Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Dr. Oz: Why 'America's Doctor' Is A Bastard
Aired: 2021-04-22
Duration: 01:19:16


=== Oprah's Career and Ghostwriters (15:06) ===

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[00:00:44]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
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[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 hang 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.
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[00:02:27]  This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we neg our audience in order to make them more closely drawn to us.
[00:02:34]  It's a tactic I learned from pickup artists.
[00:02:38]  From pickup artists.
[00:02:39]  Yes.
[00:02:41]  Really, this whole show is based on the lessons I learned as a pickup artist.
[00:02:45]  You can't see it, but I'm wearing an enormous hat with ostrich plumes coming off.
[00:02:50]  Made out of purple felt.
[00:02:52]  It's an incredible hat.
[00:02:53]  The most fuckable hat.
[00:02:55]  The most fuckable hat.
[00:02:57]  Yes, that was actually the first name I pitched for this podcast, but Sophie said that that means nothing and no one will listen to it.
[00:03:05]  So we won't be all the best.
[00:03:06]  He lies on my name and saying that I turned down his ideas.
[00:03:10]  That's just not the case.
[00:03:12]  Sophie, I think we can all agree that one of the best things to do is to lie about things your colleagues didn't do because it's funny.
[00:03:19]  I agree with it.
[00:03:20]  Thank you.
[00:03:22]  On to the show.
[00:03:24]  We're talking about Dr. Odds.
[00:03:27]  And as we left the last episode off, he had just, you know, gotten Oprah, right?
[00:03:34]  Started his TV career.
[00:03:36]  Gotten Oprah hard.
[00:03:38]  So he started his TV career.
[00:03:39]  And he also starts right around the same time he gets on TV for the first time.
[00:03:43]  He starts a daily morning radio show on Oprah Winfrey's Sirius XM channel.
[00:03:48]  Never a good idea.
[00:03:49]  SiriusXM?
[00:03:50]  No, terrible idea.
[00:03:51]  What is it about giving people three hours of uninterrupted air time?
[00:03:57]  You know, there's just something about it.
[00:03:59]  I, you know, and this is an opinion that's pretty controversial within iHeartRadio.
[00:04:03]  I think radio should be illegal.
[00:04:05]  And I think it should be a felony punished by prison time for being on the radio or having a radio or thinking about the radio.
[00:04:14]  I think the only form of entertainment that should be legal is specifically my podcast.
[00:04:19]  Yeah.
[00:04:19]  Yeah.
[00:04:20]  One podcast.
[00:04:22]  Yes.
[00:04:22]  Yeah.
[00:04:22]  And there should legally only be one Sopranos podcast allowed, which, as it turns out, is the case.
[00:04:29]  So I think if we, if we could get Chuck Schumer's ear, we can make this happen.
[00:04:34]  We'll tack this onto the pot, Bill.
[00:04:36]  No one will notice.
[00:04:38]  So Dr. Oz has the Dr. Oz show.
[00:04:41]  He's got a radio show on Winfrey's XM channel where he covers very scientific topics like how God changes your brain and the happiest people in the world.
[00:04:52]  Now, I found a New York Times article that was written just a few months into his tenure with his TV show, kind of at the start of his burst into stardom.
[00:05:02]  And the interviewer who talked to Oz for this article seems as impressed as everyone always is by the manic, somewhat inhuman pace at which Mehmet Oz works.
[00:05:11]  By this point, he'd also written six books with titles like You, the Smart Patient, You on a Diet, and You Having a Baby.
[00:05:20]  It's like the series is the famous you series.
[00:05:23]  Colin, whatever.
[00:05:25]  And he co-writes these books with another doctor.
[00:05:27]  I can't tell you how much of the writing was.
[00:05:29]  A lot of times, I'm not saying this is the case with Dr. Oz because he's a wild workaholic, but a lot of times when you have a guy that's his kind of famous and they write a bunch of books, they write like 10% of the book and they have someone else, a co-author or a ghostwriter, do the rest.
[00:05:43]  I don't know if that's the case here.
[00:05:44]  There's always one Matt Damon who's writing most of Goodwill Hunting, and then there's a Ben Affleck who gets top booking.
[00:05:52]  And I do believe Matt Damon writes most of his books.
[00:05:55]  Oh, 100%.
[00:05:56]  Yeah.
[00:05:57]  So 9 million copies of his various titles are in print by this point, like the first year of his show.
[00:06:02]  So he is a very wealthy and successful man, pretty much out the gate.
[00:06:07]  Money machine.
[00:06:08]  Getting the start on Oprah kind of guarantees it.
[00:06:11]  Basically, if Oprah likes you enough to put you on her show more than once, you're going to get rich.
[00:06:17]  Damn.
[00:06:18]  Yeah.
[00:06:20]  I just should have spent my youth trying to get on Oprah.
[00:06:24]  We all should have.
[00:06:24]  We all should have.
[00:06:27]  So Dr. Oz gets a semi-regular column for Time magazine because, again, they see this guy get famous.
[00:06:34]  They're like, we got to get some of that Oprah money too.
[00:06:36]  We get this guy on time.
[00:06:37]  People start reading time again.
[00:06:40]  And yeah, it's interesting.
[00:06:41]  They give him a column.
[00:06:43]  And in 2008, they included him on their list of the world's most 100 most influential people.
[00:06:49]  So before they hire him to a call, they call him one of the world's most influential people.
[00:06:53]  And as soon as he gets listed as one of the hundred most influential people on the planet, Dr. Oz calls his dad, right?
[00:06:59]  Like, finding out.
[00:07:02]  Yeah, this has got to be the thing.
[00:07:03]  How can he not be impressed by this?
[00:07:06]  Am I enough for you, Papa?
[00:07:08]  So when he tells his dad, his dad's first question is, what number?
[00:07:14]  How high are you on the list?
[00:07:18]  And this is not a ranked thing.
[00:07:20]  Like it's not the top 100, like going to one.
[00:07:22]  It's just these hundred people are all very influential.
[00:07:25]  It's not a listical, bro.
[00:07:26]  Yeah, it's not a listical.
[00:07:28]  Oh, my God.
[00:07:31]  But Dr. Oz in this interview seemed to acknowledge that the fact that his dad reacted that way said a lot about both, you know, his dad and about their relationship.
[00:07:40]  He told an interviewer, quote, he wants to know what number.
[00:07:43]  Are you kidding me?
[00:07:44]  There are six billion people on the planet.
[00:07:46]  It's a rounding error.
[00:07:50]  God.
[00:07:51]  But like, but like what number, though?
[00:07:53]  Because you do wonder.
[00:07:55]  How high are you, motherfucker?
[00:07:56]  Yeah, come on.
[00:07:57]  How influential are you?
[00:07:58]  You're basically me.
[00:07:59]  Yeah.
[00:08:00]  So that interviewer, along with the New York Times, wrote, quote, it's also the kind of thing that goads the sun to climb mountain after mountain, seldom pausing to enjoy the view.
[00:08:10]  The good doctor did admit to engaging in a number of time-saving measures.
[00:08:14]  Over the years, he did numerous columns, which were often just recycled from other columns or chunks of his books.
[00:08:20]  He'd provide the same list of skin moisturizing or metabolism boosting tips in different magazines or online articles.
[00:08:26]  Even so, his workload was enormous.
[00:08:28]  The Dr. Oz show was instantly one of the most popular shows on the planet, and Mehmet was contracted to record 175 hour-long episodes per year, which is a fucking brutal work schedule on its own.
[00:08:41]  And the man continued to practice as a surgeon, albeit at a reduced rate.
[00:08:46]  The New York Times interviewer who visited him in 2010 seemed to find his behavior and kind of his compulsive workaholism somewhat unsettling.
[00:08:55]  I never saw him without a portable larder of baggies, plastic containers, and thermoses of food and drink.
[00:09:00]  And all of it, every crumb, every drop, was healthful.
[00:09:03]  Low-fat Greek yogurt mixed with brightly colored berries, spinach, slaw, raw almonds, raw walnuts soaked in water to amplify their nutritional benefit, a dark green concoction of juices from vegetables, including cucumber and parsley.
[00:09:17]  Roughly every 45 to 60 minutes, as if on cue, he would ingest something from his movable buffet, but only a little bit.
[00:09:23]  His portions assiduously regulated, like an intravenous intravenous drip of nutrition.
[00:09:29]  It was the most efficient, joyless eating I have ever seen.
[00:09:33]  That is so weird.
[00:09:34]  I'm sorry.
[00:09:34]  That's so weird.
[00:09:37]  That made me so uncomfortable to just.
[00:09:40]  No, he's cool, dude.
[00:09:41]  Like, that's, you know, he's living life in the most drab way possible.
[00:09:46]  Just trying to, just trying to make TV shows and do heart surgeries, you know?
[00:09:50]  Yeah.
[00:09:50]  Who has time to enjoy anything when you're daddy?
[00:09:53]  Joyless, efficient eating.
[00:09:56]  He's like, I don't eat or drink anything that I would enjoy.
[00:10:01]  Yeah.
[00:10:01]  You're welcome.
[00:10:02]  That's just so unsettling.
[00:10:04]  I mean, you know what?
[00:10:05]  I have known a couple of people in my life, all very skinny, who have told me like, I just don't really like eating.
[00:10:10]  Like, yeah, there's some foods that I prefer to others, but I just don't really enjoy it one way or the other.
[00:10:14]  Like, I've known, like, some of those people wound up on the soylent thing.
[00:10:17]  And I guess, like, I mean, yeah, fine.
[00:10:19]  It's like, it's whatever.
[00:10:20]  You know, it's your life.
[00:10:21]  If you want to hear monkey food, eat monkey food, but don't, you know, be surprised when I judge you.
[00:10:26]  You know?
[00:10:26]  Yeah.
[00:10:27]  Like, it's, that's weird.
[00:10:29]  At the start, the Dr. Oz show was broadly inoffensive from a medical perspective.
[00:10:34]  He gave a lot of fairly good common sense, health advice, and provided a lot of people with a friendly medical face willing to explain things their doctors might not have the time or the bedside manner to properly lay out.
[00:10:45]  But Oz's fascination with alternative medicine was present from the beginning.
[00:10:49]  And as time went on, he veered more and more in that direction, following both the topics that consistently drew the most viewers and the topics that were easiest to put together.
[00:10:58]  Because 175 hours of content a year is a lot.
[00:11:01]  I mean, really, though, like at some point, you run out of shit to talk about and you have to just be like, oh, pendulums over the heart.
[00:11:08]  Do they work?
[00:11:09]  You know?
[00:11:10]  Yeah.
[00:11:11]  Punching people in the dick.
[00:11:12]  Could it improve your bowels?
[00:11:14]  Try it.
[00:11:15]  Try it.
[00:11:16]  I mean, you know, we have to do, I don't know how much content we have to do per year.
[00:11:20]  52 weeks, two hours a week.
[00:11:23]  Yeah, we do like 110, maybe like with some of the episodes that go over 120 hours of content a year for this show.
[00:11:30]  And that's a lot.
[00:11:32]  175 hours of video content is huge.
[00:11:34]  Like you can't, there's not that much good and also entertaining medical advice that you could give in a year, let alone every single year.
[00:11:42]  I mean, just like, there's only so many organs to talk about, you know, after a while, you just got to invent shit.
[00:11:49]  Yeah.
[00:11:50]  And it's this thing.
[00:11:51]  It's this kind of this inevitable churn of capitalism leading us all into this specific kind of nonsense because you can't not have content.
[00:12:02]  Legally, you're contracted to, but also you have this whole team of people whose ability to pay their rent, whose ability to afford their homes, to keep their kids in school is dependent upon you doing this show outside of just the fact that he's rich.
[00:12:16]  Like he's fine, but it's this thing.
[00:12:18]  You have to keep putting out the thing and you will never have enough meaningful shit to put out to do it.
[00:12:24]  So you start, in his case, doing nonsense about mediums and shit.
[00:12:30]  And in our case, doing episodes about Dr. Oz.
[00:12:35]  When you run out of bastards, eventually you just got to find one on TV.
[00:12:39]  We're not out of bastards, but like last week, I spent 30 hours reading about the protocols of the elders of Zion.
[00:12:44]  I needed an off week, you know?
[00:12:46]  God, we all need off weeks.
[00:12:49]  That is one of my favorite, absolutely real documents to read.
[00:12:54]  Yeah.
[00:12:55]  That's why we brought you on, actually.
[00:12:57]  Yeah.
[00:12:58]  I'm actually one of the elders of Zion and I got some protocols for you.
[00:13:04]  Oh, good times.
[00:13:06]  So for an example of the kind of nonsense creep, I guess you'd call it that like advanced upon his show.
[00:13:13]  In March of 2012, Dr. Oz did a show titled Medium versus Medicine.
[00:13:19]  Oz's guest was a psychic who claimed she could communicate with the dead.
[00:13:23]  This was one of several, and by this point, probably dozens of episodes dedicated to people who claimed to talk to the dead.
[00:13:29]  Energy healing was, you know, on the fringe, certainly, but at least it was something that when he started doing it, there were scientific studies saying there might be something to it.
[00:13:40]  Those studies have since been to a large extent discredited.
[00:13:43]  But when he started doing that, there was some evidence.
[00:13:46]  It was a thing to try.
[00:13:47]  You know, he wasn't completely out of left field.
[00:13:48]  Yeah, people were at least testing it out.
[00:13:50]  Doing episodes on mediums talking to the dead is well outside of plausible deniability territory, right?
[00:13:56]  Like you're just doing nonsense at this point.
[00:14:00]  You know, it depends how they're talking.
[00:14:03]  If you go up to a dead body and start talking to it, you are technically talking to the dead.
[00:14:07]  Now, that would be a fun show.
[00:14:09]  Dr. Oz breaks into morgues and talks to corpses.
[00:14:12]  Yeah.
[00:14:13]  Hey, how'd you die?
[00:14:15]  Just just having his bodyguards, mace police officers rolling into a crime scene, be like, who did this?
[00:14:24]  Have this go down.
[00:14:27]  Are you okay?
[00:14:29]  I am a doctor.
[00:14:32]  Do you want some almonds?
[00:14:36]  They're soaked in water for more nutrition.
[00:14:40]  All right, someone get me a crystal.
[00:14:44]  So, yeah, he had, yeah, Dr. Oz had among his psychic guests, famous grifter king John Edwards on his show, not the politician.
[00:14:55]  No, no, no.
[00:14:56]  The talks to dead TV show guy.
[00:14:58]  Yeah.
[00:14:59]  Yeah.
[00:15:00]  And he praised the reading that he received from John Edwards, saying, quote, let me tell you, it changed my life.

