Behind the Bastards - Part One: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard
Aired: 2021-04-20
Duration: 01:10:06


=== Trust Your Girlfriends (15:13) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:00:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:00:15]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:00:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:00:19]  We always say that.
[00:00:21]  Trust your girlfriends.
[00:00:24]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:00:25]  Trust me, babe.
[00:00:26]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:00:31]  I got you.
[00:00:32]  I got you.
[00:00:36]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[00:00:41]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:00:44]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:00:47]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:00:48]  That's so funny.
[00:00:50]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:00:58]  Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:06]  What's up, everyone?
[00:01:07]  I'm Ego Modern, my next guest.
[00:01:09]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:01:12]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:01:15]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:01:16]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:01:23]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:01:26]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[00:01:33]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:01:35]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:01:36]  There's a lot of life.
[00:01:38]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:45]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[00:01:52]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:01:56]  I doctored the test once.
[00:01:58]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:02:02]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:02:05]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
[00:02:07]  My mind was blown.
[00:02:08]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:02:10]  This is Love Trapped.
[00:02:11]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:02:13]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:02:17]  Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:02:27]  What's lighten my dumpster foods?
[00:02:31]  I'm Robert Evans, hosting Behind the Bastards.
[00:02:34]  That little introduction was in honor of my hometown, Portland, which just had a police officer murder a man who was having a mental health crisis.
[00:02:42]  And we'll probably be lighting some dumpsters on fire tonight.
[00:02:45]  Although you won't hear it the day that this happens.
[00:02:48]  But anyway, that's all beside the point right now, because the point right now is that I'm introducing our guest today, the Inimitable, Matt Lieb.
[00:02:57]  Hey, what's going on?
[00:03:00]  Matt, how are you doing?
[00:03:02]  I'm doing well.
[00:03:03]  I'm excited to be here.
[00:03:04]  A big fan of the pod.
[00:03:06]  Love me some bastards.
[00:03:07]  And you are, you do a Sopranos podcast.
[00:03:09]  And the name is, I believe, Pod Yourself a Gun.
[00:03:11]  That's right.
[00:03:12]  Podgun.
[00:03:13]  That's right.
[00:03:13]  That's the world's only Sopranos podcast.
[00:03:16]  Don't go looking for any other ones because they do not exist.
[00:03:19]  Little known TV show, The Sopranos.
[00:03:22]  You might have heard of it.
[00:03:23]  Very obscure.
[00:03:24]  A niche, a niche TV show that only people who really like art understand.
[00:03:30]  And that's why we talk about it.
[00:03:32]  We talk about the art.
[00:03:33]  It's fun thinking about that because I believe the song that introduced that show was something about waking up in the morning and getting yourself a gun, which is what I did this morning.
[00:03:42]  You bought a gun?
[00:03:43]  I did.
[00:03:43]  I did.
[00:03:44]  I did buy a gun this morning.
[00:03:46]  Not for Sopranos-like uses.
[00:03:49]  Although I am Italian.
[00:03:51]  So you can't really know for sure.
[00:03:53]  You can't really know for sure.
[00:03:54]  Yeah, you woke up with a blue moon in your eye and you decided, I'm going to go get myself a gun.
[00:04:00]  And then I'm going to commit crimes in the Pine Barons of New Jersey.
[00:04:03]  Yeah.
[00:04:03]  They do that a lot in the show, right?
[00:04:05]  A lot of Pine Barren crimes.
[00:04:06]  They do it at least once and it's great.
[00:04:10]  Yeah, they're chasing that guy through the...
[00:04:11]  Yeah.
[00:04:12]  Yeah, the Russian.
[00:04:13]  Yeah, and they leave their DNA everywhere.
[00:04:15]  Well, they pee everywhere.
[00:04:17]  Yeah, you know, they also, look, we Italians are not a subtle people.
[00:04:22]  No, they spend that whole episode literally like dying of like cold and they're lost in the woods, but they spend all the time talking about how they're starving because they haven't eaten in 12 hours.
[00:04:32]  It's the most Italian thing in the world.
[00:04:35]  But I want to hear about this gun.
[00:04:37]  Oh, it's just a gun.
[00:04:39]  But today, we have something much more exciting than a gun.
[00:04:42]  We have a bastard.
[00:04:43]  And our bastard.
[00:04:45]  Are you ready for this?
[00:04:47]  I'm so excited.
[00:04:48]  Are you settling in?
[00:04:49]  Yes.
[00:04:50]  Doctor.
[00:04:51]  Mehmet Oz.
[00:04:54]  I never introduced them like that.
[00:04:55]  We're talking about Dr. fucking Oz today.
[00:04:57]  Yes, that's right.
[00:04:58]  Who'd have thought he'd be a bastard?
[00:05:00]  A TV doctor?
[00:05:01]  Who would have thought a TV doctor could be a bad man?
[00:05:05]  No, they take an oath.
[00:05:07]  TV doctors, they say do no harm and get good ratings.
[00:05:10]  That's the Hippocratic oath.
[00:05:13]  Do they also oath to be bad guest hosts on Jeopardy?
[00:05:17]  Because he sucked.
[00:05:18]  I didn't enjoy it.
[00:05:19]  Honestly, if you are going up against LeVar Burton for any job, your first action should be like, you know what?
[00:05:25]  I'm bowing out.
[00:05:26]  Yes, immediately.
[00:05:28]  I'm not going to compete with LeVar Burton.
[00:05:30]  I'm going to pull me fuck off, sir.
[00:05:32]  Fighting Jordy, fighting Kunta Kinte, fighting whatever the reading rainbow guy's name was.
[00:05:37]  No, so I think it was just LeVar.
[00:05:39]  LeVar, yeah.
[00:05:42]  Yeah, no, I did not watch him on Jeopardy, but I have seen the show and had no idea he was a bastard.
[00:05:50]  Yes, he's a piece of shit.
[00:05:52]  He's a different piece of shit.
[00:05:54]  We're also going to be talking in the very near future about Dr. Phil, who's a much worse person.
[00:05:58]  Dr. Oz is bad for some reasons that you'll suspect, you know, the pseudoscience stuff, but also for some, I think, more complicated reasons, which we'll have us a nice talk about at the end of this episode.
[00:06:11]  So I've always said that one of the great tragedies of American public life is that our very best doctors are usually like kind of schlubby dudes and ladies who maybe aren't the best at social graces and certainly don't have enough time because they're wildly overworked to do TV appearances.
[00:06:27]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:28]  Yeah, I agree.
[00:06:29]  They're not hot.
[00:06:30]  I've always said doctors the bottom.
[00:06:32]  They're not hot.
[00:06:33]  I look at them and I'm like, ew.
[00:06:35]  We need to put a couple of billion dollars into a national program for more fuckable doctors.
[00:06:40]  Come on.
[00:06:40]  Yes, yes.
[00:06:41]  Doctors who fuck.
[00:06:42]  That's the next level of healthcare in America.
[00:06:46]  It won't be universal healthcare, but at least doctors will look fuckable.
[00:06:49]  Now, I mean, I think the problem is not their fuckability because it's inherently hot to be a doctor.
[00:06:53]  It's more the fact that they're not necessarily, even the ones who have a good bedside manner are good at explaining things, just don't have the time to spend a lot of it on television because they're busy saving lives.
[00:07:04]  This has led to a thriving industry, well documented in this show, of grifter health influencers and scam artists selling people poison with honeyed words and practice smiles.
[00:07:13]  Today, though, we're talking about a different kind of medical grifter, kind of a grifter who helps to launder those more shady grifters, the guy, people who aren't doctors, people who have no medical training, who are just trying to sell you nonsense cures.
[00:07:25]  The guy we're talking about today exists to give them credibility and launder them into the public consciousness.
[00:07:31]  And his name is Mehmet Oz.
[00:07:33]  Mehmet Oz is maybe the most influential public physician in the country, possibly the world.
[00:07:39]  He is, in every professional sense of the word, an excellent doctor, exceptional even.
[00:07:44]  Within the bounds of what it is he is trained to do, he may be one of the best in the world at what he does.
[00:07:51]  And he uses his, you know, the thing that makes him a bastard is that he uses these exceptional qualifications along with his charisma, his handsome face, to sell millions of people on nonsense cures every single year.
[00:08:03]  And that's, that's a bad thing to do.
[00:08:06]  He's kind of made worse.
[00:08:07]  We'll talk about this a lot by the fact that he is, he's a, he's a, he's a heart surgeon and he's an exceptional heart surgeon.
[00:08:13]  That's so sad.
[00:08:13]  It's always sad when like an amazing doctor is a piece of shit.
[00:08:17]  This is like how it felt when Ben Con Ben Carson turned out to be a Trump guy.
[00:08:22]  I was like, but you're so good at the brain surgeons.
[00:08:25]  It's always surgeons, which you talk to doctors.
[00:08:29]  They'll be like, yeah, of course it's always surgeons.
[00:08:32]  Yeah, they're the ones who think they're gods, right?
[00:08:35]  They essentially have a god complex and they'll be really good at one thing and then they'll also think that they're good at like politics and shit like that.
