was never my aspiration to do it, but I really enjoyed doing her show and then spraying the Dr. Phil.
And now, as I say, we're in our 17th season, coming up on 3,000 shows.
20,000 guests and here we are.
One of the things that obviously you're famous for is your ability to read other human beings and a lot of your show is the personal interaction that you have with other folks.
How accurate do you think that people can actually be just by talking to folks about assessing where they're coming from, whether they're lying, that sort of thing?
Well, you know, when you really sit down and focus on somebody, and particularly the people that I work with, I think they really come in wanting me to know the truth.
Uh, and we really manage people's expectations.
First off, I don't work with anybody that doesn't want to work with me.
I mean, I don't stop cars out on sunset and say, you look like you need help.
Get out.
Uh, that's not how it works.
I mean, we get tens of thousands of emails of people wanting to be there and, and it's hard to get there because, uh, I mean, somebody told me the other day, uh, the, Average guest is written in 20 or 30 times before they get there, which I hate.
I'm sorry about that.
But they really want to be there.
And I make it real clear, look, I can help you with anything you tell me about, even if it's to tell you I can't help you, or I will send you where you can get help.
But if you come in and tell me something that's not the truth, if you're just coming in trying to cover your ass or spin this, you're wasting my time and yours.
So you worked really hard to get here, so you need to tell me the truth.
So most people really are trying to put it out there and tell me the truth.
And if they're not, it's pretty obvious.
If somebody's there just trying to be a right fighter, not own their part of a circumstance or situation, whether it's a family issue or they're on drugs or whatever, if they're trying to evade and hide, it's pretty evident, because They're not wanting to take accountability or whatever, and once they start getting honest, that's real clear, too.
But most of the people come in are trying to really get some help, sincerely, or they don't make the cut, because we do Every guest that I deal with, I get a notebook that's probably 250 pages thick, because we do intake interview, I do a cross-sectional history, a longitudinal history, a medical history, a social history.
We interview collaterals, neighbors, friends, family members, to try to get as many perspectives as we possibly can.
So I have a lot of information that doesn't just come from them.
And then I have an advisory board for Dr. Phil, and that's made up of the top minds in psychology, psychiatry, medicine, sociology, and they're from the top learning centers in the country.
I've got the head of the family division in the Harvard Medical School, the children Child psychiatry at Yale University.
I've got Dr. Zimbardo, a professor emeritus from Stanford University that's done all the—remember, he did the prison experiment.
He's written most of the general psych textbooks.
If people went through general psych, they probably had Zimbardo as a textbook.
I've just got, you know, really the These are a lot of the editors of the peer-reviewed journals in psychology.
These are all on my advisory board.
So if I get a really complex case, I can send it out to these different men and women on my advisory board and get really good input from them.
You know, there's about an 18 to 24-month lag time From research that's accepted for these peer journals to the time it gets published.
So I get beyond cutting-edge information for my guests.
So we really do our homework.
So what do you think are some of the benefits and drawbacks of dealing with people on a psychological level in public like this?
Well, first off, you have to be real clear in your expectations of what you're going to do.
I am 100% clear with myself that I'm not up there doing 30-minute cures.
I mean, come on.
People ask me sometimes, you know, Dr. Phil, are problems really as simple as you make them out to be?
I don't think problems are simple at all.
In fact, I think problems are often very complex.
But I think the solutions are often very simple.
You can have a complex problem that maybe is generational through someone's family history, or it may be a problem of comorbidity where there's drugs, and then there are psychological issues, and then familial issues.
There are lots of things that are feeding in to define a problem that's multifaceted.
But the solution to that problem may be very simple, such as stop doing drugs, get the toxic people out of your life, hit the reset button and start behaving your way to success, and I'm going to give you the resources to do that.
I'm going to get you a life coach.
I'm going to get you a rehab center to get you detox from these drugs with medical supervision.
And we're going to bring a family counselor in to start redefining what you call a family dynamic.
So, you know, after 17 years, I've got a network of resources.
We've just passed $30 million in aftercare resources that we share with our guests off-camera, away from the show where they actually do the work.
So I don't think I'm solving these people's problems.
Sometimes we do, sometimes it's very simple.
But I think of it as being kind of an emotional compass.
I can tell you what I think, point you in the right direction, and then help you with the resources you need to get there.
And every guest is a teaching tool.
So, like, you might come on the show and be a real hammerhead, just as an example.
Just as an example.
And maybe you don't get it.
Maybe what I'm telling you, you don't get.
But sometimes the hardest, most hard-headed guests are the best teaching tools.
Because then I'll get thousands of letters and they'll say, oh my God, what a hard head.
He didn't get it.
But I did.
I heard him saying things I've said before, and I will never say that again.
Oh my God.
So they're great teaching tools, even though they don't get it.
And is it a problem doing it in public for some people?
If so, They wouldn't be there.
I mean, they choose to come.
And, you know, there's a certain percent of the people that are just exhibitionistic in their personality.