=== Ancient Healing Techniques Explained (04:23) ===

[00:15:06]  I've learned in my career that there are times when science just hasn't caught up with things.
[00:15:10]  And I think this may be one of them, which is almost exactly what he said about John of God, the guy who raped hundreds of people.
[00:15:20]  That's how you know, like, to stay far away from anything when he's just like, man, this is, this is a brand new groundbreaking territory.
[00:15:28]  And you can go, all right, guys, it's a rapist.
[00:15:30]  Ron.
[00:15:31]  It's one of those things.
[00:15:32]  Part of how he's like the intelligent way to frame this is you start with the true thing, which is there are things science can't explain.
[00:15:37]  One of those things is the nature of consciousness and what happens to it after, you know, vital sciences.
[00:15:43]  We don't know.
[00:15:44]  There's not an objective answer to that.
[00:15:47]  But it going this way is kind of like being like, yeah, you know, we can't explain like the slit box experiment.
[00:15:53]  Like there's a bunch of shit in physics.
[00:15:55]  I don't know.
[00:15:55]  I'm not a science guy, but like, you know, particle and wave shit.
[00:15:58]  You can't explain that.
[00:16:00]  There's a bunch of shit you can't explain.
[00:16:01]  Magnets.
[00:16:02]  Yeah.
[00:16:02]  How do they work?
[00:16:03]  How do they work?
[00:16:04]  It's this, it's this jump from, yes, there are things we can't explain to, so let's listen to this man talk to the dead.
[00:16:13]  Millions of people gather around.
[00:16:15]  Gather around.
[00:16:16]  He's going to channel your dead aunt.
[00:16:18]  Yes.
[00:16:20]  Maybe not, not a reasonable way to take a reasonable starting point.
[00:16:25]  Yeah, especially when you're a doctor on TV.
[00:16:29]  Yeah.
[00:16:29]  And I want to quote from a write-up I found in the Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association.
[00:16:34]  Quote, during another show, Oz interviewed Dr. Mossara Fali, a miracle healer to Sylvester Stallone, Prince Charles of England and others regarding his use of iridology.
[00:16:45]  According to the widely debunked bizarre belief, each part of the iris corresponds to a specific area of the body and a person's state of health could be diagnosed by examining particular regions of the iris.
[00:16:56]  After expressing his amazement at Dr. Ali's diagnostic abilities, Oz stated, I want to applaud Dr. Mozara Fali because these are ancient traditions and they have been around for centuries.
[00:17:06]  So who am I to dismiss them?
[00:17:09]  Other than a very well-educated man.
[00:17:12]  A doctor.
[00:17:13]  You're a doctor, Mehmet.
[00:17:15]  You add me at Prince Charles.
[00:17:17]  Yeah.
[00:17:18]  It's like, you know, there's a lot of cultures who say that you should remove the clitoris surgically.
[00:17:25]  It's healthier and it stops dangerous masturbation.
[00:17:28]  It's ancient.
[00:17:29]  Who are we to say this is a bad idea?
[00:17:31]  Who are any of us to say anything is wrong?
[00:17:35]  Oh my God.
[00:17:36]  I love it too.
[00:17:37]  Just like, I was amazed by his ability to look into my eyes and diagnose that my dad will never love me.
[00:17:44]  How did he know?
[00:17:45]  How did he know?
[00:17:46]  It does bring me joy that Prince Charles got fucked with because fuck Prince.
[00:17:51]  I wonder what his eyes said.
[00:17:52]  It's funny.
[00:17:52]  He said the same thing.
[00:17:53]  It said, your dad will never love you.
[00:17:55]  That's all he does.
[00:17:55]  He goes to famous people and he goes, your dad will never love you.
[00:17:58]  Your dad will never love you.
[00:17:59]  Thank you so much.
[00:18:01]  There's this one of the big aspects of this guy's success and of the success of the things he pushes is Orientalism, right?
[00:18:11]  Like this idea of like the forbidden and strange and wondrous and magical East and all of the, we don't understand all of these like, oh, India is so mysterious.
[00:18:20]  Yada, yada, yada.
[00:18:22]  What if you were to say like, well, for centuries, tobacco companies have said that tobacco can cure like different lung ailments.
[00:18:31]  Who are we to dismiss these ancient traditions?
[00:18:33]  Yeah.
[00:18:34]  The Q-zone could be real.
[00:18:36]  Exactly.
[00:18:37]  Like it stops people from stuttering.
[00:18:39]  Do more cocaine.
[00:18:43]  I mean, yeah, just the idea.
[00:18:46]  And I've always found this in general to be the biggest load of horse shit is when people have said, you know, this is like an ancient healing technique.
[00:18:55]  And it's like, you mean like bleeding people with leeches?
[00:18:58]  You know, you mean like cutting off someone's leg because he got a fucking a small infection on his toe?
[00:19:05]  Ancient.
[00:19:05]  It's the fucking thing with Dr. Oz.
[00:19:08]  Like it's one thing if you're just like traveling to another part of the world, you see some sort of medical or treatment you've never seen before and you're like, well, who am I, who am I to say anything about right?
[00:19:19]  Like, I don't know.
[00:19:20]  Dr. Oz is a doctor on TV talking to millions.
[00:19:23]  You're literally the person who should be saying something about the legitimacy of this.
[00:19:28]  Right.
[00:19:28]  Yeah.
[00:19:28]  Yeah.

