Dr. Phil McGraw is exposed as a "charismatic opportunist" who abandoned his family, faked football injuries, and secretly sold partner Thelma Box's Pathways seminars for $325,000 while crediting himself. His unethical dual relationship with a patient led to board sanctions, yet he leveraged his reputation to coach Oprah Winfrey and testify in court cases based on payment. Ultimately, the narrative reveals his rise from a poor marital therapist to a national celebrity was built on deception, exploitation, and the manipulation of public trust rather than genuine psychological expertise. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trust Your Girlfriends00:07:40
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Goespiece and Michael Manchini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
How did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, everybody.
Before we get into the episode, I wanted to talk about a fundraiser we're doing now.
Last year, y'all funded basically the entirety of the Portland Diaper Bank, which provides free diapers to people who are in financial crisis and whatnot.
We're doing that fundraiser again.
We're trying to raise $20,000 to fund the Portland Diaper Bank for the year.
If you want to donate some cash to them, you can go to GoFundMe, Diaper Need, and COVID-19 Response.
If you just Google GoFundMe, Diaper Need, and COVID-19 Response, it should take you to the fundraiser.
You can also find my pinned tweet on my Twitter at iWriteOK.
We'll take you right there.
So Diaper Need and COVID-19 response on GoFundMe.
Thank you all so much.
Fuck you.
That's the introduction.
Just fuck you, people who listen and give us an income.
Allow us to be able to do that.
Nice to see you, too.
Live a comfortable life.
Not you, Jamie.
Just the audience.
Just the people who support us with their ears.
I'm insulting.
Just out the gate.
Fuck them.
That's right.
What are you going to do about it?
You're going to listen to another podcast?
Like there are other podcasts?
Like you have other options?
Like there's a flooded marketplace of things exactly like what I do that you could just turn to?
Ha!
I don't think so.
And don't investigate otherwise.
No, please don't search podcasts on Spotify.
I feel like what you just said all could have come out of Dr. Phil's mouth at one point, the second the cameras turn off for his show.
Well, Jamie, the orca is out of the tank because that is the subject of today's episode.
And also your Jamie Loftus, my guest on the show that this is, which is behind the bastards.
Yes, it is behind the bastards.
And I'm, I'm here.
I'm mainly here to bring the Dr. Phil ASMR videos this week.
Excited is the wrong word.
Dreading?
Dreading is the right word.
I'm dreading that, Jamie.
You're going to either really love them or really hate them.
And I can't figure out which it's going to be.
I can't imagine loving them because they involve Dr. Phil.
And I think he's going to love them.
You know, it's one of those things.
We just did the Dr. Oz episodes.
And Dr. Oz, also bad, obviously.
He was on this show, but you have to respect him because he is a brilliant doctor.
Like he's a man who, for all of the harm he's done by spreading pseudoscience, has performed like 5,000 successful open heart surgeries, which is an achievement, you know, and has patented a bunch of useful medical devices and stuff.
He's a person who's made like bafflingly selfish decisions that I don't respect.
But as a person, I have to have some level of respect for the things that he has achieved because he's impressive.
Dr. Phil is just a piece of shit.
Dr. Phil is just straight up trash.
We were talking about this off mic.
There was some Dr. Drew drama in Los Angeles this week that actually like for once ended well and online bullying like persevered.
And Dr. Drew was like nominated to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority like board.
And what is, okay, I don't know Dr. Drew.
What is what does Dr. Drew do?
I'm assuming he's a nonsense doctor, like all of the other doctors we talk about.
He may be technically a doctor.
I'm not totally sure, but I think he's a radio doctor.
Oh, that's the best kind of design.
He also mediates the reunions of teen mom and teen mom two and 16 and pregnant and causes damage to lots and lots of young minds all the time.
He technically does have, he is a doctor.
I don't know if he's currently licensed, but I know him from VH1 in like middle school where he had rehab, Dr. Drew, sex rehab with Dr. Drew, celebrity rehab presents sober house.
And that sounds like my nightmare.
Like that sounds, that sounds like the hell that I would go to is Sober House.
Oh, no.