I mean, let's just face it.
They just, they want the attention.
They want to do it in front of a camera.
We have a narcissistic society.
Some people just want to be in the spotlight.
And then there's a percentage of the people that they just uniquely want my perspective.
They think, he tells, I'm tired of going to a psychologist that pats me on the hand and says it's going to be okay, and how's that make you feel?
They want somebody that puts verbs in their sentences and cuts to the chase.
So they come because they uniquely feel like I've been in their living room every day for 15 years.
They trust me and want to know my… It seems like a lot of your brand and a lot of your popularity is linked to the fact that you're a very big advocate of personal responsibility.
From the shows that I've seen, a lot of what happens, people come in, they don't want to take responsibility for what's going on in their life, they don't want to take responsibility for their choices and you kind of tell them that they need to take responsibility for those choices.
Do you think that that's...
Has that been successful, typically?
I mean, it sounds like you have follow-up resources.
And also, have you gotten blowback for pushing that hard on sort of the personal responsibility angle?
Well, look, I don't make the rules.
I'm just telling them what they are.
I mean, look, there are some things that... I'm one of those people that believes old sayings get to be old sayings because they're profound.
Like a stitch in time saves nine, you know?
I mean, these things stick around generation to generation to generation because they apply.
And I have certain rules, like, you just don't reward bad behavior.
I mean, Lassie can figure this out.
You don't need to come to me for that.
But sometimes they're so close to it, they do.
You don't reward bad behavior.
Somebody comes in, they says, I got a 30-year-old son that's on drugs.
He's living in my house.
He's telling me I'm a bitch.
He won't clean up his room.
And I can't get him to do what I need him to do.
Well, why are you letting him live with you?
Why are you buying him a new cell phone?
Why are you paying all of his car payment and insurance?
And he's calling you a...
I mean, to me, that just seems simple.
You're rewarding bad behavior, and then you're asking me why he does it.
Why wouldn't he do it?
You're requiring nothing of him.
So, of course he's going to do that.
Some words get so overused, they lose their meaning, like enabling.
You say, oh, well, you're an enabler.
People don't really stop and think what that really means.
It's used so much it loses its meaning.
Enable means I'm making it possible for him to do what he's doing.
And if I stop making it easy for him to do what he's doing, then again, old saying, necessity is the mother of invention.
If he has to find a new way to live, then he'll find a new way to live.
I mean, so I think sometimes when I'll set a parent down and say, look, let's face it.
You're doing what you're doing.
To make yourself feel better.
Not to make your addict child healthier, because it's not making your addict child healthier.
You're actually doing this so you're not anxious about them being on the street.
So don't kid yourself you're doing this to help them.
You're doing this so you don't lay awake at night.
You would rather enable them and have them high in their bedroom than worry about them being on the street.
So you're doing this for you, not them.
You're being selfish, and you're crippling them at their expense to make yourself feel better.
Now, they don't want to hear that, but is there any other way to see it?
And so I tell them the truth, and usually Once they wrap their head around that, then they say, I never thought of it that way.
And they change what they're doing.
Well, in just a second, I want to ask you about how that kind of personal responsibility ethos meshes with a society that may be promoting the idea that we are all sort of subject to forces beyond our own control.
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The second thing they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech and their own persons with force.
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So I want to ask you a little bit about the kind of—I know you don't talk politics very much.
Your show is apolitical.
But I'm not sure this is really a political question as much as it is a societal values question and may have some political ramifications.
It seems like we live in a time where a lot of folks want to blame their personal behavior on forces beyond their control.
They want to say that I do, but I don't think that it is all or none.
obviously within their control, are obviously not within their control.
They're the result of historical forces or forces out there in the ether or institutional pressures or all the rest.
Do you see that conflict right now in the country between sort of an ethos of personal responsibility and a system of thought that says that you're really a victim of circumstance?
I do, but I don't think that it is all or none.
And I look at it that way I can use genetics as a good example.
people.
My father was a bad alcoholic.
I mean, really bad alcoholic.
I mean, he would drink to the point of blackout, oblivion, violence, tearing up the house, attacking family members, etc., etc.
Now, I am genetically predisposed to be an alcoholic.
Genetics oftentimes don't tell you who is going to be a certain way.
It just tells you who is more likely to be a certain way.
It just means, for me, I have a steeper hill to climb.
It just means for me that I have a bigger challenge because of historical events.
Learning history, nature-nurture controversy, for me it was both.
That was my modeling from the most powerful role model in my life, which was my father.
Genetics, because my father had the gene and passed it on to me.
So, do I have a history that predisposes me to a certain thing?
The choice is still mine.
I still have to make that choice, and I can still make the choice.
I haven't had a drink in over 50 years.
I made the choice.
Was it harder for me to make than somebody that wasn't genetically predisposed?
Yes, it was harder for me, but I still have to make it.
And if you have a historical precedent that puts you at a disadvantage, Okay, I can understand that argument.