[00:08:44]  I think good surgeons are so prone to being also like nonsense.
[00:08:48]  Like so many of our nonsense public doctors are surgeons for the same reason that so many of our terrorists are engineers.
[00:08:54]  They're people who get really good at a specific thing and it lets them convince themselves that they know what they're talking about in a wider variety of things than they really do.
[00:09:02]  That's crazy.
[00:09:03]  It just makes me glad that I never, you know, got really proficient in any one skill.
[00:09:08]  Never gain skills.
[00:09:09]  I never ever learned how to do things.
[00:09:12]  You'll become too smart for yourself and think that you are God.
[00:09:15]  If no one learned to do anything, we would still be living in the mud and eating grubs.
[00:09:20]  And you know what we wouldn't have?
[00:09:22]  Check oil salesman.
[00:09:24]  Oh, yeah.
[00:09:24]  Or that.
[00:09:25]  We would have very little at all.
[00:09:29]  Mehmet Senge Oz was born on June 11th, 1960 to parents Suna and Mustafa Oz, who must have fucked at some point in October of 1959 in order to conceive him.
[00:09:40]  We have to assume his parents fucked in October.
[00:09:43]  You don't know that.
[00:09:44]  Yeah, he could be Immaculate Conception.
[00:09:46]  I mean, you know, Robert.
[00:09:48]  Possible.
[00:09:48]  I would say right now, the most likely theory is that they fucked sometime in October.
[00:09:53]  Oh, all right.
[00:09:54]  His father, Mustafa, had been born in Bozkir, a village in southern Turkey.
[00:09:58]  He had grown up poor in the countryside during the Great Depression.
[00:10:02]  And obviously, you know, Great Depression, bad time everywhere.
[00:10:05]  Real bad time if you're like in rural Turkey, you know?
[00:10:09]  You're dealing with a different kind of poverty than even like our grandparents dealt with here.
[00:10:15]  So he had to work himself to the bone in order to make something of himself, in order to get into medical school and distinguish himself enough that he was able to earn scholarships, which allowed him to immigrate to the United States as a medical resident in 1955.
[00:10:28]  So this is a this is a hardworking man and a man who's has to struggle.
[00:10:34]  I mean, I guess in ways that that are kind of difficult to imagine for most of us, even as difficult as our present times are.
[00:10:40]  He's like a true lift yourself up by your bootstraps kind of guy.
[00:10:44]  Yeah.
[00:10:44]  Yeah.
[00:10:44]  Came from the middle of like nowhere rural Turkey and worked himself into becoming a good enough doctor that he got it, you know, he was able to get over the racism of the fucking 1950s immigration system.
[00:11:00]  That's that's an achievement.
[00:11:02]  Yeah.
[00:11:02]  No, good for him.
[00:11:03]  Started from the bottom and now he's on TV selling fake cures.
[00:11:07]  That's his dad.
[00:11:09]  That's his dad.
[00:11:10]  That's not Mehmet.
[00:11:11]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:11:11]  That's Mustafa.
[00:11:12]  So we're talking about his dad and his mom right now.
[00:11:15]  His mom, Suna, came from a much wealthier background.
[00:11:19]  I don't know if this is what helped his dad get into the country or not.
[00:11:22]  It may have been.
[00:11:23]  Her father was a successful pharmacist and both sides of her family came from Istanbul.
[00:11:28]  She grew up with a lot of money.
[00:11:30]  As befits his more modest upbringing, Mustafa was an observant traditional Muslim.
[00:11:35]  Suna's family was more moderate and secular.
[00:11:38]  Mehmet and his two sisters grew up split between both approaches to religion.
[00:11:42]  The Oz kids spent their childhood speaking Turkish and English fluently at home.
[00:11:46]  So they grew up in a bilingual house.
[00:11:49]  Mehmet was from a young, from a young age, ambitious, starving for success, and his father's approval.
[00:11:54]  He was wont to note that he was born in the year of the rat, according to the Chinese zodiac.
[00:11:59]  In one interview, he noted of this, quote, you run the maze.
[00:12:03]  If you put cheese in that maze, I swear to God, I'll get to it and I'll get to it really fast.
[00:12:07]  But should I be running after that cheese?
[00:12:09]  Am I in the right maze?
[00:12:11]  All of these questions, which people much greater than I am think through, I put on the back burner as I'm running after that cheese.
[00:12:18]  What the fuck?
[00:12:18]  Like, he says way too much stock into the year of what animal is doing.
[00:12:24]  At least he wasn't born into the year of the pig.
[00:12:26]  And he's like, well, what you got to do is you got to take your snout and put it into the trough of life and just really got to just shove your face into food as hard as you can.
[00:12:36]  You roll around in the shit and then you hope that someday you find another piggy to fuck and then you have little piglets.
[00:12:42]  It's like, look, I was born in the year of the pig and that's why I dispose of bodies for the mob.
[00:12:46]  It's just what you do.
[00:12:50]  Well, that's a it's a nice take on year of the rat for him.
[00:12:54]  It is, it is telling because what he's saying there is like, I don't think about why I'm doing what I'm doing.
[00:13:01]  I just, I just strive to achieve things and I don't think about whether or not they're good or bad.
[00:13:06]  I just I have to achieve.
[00:13:08]  Yeah, he just wants that cheese.
[00:13:10]  Yeah, he wants that cheese.
[00:13:11]  It's ambition without an analysis, I think is what you'd call it.
[00:13:16]  And he's pretty open about that.
[00:13:18]  Now, Mustafa, his dad, repeatedly told the growing Dr. Oz, who's not yet a doctor, obviously, that when he'd grown up, when Mustafa had grown up, he hadn't been able to relax for even a second on his road to escaping poverty and establishing himself as a cardiothoracic surgeon.
[00:13:34]  So he's like telling his kid as he grows up, like, you know, like, if you want to succeed, you can't relax for even a second.
[00:13:39]  You can't take a moment off.
[00:13:40]  You always got to be hustling.
[00:13:42]  And that's how Mehmet grows up.
[00:13:44]  He's an excellent student, but no amount of success is ever enough for his dad.
[00:13:48]  He later recalled, I'd say I got a 93 on a test.
[00:13:51]  He'd say, did anyone get better?
[00:13:53]  That was always the question he asked.
[00:13:55]  Cool dad.
[00:13:57]  Sounds like a fun guy, Woodhang.
[00:14:00]  Yeah.
[00:14:01]  The school I grew up in, because of just where we were in North Texas, like about half of the kids in my school were either from India or from China or Japan.
[00:14:11]  And so you had a lot of kids who would talk that way about their parents, right?
[00:14:16]  And some of them had, especially around our senior year, there were a couple of kids who had to get like taken in by an ambulance because they would just like, in one case, seizing as a result of stress.
[00:14:25]  Like good to put this kind of pressure on a kid.
[00:14:30]  Yeah, like straight having like nervous breakdowns just from like trying to get good grades.
[00:14:35]  Right.
[00:14:36]  Once again, don't get good at anything.
[00:14:39]  It's not worth it.
[00:14:40]  Develop skills.
[00:14:41]  Don't develop skills.
[00:14:42]  You'll get seizures.
[00:14:43]  You're at risk of seizures.
[00:14:45]  You're at risk of your dad not loving you.
[00:14:48]  You know, you just got to love you no matter what.
[00:14:50]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:14:51]  Stop caring about your dad.
[00:14:52]  You know, just coast.
[00:14:54]  Coast.
[00:14:54]  Find some dirt.
[00:14:55]  Eat some grubs.
[00:14:57]  You'll be fine.
[00:14:58]  Yeah.
[00:14:58]  Start a Sopranos podcast.
[00:15:00]  Start a Soprano.
[00:15:02]  That's all you've got to do, dude.
[00:15:04]  Really bringing it back there.
[00:15:09]  So Mehmet decided to become a doctor when he was just seven years old.

=== Don't Develop Skills (11:36) ===

[00:15:13]  He recalls standing in line at an ice cream parlor.
[00:15:16]  Quote, I remember it like yesterday.
[00:15:18]  There was a kid in front of me who was 10.
[00:15:20]  My dad, just to pass the time, said, what do you want to be when you grow up?
[00:15:24]  The kid said, I don't know.
[00:15:25]  I'm 10.
[00:15:26]  My father waited until he was out of earshot and said, I never want you to tell me that if I ask you that question.
[00:15:32]  I never want you to tell me you don't know.
[00:15:34]  It's okay if you change your mind, but I never want you to not have a vision of what you want to be.
[00:15:39]  Mehmet, go kill that kid.
[00:15:41]  Kill that kid.
[00:15:42]  Fucking cut him.
[00:15:45]  Murder that loser kid and tell me what you want to do with your life.
[00:15:49]  God damn, that is way too much pressure.
[00:15:52]  Way, way too much pressure.
[00:15:52]  Yeah, that's so much pressure to put on a kid.
[00:15:54]  And it seems like the kids like that always end up becoming the, like going into the career that their father wanted them to do.
[00:16:01]  And then eventually their dad dies and then they're like, oh, fuck.