I could have, I could have shortened my description and said he's Adam Carolla's best friend, which is also true, which is like, oh, really?
Oh, yeah, no.
Yeah.
He hosted like a famous radio show called Love Line Forever.
And Adam Carolla was also on the show.
And they're, they're close.
And so, yeah, he was nominated to serve on the Homeless Authority board.
And it took, it only took about a day where like activists just bullied him into bullied people into withdrawing the nomination pretty quickly.
And he had a few spicy little comments about it.
He was like, I can't like, he basically was like, these online bullies are trying to cancel me for not being a good doctor and irrelevant for this job.
So, you know, sometimes bad doctors fall.
I like, I love to see it.
Well, that's fascinating.
I'm so happy to have learned about Dr. Drew.
Bullied Into Withdrawing Nomination00:15:13
But today we're talking about Dr. Phil, and it's, it's time to get in, get into the, it's time to have us a Philgasm.
Okay.
A McGrawsm.
A McGrasm.
McGrawsm.
A McGrawsm.
McGrawgasm.
Yeah.
So Philip Calvin McGraw was born on September 1st, 1950 in Veneta, Oklahoma, about four hours from where I grew up.
His father was Joseph and his mother was Anne Geraldine or Jerry is what she preferred to go by.
He had two older sisters and one younger sister.
When he was a kid, his father moved the family down to the oil fields of North Texas, which are about as unpleasant a place as I've ever encountered on this earth.
Not a good place to just exist.
You don't want to, as a general rule, stay away from oil fields.
Not nice places.
So his kind of like southern desolation is Phil McGraw's early childhood, which, you know, I can tell you from experience what that does to a kid.
And it makes you either a washout or ambitious and angry.
One of the two.
You either wind up an alcoholic working on an oil derrick or you do everything possible to escape the desolate South.
Anyway, Phil's going to take that second one.
I like how he went with it.
Yeah.
I have strong feelings about that part of Texas and that part of Oklahoma.
Phil was a precocious child and his parents seem to agree that he basically raised himself.
He expressed a hunger for money from a young age and he was coddled.
His mother thought he could do no wrong.
Young Phil was the center of attention for everyone but his father, who was himself obsessed with work.
The elder McGraw would end up moving the family half a dozen times for the sake of his career.
By age 11, Phil was spending summers driving a freight truck owned by his grandfather in Monday, Texas.
By age 12, he was flying planes illegally without a license as he traveled with.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Okay.
I mean, the driving a driving at age 11, not as uncommon as you might think in certain rural parts of the world, still a bit young.
Driving a freight truck is a bit, is a bit odd at age 11.
It was a shark jump.
And then unliced driving pilot at age 12?
Honestly, I looked up Dr. Phil Young because sometimes it's shocking and you're like, whoa, Dr. Phil used to be hot.
Not the case here.
But there's a picture of him as a kid.
And now I'm like, that does look like a kid that would steal a plane.
Yeah.
It just does.
He's not even stealing a plane.
His dad needs to fly to these desolate airstrips in the middle of nowhere to deliver oil field equipment.
And Phil goes with him and flies the plane sometimes.
My guess is that his dad is just like, I'm taking a nap.
You're flying this oil field equipment across Texas.
I trust you.
Land the bastard.
Okay, dad.
Dr. Phil looks like adult Chris Cuomo.
Whoa, I see it.
I see it.
Okay, it's honestly shocking that he was not a bald baby.
No, if someone wants to make a comic book, Dr. Phil Child Pilot, it's a pretty decent premise.
I've heard worse.
So yeah, this is how Phil spends his childhood up until the point when his dad, Joe, turned 40 and decided apropos of nothing that he was going to abandon his family and become a psychologist.
We truly don't have more info than that.
I have not found more info than that.
His dad's like, I'm going to become a psychologist.
You guys can keep doing your thing.
You know, like, that's basically how it's set.
And so Joe leaves his wife and three daughters behind.
I think they stay in Texas.
And he brings Phil with him to Kansas, where the two started a new life together.
I don't like this.
The closeness of father and son here.
It sounds like, why is it, oh, I hate because every time we go over stories like this, you're like, it can't be daddy issues.