That just means it's harder for you to do what you need to do.
But it is still up to you, because not even God can change what has happened.
The past is over.
The future hasn't happened yet.
The only time is right now, and the only question is, what are you going to do?
And I'll say that.
I said this yesterday.
There was a young woman that I was working with that had been sexually molested.
And she was feeling really guilty and damaged by it.
And I said to her, let me be clear, you have zero accountability for what happened to you when you were eight and nine years old.
Zero.
Don't feel guilty.
I don't even care if you think back and think, I actually enjoyed it sometimes.
And so you're thinking, that makes me different.
I feel guilty.
You have zero accountability for what happened to you when you were eight or nine.
You have 100% accountability for what you do about it now.
As an adult, you are responsible for what you do about it.
Is it fair that you have to be responsible for it now, that you have to overcome that?
No, it's not fair, it just is.
I'm sorry that you have to deal with that, but you do, and nobody can fix it but you.
Zero accountability then, 100% accountability now.
Yeah, I think there is a problem that people don't want that to be the case, but it is the case.
It's not up to me to say that.
It just is.
I'm sorry.
It just is.
So in the field of politics, there's a tendency for politicians to And I wonder if there's a tendency in the field of psychology to paint people as the victims of their own biology too much, to pathologize evil, to essentially suggest that decisions are not your own.
So to take an example, there's been a lot of controversy over the last few weeks over this documentary about Michael Jackson, who was allegedly a child molester.
And there are several now, I guess, four different kids who have come forward, now adults, saying that he molested them.
When they were children.
There was an article by Dolly Lithwick over at Slate that was kind of interesting in which she said, you know, are we going to treat this as a sickness or are we going to treat this as though it's an evil?
In other words, is Michael Jackson an evil man or was he a man who was suffering from some sort of biological sickness?
Where do you come down when it comes to determining that balance in terms of personal responsibility versus maybe genetic drive to do something that we think is evil or immoral?
Well, I can't speak to the Michael Jackson situation because I don't know the facts of that situation.
But let's talk hypothetically.
When you go into psychology, it's just like as an undergraduate, you have to pick an area of specialization.
And for me, it was clinical.
And that's where you deal with Neurosis, psychosis, that's what you generally think of when you think of going to a therapist.
They're generally a clinical psychologist.
Not always, there can be counseling and others, but generally it's clinical.
And then I also completed the core in behavioral medicine, which is essentially medical psychology.
It's a point at which your physiology and your psychology merge and interact and they influence one another.
And that can be a profound influence, particularly with chronic disease management.
And then when I finished school, I did a postdoctoral fellowship in forensic psychology.
So now I was dealing with psychology and the law.
And one of the things that I was often called on to do, from a forensic psychological standpoint, is make a determination between the irresistible impulse And the impulse not resisted.
And there's just a few words that differentiate that, but it's often the difference between the death penalty or life in prison and going home.
An irresistible impulse, you become involuntary.
You're a passenger.
This is an irresistible impulse.
You could not resist it.
You're now a passenger.
You're back in row 12 of the bus.
An impulse not resisted, you're driving the bus.
You choose not to resist this impulse.
And a big part of my determination in those situations was, did this person have the capacity to know the difference between right and wrong?
And if someone is a pedophile, if they are aroused by Children, for example.
Okay, clearly a deviant behavior, right?
Unhealthy, sickness, no doubt about it.
Do they know the difference between right and wrong?
Do they know this is wrong, but they act on it anyway?
Now, to me, if they know it's wrong, then they have the ability to raise their hand and say, I have this problem.
I need help with this.
I need controls built in around me for this.
I need monitoring.
I need help with this.
I have trouble with this.
And if they fail to do that, now I've got a problem with their behavior.
But if they say, Look, I have a problem here, and I realize that I don't want to feel these things, but I do, and I know it's wrong, so I'm identifying myself.
I'm going to mental health professionals.
I'm identifying myself before I act on this.
And there are many pedophiles that do that, by the way.
They do raise their hand and say, they don't come out publicly, but they go to a therapist and say, my God, what is wrong with me?
And they get help.
So somebody that feels that and knows the difference between right and wrong.
And one of the real simple ways to figure that out is if they hide it.
Because if they hide it, they must know it's wrong.
So if they don't hide it, then they might not know it's wrong.
So you can look at their behavior and see, did they go to great lengths to hide this, to cover this up?
If they do, they must know it's wrong.
So I was on your show a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things we talked about was the Jussie Smollett alleged fake hate crime.
And one of the topics that came up was the possibility that we Americans may value victimhood too highly.
We are all sympathetic to victims.
We want to make sure the victims are taken care of.
But do you think that Americans are treating victimhood as a sort of medal of honor at this point?
Well, it depends.
If someone is truly in an imbalance of power and they are exploited, I have great compassion for that person.
But you have to make a decision, and maybe an investigation, to determine if that's really the case.