[00:16:05]  I didn't get to do what I wanted to do with my life.
[00:16:07]  And now I'm miserable.
[00:16:08]  Yeah.
[00:16:09]  Yeah.
[00:16:09]  It's, it's, it's a real bummer.
[00:16:11]  Yeah.
[00:16:12]  Um, it's not just don't put pressure on people.
[00:16:15]  There's plenty of grubs.
[00:16:16]  Yeah.
[00:16:17]  By the time Mehmet was ready to start school, his father was wealthy enough to pay to send his son to Tower Hill School, a K through 12th grade private college preparatory school in Wilmington, Delaware.
[00:16:27]  Jesus, that sounds horrible.
[00:16:29]  I know.
[00:16:30]  It sounds like a fucking nightmare.
[00:16:32]  The fancy boy prep schools.
[00:16:34]  Uniforms, ties.
[00:16:37]  Yeah, probably like weird shorts during the summer.
[00:16:41]  Yeah.
[00:16:42]  The fancy boy prep school worked well enough that Mehmet was accepted to Harvard, where he played football and water polo.
[00:16:48]  His grades were, as always, exceptional.
[00:16:50]  One of his roommates later recalled he was very competitive.
[00:16:54]  There was never any question that he wasn't going to be a doctor.
[00:16:57]  He wanted to be a fantastic surgeon.
[00:17:00]  So people around him, like everyone kind of recognizes this kid as brilliant.
[00:17:04]  Everyone recognizes he's got the drive he's going to achieve, you know, so good for him.
[00:17:08]  I mean, it's just like, I just look back now at my own childhood and I'm like, god damn it, if I can think of one friend where I, where I knew what they wanted to do for a career, I don't think we ever talked about like, what's your career going to be?
[00:17:24]  No one was like, I'm a doctor.
[00:17:25]  You know, it was, it was mostly just like, you know, how's, how's your hip-hop album working out?
[00:17:30]  And they're like, good.
[00:17:31]  And they're like, cool.
[00:17:32]  And that was the whole thing.
[00:17:34]  That's interesting.
[00:17:35]  I think it was different for me because there was definitely a lot of pressure to have something.
[00:17:40]  You know, I went to a public school.
[00:17:42]  I didn't go to a private school, but I went to a public school in my early schooling years was in a dirt poor farming town called Idabelle, Oklahoma.
[00:17:50]  And the school was as good as it could be in a place like that.
[00:17:53]  Like they paddled us and stuff.
[00:17:54]  Like it was not a high-end educational.
[00:17:57]  Wait, what's that due in a public school?
[00:18:00]  Yeah.
[00:18:00]  Yeah.
[00:18:00]  Oh, damn.
[00:18:01]  They still did that in Oklahoma back in them days.
[00:18:03]  Yeah, damn.
[00:18:05]  You got to sign the paddle afterwards, too.
[00:18:08]  That's nice.
[00:18:09]  But when I was in, I don't know, third grade or so, I moved to Plano, which is a fairly wealthy suburb of Dallas.
[00:18:16]  And the schools, the public schools are very good.
[00:18:19]  And there is a lot of drive to achieve.
[00:18:21]  Like I said, a lot of like kids who were really motivated by their parents to achieve.
[00:18:26]  And so you either were kind of planning to be a doctor or, you know, something on that level, or you were planning to join the military because it was Texas.
[00:18:34]  And I was in ROTC.
[00:18:35]  So me and all my friends, I think we all kind of assumed we're all going to join the army, you know?
[00:18:39]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:40]  I went to public school, you know, my entire life.
[00:18:44]  And I think most of my friends either wanted to, they were either going to go into the army or they were, or they wanted to be famous musicians and or athletes.
[00:18:56]  So see, My brother is a doctor and knew he was going to be a doctor from the, he's my older brother, too, from the time that he was like seven.
[00:19:03]  So, like, and I, and I'm like, la, la, la, no idea.
[00:19:07]  So, that was, I'm just saying, like, a level of ambition at a very, very young age has always been a turnoff for me when it comes to like friends because it just they always have that like sense where they're trying to get you're some sort of stepping stone into their whatever their career path is.
[00:19:25]  And I don't like it.
[00:19:27]  So, Oz took only one break during his relentless progress through medical school.
[00:19:32]  Uh, and his, that break was to do a compulsory, I think it was a one-year term of service in the Turkish army in order to maintain his dual citizenship.
[00:19:39]  Um, other than that, straight on to like becoming a doctor.
[00:19:43]  That's the only kind of break he.
[00:19:45]  So, I guess that's his gap year is being in the Turkish army.
[00:19:49]  I'm just going to take a break, have a gap year, and join the military of a foreign country to help suppress, you know, Kurdish liberatory movements and stuff.
[00:19:57]  Whatever.
[00:19:58]  Yeah.
[00:19:58]  They got to stop trying to have their own thing.
[00:20:01]  Yeah.
[00:20:03]  He got a four-year degree in biology and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he doubled up working on both an MD and an MBA.
[00:20:11]  He succeeded in earning both.
[00:20:13]  So that's interesting to me.
[00:20:14]  He gets both, he gets at the same time as he's getting his MD.
[00:20:17]  He also gets a business degree.
[00:20:19]  Yeah, this is very, there's a lot of foreshadowing going on.
[00:20:23]  Yeah, there's some foreshadowing.
[00:20:25]  He earned both, obviously, with flying colors.
[00:20:27]  He's an incredibly intelligent man, right?
[00:20:29]  This isn't just a guy like we'll talk about Dr. Phil later.
[00:20:32]  Dr. Phil, I don't think is very smart.
[00:20:34]  He's incredibly good at reading and manipulating people.
[00:20:36]  He's not particularly a genius.
[00:20:39]  Mehmet Oz is a genius.
[00:20:40]  Like, I think he almost certainly is an actual genius.
[00:20:44]  Yeah.
[00:20:44]  In 1985, at age 25, he married Lisa Lamoll, who was the daughter of a cardiothoracic surgeon who worked with his father.
[00:20:51]  They met at like a party or something.
[00:20:53]  This relationship gradually opened him up to alternative medicine and Eastern mysticism because Lisa's mom was hardcore into homeopathy, meditation, and other new age stuff.
[00:21:02]  We'll talk about that more in a little bit.
[00:21:04]  For the next decade and change, Dr. Oz's career zoomed forward.
[00:21:08]  He became triple board certified, which I don't know what that means, but it sounds impressive.
[00:21:13]  It's at least three boards.
[00:21:14]  It's at least three boards.
[00:21:15]  That's three more than I've been certified.
[00:21:17]  Yeah, I got zero boards under my one.
[00:21:20]  Fuck.
[00:21:20]  Not a single board between the three of us.
[00:21:23]  We really should find a board just to get us some certifications, guys.
[00:21:27]  Just to get certified.
[00:21:28]  If you're a board, if you're a medical board, there's a board out there.
[00:21:31]  Well, at least, you know what?
[00:21:33]  The state of New Jersey has certified me as a reverend doctor.
[00:21:36]  So I'm one board certified.
[00:21:38]  There's a board out there.
[00:21:39]  Is there a board in the Universal Life Church?
[00:21:42]  Because I am a minister/slash Jedi Knight.
[00:21:45]  I'm going to say that counts.
[00:21:46]  All right.
[00:21:46]  I'm board certified.
[00:21:48]  Can you get me painkillers?
[00:21:50]  You know, I know a guy.
[00:21:54]  Sounds legal enough.
[00:21:58]  So he starts working as a heart surgeon.
[00:22:00]  And he's very good at being a heart surgeon.
[00:22:02]  And he's not just good at the heart surgery part.
[00:22:05]  He's good at the science part.
[00:22:06]  Over time, he authors hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and he's awarded 11 patents.
[00:22:12]  One of them is for a solution to preserve transplanted organs.
[00:22:15]  Another is for an aortic valve that can be implanted without open heart surgery.
[00:22:19]  Like he's, he's not just really good at the mechanics of surgery.
[00:22:23]  He's an excellent scientist.
[00:22:25]  Yeah.
[00:22:26]  11 patents is pretty good.
[00:22:29]  Seriously.
[00:22:30]  One might say he's the wizard of Oz.
[00:22:34]  I think I read like six articles with variations of that title on the guy.
[00:22:38]  All right.
[00:22:38]  Well, I got to go then.
[00:22:40]  My gosh.
[00:22:41]  It's just a thing.
[00:22:42]  Journalists can't fucking help themselves.
[00:22:44]  Oh, you can't help yourself if you're anybody.
[00:22:46]  You see Oz and you're like, oh, I got to call him a wizard.
[00:22:49]  Got to call him a wizard.
[00:22:51]  Dr. Oz was hired by Columbia Medical School as a teacher.
[00:22:56]  And as, you know, he's also working.
[00:22:57]  They've got a hospital.
[00:22:58]  He's working there, but he's also teaching.
[00:23:00]  And he very quickly rises to the level of full professor and becomes the vice chair of the cardio of the heart surgery department, basically.
[00:23:08]  How old is he at this point?