Everything can't be just a daddy issue.
But then, but then it always is.
Yeah, it's interesting.
One of the things that's just interesting to me is like the ways in which Dr. Phil and I's early background are similar and then diverge.
And this is a big divergence point because when I was a kid, my dad left for like a couple of years to work somewhere else.
But it was because we had no money.
We were at like the edge of bankruptcy.
And the only job he could get was in New York living on a friend's couch and like working at a radio station so he could send back money to us.
So it wasn't like.
And like I didn't go with him.
He like had to go alone to New York to support the family and stuff.
But it is this weird grew up in the same area, moved around a bunch when we were little.
Our dad leaves, you know, but in Phil's case, he goes with his dad and they just abandon all the women.
Right, right, right.
Like Dr. Phil's dad is like, you're my wife now.
You're my wife now, boy.
My wife pilot.
Fly the plane, Phil.
You're my wife now.
Dr. Phil, child wife pilot.
The pitch is getting better and better and better.
It's going to be sold by the end of the episode.
I actually just got an email from Netflix and it's a check for $112 million.
So we are now contractually obligated to make this show, Jamie.
I would honestly rather do that more than anything else.
I know.
That would be a dream.
Let's leave this life behind.
Okay, so we're abandoning podcasts to do that.
To do Dr. Phil, child wife pilot, yes.
I think that would put a lot of positivity back into the world.
So they just, they just bail.
And it's not for financial reasons.
I mean, it is.
They're poor as shit.
His dad wants to go to school and is like, I can't take care of this family anymore.
Bye.
The way it's been described in the articles I've read.
Now, maybe Dr. Phil could give us a more detailed story, but I have not run across it yet.
Okay.
Yeah.
Most of the info I have on his childhood comes from a Dallas Observer article.
And they explained the whole abandoning of Phil's mom and sisters as a financial move.
Okay.
Phil apparently told the Dallas Observer, quote, there just wasn't enough money to do otherwise.
So we can only feed two members of this family.
So girls, you're on your own.
Phil and I are going to Kansas.
Okay.
Yeah.
Extremely, very, very, sounds like a really healthy family dynamic so far.
You get the feeling he grew up in a healthy environment.
That's true.
Healthy families are all alike.
They allow 12-year-olds to fly planes.
That is how the famous quote goes.
That's how Anna Karinita starts.
I love that book so much.
And it turns out that's the thesis statement of the whole thing.
How did you just pronounce that, Robert?
I don't know.
Anna Karenina, what is it?
I was going to let it fly.
Yeah, I wasn't.
Honestly, I think that had Anna Karenina been a child pilot, maybe she wouldn't have gotten crushed by that train.
No, no.
And she could have been Dr. Phil's dad's child wife.
I actually don't know what happens in that book.
I pretended to read it when I was like 11.
I just stared at him really hard over a course of months.
Per the results of a 2006 court case, I am not allowed to read Russian literature.
In more recent post-fame interviews, Dr. Phil claims those early days with his father were a humbling experience.
Quote, we were so poor, we couldn't even pay attention, which is, I don't, I think is less a true statement.
Not that I'm saying they weren't poor.
I think he just said that because he knows it was a pithy thing and he makes his whole living off of like saying stupid Dr. Phil witticisms.
Well, he couldn't even bet.
And I've heard that a thousand times.
Like I have heard a thousand different people say, explain their origins that way.
So I don't know.
Fuck you, Dr. Phil.
Be original.
The moms absolutely lose it.
I bet it does.
I absolutely bet it makes the moms lose it.
Someone when Dr. Phil quips.
Someone on Reddit during the Dr. Oz episode, you know, I noted a couple of times that his audience and the people that he makes money off of is like middle-aged moms and that that's a great business because they have all the money or at least control all the money.
Like middle-aged moms are one of the most profitable demographics to get in your corner in the entire world.
Right.
And someone was like, you're being like unfairly negative towards middle-aged moms.
I was like, it's just a statement of fact.
Like, look in the audience of a Dr. Oz show.
Like, it's not 16 to 30-year-olds, like men.
It's, it's, it's a bunch of moms.