Or are they laying down in front of the bus?
They could both get run over.
But did one of them go lay down in front of the bus?
Or was one sitting in a cafe and the bus came over the curb and ran over them?
They both got run over by the bus, but is there a difference?
And to me, there is a difference.
It's a difference between being a victim and a volunteer.
There are victims that, despite their best efforts, they are exploited.
And then there are those who seem to volunteer for it and take great pride in it, and it becomes their identity.
I have much less compassion for those people, and I think there are some of those people, and it becomes who they are.
And they milk it for everything they can.
And I'm not talking about hoaxes.
No, but people that truly become victimized in some way, they get on the short end of an imbalance of power.
But can I sort of change the subject for a minute?
Sure, please.
This is something that really bothers me.
And you were on the show a couple of weeks ago.
Thank you very much for doing that.
And you were on there kind of as the sole voice on your side of the issue with four or five other voices that were kind of counterpoint voices.
And I thought that we had a very respectful, intelligent conversation.
And I talked to the audience afterwards in studio, I looked at the message boards afterwards, and I thought people on both sides of the issue were a little bit dumbstruck by what an intelligent, respectful exchange of ideas took place, even though there were some diametrically opposed positions.
And I walked backstage, and you were back there with a couple of those people that you have debated before.
You are 180 degrees out from where they are on positions.
And y'all were laughing and talking and talking about some personal issues and just really kind of enjoying some personal time together.
What has happened that that doesn't happen anymore?
You were on different sides of issues about as diametrically opposed as you can get.
You said your piece, respectfully.
You didn't interrupt anybody.
They didn't interrupt you.
It was a good conversation, and then y'all were backstage treating each other like decent human beings.
Why doesn't that happen anymore?
You guys did it.
Well, again, my opinion on this is that I do think that there is currency in victimhood, and even in public debate, if you can claim that you've somehow been harmed by the other person, then we grant you a sort of patina of more credit.
You're treated with more respect.
So, if you're in just an honest debate and everybody sort of expects, you know, understands the rules of the debate, you treat each other with respect, somebody wins, somebody loses, or maybe you just have a discussion, then There's no real reward there.
But politically speaking, I think we live in a time where if you can claim that someone was mean to you on stage or you claim that you were offended by somebody, that there is real currency in that.
I was pointing this out with regard to, for example, the vice president, Mike Pence, and Joe Biden, the former vice president.
So a couple of weeks ago, Joe Biden did a speech in Nebraska where he suggested that Mike Pence was a decent guy.
And he was immediately hit by a wave of people who said, well, Mike Pence isn't a decent guy.
He disagrees with me on some LGBT issues.
This would be Cynthia Nixon, the former gubernatorial candidate in New York.
And Joe Biden then backed down.
And then he said, well, I guess Mike Pence isn't a decent guy because we disagree on those issues.
Again, I think that the reason that he did that is not because he doesn't actually think Pence is a decent guy.
He knows Pence.
I think that he probably thinks Pence is a decent guy.
But if you can pretend that there is a lack of character on the other side, it allows you to avoid having the kind of productive discussions that bring unity and there's a lot of money to be made and a lot of political hay to be made in the polarization rather than in the reasonable discussion, I think.
Well, here's what I think about that, since you asked.
You were going to ask, I can tell.
I don't drink or smoke dope or take drugs.
I never have because, as I said, everybody makes decisions in their lives, like what are we going to have for lunch today, where are we going to go on vacation.
But then there's another level of decision we make, and I call those life decisions.
Life decisions you make one time, and that's it.
That's it for your life.
Like, you make a decision you're not going to steal.
Like, so, you make that decision maybe in the third grade, you know, and your parents tell you, or you get caught stealing or something, and so you decide you're not going to do that anymore.
And that's a life decision.
I'm not going to steal.
So you don't wake up in the morning when you're 30 years old and say, oh man, I'm in a rush and I'm short on cash.
Do I want to go by the ATM or knock over that 7-Eleven?
You don't have that debate because you've made a life decision.
I don't steal.
So you're going to go by the ATM.
You're not going to rob the 7-Eleven.
And so we make life decisions.
I made a life decision early on that I wasn't going to drink or do drugs because of what I'd seen it do to my dad, who I thought was a really good, hard-working man.
I saw what it did to him.
I don't have any problem with people who do, in moderation.
But one of my best friends is Ron White, the blue-collar comedian.
Now, he smokes dope every day.
And he drinks every day.
And I've loaded him into the car and taken him home and poured him out on the floor before.
And people say, how can these two be friends?
Here's Mr. Straight, doesn't do any of that.
And here's Mr. Never does anything but that.
And my answer to that is always the same.
You don't have to love everything about somebody to love them.
You don't have to love all their behavior to love them.
I wish he didn't do that, but he does.
But he's also very loyal.
He's a great father.
He's really fun to be around.
He's an intelligent guy, interesting to talk to, very respectful of my wife and kids.