[00:23:09]  He's in his 30s.
[00:23:11]  Oh, man.
[00:23:12]  Yeah.
[00:23:12]  Like everything I've read right now on its own would be a career trajectory any doctor in medicine would envy.
[00:23:19]  Like you could die happy with that being your fucking resume.
[00:23:23]  Like that's a hell of an achievement.
[00:23:25]  Yeah, my God.
[00:23:27]  Yeah.
[00:23:27]  In 1995, a New York Times profile referred to Dr. Oz as, quote, probably the most accomplished 35-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon in the country.
[00:23:37]  Jesus.
[00:23:38]  He might be the best at what he does in the entire United States at this point.
[00:23:42]  I mean, I don't know how to measure that, but he's, he's very good.
[00:23:46]  I mean, I don't know any other heart surgeons by name, so fuck.
[00:23:50]  I mean, he's the guy.
[00:23:51]  Yeah.
[00:23:52]  Now, the article that I found that quote in, however, gives some hints about what was to come because that article was about Dr. Oz's increasing experimentation with alternative medicine.
[00:24:02]  It opens with the story of one of his patients, a 49-year-old diabetic smoker who suffered a critical heart attack.
[00:24:09]  She went under Mehmet's knife for a dangerous surgery.
[00:24:12]  Quote, at the invitation of Oz and his patient, there were two other people on hand in surgical gowns and masks, a second-year medical student named Sally Smith stationed at the patient's feet and a 52-year-old healer named Julie Motts, who was standing at the patient's head.
[00:24:27]  As volunteers in Oz's Cardiac Complementary Care Center, they worked for free through the operation, seldom moving except to reposition their hands.
[00:24:35]  As Oz requested sutures and clamps and units of lidocaine, Motz called softly to Smith to move her hands from the small toe of the patient's right foot to a point on the sole known as the bubbling spring.
[00:24:45]  What they were doing, no one else in the operating room knew how to do or had ever seen done during a coronary bypass or had ever thought worth doing, even as an experiment.
[00:24:54]  In this ultimate theater of scientific medicine, the women were using their hands as kings once did to treat subjects with scropula and as Jesus is said to have done and as shamans and mothers and Chinese Quigong practitioners still do.
[00:25:07]  They were using their hands to run a kind of energy, which science cannot prove exists into the patient's kidney meridian, which also may or may not exist.
[00:25:15]  The kidney meridian?
[00:25:17]  Yeah, you got to get that meridian.
[00:25:19]  That's the best part of the kidney, the meridian.
[00:25:22]  That's the most delicious part of the kidney is the meridian.
[00:25:24]  Oh man, with fucking on a Ritz cracker sliced thin.
[00:25:27]  I love me some little bit of Ritz.
[00:25:30]  You just want to get, you want to get like some duck fat or some butter.
[00:25:32]  You want to get it sizzling in the pan and you just slap that meridian on for like a half a second and it's good to go.
[00:25:38]  That's all you fucking, just a little bit of, little bit of char, you know?
[00:25:42]  I mean, this all feels like he's going to start turning his patients into foie gras.
[00:25:47]  And I'm very excited for what's to come, this heel turn that he's going to take.
[00:25:54]  So yeah, that's, that's, that's silly.
[00:25:56]  I, I, I think that's silly.
[00:25:58]  Um, but at the other hand, like it's in a hospital.
[00:26:02]  These people are clearly following sanitation guidelines.
[00:26:05]  They're not getting paid.
[00:26:06]  The patient's not getting charged extra.
[00:26:08]  So I don't have a problem with that.
[00:26:10]  And he's the smartest doctor in the world.
[00:26:12]  It's like one of those things where you're like, I feel like this is wrong, but I don't know enough to dispute it.
[00:26:18]  So I'm going to let him fuck with my kidney meridian.
[00:26:22]  I'm not willing to morally condemn him for that, even though I think it's silly just because like, yeah, yeah, what's the fucking harm in seeing, you know?
[00:26:28]  And in that case, if you're actually doing it in a medical context, you're guaranteeing everybody's taking proper sanitation procedures.
[00:26:35]  Fucking whatever.
[00:26:36]  And it seems like from what I can tell, that sounded non-invasive.
[00:26:41]  It's unaligned.
[00:26:42]  Yeah, yeah, they were just doing energy work or whatever.
[00:26:44]  Yeah, they were throwing, you know, crystals and doing fucking pendulums over him.

=== Let Him Fuck With My Kidney (03:59) ===

[00:26:50]  It falls into the category of it couldn't possibly hurt.
[00:26:53]  So why not give it a shot, right?
[00:26:54]  Yeah.
[00:26:55]  Which is, we'll talk about this more later, but that's kind of what they were going for.
[00:26:59]  You know what else can't hurt?
[00:27:01]  I don't.
[00:27:02]  The products and services that support this podcast, guaranteed to not harm you.
[00:27:07]  In fact, every one of the products of ours that you buy extends your life by exactly 45 minutes.
[00:27:13]  So, you know, spend all your money and gain immortality.
[00:27:23]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:27:27]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:27:30]  If you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:27:33]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:27:36]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:27:40]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:27:42]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:27:44]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:27:46]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:27:51]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:27:53]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:27:55]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:27:57]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:28:00]  They said, oh, hell no.
[00:28:01]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:28:04]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:28:08]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:28:10]  Trust me, babe.
[00:28:11]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:28:21]  What's up, everyone?
[00:28:22]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:28:23]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:28:30]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:28:34]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:28:37]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:28:42]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:28:44]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:28:49]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:28:53]  Yeah.
[00:28:54]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:28:57]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:28:58]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:29:07]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:29:09]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:29:15]  Just hang in there.
[00:29:16]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:29:18]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:29:19]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:29:21]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:29:29]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:29:36]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:29:41]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:29:44]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:29:48]  I doctored the test once.
[00:29:50]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:29:53]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:29:57]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:29:59]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:30:02]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:30:04]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
[00:30:06]  My mind was blown.
[00:30:08]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:30:09]  This is Love Trap.
[00:30:11]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:30:13]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:30:18]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:30:24]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:30:29]  Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:30:39]  10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
[00:30:42]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene from iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.

=== Justice Served In Arizona (15:13) ===

[00:30:50]  This is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:30:52]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:30:54]  Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey.
[00:30:56]  July 2003.
[00:30:58]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:31:03]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:31:06]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:31:14]  Everybody in the chambers ducks.
[00:31:17]  A shocking public murder.
[00:31:19]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:31:20]  Those are shots.
[00:31:21]  Those are shots.
[00:31:22]  Get down.
[00:31:23]  A charismatic politician.
[00:31:24]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:31:27]  I still have a weapon.
[00:31:29]  And I could shoot you.
[00:31:32]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:31:34]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:31:37]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:31:38]  That may have been about sex.
[00:31:40]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:31:53]  We're back.
[00:31:54]  We're talking about Dr. Oz, who in the mid-90s has started some weird alternative medicine stuff.
[00:32:01]  Now, he's not the person who starts the alternative medicine program at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, which is also like a teaching hospital, whatever.
[00:32:09]  It's one of those hospitals that they have a medical school with.
[00:32:11]  You know, you know, the thing.
[00:32:13]  If television has taught me accurately, all of the doctors are fucking constantly.
[00:32:18]  Doctors fuck and teach.
[00:32:19]  That's what they do.
[00:32:20]  Doctors fucking they teach.
[00:32:21]  That's all they do.
[00:32:22]  You know, when you're not teaching, you're fucking.
[00:32:25]  And Columbia Presbyterian was among the most reputable medical establishments on planet Earth.
[00:32:30]  Still is, as far as I'm aware.
[00:32:32]  So this alternate medicine program there is kind of an odd thing.
[00:32:36]  It was not started at the behest of anyone at the top of the school.
[00:32:39]  The whole thing came about because in 1993, a retired utility executive named Richard Rosenthal gave them three quarters of a million dollars as a private grant in order to establish a center to study alternative medicine.
[00:32:52]  Just gifted money and just said, do this.
[00:32:56]  Start a magic doctoring school.
[00:32:59]  I like to be like aborts.
[00:33:02]  Okay.
[00:33:03]  Now, Richard had been motivated by having several close friends of his get terribly sick in such a way that doctors told him there was nothing that could be done to help them.
[00:33:14]  And his response was to basically throw a bunch of money into a hole to see if alternative medicine could come up with solutions.
[00:33:19]  And it's one of those things I could make fun of.
[00:33:22]  Like this is almost exactly a week after my mom just died of a type of cancer that when you get diagnosed with it, pancreatic, there's basically nothing they can do.
[00:33:31]  You know, it's list, even like, like she went through chemo and it did nothing, you know?
[00:33:36]  I get it.
[00:33:37]  You go through something like, okay, well, let's try other shit, you know?
[00:33:41]  So I can't, I can't even blame Richard for, like, it seems like he was motivated out of grief to do this, you know?
[00:33:46]  Yeah, you can't blame people for trying to try any other alternative to, I mean, you know, something in which there is no cure in modern medicine.
[00:33:57]  I won't blame the snake oil salesman.