=== Responsibility of Famous Doctors (04:39) ===

[00:19:29]  You're the guy.
[00:19:30]  You're the person.
[00:19:31]  You are in fact the person who should say something about this.
[00:19:34]  Who am I?
[00:19:35]  You're you.
[00:19:36]  You're the most famous doctor in America.
[00:19:38]  Yeah.
[00:19:39]  And that's what that write-up in the Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association notes.
[00:19:43]  Quote, who?
[00:19:44]  Dr. Oz is a trained clinician and scientist, someone who can read a scientific article with a critical eye.
[00:19:50]  He is someone who can filter out the noise of the placebo effect or discern the simple carnival tricks of a charlatan.
[00:19:56]  The problem is that most people in his audience cannot.
[00:20:00]  Yeah.
[00:20:00]  Yeah.
[00:20:01]  I mean, he has a literal responsibility to tell people that these guys are full of shit.
[00:20:07]  But he also has a responsibility to his show sponsors and to the network for ratings, you know?
[00:20:14]  You know who else has a responsibility to the show's policies?
[00:20:18]  Wow.
[00:20:19]  I know.
[00:20:20]  I think that's got to be the first time.
[00:20:22]  That's got to be the first time it's ever actually been a relevant segue.
[00:20:26]  So fucking good.
[00:20:27]  So good.
[00:20:28]  Anyway, here's products.
[00:20:35]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:20:39]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:20:42]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:20:45]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:20:49]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:20:53]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:20:56]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:20:58]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:21:03]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:21:05]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:21:07]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:21:09]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:21:12]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:21:14]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:21:16]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:21:20]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:21:22]  Trust me, babe.
[00:21:23]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:21:33]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:21:38]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:21:43]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:21:49]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:21:58]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:22:03]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:22:07]  He related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:22:10]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:22:11]  That's so funny.
[00:22:13]  Sherry stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:22:21]  Say you love me.
[00:22:24]  You know I.
[00:22:26]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:22:33]  What's up, everyone?
[00:22:34]  I'm Ego Modern.
[00:22:35]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:22:43]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:22:46]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:22:49]  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.
[00:22:54]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:22:57]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come.
[00:22:59]  Look for up and coming talent.
[00:23:01]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:23:06]  Yeah.
[00:23:06]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:23:09]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:23:11]  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.
[00:23:19]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:23:22]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:23:29]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:23:31]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:23:32]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:23:33]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:23:42]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:23:48]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:23:54]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:23:57]  You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?
[00:24:00]  I doctored the test once.
[00:24:02]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:24:05]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.