He's just a really great guy.
I don't like this about him, but you don't have to like everything about somebody to like them.
So why can they not have a difference of opinion on an issue and you still recognize they have many redeeming qualities?
If I had a brain tumor and the surgeon that was coming in to save my life had different political views, But this was the guy that could save my life?
Would I go, no, don't take this tumor out of my head.
I don't like what you believe politically.
Hell no.
Fix me.
I just don't understand the intolerance that we now seem to have for each other instead of recognizing that we can differ on issues and still recognize that there's redeeming qualities in each other.
And I don't say that politically.
I say it to both sides of the aisle.
I just don't understand.
It didn't seem to used to be that way.
Well, actually, I want to ask you about that in just one second.
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So, I want to ask you about that.
You know, you talk about how you can love people without loving everything about them, and obviously that's true.
There are really two questions I want to ask about.
The first one is, in order to love a person, does there have to be at least some sense of shared values?
Meaning that, you know, How much do you have to love about the person in order for it to be over the tipping point?
I'm not going to love somebody from Al Qaeda or the Taliban, obviously.
I'm not going to love neo-Nazis.
It's going to be very difficult for me to love those people.
And it's not just a political disagreement.
There are root values that are in disagreement.
What root values do you think that people need to share in order for there to be a bedrock for love to grow?
Well, I think that you've just identified it, its root values.
I mean, I'm not going to hang out with Hitler because he plays a hell of a game of golf.
I could give a shit about his game of golf, right?
I mean, everything about him is offensive to my sensibilities.
So that is overwhelmingly, we are just different people with different core values.
And that's not what I'm talking about.
If you're talking about somebody from Al-Qaeda, if you're talking about somebody that is a child molester, and just everything they stand for is offensive to your sensibilities, the gap is too wide.
You can't get a bridge to span that.
But that's generally not the case.
If you sit down with people You know, for example, if I'm negotiating with people, whether it's a business deal I'm negotiating, or if I'm trying to broker a peace between a couple that is really at odds with each other and on the brink of divorce, I always do the same thing.
I say, first, let's talk about what we agree about.
I know you came here to resolve your differences, but first, I want to make a list of what we agree about.
Because if we do that, we might just find that what we disagree about is less than we realize.
So let's talk about what we agree about.
And we make that list.
And if that list is really small, then maybe that gap is too wide.
But if that list is made up of those root values and core values, like we both want our children to do well, You know, we both love these kids.
We both want certain things.
You have a good list of root values.
And then you look at what we disagree about, and you realize, well, maybe we have different currencies here.
Uh, maybe I can give you more of what you want, and you give me more of what I want, because you value something more than I do, and I value something more than you do.
I'm willing, this is a one for me and a ten for you.
I can give you that, and that's a two for you and a ten for me, so it's an easy give for you, but a big get for me.
If you get people where they're looking for ways to come together instead of looking for ways to come apart, then you can begin to make some headway.
And that's all I'm saying.
We don't seem to have a dialogue.
Well, and I think that that's what I'm getting to is I think that the incentive structure is aligned so much right now politically for people to make gains with their own side by drawing distinction.
So you're saying that, you know, you draw points of unity and that's how you get together.
But politics isn't about How you draw together.
Politics, right now at least, is about how you draw distinction with the other side so that you convince people to come to your side.
And the easiest way to do that is to attack them on a character level, not on a policy level.
If you admit that the other side is basically good-hearted, has good intentions, that they mainly want good things even if we disagree about how to get there, well then people might side with that person.
But if you say that that person is a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, if you say that person is a Nazi, if you say that person has no tolerance, Then it's a lot easier to get people to side with you after all.
What are they going to do?
Side with this person who you just characterized as Hitler?
So it's an easy, it's an easy political game.
It's one I really object to in a strong way, but I think that that's, I think that's the easiest political currency out there right now.
Yeah.
And what I really find offensive is when you see people backstage that treat each other with dignity and respect, And then walk out on stage and put on a completely different persona.
That is really hypocritical and disingenuous to me.
Now I don't trust either one of them.
Yeah, totally agree with that.
So I want to ask you about changing people.
So that's sort of the second question.
You're talking about shared values.
You've said before that you think people change.
But does that mean that you can change them?
Or does it have to be an internally driven thing?
Because so much of politics and life is about determining whether you ought to accept somebody for the flaws that they have or whether you ought to expend effort in the attempt to change them.
So take, for example, your friend.
Was there a certain point where you said, you know what, I've given him a lecture 20 times about not drinking and not doing drugs.
He's not doing it.
I can either take him as he is or I can leave him.
When do you make that call as to whether somebody is changeable or not?
Well, I think when you disagree, the goal needs to be that you're heard and understood.
not that you win, and you're not And certainly, I think that's true at a personal level.
If you're in a relationship, certainly if it's a husband and wife, and your goal is to win, what does that mean?
That means that your partner is now a loser.
And when people lose, how do they feel?