[00:33:59]  I'm never going to blame someone who's like, well, doctors said they can't cure me.
[00:34:02]  So I'm going to eat this root, you know?
[00:34:05]  Fuck it.
[00:34:05]  Why not?
[00:34:06]  Go for it.
[00:34:07]  Who gives a shit?
[00:34:07]  Like, it can't hurt if you're definitely going to die.
[00:34:10]  Yeah.
[00:34:12]  And it is, to be honest, like it is kind of within, even you could argue within kind of medical best practices because one of the things, if like I took EMT training years ago, one of the things they tell you is that you're not supposed to use an AED, you know, like paddles to restart a heart.
[00:34:27]  You're not supposed to use them on an infant.
[00:34:29]  But if an infant is in, you know, the state where like you use them on them because they're dead.
[00:34:35]  Shock the shit out of them.
[00:34:36]  Yeah, they're dead.
[00:34:37]  You can't make dead worse.
[00:34:38]  So like, why not?
[00:34:40]  So I guess like, yeah, you can't, I don't know, can't make it worse.
[00:34:43]  Why not see if it, if, if something happens.
[00:34:46]  I'm not against the basic idea of testing some of this shit as well.
[00:34:49]  The worst thing you're going to get out of that is a really cool TikTok video of electrocuting a dead body.
[00:34:54]  Absolutely.
[00:34:54]  And then you get a fuckload of followers and then you start selling brain pills.
[00:35:00]  It's a perfect plan.
[00:35:03]  So yeah.
[00:35:05]  So I can't blame the college for this.
[00:35:07]  I can't blame the guy for funding it.
[00:35:08]  It's a reasonable thing.
[00:35:10]  Why not?
[00:35:10]  You know what?
[00:35:11]  That's kind of my attitude is why the fuck not.
[00:35:13]  And that's more or less what the dean of faculty of medicine at the college said.
[00:35:17]  Like, all right, well, we're not paying for it.
[00:35:19]  Why not give it a shot?
[00:35:21]  That said, a lot of medical professionals were really angry about the idea.
[00:35:25]  Dr. Victor Herbert, a Columbia medical school graduate and a professor of medicine at Mount Sinai and a board member of the National Council Against Health Fraud, publicly lambasted the lecturers brought in by the program as con artists and sociopathic liars.
[00:35:40]  And knowing the kind of people who get into the selling this shit business, I don't know if he's wrong about that.
[00:35:46]  A lot of these people are fucking sociopaths, you know?
[00:35:49]  He says, quote, I am nasty.
[00:35:50]  I call practitioners a fraud, practitioners a fraud.
[00:35:53]  It's my feeling that the Rosenthal Center has been promoting fraudulent alternatives as genuine.
[00:35:58]  And I get his critiques.
[00:35:59]  You know, that is one of the, like, I can say on one hand, what's the harm, but also maybe the harm is that people hear this stuff is being done in a hospital, so it must help when it doesn't.
[00:36:08]  And maybe some of those people do that, not the way Dr. Oz is doing it, where we're going to do the normal medical procedure.
[00:36:14]  We'll have this done.
[00:36:15]  Maybe some people decide, I just want to have the energy work done.
[00:36:17]  And then they drop dead of a heart attack because it doesn't replace a valve, you know?
[00:36:22]  I'd like to think that even at a hospital or a research facility with Western medicine, that they still peer review and try out different, you know, like alternative medicines, right?
[00:36:36]  You know, like some of them, some of them work.
[00:36:38]  Some of them work.
[00:36:39]  Like there was a time when, you know, acupuncture was seen as kind of like a crock and now it's like kind of just a standard part of Western medicine.
[00:36:47]  It's just, you know, so.
[00:36:49]  Yeah.
[00:36:49]  And there's a, there's a lot to be said about even acupuncture.
[00:36:51]  You know, I went through a lot of it as a kid and it did nothing for me, but my grandpa swore by it for his Parkinson's.
[00:36:57]  And even if it was, I don't know, you could say it's like fucking whatever, placebo, but he experienced relief.
[00:37:03]  So I don't care.
[00:37:04]  Like, yeah.
[00:37:06]  I don't know.
[00:37:07]  I'm not going to get into like it, because I don't know.
[00:37:09]  I don't know all of the, I know it's one of those things where there's a number of divergent opinions on acupuncture, but a number of things that were initially considered alternative medicines have been found to have medical, you know, benefits.
[00:37:19]  Not that that's the norm, but it has happened in history, you know, different kind of traditional or whatever treatments.
[00:37:26]  So this is very controversial, though, is the point I'm making.
[00:37:29]  And a number of people even picketed the college when the Rosenthal Center opened.
[00:37:33]  None of this dissuaded Dr. Oz from participating in it.
[00:37:36]  His explanation as to why he embraced alternative medicine was, to be quite honest, kind of brilliant.
[00:37:42]  He said that his, by this point, vast experience as a real doctor had really informed him of the limits of medical science.
[00:37:49]  Specifically, he said that while he could sew bypass grafts and even implant a new heart into someone's chest, he couldn't change the habits that had made them sick in the first place, nor could he cure the emotional issues that they were dealing with.
[00:38:01]  Depression, he pointed out, was a major risk factor in heart patient recovery post-surgery and things like meditation, right?
[00:38:08]  That's kind of considered woo, new age.
[00:38:11]  That can help with depression and that can help with healing.
[00:38:14]  And he's right about that.
[00:38:14]  That's not a bad point to make.
[00:38:18]  So he seemed to insinuate when he was talking to the New York Times, why wouldn't a caring physician want to try everything possible to improve his patient's odds?
[00:38:26]  He could point out that meditation had shown some benefit for heart disease patients.
[00:38:30]  Who was to say that other stuff wouldn't work?
[00:38:32]  Dr. Oz told the New York Times that he felt ethically obliged to experiment in new directions in medicine.
[00:38:39]  The article makes it clear that Dr. Oz had not let up one bit in the workaholic tendencies that he inherited from his father as well.
[00:38:46]  And I'm going to quote from the Times again here.
[00:38:48]  Mehmet Oz is one of those rare beings who seem incapable of sloth.
[00:38:52]  He's doing a heart transplant right now, his secretary says on the phone, and he's got a double lung transplant waiting.
[00:38:57]  And those are in addition to his two regularly scheduled open hearts.
[00:39:00]  And then at three, he's supposed to fly to Boston to deliver a lecture.
[00:39:03]  So exceptional is Oz's energy that some of his colleagues use him as a benchmark, correlating their own vitality as a fraction of a full Mehmet unit.
[00:39:11]  He runs down Lobbs, size's tennis partner, mentor, and department chairman, Dr. Eric A. Rose, who at 44 is one of the top heart transplant surgeons in the world.
[00:39:21]  So I can't tell you how nervous I would be going into a lung transplant procedure and then hearing like, this doctor's got to do a heart after you and then got to fly to Boston.
[00:39:33]  I'd be like, you think you could maybe take your time with this, bro?
[00:39:37]  Like, could you get it?
[00:39:37]  I get that.
[00:39:38]  I do.
[00:39:39]  It is a matter.
[00:39:40]  We'll talk about the ZN2.
[00:39:41]  We don't have enough of these guys.
[00:39:43]  It's actually a major health problem how few people there are that can do this.
[00:39:47]  Yeah.
[00:39:48]  But it is exhausting.
[00:39:50]  Everything you read about this guy's day, like you're just one of those people who I think I kind of get the feeling.
[00:39:55]  I don't want to psychoanalyze someone, but you get the feeling he can't be alone and still.
[00:40:01]  Like he has to always be moving towards something.
[00:40:04]  Yeah.
[00:40:04]  He's got his dad in the back of his head telling him to murder that kid in the ice cream show.
[00:40:09]  Yeah.
[00:40:10]  Kill that fucking.
[00:40:11]  Kill that fucking kid.
[00:40:12]  He doesn't know what he wants to be.
[00:40:14]  Yeah.
[00:40:14]  Just like, I mean, I imagine that would create a bit of a problem later in life with stillness.
[00:40:22]  Yeah.
[00:40:23]  I feel for him a little bit in that.
[00:40:25]  Sure.
[00:40:26]  Now, the article also goes into more detail about how Dr. Oz's fam, Dr. Oz's wife's family piqued his interest in alternative medicine.
[00:40:35]  His father-in-law was one of the surgeons on the first heart transplant team in Texas.
[00:40:39]  He'd also been nicknamed the rock doc by Rolling Stone for playing music in the OR to relax patients.
[00:40:46]  His mother-in-law had developed a special low-fat diet for her husband's cardiac patients.
[00:40:50]  And this was really before it was accepted that low-fat diets would be good for heart patients.
[00:40:56]  She once refused surgery for her own inflamed gallbladder and handled it instead by altering her diet.
[00:41:02]  She taught her son-in-law, Dr. Oz, about using Arnica for sore muscles and herbal tea for stomach aches.
[00:41:08]  So he gets brought in in part to alternative medicine by these people who have a real medical background and are doing things that aren't widely accepted, but also may help.