=== Dangerous Relaxation Drinks (15:04) ===

[00:24:09]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:24:12]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:24:14]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:24:16]  Greg Oespi and Michael Marcini.
[00:24:18]  My mind was blown.
[00:24:20]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:24:22]  This is Love Trap.
[00:24:24]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:24:26]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:24:30]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:24:37]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:24:41]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:24:51]  Ah, we're back talking about Dr. Oz having just a great time.
[00:24:56]  So obviously, the fact that Dr. Oz, I mean, probably the fact that most of his audience couldn't discern whether or not any of these nonsense treatments were real is a big part of why the Dr. Oz show became an overnight success.
[00:25:10]  Before very long, it was being watched by 4 million viewers every single day.
[00:25:15]  Over the next half decade or so, he won two Emmys.
[00:25:18]  His guest list included First Lady Michelle Obama, who loved Dr. Oz for his focus on healthy diets for children and in general, his crusade to get Americans to lose weight.
[00:25:27]  Dr. Oz claimed through medicine that through math that I cannot verify that his show inspired Americans to lose 3 million cumulative pounds per year.
[00:25:38]  I don't know, maybe.
[00:25:39]  Yeah, they base that on what?
[00:25:41]  Like, did people call in to say how many pounds they've lost to the show?
[00:25:47]  I mean, I'm sure he found some way to like make the claim or whatever, but it's, it's very, it's, I don't know, maybe it is one of the things that he does that is, we'll talk about there's problems with some of the diet tips he gives people actually, significant ones.
[00:26:00]  Um, but telling like inspiring people to lose weight is not usually bad for their health, although it can be.
[00:26:08]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:09]  Sometimes people take it too far.
[00:26:10]  It depends on the fucking health problems, you know?
[00:26:13]  It's a mixed bag, I guess we'd say.
[00:26:16]  But the other stuff isn't a mixed bag.
[00:26:19]  So I guess we'll call that his great success.
[00:26:22]  So, yeah, it is good.
[00:26:25]  I will say it is unequivocally good that Dr. Oz continually pressed his audience of millions of people to eat more fruits and vegetable fruits and vegetables, to get better sleep, to exercise regularly, and to get their flu vaccinations.
[00:26:37]  That's all rat, right?
[00:26:38]  Yeah.
[00:26:39]  But shit, I could have told you that.
[00:26:40]  Give me a tip.
[00:26:41]  Yeah, you don't have to have, you don't have to be a doctor to say that, doctor.
[00:26:44]  No, that shit.
[00:26:45]  Yeah.
[00:26:45]  Eat better, piggies.
[00:26:46]  I mean, he's charismatic.
[00:26:48]  People like him.
[00:26:49]  It's good that he does that at least.
[00:26:51]  Yeah.
[00:26:51]  They don't trust me, so they won't give me the show, but they should.
[00:26:55]  Yeah.
[00:26:56]  The unfortunate part is that this guy gained, because he's handsome.
[00:27:00]  A lot of ladies out there think Dr. Oz is hot.
[00:27:05]  He's a doctor.
[00:27:06]  He's very charismatic.
[00:27:09]  He's very charming.
[00:27:10]  And he gains this enormous influence with Middle America.
[00:27:14]  And he uses that influence to do some really fucking questionable shit.
[00:27:18]  And I'm going to quote now from a write-up in the AMA's Journal of Ethics.
[00:27:22]  He has told mothers that there were dangerous levels of arsenic in their child's apple juice.
[00:27:27]  There weren't.
[00:27:28]  And suggested that green coffee is a miracle cure for obesity.
[00:27:31]  Federal regulators discovered altered data in hyped coffee bean evidence.
[00:27:35]  The Food and Drug Administration tested for arsenic and apple juice and found the vast majority of apple juice tested to contain low levels of arsenic.
[00:27:43]  And given these levels, was confident in the overall safety of apple juice consumed in this country.
[00:27:48]  Dr. Oz also featured two guests on his show who claimed that genetically modified foods were cancer causing, despite repeated safety reports that found no adverse effects.
[00:27:58]  Man.
[00:27:59]  I mean, he's like, he's very, he's getting there.
[00:28:02]  Like, I'm watching him slowly go from Mehmet to Mangala.
[00:28:09]  You know, like he's.
[00:28:12]  Come on, let him be Mangala.
[00:28:15]  It is too good a pun to be fair, Robert, but let's go for it.
[00:28:20]  All right.
[00:28:21]  We're doing it.
[00:28:21]  But no, we're watching him turn into a snake oil salesman, and it's very exciting.
[00:28:27]  Yeah.
[00:28:28]  So Dr. Oz's enthusiasm for alternative medicine has had the effect of creating instant fads over any health product he even vaguely suggests on his show.
[00:28:38]  When he mentions the purported health benefits of white mulberry, red palm oil, or brown seaweed, all of which he's claimed can do things like cut weight, reduce aging, or beat the flu, those products fly off the shelf.
[00:28:49]  Oz often doesn't endorse specific brands, but he doesn't need to.
[00:28:53]  Online retailers watch closely and immediately slap as seen on Dr. Oz on their pseudoscientific products.
[00:29:00]  Yes, I've seen this.
[00:29:01]  Yeah.
[00:29:01]  I've seen this.
[00:29:02]  This is where we get to the big harm.
[00:29:04]  He did one episode that focused on so-called relaxation drinks and included a close-up shot of five cans of beverages he said might help calm you down.
[00:29:13]  Just a Miller high life.
[00:29:15]  Yeah.
[00:29:18]  He just puts a can of Colt 45 on the table.
[00:29:21]  Billy D. Williams walks out.
[00:29:25]  It's a steel reserve.
[00:29:27]  Trust me.
[00:29:28]  You'll be relaxed.
[00:29:29]  You'll be calm as shit.
[00:29:32]  You might yell at your mom, but it'll be fun afterwards.
[00:29:36]  Yeah.
[00:29:37]  You will very calmly put your hand through a taxi cab window.
[00:29:44]  As soon as the episode aired, a quote liquid sleep aid called iChill bragged on their website.
[00:29:51]  Dr. Oz is talking about a new way to wind down with relaxation drinks.
[00:29:55]  They are the newest trend in helping you relax and calm down.
[00:29:58]  And the best news is they contain natural ingredients already known to promote relaxation.
[00:30:04]  Mulberry, Laudenum.
[00:30:08]  I remember the eye chill.
[00:30:09]  That turned into like an entire thing.
[00:30:11]  There's so many.
[00:30:12]  Yeah, we're about to talk about it.
[00:30:14]  Yeah.
[00:30:16]  And also, if there was a Laudanum drink, I would be buying it.
[00:30:20]  So the problem with all with this is that all of these different relaxation drinks are filled with a variety of chemicals like melatonin and theanine and taurine.
[00:30:29]  These drinks are unregulated as they are not medicines or dietary supplements, but the chemicals they include all have actual impacts on the central nervous system.
[00:30:39]  Pregnant women and children are often advised to avoid products with some of these chemicals, but the beverages in question rarely note this.
[00:30:47]  No data exists on how these chemicals might impact people and the quantities they are added to in these beverages, or when combined with other chemicals, or when combined with medications people drinking them might be taking.
[00:30:59]  Responsible doctors, writing for the journal Nature Neuroscience, wrote a warning about these beverages that specifically called out iChill by name.
[00:31:07]  Quote, Existing research on the potential benefits and harms of some components of relaxation drinks suggests that they may not always be safe.
[00:31:15]  Indeed, the FDA issued a warning last year to the manufacturers of melatonin-laced brownies, citing safety concerns from the literature, including effects on the autonomic nervous system and visual system and increased expression of symptoms in a sleep disorder.
[00:31:28]  Other components of relaxation drinks, such as L-theanine or amino acids, such as taurine, may be considered safe for consumption only at some doses by the FDA.
[00:31:37]  But relaxation drinks are not subject to such regulations, nor are they required to disclose the amounts of their ingredients.
[00:31:44]  Oh my God.
[00:31:45]  I mean, first of all, did you say melatonin brownies?
[00:31:50]  Yeah, buddy.
[00:31:52]  What the fuck?
[00:31:52]  Like, I want to eat and just get tired immediately.
[00:31:56]  Like, that is very strange.