They feel like a loser.
They feel like they lost.
Do you want your husband or wife to feel like a loser?
Why would you want that?
If instead you say, look, my goal here is I want you to hear me, I want you to understand me, and then I'll shut up.
And across time, if you prove to be sensitive to that, and you try to find some middle ground with me, and I try to find some middle ground with you, Then this relationship is going to have a long-term history.
If not, then maybe it won't.
But my goal is not going to be to grind you down where you finally say, OK, OK, you're right, you're right, you're right.
You've got to decide if you want to be right or you want to be happy.
And being right comes with a lot of resentment from those that you've proven wrong.
And that doesn't seem to advance personal agendas or political agendas.
I mean, and that's really the question.
Is there a difference between personal interactions and political interactions in the sense that when it comes to political interactions, there is an actual result that is apart from the two sides, meaning that there will be a law, for example, or there will be a public policy that at the end of the day is promulgated.
I mean, in my marriage, my goal is to preserve the marriage because I married a person with whom I share values.
The marriage is more important than anything else that is on the table.
And that means that I'm willing to subsume fact in favor of feeling when it comes to my wife.
This is true with my parents and my siblings.
When it comes to politics, where you're determining the rules that govern a society, or how we ought to see reality itself in some cases, what should be the mix there between facts and feelings?
Well, I think that people say politics are local, not national.
I disagree with that.
I think politics are personal.
I don't think they're local, I think they're personal.
Now, people can deny that, but I think people sit down and say, What's in this for me?
How's this going to affect my family?
How's this going to affect me?
Whether it's a law about taxes or whatever, how is, if something's going to change the mix of the community or it's going to change laws about how long you work or retirement or taxation, whatever, people may not want to say it, But I think they look at it and say, you know, how's this going to affect me?
And so I think it gets down very much like a relationship.
I think they look at it in terms of its personal impact, and once they decide that they can live with whatever that outcome is, then they start to think about others.
You know, first it's survival, then it's actualization, then you start You gotta survive first and then you can start caring for others and taking care of them.
And I'm not saying that people don't have genuine empathy and concern for others, but I guess the thing that I would really want people to do, I believe knowledge is power.
I think knowing The true, unspun facts of a situation are critically important.
And I'm just not sure that many people have access to that in this day and time.
I don't know where to get unspun news today.
I don't know where to get it.
Yeah, and I'm not sure that it's even possible.
I mean, I think there are people who are striving for it, but I think everybody has their own cognitive biases that act themselves out in real time, no matter how we discuss the issues.
When it comes to the difference between personal and political, I'll give you an example of where I think that, for example, there's a gap.
So, on the issue of transgenderism, I've been very outspoken.
I think that a biological man is a biological man.
I think a biological woman is a biological woman.
There are people who are intersex, but that does not obviate the categories of male and female.
I do not think that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man.
And if a man wants to identify as a woman, I think that that is factually incorrect.
My view of that is that that's a mental disorder.
Now, if I'm at dinner with a person who is transgender, I will call them by their preferred pronoun because what's the point in offending the person The person's still a person.
I wouldn't go out of my way to insult somebody who I'm at dinner with.
But if I'm speaking publicly about Caitlyn Jenner, for example, I will say that Caitlyn Jenner is a man, and I will call him by his biological pronouns.
The reason for that is because in the dinner situation, my target audience is the person with whom I'm speaking.
That's the person with whom I'm forming a relationship.
In the political world, the target audience is not Caitlyn Jenner.
I'm not speaking to Caitlyn Jenner.
I'm speaking to the audience writ large about a scientific issue that has some ramifications for public policy.
I'm not sure how to bridge that gap when people suggest that we ought to discuss public policy as though it were personal.
We should pretend that scientific facts don't exist in order to not offend, for example.
Well, I think what you're talking about is the difference between being genuine and being brutally honest.
There is a time and a place for everything.
And the time and the place for you to air your scientific-based political agenda doesn't have to be at dinner.
I mean, there's a time where that fits, and there's a time where you're in that mode, and you can say what you want.
But is that appropriate at dinner?
And if you feel uncomfortable with...
not being consistent with your scientific belief, then don't get in that situation.
But it's kind of like my wife tells me at home, don't you Dr. Phil me.
You do that at home.
Don't you do that up there.
Don't you do that here.
You know, there's a time and a place for everything.
And I think you've chosen very well to say, I'm not going to be offensive to this person's belief system here.
But you put me in a public forum and ask me to take a position, I'm going to be true to my belief system here.
That doesn't mean I have to be offensive to this person's belief system there.
So in a second, I want to ask you about your religious worldview, because religion is obviously a great part of how people become happy in certain social science studies.
I want to ask you what your factors are for happiness.
How do you become a happy person, and does religion play a part in that?
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So let's talk a little bit about how to become a happy person.
So there's a lot of focus on happiness, particularly in Western civilization.