[00:41:17]  You know, music, I think there's some data now on how music can help with certain aspects of the healing process.
[00:41:22]  Right.
[00:41:23]  Low fat mother-in-law seemed to be on the cutting edge of that.
[00:41:26]  When you said the rock doc, I got concerned.
[00:41:29]  I thought he was going to like replace people's hearts with crystals and shit.
[00:41:33]  And I was like, oh, no.
[00:41:34]  Oh, no.
[00:41:35]  They all die, but my God, their hearts are pretty.
[00:41:39]  So this is how Mehmet gets introduced to the wide world of quack cures.
[00:41:44]  And it makes sense.
[00:41:45]  He enters it through largely reasonable ways, alternative treatments that have some positive impact on people.
[00:41:51]  There's extremely reasonable stuff in the article in general.
[00:41:54]  Like Dr. Oz points out that in 1995, American hospitals had only recently allowed family to stay in the hospital with a patient.
[00:42:01]  While in Turkey, it was common for families to do this.
[00:42:04]  And of course, having loved ones nearby can help a patient's morale, which can influence how well they heal.
[00:42:09]  No one, I think, today would even like think to disagree with that.
[00:42:13]  It didn't used to be common.
[00:42:15]  It changed.
[00:42:16]  So he's in medicine during a time when a lot of stuff that like just wasn't, that is kind of now common sense medicine wasn't.
[00:42:23]  And I think that kind of opens his eye to like, well, maybe all this other shit works.
[00:42:28]  Yeah.
[00:42:28]  Maybe everything in my head is correct.
[00:42:30]  Yeah.
[00:42:31]  Slowly getting to him turning into a complete narcissist.
[00:42:35]  Yeah.
[00:42:35]  And the article kind of veers right from, yeah, having loved ones in the room can influence how well you heal to Dr. Oz's love of energy work, particularly his work with a lady named Motz, who believed she could sense the energy of heart transplant patients.
[00:42:49]  The Times article certainly does not portray this woman in a particularly positive light.
[00:42:54]  Quote, she now has her surgical C-legs under her, but the first time Motz observed open heart surgery, she had a shaky debut.
[00:43:01]  She had been standing at the patient's head outside the sterile field, periodically telling Oz what changes she was able to sense in the patient's energy.
[00:43:08]  The patient was obviously not awake, but probably had some awareness, most likely smell and perhaps hearing.
[00:43:13]  Open heart patients are often fitted with headphones and provided with tapes to listen to, including, if they want, Oz's own specially recorded soupy trance music.
[00:43:22]  For the bypass team, it was quite a novelty to hear Motz report that she was registering the patient's moods in her body, various states of fear, anger, or satisfaction perceived as roughness in her chest or turbulence in her stomach.
[00:43:33]  At one point, seeing that Motts was not looking so good herself, Oz asked a burley assistant to take her outside for some air.
[00:43:39]  When he returned, he said, I sense a change in my stomach.
[00:43:43]  It's a tenseness.
[00:43:44]  No, it's a growling.
[00:43:45]  No, wait a minute.
[00:43:46]  I'm just hungry.
[00:43:50]  Oh my God.
[00:43:50]  I swear she's like, she seemed like she is just describing her own feelings and then just ascribing them to an open-heart patient.
[00:44:00]  But yeah, it's one of those things.
[00:44:02]  I'm not sure exactly what type of energy work this person is doing because there's a few different kind of categories of it.
[00:44:09]  She's checking the vibes, dude.
[00:44:11]  She's checking the vibes.
[00:44:12]  Just making sure, you know, the vibe dipstick is filled with oil.
[00:44:16]  I should note, if I'm going to be totally fair, that Riki, which has its origins in Japan, has been shown in some early scientific studies to help diminish the symptoms of chemotherapy and to significantly alter people's experience of physical and emotional pain.
[00:44:31]  And I have some friends who swear by it for kind of physical and emotional pain in particular.
[00:44:38]  I don't know what Reiki is.
[00:44:39]  I've heard of it.
[00:44:40]  Is it like when Mr. Miyagi rubs his hands together and then he puts his head?
[00:44:43]  It's like energy work, I guess.
[00:44:45]  I don't know.
[00:44:45]  It's not a kind of thing that I particularly believe in.
[00:44:48]  And I kind of think in a lot of cases, it's that you have a good relationship with the practitioner and you trust them and it can be, you know, an emotionally soothing thing, which I don't know.
[00:44:58]  There were early studies, scientific studies, that showed that it could diminish the symptoms of chemotherapy and reduce people's experience of pain.
[00:45:05]  Now, further studies were commissioned after these early studies, which starting in the early 2000s were more negative.
[00:45:12]  A number of hospitals did, however, add Riki practitioners to their stable of available providers, in part as a result of like the work that Dr. Oz and the center at Columbia was doing.
[00:45:24]  You can find these people in hospitals now.
[00:45:27]  And it's worth noting that a number of the positive studies about Riki and other similar things were conducted by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
[00:45:38]  Their work is problematic to say the least.
[00:45:40]  And I'm going to quote now from an analysis of several studies conducted by this organization by Professor Dr. Edzard Ernst.
[00:45:48]  Quote, three studies suggested that energy medicine had an effect, but their authors either applied statistics inappropriately, confounded the effects of energy healing by adding unrelated interventions to the experimental condition, or failed to design or blind equivalent placebo controls.

=== Biased Energy Healing Studies (06:53) ===

[00:46:03]  Their results are therefore untrustworthy.
[00:46:06]  The two studies that were well-designed failed to demonstrate effects from energy and healing.
[00:46:11]  The odds of generating a useful result of a clinical trial of energy medicine are small.
[00:46:15]  Moreover, what impact would negative studies have?
[00:46:18]  Scientists will simply say, we could have told you so, and proponents are unlikely to change their mind.
[00:46:24]  Proponents may then claim that the negative study must have been flawed or that energy medicine cannot be investigated by the tools of science.
[00:46:30]  Or they might rely on the NCCAM, that organization I talked about, funded studies that generated biased but apparently positive results.
[00:46:38]  The NCCAM's approach encourages a self-perpetuating cycle of misinterpreting research and conducting flawed research, which inevitably generates some studies that erroneously claim positive effects and give the false impression that the efficacy of energy medicine is still scientifically unresolved.
[00:46:55]  Man, we are just veering into anti-vax territory and like anti-mass territory people who just, they Google stuff and then they go, this article right here says that mass actually killed COVID.
[00:47:09]  They can't analyze.
[00:47:10]  And it's from a government science organization.
[00:47:12]  You know, these guys like, and here's a study that said, and it's like, well, okay, but you actually look at scientists who don't have a vested and often financial interest in this and they point out all these very obvious flaws in the study.
[00:47:23]  It's worth noting that the NCCAM was founded in 1998, three years after the New York Times article about Dr. Oz and the Alternative Medicine Center at Columbia was published.
[00:47:34]  Now, Dr. Ross at this point was not yet on Oprah's show, but he had been featured on TV several times for his pioneering work with mechanical hearts, as well as his embrace of alternative medicine.
[00:47:44]  You can draw a direct line.
[00:47:46]  I don't know if we would have an NCCAM without Dr. Oz.
[00:47:49]  I don't know.
[00:47:49]  You can't say that for certain.
[00:47:52]  But he is someone who before his embrace of alternative medicine starts to be well known as an exceptional doctor and scientists.
[00:47:58]  He embraces this stuff.
[00:48:00]  Columbia starts studying this stuff.
[00:48:03]  And even though everything they find is pretty inconclusive, the fact that it's in an actual hospital lends it legitimacy.
[00:48:09]  This organization is started in order to test this stuff.
[00:48:13]  The organization is filled with people who already believe in it, carrying out tests that are flawed.
[00:48:18]  And it helps prepare this culture of believing too much in this stuff.
[00:48:23]  My God, it's just like, it's a real life Facebook group.
[00:48:25]  You know, it's just like everyone already believes in all the stuff and they just keep like just co-signing each other's bullshit.
[00:48:33]  And it's one of those things, like, again, I know people who swear by Riki, who gain, you know, emotional benefits from it, who think it helps with, you know, a number of things, including like physical, including emotional pain.
[00:48:46]  And like, if you find something that helps you alleviate your emotional pain, go for fucking power too.
[00:48:51]  You know, you're never going to hear me say a damn word against it.
[00:48:54]  You know, go with God.
[00:48:55]  That's, that, that's all great.
[00:48:57]  But I mean, you want to relieve pain.
[00:49:00]  Yeah.
[00:49:01]  Try some morphine, though, dog, because that shit, oh my God.
[00:49:04]  Morphine.
[00:49:04]  And there's no downsides to morphine.
[00:49:06]  No, I can't think of one downside to morphine.
[00:49:09]  It's not a single one.
[00:49:11]  Yeah.
[00:49:11]  It just feels good the whole time and you just need to take more.
[00:49:15]  My issue is not so much with any particular treatment.
[00:49:19]  Not that not even an issue that people would like.
[00:49:22]  It's number one, a lot of people will issue actual medical treatment in favor of some of this stuff.