Like, my mom loved Dr. Oz.
It's that, that's who his audience is.
It's not like a negative statement.
My mom loves Dr. Phil.
No, yeah, I don't think that that's a negative state.
So if anyone's hearing that, it's not like what they're intending to say.
It's just who the audience is.
Yeah.
It's the target audience.
Yeah.
It's like saying, like, men 18 to 35 listen to Joe Rogan.
That's not like, I'm not even, it is negative to listen to Joe Rogan, but I'm not being negative when I say that.
I'm just accurately describing his audience.
Yes.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Fuck you, Joe Rogan.
Doctor, I, as someone who was raised by Dr. Phil moms, I am fully, and it's like not, but I mean, it is the primary demographic.
Yeah.
At least at the peak.
I don't know who's watching Dr. Phil now.
No matter your demographic, there's a grifter for you.
Look, I've been honest about the fact that there was a period of time in my life when I liked John McAfee before I knew about, you know, the murder and the rape and stuff.
Right.
Like we all, we all have a grifter we're vulnerable to.
It's nothing to be ashamed of.
You just need to acknowledge it.
And in the case of middle-aged suburban moms, it's Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz.
Mine was, I think the grifter that really got me was Lou Perlman, who made all the boy bands that made me more dense.
Oh my God.
I mean, one of my favorite, not my favorite, but one of the most legendary bastards.
Absolutely amazing person.
Like Mr. Blink himself.
No, without any sort of joking, like a genius, just has a genius in terms of knowing exactly what a specific age group of people want.
Right.
It doesn't mean that we were like not smart, but we were clearly targeted by all have a thing we're vulnerable to.
Anyway, we're getting off topic, which is fine because it pads the runtime.
And that's what I do as a grifter is I pan the runtime in order to make more money off of you fucking sorry.
Roberts exposed.
Shameful.
So yeah, the details that Dr. Phil gives about his childhood, like he gives that kind of pithy, we were so poor we couldn't even pay attention quote.
But in the interview with Dallas Observer, the details he actually gives make it seem like the issue for Phil was less a matter of crushing poverty.
Like I think they were kind of poor, but I think they were like my kind of poor, like, which was not crushing poverty.
It was not you're malnourished.
It's just there's no money for anything but the basics, you know, but the basics are covered.
Absolutely breaking even.
Yeah.
But you're not like, you know, you're not like in absolute destitution, you know, like not to exaggerate it, but like you're poor.
Like that's kind of what I think is really happening.
And part of why I think that is because his real complaint about that time in his life is that he couldn't buy any cool shit.
Quote from the Dallas Observer.
It didn't help that he was fiercely competitive, he says, and he lacked the clothes and the car to compete for girls.
So I think that's more the big thing for him, right?
Like, you're not that poor.
You just don't have enough money to impress girls with possessions.
Right.
Okay.
I get that level of poverty.
Yes.
Yeah.
I think most of us had more or less that level of poverty.
We're like, especially like I was like one of the poorer kids in a school that was not poor.
There were kids in my school who drove BMWs.
And like, I had a beat to shit Ford Taurus.
I'm not complaining.
I had a Ford Taurus.
Like, I'm not complaining.
I had a car.
But you see the kids whose parents are rich and you're like, ah, shit, I feel so poor because they have a brand new Jaguar.
That's, I think, the kind of poor he is.
Yeah.
Or school is like the kid with the Ford Taurus was like, oh, my God.
He has a car.
What a cool boy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that was just for my senior year, but yes, I did.
I did eventually get a car.
So thankfully, the young Dr. Phil was huge, quickly crossing six feet.
He's a massive man, if you've ever seen him next to normal-sized people.
He's a very large person.
I forget that, but yes.
Yeah.
Is he like six?
Yeah, he's like an inch or two taller than me, and I think quite a bit broader.
Like he's a big motherfucker.
But most of that's mustache, Robert.
Most of that's a lot of it's mustache now.
But when he was younger, he was in good shape and he was he was very like muscular.
And as a result of how big and strong he was, he was a shoe-in for the high school's football team.
He later recalled, quote, I was Phil the jock and that was my currency.