The traditional religious worldview has been your happiness is of no consequence, basically, that you have duty, and duty is what motivates you.
And if you fill your duty, then you'll be happy.
In the typical sort of Aristotelian view, if you act in accordance with virtue, you'll be happy.
We in Western society seem to think that happiness is Sometimes material goods, sometimes it is, you know, kind of the joy of the moment.
How do you define happiness, and what should we be aiming for?
Yeah, well, a friend of mine has a poster that says, money won't buy happiness, but it'll get you where it is.
It'll get you real close to where it is.
I think it's very individual, and I think it comes down not only to how you define it, but how you Experience and express it.
I mean, because happiness is not just a definition, it's experiential.
I mean, let's put on our Gestalt hats for a minute and say, what's our experiential happiness?
And, you know, to me, I start using synonyms like fulfillment and peace and joy.
And, you know, I'm what my wife Robin calls emotionally constricted sometimes.
I mean, something good will happen and, you know, she looks like...
You know, Snoopy dancing in the Peanuts cartoon, you know?
She's like, hey!
And she looks at me and says, give me something!
You know, come on, give me something here!
And I might be feeling all warm inside, and it's like, okay, I've achieved that, I've clicked that off, I feel great about this.
And, you know, for me, happiness is is a real sense of peace and accomplishment and that kind of sense of having climbed this mountain and done that, and I'm very happy about that.
But I may not be as expressive as she is or the next person is, and I think it's different I think it's different for everybody.
And for some people, they define that with spiritual awakenings and spiritual evolution.
Some people achieve it through a sense that they're really being altruistic in some way.
Some people define it materialistically.
And I think it changes as we change.
Things make me what I call happy or fulfilled now.
That didn't have that effect on me 30 years ago.
I've got this kind of ruler that I've made.
I roll it out on the floor and it goes from zero to 83, which is the life expectancy.
And I have people sometimes walk along it and stand on their age.
And when I walk along it and stand on my age and look over my shoulder, There's a whole lot of white behind me and not very much ahead of me.
So now, having good health and being able to enjoy what's around me now, my kids who are grown and my grandkids, I mean, to me, spending time with them and having the health and cognition to enjoy it, that, to me, is really fulfillment and happiness, and that, to me, really fills me up.
Thirty years ago, I took most of that for granted, so it didn't have an effect on me, so I think it changes across time, and I know now One of the things that gives me the most fulfillment is I love giving a voice to people that don't have it.
So, if I'm working with a story on Dr. Phil that has children caught in a crossfire, In a custody battle or something, and they're just being torn apart and used as a rope in a tug-of-war, and I can come in and stop that and get these kids out of this crossfire and give them the voice they don't have.
I might go home tired that night, but it's a good tired.
I feel good about what I've done.
This was a good thing, and if millions of people watch that, and a percentage of them won't do that because they saw the pain in these kids' eyes and I realize I've impacted those people, then that's a good target at the end of the day and that's a joy for me.
So, you know, sometimes it's tied to achievement, sometimes it's tied to something else, but I think it has a lot to do with peace and fulfillment.
So, I want to ask you about something that seems to be making a lot of people deeply unhappy, and that is social media.
Do you think that social media is a net benefit or a net detriment to human beings?
Were we ready for this machine that we created for ourselves?
And I'm talking from the perspective of someone who's extraordinarily active on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all the rest, but the science tends to suggest that this stuff may not be particularly good for us.
Where do you come down on the social media?
Well, I think we have to...
It's here, so where I come down on it is, deal with it because it's here.
Here's what I think.
When I started Dr. Phil, the first text message had not been sent.
There was no Twitter, there was no Facebook, there were no smartphones.
So I'm dealing with things now that didn't even exist when I started.
But I'm also dealing with kids who used to come home and their mother said, sit down, you can't talk right now, Dr. Phil's on.
Now they're coming on to the show and their kids are saying, they're saying, hey, can't talk right now, Dr. Phil's on.
And I realize that we have a whole new set of influences on kids, and they have access to information that I didn't have when I was growing up, that's racing them along the evolutionary continuum, in terms of relationships and emotion, and their access to bullies and predators and all that we didn't have to deal with in my generation.
If you were getting bullied at school, you went home, it stopped.
Now you go home, the cyber bullies just follow you home and you get online and they're bullying you at home.
So it's here, we have to deal with it.
I was invited to testify on Capitol Hill.
on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and they were asking, should they allocate money to the curriculum to deal with cyberbullying?
And I was there to say, not just yes, but hell yes, because teachers were saying, it doesn't happen on campus, so we don't, it's not our job.
And I was saying, well, it is your job, because these are the kids that are doing it, and you're watching these kids throughout the day.
What we have to start doing is preparing our children to deal with the social media world, because if we have a generation that grows up with the need to be loved by strangers, we're creating a vulnerable generation that is giving their power away to people they don't even know.
If your mood is driven by how many likes a picture you post gets, I've talked to kids that they'll put up a picture and it doesn't get 10% of the likes the last one did, and their moods cycle down.