[00:31:58]  Like, here's the thing about brownies.
[00:32:00]  I've never eaten one and been like, I just want to relax.
[00:32:03]  Like, no, I'm trying to get a little sugar rush.
[00:32:05]  To be honest, to be honest, a sleepy time brownie, delightful.
[00:32:09]  I would be very down.
[00:32:11]  Listen, pod brownies are very different.
[00:32:13]  It's not, it's not the same as relaxation.
[00:32:16]  Like, one is like an ambient brownie and the other one is like a brownie that makes you hungry for more brownies.
[00:32:22]  Pod brownies make sense.
[00:32:24]  Ambient brownies exist.
[00:32:26]  I would love one.
[00:32:27]  Thank you, buddy.
[00:32:27]  I mean, I guess I'd rather do that than just swallow an ambient, but man, that is.
[00:32:32]  I'm like, I'm like, gets to sleep and also got a brownie.
[00:32:35]  Sounds awesome.
[00:32:37]  It's bad for your health.
[00:32:38]  I'll tell you that much.
[00:32:39]  Apparently, am I remembering this correctly, Robert?
[00:32:42]  But wasn't the eye chill like the bottle and the marketing like similar style to like an energy drink similar to like a five-hour energy?
[00:32:50]  That was like the aesthetic.
[00:32:52]  No, no, no.
[00:32:52]  I think those were those were, they had like a weird different shaped plastic bottle.
[00:32:56]  But like the problem is that, again, number one, you've got a lot of people with like, who are on medications that this shit interacts with.
[00:33:03]  Which is crazy that like literally a relaxation drink could be contraindicated for your prescription medication.
[00:33:12]  Okay.
[00:33:12]  So everything Dr. Oz recommends, I guess outside of like death psychics, comes with this caveat.
[00:33:20]  Some of the herbs and natural medicines that he recommends do have health impacts, but they also have consequences, medications they might not interact well with.
[00:33:28]  Dr. Oz does not bring this up when he shotguns half-assed advice out to an audience of millions.
[00:33:34]  That article in Nature Neuroscience that I referenced, warning about the relaxation drinks Oz recommended, it's been read 10,000 times.
[00:33:41]  So the article warning people that these things can be contraindicated and might have impacts on your health and your central nervous system, read 10,000 times.
[00:33:51]  Dr. Oz's episode suggesting these drinks, watched 4 million times.
[00:33:55]  God damn.
[00:33:57]  Yeah.
[00:33:58]  People started to notice that this was a problem by the mid-aughts.
[00:34:01]  Doctors had been complaining for a while, but in 2013, Forbes wrote a listicle laying out the silliest things Dr. Oz has suggested on his show, including the fact that having 200 orgasms a year would extend your life by six years.
[00:34:15]  Here's how he explained that bit of math on his website.
[00:34:18]  Dude, I'm about to live to 200 years old.
[00:34:21]  I ain't never dying, motherfucker.
[00:34:23]  I ain't never died.
[00:34:24]  I get one out at least once a day.
[00:34:28]  365.
[00:34:30]  Here's his website.
[00:34:31]  If you have more than 200 orgasms a year, you can reduce your physiologic age by six years, Dr. Oz says.
[00:34:37]  He bases the number on a study done at Duke University that surveyed people on the amount and quality of sex they had.
[00:34:44]  They looked at what happened to folks that are receiving a lot of intercourse over time.
[00:34:47]  And the fact is, it correlated.
[00:34:49]  Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait.
[00:34:51]  Is it sex?
[00:34:52]  Because he didn't say nothing about sex.
[00:34:54]  He said orgasms.
[00:34:55]  And I do that on my own.
[00:34:58]  No, he talked to them about the amount and quality of sex they had, but like it's correlated.
[00:35:05]  So again, he's basically lying here.
[00:35:07]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:08]  You number one, what is the possibility that people who are having a lot of good sex are in better health?
[00:35:15]  And that's why they're able to have a lot more good sex because they're like, they're physically healthy.
[00:35:19]  And so it's easier for them to like.
[00:35:23]  What are the odds that like, if you're having more sex, you're more social, you're more likely to have a long-term romantic partner, that increases your lifespan.
[00:35:31]  Yeah.
[00:35:31]  Again, I'm of all people never going to be the guy to say there's not health benefits to sex.
[00:35:36]  There sure is.
[00:35:37]  Oh, yeah.
[00:35:38]  Dr. Oz is exaggerating this.
[00:35:42]  He's taking an actual study that showed some interesting stuff and he's turning it into a lie.
[00:35:47]  Yeah, he's turning it into like pretending he has quantifiable data and that like correlation and correlation is causation.
[00:35:55]  Like that, that's that's what he's trying to do.
[00:35:58]  Yeah, there is data that suggests that regular intercourse reduces men's mortality risks by 50%, which doesn't mean that fucking stops men from dying, particularly because it's men who benefit in this way.
[00:36:09]  It means that men are less healthy than women, tend to die faster.
[00:36:13]  And when men have partners that they live with, they are more likely to have a medical problem noticed.
[00:36:18]  If they have a heart attack, someone's going to be there to call them.
[00:36:20]  Like there's a lot of reasons why this is the case.
[00:36:23]  Yeah, they're not dying alone.
[00:36:26]  Yeah.
[00:36:26]  It's not the fact that just fucking magically adds, like reduces your age by six years if you do it enough.
[00:36:32]  Like that's nonsense.
[00:36:34]  It's nice to think it though.
[00:36:36]  It makes it nice to think it.
[00:36:38]  I'm going to print out that article, show it to my girlfriend and say, hey, you got to help me live longer.
[00:36:44]  You know?
[00:36:45]  Not coming enough.
[00:36:46]  I'm going to die.
[00:36:47]  We got to do this more.
[00:36:49]  Yeah.
[00:36:49]  Just start fucking in public.
[00:36:51]  And when the cops come be like, this is medicine.
[00:36:53]  Yeah.
[00:36:54]  Do you want me to die six years earlier than I should?
[00:36:57]  I have a right to this.
[00:36:59]  Dr. Oz said I should fuck more.
[00:37:02]  Now, on its own, recommending that people get more sexes is, you know, fine.
[00:37:07]  I'm very pro-sex, but I am anti-encouraging people to misunderstand health science.
[00:37:12]  The nature of Dr. Oz's audience and the sheer breadth of things he suggests makes it difficult to analyze the total health impact of his show.
[00:37:19]  But there are some dire case studies, as Vox notes in their write-up.
[00:37:23]  Quote, there's the case of a man who followed Oz's suggestion of curing insomnia by pouring uncooked rice into socks, heating them in a microwave and wearing them to bed.
[00:37:32]  The man got second and third degree burns on his feet.
[00:37:36]  And the reason he got burned is because he was diabetic.
[00:37:39]  He didn't have the same level of feeling in his feet.
[00:37:42]  Oh my God.
[00:37:42]  If he had gone to a doctor and said, hey, I heard about this thing that might help with insomnia, the doctor would say, well, you're diabetic.
[00:37:49]  You don't have as much feeling in your feet.
[00:37:51]  I'm worried you might burn yourself.
[00:37:54]  Dr. Oz is just saying, hey, this will help you sleep.
[00:37:56]  Do it, whoever you are.
[00:37:57]  Again, it's just idiots.
[00:37:59]  You're talking to 4 million people.
[00:38:01]  It would be bad advice for some of them.
[00:38:03]  I mean, it's like, this all feels very much like when Trump was telling everyone about the wonders of hydroxyl.
[00:38:15]  We're going to talk about that later.
[00:38:16]  And then people are eating fucking fish food or like fish tank cleaner and dying.
[00:38:20]  And people are like, how could people be so stupid?
[00:38:24]  And it's like, people are stupid.
[00:38:26]  You can't tell them to eat the fucking fishbowl cleaner.
[00:38:30]  Yeah.
[00:38:30]  They'll do it.
[00:38:31]  They'll fucking do it.
[00:38:34]  So this guy sued, but the case was thrown out because the judge determined that Oz cannot establish a physician-patient relationship through TV.
[00:38:41]  I agree with the judge.
[00:38:43]  That's my problem with his show is that he is a physician purporting to be giving medical advice, but is also not taking anyone's individual circumstances into account.
[00:38:55]  And more to the fucking point, not liable if he does any of the irresponsible things that would lend a physician doing their job traditionally in trouble.
[00:39:05]  I mean, it is medical malpractice, whether or not he's legally liable for it or not.
[00:39:12]  I would agree.