[00:49:29]  And it's not going to, I'm trying to be as fair as I can.
[00:49:33]  Riki is not going to solve your blocked cardiac pathways.
[00:49:37]  You know, like, it's not going to fix it.
[00:49:40]  Yeah.
[00:49:40]  I mean, energy is great, but Plavix works wonders.
[00:49:44]  Plavix is a lot better.
[00:49:47]  And it's, it's, it's more to the point, even more than that, is it, it gets us on this, this road of increasingly accepting and legitimizing things that there's no, there's not a scientific basis for.
[00:50:00]  And that leads us to shit like, let's drink bleach to cure the coronavirus.
[00:50:05]  Like, you know, it's where the road ends.
[00:50:07]  I have more of a problem with than Dr. Oz experimenting with an energy worker during a surgery.
[00:50:13]  Like it's where that leads to.
[00:50:15]  And he plays a major role in legitimizing that.
[00:50:18]  He's, he, he helps put he helps put our national foot on the gas pedal into the post-science age.
[00:50:27]  Yeah, it's a slippery slope to that, you know, downing that brain octane oil.
[00:50:32]  Exactly.
[00:50:33]  Exactly.
[00:50:35]  So yeah.
[00:50:37]  At this point, though, we're talking still in the mid 90s.
[00:50:39]  Everything Dr. Oz is saying is reasonable from a certain point of view.
[00:50:43]  He's not claiming that Reiki's going to cure cancer.
[00:50:45]  He's not even claiming it's going to cure your heart disease.
[00:50:47]  He's saying it could help with recovery and a lot of recovery is mental.
[00:50:50]  And he's not, you know, it's possible he's right.
[00:50:53]  You know, he's not yet a bastard.
[00:50:56]  It's certainly not impossible for this kind of stuff to have a mental impact, which can positively affect recovery.
[00:51:01]  Okay.
[00:51:02]  Yeah.
[00:51:02]  So yeah, he's not a bastard at this point.
[00:51:04]  Nearly all of his alternative medical claims were things that you could argue were at least to some extent reasonable based on the way he framed them.
[00:51:12]  And he was most importantly, regardless of whatever kind of woo-woo stuff he got into, an exceptionally gifted medical perfecture professional who was performing something like 250 heart surgeries a year.
[00:51:22]  You know, that's 250 lives a year.
[00:51:24]  Yeah.
[00:51:25]  Extended.
[00:51:26]  That's great.
[00:51:27]  He's not a bastard yet.
[00:51:28]  Yeah.
[00:51:29]  He's doing great work so far.
[00:51:31]  Despite the heart stuff, fine.
[00:51:34]  A little bit of energy, a little bit of heart surgery.
[00:51:37]  It works out.
[00:51:38]  And the thing, though, that is, I think is happening during this period.
[00:51:42]  And I don't know how conscious a choice this is by Dr. Oz.
[00:51:46]  I think it is because of the fact that he gets an MBA as well and the fact that he's very good at getting press, very good at getting on TV, at getting in the news.
[00:51:54]  I think he is at this point crafting his career to make himself into an ideal candidate for famous TV doctor.
[00:52:01]  I think he is building a background that will allow him to establish his celebrity career later.
[00:52:07]  It is not hard to see how a handsome doctor with TV experience, a New York Times profile talking about alternative medicine and a seriously impressive resume was going to wind up eventually on Oprah Winfrey's radar.
[00:52:19]  He almost built himself perfectly for that to happen.
[00:52:23]  And he tried in the early 2000s.
[00:52:26]  He tried with his wife to start a TV show.
[00:52:28]  They like filmed a pilot episode.
[00:52:30]  It didn't really take off.
[00:52:32]  But he succeeds in, and I think he's pushing and his wife is pushing him to get in.
[00:52:38]  She's very much his business partner to develop himself into a media personality.
[00:52:43]  And he eventually succeeds in 2004 in getting invited to Oprah Winfrey's show.
[00:52:49]  Now, Mehmet immediately endeared himself to Winfrey's audience with his willingness to discuss frank health details in a way that was demystifying and humorous.

=== Filmed A Pilot Episode (05:41) ===

[00:52:57]  He most famously explained that healthy poops tended to be shaped like an S and should hit the water like an Olympic diver with very little splash.
[00:53:05]  Oprah herself later recalled, when he made it okay to talk about the shape of a good poop, I knew he could talk about anything.
[00:53:12]  He always found ways to make the human body endlessly fascinating.
[00:53:16]  Man, that is, I mean, I'm low-key impressed that he impressed Oprah with the doo-doo shapes.
[00:53:24]  It's mom stuff, you know?
[00:53:25]  Moms love poop.
[00:53:26]  They do.
[00:53:27]  They love talking about doo-doo.
[00:53:28]  That's the thing.
[00:53:29]  And that's what, like, Oz does exactly the right things to endear himself to like millions of middle-class moms, which is the best market in the country.
[00:53:39]  It's an incredible market.
[00:53:41]  You can make all of the money if you can get a few million middle-class moms to love you.
[00:53:46]  Yeah.
[00:53:46]  I worked at this digital, what do you call it, like a digital production company.
[00:53:52]  And the most famous person that we dealt with was a famous Facebook mom who had millions of followers.
[00:53:59]  And I would watch her stuff and I was like, this is, you know, maybe the most awful shit I've ever seen.
[00:54:06]  It was just a lady in a car yelling at people about kids.
[00:54:09]  Yeah.
[00:54:10]  And but the, she was a famous mom.
[00:54:13]  I mean, if you can become a famous mom, you will be one of the most famous people in the country.
[00:54:18]  Yeah.
[00:54:18]  I mean, it's, it's the power of particularly middle-class moms can't be exaggerated.
[00:54:24]  Like in Professor, the cops and the feds were able to fuck over as many people as they wanted until they started gassing moms.
[00:54:31]  Right.
[00:54:31]  So then the whole country's pissed.
[00:54:34]  Yeah.
[00:54:34]  They're like, hey, listen, you can do that to people of color, but those are moms.
[00:54:40]  Those are white moms.
[00:54:41]  Those are white moms.
[00:54:43]  That could be my mother.
[00:54:45]  Yeah.
[00:54:48]  You know what else?
[00:54:50]  Yeah, where are you going with that?
[00:54:52]  Where are you going with that, Raven?
[00:54:54]  I thought you were going to say you know what else is your mom.
[00:54:56]  That's where I thought you were going with that.
[00:54:58]  You know what else is your mother?
[00:54:59]  The products and services that support this podcast.
[00:55:07]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:55:11]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:55:15]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:55:17]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:55:21]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:55:25]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:55:29]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:55:31]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:55:35]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:55:37]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:55:39]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:55:41]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:55:44]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:55:46]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:55:48]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:55:53]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:55:54]  Trust me, babe.
[00:55:55]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:56:05]  What's up, everyone?
[00:56:06]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:56:07]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:56:15]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:56:18]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:56:21]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:56:26]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:56:29]  I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:56:33]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:56:38]  Yeah.
[00:56:38]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:56:41]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:56:43]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:56:51]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:56:54]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:57:01]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:57:03]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:57:04]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:57:05]  Yeah.
[00:57:05]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:57:14]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:57:20]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:57:26]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:57:29]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:57:33]  I doctored the test once.
[00:57:34]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:57:37]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:57:41]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:57:44]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:57:46]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:57:48]  Greg Olespi and Michael Marancini.
[00:57:50]  My mind was blown.
[00:57:52]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:57:54]  This is Love Trap.
[00:57:56]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:57:58]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:58:02]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:58:09]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:58:13]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:58:23]  10-10 shots five, city hall building.
[00:58:26]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:58:31]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:58:37]  How could this have happened in City Hall?

=== Special Dr Oz Episode (11:27) ===

[00:58:38]  Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:58:41]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:58:47]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:58:50]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:58:59]  Everybody in the chamber's docked a shocking public murder.
[00:59:03]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:59:05]  Those are shots.
[00:59:06]  Those are shots.
[00:59:07]  Get down.
[00:59:07]  A charismatic politician.
[00:59:09]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:59:11]  I still have a weapon.
[00:59:13]  And I could shoot you.
[00:59:16]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:59:18]  He allegedly was a victim of flat down.
[00:59:21]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:59:23]  That may have been about sex.
[00:59:25]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:59:37]  We're back.
[00:59:39]  So we've all just agreed that Matt is very funny.
[00:59:43]  That was the discussion over the break.
[00:59:45]  You made this one into a two-parter, Matt.
[00:59:47]  So the audience can thank you for two episodes about Dr. Oz this week.
[00:59:52]  All right.
[00:59:52]  Or they can blame you.
[00:59:54]  And if they blame him, Matt's home address is...
[01:00:00]  Oh, we love to dox our guests, don't we?
[01:00:02]  Dox me, baby.
[01:00:04]  So Oprah had Dr. Oz on her show 55 times over the course of five years.
[01:00:09]  She gave him the nickname America's Doctor, which stuck.
[01:00:13]  And although I'm not saying this in a positive sense, is unfortunately accurate.