I've talked to parents whose kids were cyber-bullied to death.
We hate you.
Go kill yourself.
And they walk in, and their daughters hung themselves in the closet, and they're dead.
And they go look at their social media, and there's 75 posts there.
Just kill yourself.
We don't want to see you tomorrow.
We have to prepare our children to realize this is not the World Wide Web, it's the Wild Wild Web.
There's no control, there's no enforcement, there's no accountability.
So we have to inoculate our kids so they realize this isn't the real world.
These are keyboard bullies.
They wouldn't say that to you in the elevator.
But they'll say it to you with the anonymity of a keyboard.
Do you think they're starting to bleed over?
Meaning that, you know, there's always been this sort of feeling on Twitter or Facebook that there's the online world and then there's the real world.
And the online world is not real, and when you turn off the computer, life gets better.
But what I'm starting to see is that the crudity of the online world is bleeding over into the real world.
People are treating each other worse in the real world as a result of them being accustomed to treat each other badly online.
I hope not.
I mean, I haven't seen any research about that.
I'm seeing it get worse online, and I'm seeing, just this last weekend, a few weekends ago, sorry, I flew into North Carolina to meet with the family of Shanann Watts, who
Chris Watts, the family annihilator that killed his wife and two babies, Bella and Sissy, you recall that story, he had just given a real confession about what he actually did in killing her and those two children.
And the family wanted to sit down and talk, and I went in and sat down and talked with Susan and Frank and Frankie Jr., her brother.
And one of the biggest problems they have in their grief right now are the Internet trolls.
There are trolls that are opening accounts in their daughter's name and sending messages, like, so they get up and get on the Internet, and there's a message from their daughter Shanann.
That says, I'm burning in hell, why did you do this to me?
Things like that, just to torture them.
And trolls accusing them of things, and saying they are the real murderers, and all this stuff.
People, they're just pure, sick, evil people.
And that wouldn't happen if there wasn't social media, so that's a real downside to it.
And there's no enforcement of that.
And there's got to be some way to find those people and hold them accountable for that, because You know, some people that don't react well to that, it can actually push them over the edge and be suicidal.
So, some of it is out of control, and I don't know what the answer is, but it is out of control.
So, when it comes to how to train your kids for this sort of stuff, you deal with kids on a regular basis on this show.
What are sort of the rules for the road in teaching your kids how to deal with a world that seems like it may be increasingly chaotic?
Well, you have to talk to them about it, number one.
Look, kids have the knowledge but not the wisdom to handle this Internet and the World Wide Web.
Adults have the wisdom but not the knowledge.
Those kids can navigate around there, my God, with three clicks, they can have you anywhere and anything looking at whatever.
You know, we're in there trying to figure out how to get this camera to point the other way for 30 minutes, and by then, you know, they've gone around the world.
So they've got the knowledge, we need to provide the wisdom, and you've got to sit down and talk to them.
And you remember, well, you're too young, but there used to be these ads that would come on at 10 o'clock at night, and it would say, it's 10 o'clock, do you know where your children are?
Do you remember those?
A little before my time, I think.
Well, it used to be, it'd just come on at 10 o'clock, it'd just go, bing, it's 10 o'clock, do you know where your kids are?
With the internet, It's always 10 o'clock.
You need to know where your kids are.
And parents need to find out what platforms their kids are going to.
And they say, well, I don't want to invade their privacy.
My advice?
Invade their privacy.
Get a screen name.
Get in that group.
See if your child's being groomed.
They may not notice it, but you need to notice it.
See if somebody's talking, trying to get your daughter out the bedroom window, and she thinks it's another 13-year-old, and it's really a 40-year-old pedophile, predator out there.
You need to monitor.
You need to know where they're going.
And you need to talk to them and show, when an article is in the paper about Someone being abducted by somebody they met, you need to show them.
I'm not trying to make them paranoid or make them think the world is a scary place, but they need to be situationally aware.
You need to talk to them about that.
And if they become obsessed, then you need to get them to unplug.
And if they're spending, if all you ever see is the top of their head and their thumbs are going like this, you need to limit the time that they're on there.
And you can put child controls on there, but they'll defeat those before you set them up.
You need to limit their time, and you need to know where they're going, and you need to monitor that so you can protect them from themselves and from others.
So I have one final question for you.
You've done 3,000 shows.
I want to ask if there's one particular episode that sticks out to you, but first, If you want to hear Dr. Phil's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com, click subscribe, and you can hear the end of our conversation there.
Well, Dr. Phil, thanks so much for stopping by.
Folks, you need to check out Dr. Phil's podcast.
It's called Phil in the Blanks.
Go check it out right now.
And of course, everybody watches your show, so I don't even need to plug Dr. Phil.
It's just, I mean, everyone knows about it.
Thanks so much for stopping by.
I really appreciate your time.
Thanks so much.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay.
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