=== TV Doctor Medical Advice Issues (07:06) ===

[00:39:13]  And I'm going to continue that quote from Vox.
[00:39:15]  Not everyone agrees with the judge's reasoning.
[00:39:18]  Rochester, New York medical student and blogger Benjamin Mazer has been publishing anonymous stories sent to him from health professionals about the impact Oz has had on patient care.
[00:39:26]  One reported that her dad had a heart attack and five stints placed in his heart, which required him to take aspirin and Plavix to prevent blood clots.
[00:39:34]  He was watching Dr. Oz, who said Plavix was not necessary.
[00:39:37]  So he stopped taking it.
[00:39:39]  About a month later, he had another massive heart attack and coded and had to be shocked back to life.
[00:39:44]  She continued, my dad admitted to following Dr. Oz's advice and not asking his own cardiologist.
[00:39:50]  Man, that's really bad.
[00:39:54]  Did he have like an alternative or was he just like decided one day that Plavix is going to be?
[00:40:00]  If I know my Dr. Oz, I'm sure it was, you don't need to take Plavix.
[00:40:03]  Eat these different heart-healthy foods and avoid these foods and that'll do all that Plavix will do.
[00:40:08]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:09]  Eat some beans and put your face in some boiled water and you should be fine.
[00:40:14]  I suspect it was dietary advice that if you're someone who doesn't really need Plavix is fine or might even help you to not need it later in life if you adopt healthier habits.
[00:40:23]  But the problem is, again, the way he's framing it, there's going to be a lot of people who are like, just had stints placed in their heart.
[00:40:28]  I don't need Plavix.
[00:40:29]  Fuck it.
[00:40:30]  You know?
[00:40:30]  Yeah.
[00:40:30]  Dr. Oz, the TV doctor said, I don't need this medicine.
[00:40:35]  I just need more acai in my belly.
[00:40:37]  The TV doctor also said he can talk to ghosts.
[00:40:40]  So I'm going to go talk to, I mean, you will be talking to ghosts faster if you follow all of Dr. Oz.
[00:40:46]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:47]  I want to talk to ghosts.
[00:40:48]  I'm going to stop taking my Plavix and die of a stroke.
[00:40:52]  Now, on his show, Dr. Oz claims that the trust of his audience is the entire reason for his relevance.
[00:40:57]  Quote, the currency that I deal in is trust, and it is trust that has been given to me by an audience that has watched over 600 shows.
[00:41:05]  He repeatedly references the fact that he is responding to the very real and very understandable unfilled needs of Americans who feel alienated from modern healthcare, which is an expensive and often inhumane labyrinthine bureaucracy.
[00:41:18]  True.
[00:41:19]  This is true.
[00:41:20]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:41:21]  100% true.
[00:41:23]  Yeah.
[00:41:23]  How you exploit it is a very different thing.
[00:41:27]  But the thing he is replacing it with is by and large nonsense.
[00:41:32]  And I'm going to quote from that right up in the Journal of Ethics again.
[00:41:35]  When it comes to epistemic boundaries, Dr. Oz admits he applies different standards of evidence compared to those accepted in the medical establishment.
[00:41:43]  When challenged by a reporter for the New Yorker about his questionable evidentiary standards, he replied that all data could be differentially interpreted.
[00:41:50]  You find the arguments that support your data, he said, and it's my fact versus your fact.
[00:41:55]  It's not that he doesn't offer data.
[00:41:56]  It's common for Dr. Oz to offer some plausible mechanism from test tube experiments conducted by manufacturers, combined with personal anecdotes from his own or consumers' experience to support the products he's promoting.
[00:42:08]  A study of 80 recommendations made on the Dr. Oz show in early 2013 found that published evidence supported 46% of recommendations, contradicted 15%, and did not support 39%.
[00:42:20]  Gotta love a good like coin flip on whether or not he's fucking lying to you and having an adverse effect on your health.
[00:42:28]  If your doctor said, hey, you know, 46% of the time, I give pretty good advice.
[00:42:34]  You would be like, I think I'm going to get another doctor.
[00:42:36]  But he would reframe it.
[00:42:37]  He'd be like, I'm back in 500 here.
[00:42:39]  And you'd be like, ooh, 500.
[00:42:41]  That's a good betting.
[00:42:42]  If you assume medicine is like baseball, I'm a great doctor.
[00:42:46]  No, he's crushing it.
[00:42:47]  Yeah.
[00:42:48]  Doing a great job.
[00:42:50]  Now, to his credit, the journal does note that a decent chunk of the blame for Dr. Oz's success lies in the very, very flawed state of mainstream medical science.
[00:42:58]  Quote, we settle for incomplete, selectively published data in journals heavily subsidized by pharmaceutical companies and for outcomes that don't give firm answers.
[00:43:08]  While not on par with offering anecdotes as evidence, the fact that debates persist about what constitutes sufficiently high, unbiased quality evidence to support decisions in the profession as a whole creates a wedge that Dr. Oz seems to exploit.
[00:43:23]  So again, this is the Journal of Ethics being like the fact that you can pay to get a study done.
[00:43:28]  The fact that we pharmaceutical companies lobby to allow them to market things in dishonest ways.
[00:43:34]  The fact that doctors are bribed by companies like Purdue Pharmaceutical with vacations to recommend people take medication that is not in their best interest to take.
[00:43:43]  That's why this motherfucker has a job.
[00:43:46]  And the fact that healthcare is expensive, right?
[00:43:48]  The fact that we don't have single-payer healthcare.
[00:43:50]  It all combines to the fact that a lot of people who are not idiots, I'm not saying you can be, I'm sure there's people who are brilliant electricians who fucking are brilliant at whatever, who are great at whatever it is they do, but they're not fucking doctors because most of us aren't.
[00:44:05]  And it's hard to get.
[00:44:07]  I am very fortunate in that I have a couple of good friends who are doctors and I am luckier than I can.
[00:44:13]  One of them is a guy who was on the show recently, Cavajoda.
[00:44:17]  I'm luckier than I can, that I can say to be able to like every now and then send them a message being like, hey, what should I do here?
[00:44:24]  Even if it's a question of like, I'm having this problem, I don't know what kind of doctor to see to like get this dealt with.
[00:44:30]  I don't know whose job this is.
[00:44:32]  And I don't want to like my ex a while ago had a non-cancerous brain tumor and it was a fucking nightmare figuring out.
[00:44:41]  It took a series of different doctors and tests to figure out what kind of doctor she needed to go to to get the medication that would help.
[00:44:47]  And it's, of course, people are like, well, this guy is explaining things and he's nice and he's saying that I have the power to deal with this.
[00:44:54]  If I change my diet, if I do this, if I do that.
[00:44:57]  He's giving us alternatives to dealing with the bureaucracy of medical institutions in this country.
[00:45:03]  I have a Kaiser and I had to go to a rheumatologist and I tried to get a hold of him on the phone and they sent me through six different call centers to finally get to his specific office.
[00:45:17]  And then I asked the lady, oh, can I get the extension so that I don't have to deal with that?
[00:45:21]  And she's like, oh, sorry, we're not allowed to do that.
[00:45:24]  And so now I'm just recording every phone call and just freestyling to the hold music because it's the only thing I can do.
[00:45:33]  I'm like, you know what?
[00:45:34]  I might as well turn this into content because this is fucking ridiculous.
[00:45:38]  You know, there's like the amount of bullshit you have to go through makes people like Dr. Oz feel like a good alternative, you know?
[00:45:47]  Yeah.
[00:45:47]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:45:49]  And it's, it fucking sucks.
[00:45:52]  It does.
[00:45:52]  It just really fucking sucks.
[00:45:56]  And it fucking sucks because there's a lot of wonderful people who are part of the medical system, like the fucking doctors in the in the ER who were with my mom in her last days, like incredibly competent and compassionate and like amazing people who in their entire careers will never be able to do as much good as Dr. Oz does harm because he has 4 million people watching him every day.

=== Turning Hold Music Into Content (03:51) ===

[00:46:20]  It's a bummer.
[00:46:21]  Yeah.
[00:46:22]  It's you know, it's not a bummer.
[00:46:24]  Oh.
[00:46:24]  Wow.
[00:46:25]  Capitalism is actually a bummer, but it's the water we swim in.
[00:46:30]  So here's some fucking ads.
[00:46:37]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:46:41]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:46:44]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:46:47]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:46:50]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:46:54]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:46:56]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:46:58]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:47:00]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:47:05]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:47:07]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:47:08]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:47:11]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:47:14]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:47:15]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:47:18]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:47:22]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:47:24]  Trust me, babe.
[00:47:25]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:47:34]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:47:40]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:47:45]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:47:50]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:48:00]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:48:05]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:48:08]  He related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:48:11]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:48:13]  That's so funny.
[00:48:14]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:48:23]  Say you love me.
[00:48:26]  You know I.
[00:48:27]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:48:35]  What's up, everyone?
[00:48:36]  I'm Ago Modem.
[00:48:37]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
[00:48:48]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:48:51]  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.
[00:48:56]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:48:59]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
[00:49:03]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:49:08]  Yeah.
[00:49:08]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:49:11]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:49:12]  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.
[00:49:21]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:49:23]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:49:30]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:49:32]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:49:33]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:49:35]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:49:43]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:49:50]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:49:55]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:49:58]  You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?
[00:50:02]  I doctored the test once.
[00:50:04]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:50:07]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.