[01:00:18]  He's definitely America's Doctor.
[01:00:21]  Just appealing to the lowest common denominator of the stupidest human being.
[01:00:26]  America's Doctor.
[01:00:27]  And if you look at the health of the average American, you can tell the quality of job he's done.
[01:00:34]  Eat more bread.
[01:00:36]  Everybody eat bread.
[01:00:38]  Well, actually, that's the one thing he is.
[01:00:39]  He's actually pretty good about like weight loss.
[01:00:42]  Well, I don't know.
[01:00:42]  That's still debatable.
[01:00:43]  Stop defending Dr. Oz.
[01:00:45]  I'm not going to defend.
[01:00:46]  I just love to be fair, you know?
[01:00:48]  I know you do.
[01:00:49]  You're very fair.
[01:00:50]  Look, say what you will about Hitler.
[01:00:52]  Say what you will.
[01:00:53]  He was a vegetarian.
[01:00:55]  And that's good for the environment.
[01:00:57]  The man cared about animal rights.
[01:01:01]  By 2009, it was clear that Dr. Oz had more than enough star power to justify a shot at his own show.
[01:01:07]  Oprah's production company had little trouble finding a buyer for what was sure to be a blockbuster new series.
[01:01:13]  Her show celebrated the launch of Dr. Oz's show with an entire episode dedicated to Dr. Oz, which acted as something of a coming out party for his brand.
[01:01:23]  From a press release on Oprah.com.
[01:01:26]  This is talking about the special Dr. Oz episode.
[01:01:29]  Moving personal stories and extraordinary surprises are featured throughout the hour as Dr. Oz meets viewers who share how his advice saved their lives.
[01:01:37]  From those who noticed life-threatening diseases their doctors missed to those who lost weight thanks to his diet tips from Dr. Oz.
[01:01:44]  Real people step forward to offer their thanks to America's Doctor.
[01:01:48]  Plus, it's the reunion that Dr. Oz never imagined would happen as Oprah show producers track down a young boy he cared for in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the two reunite for the first time.
[01:01:59]  He's like the fucking perfect, perfect guy for this.
[01:02:02]  I mean, I love that it's literally sounds like an hour-long special of people just thanking him, which might be the most narcissistic thing I think I've ever heard.
[01:02:13]  Yeah.
[01:02:13]  I mean, like, it's one thing for Oprah to do that because I think America does legitimately owe her thanks for just years of content, you know?
[01:02:23]  of mostly dangerous health-based content.
[01:02:27]  Oh, yeah, no, I mean, it's awful content, but the fact is it's, it's quantity over quality in America.
[01:02:32]  And, you know, but an hour of just thanking Dr. Oz and having people come up to him, like, you saved me is fucking wild.
[01:02:41]  It's worth noting in terms of his bastardry that kind of the acceleration from, hey, maybe energy healing works to becoming a monster.
[01:02:49]  The early 2000s is the period in which Oprah becomes aware of a Brazilian healer named John of God, who believes he can do psychic surgery and like remove tumors.
[01:02:58]  John of God.
[01:02:59]  Yeah.
[01:03:00]  Yeah.
[01:03:01]  Oh, of, of the, of the Brazilian of gods.
[01:03:04]  Yeah.
[01:03:05]  And on the episode in which she introduces John of God to America, Dr. Oz comes on and gives his professional opinion that like he seems like he's really having an effect on people and I can't explain it.
[01:03:18]  I don't think medical science can explain what this man is doing.
[01:03:20]  Basically giving a real doctor's opinion that this guy's got to be legit.
[01:03:25]  John of God later turned out to be a mass rapist on the on a scale hundreds of victims on a scale almost incomprehensible.
[01:03:34]  We did a two-parter on John of God.
[01:03:35]  You can listen to it.
[01:03:36]  It's a fucking nightmare.
[01:03:38]  This guy never gets half the following that he has if it's not for Oprah and Dr. Oz.
[01:03:43]  So wow.
[01:03:46]  Holy shit.
[01:03:47]  Oh, it's good shit.
[01:03:48]  Good shit.
[01:03:49]  I found a fascinating New York Times article written a few months into Dr. Oz's new show.
[01:03:54]  It notes that in transitioning to his own series, Dr. Oz had to spice up his act for a daily daytime audience, quote, potentially distracted by the tantrums of a toddler or the yelping of a labradoodle.
[01:04:06]  They go on to summarize his early episodes.
[01:04:09]  His show tackles topics as diverse and diversely weighty as skin cancer, kitchen burns, sleep eating, and pubic hair loss, returning constantly to the same television motherload Winfrey profitably mined, weepy overweight guests who vow and often fail to get in shape.
[01:04:24]  And it has taken its star far away from any sort of traditional medical practice.
[01:04:28]  He explains that transition as the product of frustration.
[01:04:32]  Too often, he told me, he would sit in an office and be telling you stuff too little, too late, that if you'd been able to lose a little weight or if your diabetes had been managed more aggressively, then it would have dramatically altered your destiny, which is now to go downstairs and have open heart surgery.
[01:04:46]  With his TV show, he can exhort Americans to end all aspect, to tend to all aspects of their health, head to toe, before they reach a point of no return.
[01:04:54]  Lose weight, go to Brazil and get sexually assaulted by a con man.
[01:05:00]  Oh, boy.
[01:05:03]  You know, there's always that point.
[01:05:04]  You know, I've listened to your show, and there's always that point in the episode where the comedian or the guest has no other option but to just say, fuck, that sucks, dude.
[01:05:16]  Like, there's no other comment, but what?
[01:05:19]  Oh, that's crazy.
[01:05:21]  But, you know, hey, John of God, Dr. Oz, they all sound like great people.
[01:05:28]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:05:29]  And it's going to get worse.
[01:05:31]  You know, this is kind of the period.
[01:05:33]  One of the things he's supposed to do in this period is he starts cutting back on his surgical practice and performing fewer surgeries.
[01:05:40]  Yeah, because he's got to keep up all those TV dates.
[01:05:42]  Yeah.
[01:05:42]  In order to tell people about John of God, the mass rapist, and in order to tell people about, I don't know, some stuff that's good, right?
[01:05:51]  Telling people to eat healthier is a good idea.
[01:05:54]  America's diet sucks.
[01:05:55]  His diet advice, I think, is, well, we'll talk about that later.
[01:05:59]  It's also problematic.
[01:06:00]  Anyway, he's trading objectively useful medical work for being a nonsense doctor, but he's making millions of dollars.
[01:06:08]  Yeah.
[01:06:09]  And in America, that is the ultimate marker of doing the right thing.
[01:06:15]  That's the only thing that tells you whether or not you're doing the right thing.
[01:06:18]  Yeah, if you're making a lot of money, then whatever you're doing is the right thing to do.
[01:06:21]  Yeah.
[01:06:22]  It's morally correct to make a lot of money.
[01:06:25]  Yeah.
[01:06:26]  Morally righteous.
[01:06:28]  Righteous wealth.
[01:06:30]  Yes.
[01:06:31]  You know what else is righteous, Matt?
[01:06:34]  Is it the products and services?
[01:06:37]  No, my man.
[01:06:38]  It's you.
[01:06:39]  Because the episode's over.
[01:06:41]  Part one is over.
[01:06:42]  And we're going to sail out.
[01:06:45]  But first, you've got to plug your pluggables.
[01:06:47]  And I just decided to compliment you before we reach.
[01:06:49]  Yeah, that's very nice.
[01:06:51]  Here, I thought you were just trying to get me to talk about products and services.
[01:06:55]  Well, thank you for having me on.
[01:06:57]  I have a product and/or service called Pod Yourself Agun.
[01:07:01]  It's a Sopranos podcast.
[01:07:02]  And yeah, if you like the Sopranos, or even if you don't, check it out on the, you know, wherever the podcast store is.
[01:07:11]  Podcast.
[01:07:12]  All right.
[01:07:13]  Well, this is the show that it is, and we're done doing the things that we do.
[01:07:20]  So go out into the world and, I don't know, find Dr. Oz and scream at him.
[01:07:25]  Give him a good screaming.
[01:07:43]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:07:51]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:07:54]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:07:56]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:07:58]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[01:08:02]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:08:04]  Trust me, babe.
[01:08:05]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:08:14]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[01:08:19]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
[01:08:22]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[01:08:25]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[01:08:27]  That's so funny.
[01:08:28]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[01:08:36]  Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:08:44]  What's up, everyone?
[01:08:45]  I'm Ego Modern.
[01:08:46]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[01:08:50]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:08:53]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:08:55]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:09:02]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:09:04]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[01:09:11]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:09:13]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:09:14]  There's a lot of life.
[01:09:16]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:09:23]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[01:09:31]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[01:09:34]  I doctored the test once.
[01:09:36]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[01:09:41]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[01:09:43]  Ray Gillespie and Michael Ranchini.
[01:09:45]  My mind was blown.
[01:09:46]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[01:09:48]  This is Love Trapped.
[01:09:49]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[01:09:51]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[01:09:56]  Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:10:02]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:10:05]  Guaranteed human.