=== Bone Density Loss Risks (15:20) ===

[00:50:11]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:50:13]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:50:16]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:50:18]  Greg Oespi and Michael Marcini.
[00:50:20]  My mind was blown.
[00:50:22]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:50:23]  This is Love Trap.
[00:50:25]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:50:27]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:50:32]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:50:38]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:50:43]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:50:52]  We're back.
[00:50:54]  So, in 2014, Mehmet Oz was called before a Senate subcommittee to answer questions about his unfounded claims about dietary supplements.
[00:51:03]  Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill went off on him saying, I don't know why you need to say this stuff because you know it's not true.
[00:51:10]  Why, when you have this amazing megaphone and this amazing ability to communicate, would you cheapen your show by saying things like this?
[00:51:18]  And he just pulled out a lot of money and he just started making it rain all over Congress.
[00:51:22]  Do you know how many houses I have?
[00:51:25]  She pointed out several examples of the things he cheapens his show by saying.
[00:51:29]  He had called green coffee extract a, quote, magical weight loss cure.
[00:51:35]  Recent research has suggested that long-term use of green coffee extract causes bone density loss in animals.
[00:51:44]  But you are, in fairness, you're losing weight.
[00:51:47]  Your bones are lighter.
[00:51:49]  That's weight.
[00:51:50]  Bones are heavy as hell.
[00:51:52]  It was everywhere when that came out.
[00:51:54]  It was at literally not just like, it's not like bed bath and be everywhere.
[00:51:59]  Get light bones.
[00:52:00]  You can fly like a bird.
[00:52:04]  And again, those are studies in animals, but it's the kind of thing where a responsible doctor would say, well, some studies in animals have shown that this might cause bone density loss.
[00:52:14]  So unless, you know, your weight is a really disastrous health situation and your bone density is fine, I wouldn't recommend this.
[00:52:21]  Dr. Oz is just saying it's a magical weight loss cure.
[00:52:23]  I mean, he's not wrong.
[00:52:25]  He's not wrong.
[00:52:26]  Yeah.
[00:52:27]  Oz called raspberry ketone, quote, the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat.
[00:52:33]  This is a fun one.
[00:52:34]  First of all, it's all gasoline.
[00:52:36]  Part of why people, well, actually, part of why people are attracted to stuff like this is that like raspberry ketone, that's natural.
[00:52:44]  It sounds like, oh, if I just like getting raspberries, that's going to help me lose weight.
[00:52:47]  This chemical in a natural, healthy fruit.
[00:52:50]  Of course, it makes sense that like some wonderful plant-based medicine would be able to help me lose weight.
[00:52:55]  Yeah.
[00:52:56]  Raspberry ketones don't come from raspberries.
[00:52:58]  They can, but it takes 90 pounds of fresh raspberries to produce a single dose.
[00:53:03]  As a result, they are manufactured synthetically.
[00:53:06]  A fact Dr. Oz did not feel the need to explain because, again, he's really critical of GMOs.
[00:53:12]  And it might seem hypocritical to note that raspberry ketones are actually synthetic lab nonsense.
[00:53:18]  I love when people say things like, it's natural.
[00:53:21]  It's like, I think cyanide is natural.
[00:53:25]  There's a lot of like natural poisons out there.
[00:53:28]  Fucking snake venom is natural.
[00:53:30]  The fucking arsenic and the apple juice that he's worried about is natural.
[00:53:35]  It is possible based on animal studies that these ketones may have some ability to reduce or slow weight gain, but no studies have ever been conducted on how raspberry ketones impact human beings.
[00:53:48]  There have been reports that they increase blood pressure and heart rate in humans.
[00:53:53]  Dr. Oz does not warn about this.
[00:53:55]  Likewise, when Dr. Oz told his viewers that Garcina Cambogia may be the simple solution you've been looking for to bust your body fat for good, he did not also warn them that it can interact negatively with diabetes medications, painkillers, and psychiatric medications.
[00:54:11]  Oh my God.
[00:54:12]  Why would you need to warn people that?
[00:54:15]  Look, what are the odds someone looking to lose weight has diabetes medications?
[00:54:19]  Zero.
[00:54:20]  What are the odds that someone who has diabetes is sitting around watching Dr. Oz's show?
[00:54:26]  Zero.
[00:54:27]  What are the odds that a middle-class American is addicted to painkillers?
[00:54:32]  Zero.
[00:54:33]  Zero.
[00:54:35]  During the Senate inquiry, Senator McCaskill pointed some of this out and she told Dr. Oz, quote, when you feature a product on your show, it creates what has become known as the Dr. Oz effect, dramatically boosting sales and driving scam artists to pop up overnight using false and deceptive ads to sell questionable products.
[00:54:54]  In the wake of this, which was a fairly bad day on Capitol Hill for him, Dr. Oz released a somewhat contrite statement where he noted, I took part in today's hearing because I am accountable for my role in the proliferation of these scams.
[00:55:07]  and I recognize that my enthusiastic language has made the problem worse at times.
[00:55:11]  We're good so far?
[00:55:12]  Yeah, no, not bad.
[00:55:14]  Pretty good so far.
[00:55:15]  Oz added in his statement, to not have the conversation about supplements at all, however, would be a disservice to the viewer.
[00:55:21]  In addition to exercising an abundance of caution in discussing promising research and products in the future, I look forward to working with all those present today and finding a way to deal with the problems of weight loss scams.
[00:55:32]  God, I think it's amazing.
[00:55:35]  I'm just talking about, I'm just asking the question.
[00:55:38]  We have to have conversations about this.
[00:55:40]  You know, a conversation would be noting, for example, green coffee extract causes bone density loss in Adams and perhaps be worse.
[00:55:48]  That's a conversation.
[00:55:50]  Well, you and I have had about these things is a conversation.
[00:55:54]  I love people who are like, I'm just asking the question.
[00:55:57]  I mean, I'm not a doctor.
[00:55:58]  I'm a guy who's addicted to an unregulated plant.
[00:56:04]  Oh my God.
[00:56:06]  Which I just took more of while standing next to my unregulated gun.
[00:56:10]  Yeah, dude, you're living the unregulated.
[00:56:12]  Not a drum right now.
[00:56:15]  So Dr. Oz, also making this statement, pointed out that he believed the greatest disservice he'd done to his audience was to not recommend specific products, which had provided room for a wide industry of shysters to stick his name on their website.
[00:56:30]  So like, oh, I was just saying green coffee extract and a bunch of companies I couldn't verify started selling it with my name on it.
[00:56:37]  I should have recommended a specific brand.
[00:56:39]  Yeah.
[00:56:40]  What I need to do is cut deals with specific companies so that you can only be taking their bone density loss drugs.
[00:56:49]  Yeah.
[00:56:50]  I mean, exactly.
[00:56:51]  Good call.
[00:56:52]  Fucking amazing.
[00:56:54]  Yeah.
[00:56:55]  So in the wake of this day on Capitol Hill and this amazing response, physicians across the country asked Columbia University in a letter, basically, what the fuck?
[00:57:04]  Why is this guy still on your faculty?
[00:57:06]  Columbia claimed it was because of their commitment to, quote, the principle of academic freedom and to upholding faculty members' freedom of expression for statements they make in public discussion.
[00:57:17]  Hell yeah, dude.
[00:57:18]  That's like fucking rad.
[00:57:20]  Yeah.
[00:57:21]  They're like anti-cancel culture letter.
[00:57:23]  You know, they're just like, stop trying to cancel Dr. Oz's freedom of speech.
[00:57:27]  Yeah, freedom of speech.
[00:57:30]  I mean, doctors also are held to different standards than the rest of us.
[00:57:33]  They take an oath.
[00:57:35]  Come on.
[00:57:36]  If like your uncle Jimbo says, hey, you know, take some green coffee extract.
[00:57:40]  It'll help you lose weight.
[00:57:41]  Yeah.
[00:57:42]  Nothing wrong with that.
[00:57:43]  It might not be good advice, but that's just a guy saying a thing.
[00:57:47]  Doctors are held to a different standard.
[00:57:50]  Yeah.
[00:57:50]  It's on you if you listen to your crazy Uncle Jimbo.
[00:57:54]  It is definitely on the doctor if he recommends you lose some bone density so that you look better in that dress.
[00:58:02]  It's, it's, it's awesome.
[00:58:04]  It's dumb.
[00:58:07]  So on April 15th, 2015, 10 prominent physicians sent a letter to Columbia University calling Oz's faculty position there unacceptable and citing his, quote, egregious lack of integrity.
[00:58:18]  The only change wrought by the congressional inquiry and the flood of condemnation from the medical community seems to be that Dr. Oz started endorsing specific supplements and pseudomedicines.
[00:58:28]  God, he's Alex Jonesing it.
[00:58:31]  He's jonesing it hard.
[00:58:32]  He's so much smarter than Alex, though.
[00:58:35]  You focus it just on the health.
[00:58:37]  None of this nonsense, like political shit.
[00:58:40]  Everybody is going to love you and you'll make way more money.
[00:58:44]  Yeah.
[00:58:44]  A 2018 analysis of his show by the Health News Review found, quote, in the Dr. Roz show, 13 out of 19, 68.4% shows had ads relating to general show content.
[00:58:57]  57.9% had specific products mentioned by the host using their commercial name.
[00:59:03]  And 36.3% of shows mentioning products by name named more than one product.
[00:59:09]  And also found that 78% of the medical statements made on the Dr. Oz show did not align with, quote, evidence-based medical guidelines.
[00:59:18]  So if those guidelines mattered, they'd make more money, dog.
[00:59:22]  Half a decade earlier, 46% of his statements are more or less fine.
[00:59:29]  Now it's down to what, Jesus, 22%.
[00:59:33]  Wow.
[00:59:34]  So we're seeing, again, the quality of the, because again, you're running out of good content.
[00:59:39]  You only have so much good medical advice you can give when you're doing an hour a day, 175 times a year for fucking 15, 16 years.
[00:59:48]  Eat fruit.
[00:59:49]  Exactly.
[00:59:51]  The actual amount of things that an average person can reasonably do to improve their own physical health doesn't really take that long to explain to you.
[00:59:58]  You know, it's pretty simple stuff.
[01:00:00]  And most of us know a lot of it already.
[01:00:02]  We know when we're, I know that pounding Kratom and Coke Zero isn't a wise healthcare decision.
[01:00:09]  No, no, but you know it.
[01:00:11]  And you can, you know, fucking, you don't need a Dr. Oz to tell you that.
[01:00:15]  You know, you just know, you know, just the fact that I bought the $100 entire smoked leg of pig from Costco, the giant prosciutto leg that you can cut.
[01:00:27]  I know buying that and not also purchasing, I don't know, salad in order to have sufficient virality.
[01:00:35]  I recognize that was a poor health decision.
[01:00:38]  Yeah.
[01:00:39]  No one tricked me about this.
[01:00:41]  And at no point did I think this $100 worth of smoked ham is a solid healthcare move.
[01:00:47]  It's smoked.
[01:00:48]  What could be so bad with smoked?
[01:00:50]  It's smoked.
[01:00:51]  It's good for my Q zone.
[01:00:53]  Traditional medicine.
[01:00:54]  Yeah, this is really good for all of my kidney meridians.
[01:00:58]  I need all the smoked hams I can.
[01:01:00]  Oh, my meridians are fucking rocking right now.
[01:01:03]  I am peaking in meridians, bro.
[01:01:05]  Let me fucking tell you, my meridians are as hard as a goddamn rock.
[01:01:10]  Feel my kidneys.
[01:01:11]  Feel my kidneys.
[01:01:12]  It's just like, why is your kidney swollen?
[01:01:16]  The Dr. Oz show is still on the air.
[01:01:18]  In 2018, President Trump appointed Dr. Oz to a council on sports, fitness, and nutrition as part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
[01:01:26]  He is still on that council under Joe Biden.
[01:01:29]  Bipartisan, baby.
[01:01:31]  Two years later.
[01:01:33]  Oh, no politician is dumb enough to want to piss off Dr. Oz.
[01:01:36]  You're never going to hear Joe Biden throw it.
[01:01:38]  Well, except for Claire McCaskill.
[01:01:40]  God bless her.
[01:01:43]  She was the only one who had the guts to stand up to Dr. Oz.
[01:01:47]  I think other people did.
[01:01:47]  I'm not an expert on what went down in that congressional thing, but she seems to be the main one who was really angry at him, which good on you, Claire.
[01:01:55]  I love that a bipartisan decision is just like, let's share this grifter, you know, between administrations.
[01:02:03]  Like, good, you know what?
[01:02:05]  We all agree that you should be able to lie about healthcare as an MD.
[01:02:10]  So 2018 is when he gets appointed to this council.
[01:02:13]  Two years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he endorsed hydroxychloroquine.
[01:02:18]  Later that year, he endorsed reopening schools, saying, I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity.
[01:02:26]  I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2% to 3% in terms of total mortality.
[01:02:33]  What the fuck?
[01:02:35]  2% to 3% of the current.
[01:02:36]  That's barely anybody dying.
[01:02:38]  That's barely hundreds of thousands of deaths.
[01:02:41]  He said 2% to 3% as if that's not a huge number of people.
[01:02:45]  He's losing his goddamn mind.
[01:02:47]  And it's one of those things, not making a point pro or against gun control either way, but if somebody against gun control said, what?
[01:02:54]  Keeping these things legal is only going to cost us 1% of the country.
[01:02:57]  You'd be like, you're a fucking maniac.
[01:03:01]  You are a dangerous person.
[01:03:03]  Man.
[01:03:04]  But he's like, we got to, and he didn't.
[01:03:07]  Yeah.
[01:03:07]  This outraged a lot of people.
[01:03:08]  And Oz apologized as he apologized for vaccination hydroxychloroquine.
[01:03:12]  Yeah, he see Days he did.
[01:03:15]  He claimed regret that his comments had confused and upset people and basically pointed out the Lancet wasn't saying 2-3% of the country was going to die.
[01:03:21]  It was, I think, more like 2%, 3% of like school children or something would get sick.
[01:03:27]  And like, it was, he, he, but the way he phrased it was, it's only going to cost us 2% to 3% of the country.
[01:03:34]  Like, I don't care what the actual study, again, I don't care what the study is.
[01:03:38]  I care what you said to your audience of millions.
[01:03:40]  And also, I care about the fact that in any case, that's fucking evil.
[01:03:45]  Yeah.
[01:03:46]  Like, that's an evil thing to say.
[01:03:48]  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty wild to just look at two to three percent of the country as like expendable if it means that my fucking dirtbag ass fifth grader can be stuck inside in a school all day.
[01:04:01]  And listen, I get it.
[01:04:02]  People with kids, they want their kids to go back to school, but you, you, that's easy.
[01:04:07]  You don't say the quiet part out loud, you know?
[01:04:09]  Yeah, it's one thing to say, hey, look, living in a society, there's all kinds of cost-benefit sort of analysis we have to do.
[01:04:17]  Like, right, cars improve a lot of efficiencies in certain ways and people like have them.
[01:04:22]  They're also going to cost X many lives.
[01:04:24]  You know, we could change these sorts of laws, but it would lead to this sort of problem.
[01:04:29]  You know, we have certain freedoms that may cost lives.
[01:04:32]  And like to be like, that's just living in a society, right?
[01:04:36]  There's no, our society is not angled around absolutely reducing mortality in every way.
[01:04:42]  And there's a cost to not having these schools open and it's a very real cost.
[01:04:45]  And like we have to like, that's a way to say that.
[01:04:48]  I'm not saying that's the argument I'm making because I'm not.
[01:04:50]  I'm thinking, I don't think we should open schools out until we actually have, I don't know, like 80% of the fucking country vaccinated or whatever.
[01:04:57]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:04:57]  But like, but that's a way you could, that's a way you could make that argument and not sound like a gibbering sociopath.
[01:05:06]  And it's weird to like, you know, be like, all right, it was a poor choice of words.
[01:05:09]  And it's like, bro, at this point, saying words out loud to millions of people is your job.
[01:05:14]  Yeah.
[01:05:15]  You're choosing to do the job.
[01:05:17]  You could never work another day in your life and you would never, you, you, you're rich.
[01:05:22]  You don't need to do this.
[01:05:23]  You're choosing to.
[01:05:24]  So go fuck yourself with that explanation.
[01:05:27]  Fucking fix some hearts already.
[01:05:29]  Stop talking.
[01:05:30]  We're getting to that.

=== Choosing to Harm Lives (11:32) ===

[01:05:31]  So today, Dr. Oz works to continue to monetize his brand with his wife and business partner, who he also writes books with.
[01:05:38]  His daughter seems to be getting in on the griff too with books like the dorm room diet, which she wrote when she was in college, I think.
[01:05:44]  The dorm room diet.
[01:05:46]  It's just free pizza and dick.
[01:05:48]  The dorm room diet.
[01:05:49]  Hey, you know, if you pour coffee into instant ramen, you can get it right.
[01:05:54]  Exactly.
[01:05:54]  It's a two-birds worth stone.
[01:05:57]  I've done that, by the way.
[01:05:59]  We've all been there.
[01:06:00]  Kind of proud of it.
[01:06:01]  It's real good if you add in vodka.
[01:06:03]  He is worth tens of millions of dollars and is not in any danger of being worth less anytime soon.
[01:06:10]  We've talked a lot about the harms of his specific recommendations and the disinformation he spreads.
[01:06:14]  But at the end of this all, I keep coming back to that 2010 New York Times article, specifically its end, when I think about what may be his worst crime against medicine.
[01:06:24]  Quote, on the stairs at Columbia Presbyterian, apropos of nothing, he began talking about certain Japanese, Sardinian, and Costa Rican populations that live unusually long and said that their shared trait was activity, activity, activity.
[01:06:38]  His first column for Time magazine, Living Long and Living Well, ran in a section called How to Live 100 Years.
[01:06:46]  At another point in his Rockefeller Center office, he said that so many people thrill on being to being on television because, quote, there's an element of eternity to it.
[01:06:54]  You are storing you.
[01:06:56]  You are taking your life force for that brief moment when you're on camera and you're storing that for all eternity, which makes you someone who will never truly die.
[01:07:06]  That is a fucking bonker's way of looking at being on TV.
[01:07:10]  Holy shit.
[01:07:11]  That is out of its goddamn mind.
[01:07:15]  He's literally one year away from wanting to be buried with his cats.
[01:07:20]  You know, like this dude wants some pyramids and some live cats in a casket with him.
[01:07:26]  This is, he's a pharaoh.
[01:07:28]  Yeah.
[01:07:29]  I'm going to continue the quote.
[01:07:31]  And he described his own investment in television by saying, I've always felt that when I looked at my tombstone, it shouldn't say, Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 open heart operations.
[01:07:42]  I've probably done 5,000.
[01:07:44]  Am I any better at it than 10,000?
[01:07:46]  He shook his head.
[01:07:47]  It's just a different number on a tombstone.
[01:07:50]  No, it's not.
[01:07:51]  It's 5,000 other people whose lives are.
[01:07:53]  Those are actual humans.
[01:07:54]  Those are human beings.
[01:07:56]  It's not about like your, how better it, you're already great at it.
[01:08:01]  It's about saving additional lives.
[01:08:03]  My God, that it's, that's wild.
[01:08:06]  One of the, he has dramatically, he still does perform surgery, I think, sometimes.
[01:08:11]  He certainly was in the late aughts because he's a doctor.
[01:08:15]  He just doesn't do nearly as much.
[01:08:17]  He used to do a lot more and he's, he's cut it by more than half the amount of actual heart.
[01:08:21]  And it's the one thing he's good at.
[01:08:22]  I mean, I almost.
[01:08:23]  And he's amazing at it.
[01:08:25]  So one of the things that I should note here is that right now, even with the assumption that every available training position for cardiothoracic surgeons is filled, we are looking at a projected shortage of 1,500 cardiothoracic surgeons or 25% of the workforce by 2025.
[01:08:45]  Four years.
[01:08:47]  There is a desperate need for the thing that he's definitely one of the best in the world at, a tremendous and terrible need for it.
[01:08:54]  And he has stopped doing that in order to give people bad medical advice that will hurt some of them on TV.
[01:09:01]  And I want to be really clear here.
[01:09:04]  I am not saying that just because you become a cardiothoracic surgeon, you have to do that until the day you drop.
[01:09:09]  You don't.
[01:09:10]  You can quit.
[01:09:13]  And that's not immoral.
[01:09:14]  It's not evil to be like, I've done enough.
[01:09:16]  A good friend of mine was a cardiologist for 30-something years and quit to travel around the world as a photojournalist.
[01:09:22]  And I don't think there's anything immoral.
[01:09:23]  You do not owe the world doing just because it's valuable and there aren't enough people doing it forever.
[01:09:28]  I am not.
[01:09:29]  And you don't have to quit to do some other valuable job.
[01:09:31]  You can just quit to enjoy your life, be with your family.
[01:09:33]  I'm not saying that.
[01:09:35]  But he didn't quit to be with his family.
[01:09:38]  He quit to give people bad health advice.
[01:09:42]  He quit to do crimes.
[01:09:43]  Yeah.
[01:09:44]  He is doing something that should be illegal instead of performing an additional 5,000 life-saving surgeries.
[01:09:50]  Right.
[01:09:50]  Yeah.
[01:09:51]  That's evil.
[01:09:52]  Yeah.
[01:09:52]  No, that is bad.
[01:09:54]  That is, that is definitely immoral to have the ability.
[01:09:59]  It's like being Superman and having the ability to save someone from a burning building, but being like, fuck, dude, I'm kind of on my way to do this TV interview.
[01:10:08]  It's going to get me more interesting.
[01:10:09]  Yeah, but I'm going to sell people pills instead.
[01:10:13]  Lex Luther can suck it, you know?
[01:10:16]  I got pills to move.
[01:10:17]  The way that he phrases that is incredibly telling, right?
[01:10:20]  Like it shouldn't say Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 open heart operations.
[01:10:24]  Am I any better at it than 10,000?
[01:10:26]  It's like, that's not, I care that you get better at it to the extent that it improves patient outcome, but like I don't care.
[01:10:32]  Like the thing that's good about performing 10,000 open heart operations is presumably somewhere near 10,000 people have had their lives extended because of you.
[01:10:41]  And that's amazing.
[01:10:43]  That's tens of thousands of cumulative years get added to the lives of people who are loved and who do things themselves, who do incredible, like who have their own ways of contributing to society, who have children.
[01:10:56]  It's such a sick way of looking at this too.
[01:10:59]  Really?
[01:11:00]  I'm already really good at it.
[01:11:02]  So I decided I want to go get into TV now.
[01:11:07]  If he'd been like, I did my car, I performed 5,000 surgeries.
[01:11:11]  Now I want to become an actor.
[01:11:13]  You have that right.
[01:11:14]  Absolutely.
[01:11:14]  I'm never going to say that's.
[01:11:15]  I mean, it depends on the movie, but yeah, yeah, for sure.
[01:11:18]  Yeah.
[01:11:18]  If you're in Michael Bay movies, we might have another talk.
[01:11:20]  Exactly.
[01:11:21]  But that's, again, it's not that he's decided he wanted to go into TV.
[01:11:24]  It's not that he decided to go into entertainment.
[01:11:26]  It's that he decided to do a job, to go from doing a job where he was unequivocally saving lives to doing a job where he often gives people advice that could shorten or at least reduce the quality of their life.
[01:11:38]  I mean, I guess he got tired of helping people and was like, you know, time to make some fucking bank.
[01:11:44]  Yeah.
[01:11:45]  I mean, it's not just makes him bank, but he's like, man, I saved 10,000 lives.
[01:11:50]  I'm going to have to kill 10,000 just to fucking net neutral this shit, you know?
[01:11:55]  You know, he's just trying to, he's trying to balance the scales of his good and evil.
[01:12:01]  It's so fucking frustrating.
[01:12:04]  I really dislike this man.
[01:12:06]  Yeah.
[01:12:07]  He's so handsome, though, dude.
[01:12:09]  I mean, he's very handsome.
[01:12:12]  He made a lot of money.
[01:12:13]  So that's good.
[01:12:15]  And, you know, he's out there every day giving hope to people who are currently dying of a very, very treatable ailment and saying, nah, dog, put your feet in some hot rice.
[01:12:28]  Put your feet in some hot rice.
[01:12:30]  And see what happens, dude.
[01:12:31]  Just see what happens.
[01:12:32]  You know, like someone's got to be doing that job.
[01:12:36]  It's this fucking thing.
[01:12:37]  Part of the Dr. Oz problem and the part of it that he is leaning into, but it's not his fault is this thing that's a broader problem that I've gotten trapped in that a lot of that everyone who's a public figure is at risk of getting trapped in, which is the fact that if you're good at something and also have some measure of fame or popularity, you start to think you can extend your skills to everything.
[01:13:01]  I was in the gym the other day since I'm in Texas with my family and since I'm vaccinated and everyone wears a mask, but I've been going to a gym and my family's vaccinated.
[01:13:12]  It's like, it's a thing we get to do now.
[01:13:14]  Okay.
[01:13:14]  Yeah, you're allowed.
[01:13:15]  Yeah.
[01:13:16]  I've been going to a gym and the gyms have like news programs on, right?
[01:13:19]  And I saw Dr. Oz on and it was Dr. Oz True Crime, because I guess Dr. Oz has added a true crime thing where he's like talking about this woman who murdered her kids and interviewing like, the ex-wife of the husband of the woman who murdered her kids and like dude, this thing's like you don't have any.
[01:13:36]  Why are you doing this?
[01:13:37]  Like oh because, because it's popular with the same people who like your show.
[01:13:41]  And why?
[01:13:42]  Why like?
[01:13:44]  Why not?
[01:13:44]  Why, Why not stick your hand into this thing that is deeply painful for a lot of people and make money off of it?
[01:13:52]  Why not do it?
[01:13:54]  Because if you're famous and good at one thing, there's no reason not to do absolutely everything.
[01:14:00]  I just hate it.
[01:14:01]  Yeah, especially since it's, again, he has the God-given skills to actually do good and help people.
[01:14:11]  And he chooses, you know, this shit.
[01:14:14]  And I got to say, I blame his dad.
[01:14:17]  I blame his dad.
[01:14:17]  You blame his dad too.
[01:14:19]  Fuck you, Mustafa.
[01:14:20]  Yeah, Mustafa.
[01:14:22]  You fucked up, dude.
[01:14:24]  I mean, you did a great job by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and yada yada.
[01:14:28]  But, you know, maybe you should have, maybe you should have maybe been more encouraging for him to just maybe, you know, pick one thing and stay with it rather than, you know, venture off into television.
[01:14:40]  I will say, at least with the true crime stuff, that like, I know he's like, he's a little bit kind of like getting into kind of our territory here with the podcast business.
[01:14:49]  And I don't like that.
[01:14:52]  But I'm glad I don't have a true crime podcast that he's currently cannibalizing.
[01:14:56]  If he starts a Sopranos one, I will lose my fucking mind.
[01:15:01]  If Dr. Oz decides one day, like, I want to do a prestige TV rewatch show for CNN, that'll be it, dude.
[01:15:10]  Oz, you'll be on my goddamn list.
[01:15:12]  I don't think his podcast publishes anymore the one that he was doing.
[01:15:15]  I don't see any new episodes past 2019.
[01:15:19]  Well, I mean, he's doing a true crime show.
[01:15:23]  That's as close as you get to the podcast business.
[01:15:26]  Yeah.
[01:15:27]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:15:28]  Those are the number one pods out there, dude.
[01:15:31]  Pisses me off.
[01:15:34]  My pods.
[01:15:36]  All right, guys.
[01:15:38]  That's the episode.
[01:15:41]  Do you have any plugs?
[01:15:43]  Yeah.
[01:15:44]  Plug the plugs?
[01:15:46]  My name is Matt Lieb, and I'm on Instagram, Matt Lieb Jokes.
[01:15:51]  The Graham.
[01:15:52]  Yeah, I'm on The Graham.
[01:15:53]  I'm also on Twitter at Matt Lieb, but follow me on Instagram.
[01:15:58]  And yeah, and if you like the Sopranos, pod yourself a gun.
[01:16:02]  Pod yourself a gun, baby.
[01:16:04]  Well, get out there and again, find Dr. Oz in the street.
[01:16:08]  And Sophie, what is the legal definition of incitement?
[01:16:15]  I'm not, for legal reasons, I'm not going to answer that question.
[01:16:19]  All right.
[01:16:23]  Just go out and wander the streets angry and agitated.
[01:16:29]  Yeah.
[01:16:30]  Without any clear goal.
[01:16:32]  Yeah.
[01:16:33]  Angrily wander the streets agitated with an unclear goal.
[01:16:36]  That's what I want all of my listeners to do.
[01:16:53]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:17:01]  I vowed I will be his last target.

=== Trust Your Girlfriends (02:12) ===

[01:17:03]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:17:05]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:17:07]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[01:17:12]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:17:13]  Trust me, babe.
[01:17:14]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:17:24]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[01:17:29]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
[01:17:32]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[01:17:35]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[01:17:37]  That's so funny.
[01:17:38]  Merry day with me each night, each morning.
[01:17:46]  Listen to Nora Jones' playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:17:54]  What's up, everyone?
[01:17:55]  I'm Ago Moda, my next guest.
[01:17:57]  It's Will Farrell.
[01:18:00]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:18:03]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:18:05]  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.
[01:18:12]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:18:14]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[01:18:21]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:18:23]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:18:24]  There's a lot in life.
[01:18:26]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:18:33]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[01:18:40]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[01:18:44]  I doctored the test once.
[01:18:46]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[01:18:50]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[01:18:53]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Marcini.
[01:18:55]  My mind was blown.
[01:18:56]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[01:18:58]  This is Love Trapped.
[01:18:59]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[01:19:01]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[01:19:06]  Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:19:12]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:19:14]  Guaranteed human.