And by currency, he means that's how he got girls, right?
He didn't have the car, he didn't have, but he was able to like get girls because he had, you know, he was, he was on the football team.
He was tall.
He was tall.
He was, and he was apparently quite good at football.
In Phil's senior year, his father moved to Wichita Falls to start his psychology practice.
Not yet a doctor, Phil spent his entire senior year living alone.
He didn't go with his dad this time.
He supported himself and he played football because he was like, there was a period of time where he might have made it into the NFL.
So he didn't want to leave his high school and like disrupt that.
He said, quote, it wasn't what you were supposed to do, but I was pretty independent.
Interesting.
College scouts had started eyeing him pretty early on.
And he had, it seems like he had a real chance of getting at least picked to play college ball.
He did get picked to play college ball.
His dad had gone to the University of Tulsa on a football scholarship.
And in short order, Phil was picked by scouts for the same college.
So he gets a college scholarship to the University of Tulsa.
He becomes the captain of the freshman football team.
And he says he was very good.
A lot of articles you'll say were very good.
We're going to talk about this in a little bit because his team at least was shit.
Like, not just, not just a bat, not just like not good in the year, but like one of the all-time least successful college football teams in the history of college football.
No.
I'm trying to think of other, there's, that is like such a like celebrity that grows to be evil.
I feel like that is a pattern of like, I, I could have been a big sport.
That was his Hitler's art school, right?
Right, right, right.
Like, and you just know that's parties.
He doesn't let people forget it.
Like, yeah.
I'm looking up celebrities who played high school sports.
Matthew McConaughey.
It just seems like not making it big in college sports can be potentially a villainous origin story.
Dr Phil Team Gets Beaten00:06:43
I mean, I never had any chance.
I was on the high school.
I did like, sorry, I did one year of football in junior high.
I never had any chance of going pro and I didn't like football.
There was a period of time where I might have been able to like do well at fencing.
I did.
I was in like a special pro.
I was pretty, I was pretty good at fencing at pay.
But no, I got bored eventually.
For you, I could see that for you.
Yeah, take it back up.
If you're really tall, it helps.
Yeah.
But never like, never, never at the college level or anything.
I ran track in junior high, but then I threw up one time and I quit permanently.
And to this day, I do not run.
I was captain of the varsity basketball team and I'm really, really short.
Holy shit.
I had so I'm the most athletic of our bunch.
Sophie is the most successful athlete in in this call.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Send pics.
Oh, there are people.
That's Jamie.
I will personally send them to you.
You know, I will say, having watched the video of that guy shot putting a fucking Bobcat, I think that should be amazing.
That's the most amazing thing I've seen in such a long time.
That was, that was, that, you know what that was?
Is the greatest example of like quality husbanding that I think I've seen on Twitter?
Like, oh my God.
That's, that's a, that's a, you did, you did good, man.
That's exactly what you're supposed to do.
Like, that's, that's, that's wholesome masculinity right there is shot putting a wild cat away from your wife.
Wait, that's so, what a hero.
Well, and it's also, you know, it's not going to do any damage to the cat.
Now, he did get out his gun to shoot the cat, but it charged back at the family.
And I feel at that point, the cat had chosen violence.
You know, he gave he gave the animal a chance to end the interaction.
Thank you for that, uh, that fine forensic analysis.
That's, that's my, that's my opinion on the by now weeks old video of a guy hugging a bobcat across a yard.
Like, to be fair, he chose violence.
Yeah, the cat chose violence.
That's my, that's my end statement here.
So, um, yeah.
Anyway, Dr. Phil, a lot of interviews, you'll see he was very, very good, could have, maybe could have gone pro.
Um, I don't know how accurate that is.
I'm not great at football, but I found an incredible analysis on the sports website Grantland about a game that he played in, that his freshman football team played in, that is like one of the most famous games in college ball history because of how badly his team did.
Yeah.
Grantland calls it one of the craziest games in NCAA history.
For starters, the bulk of Phil's team were like actively dying of the flu while they played.
Quote, an especially virulent strain of flu had been cavorting through the Tulsa athletic dorm, somehow overcoming the formidable sanitary standard those three words imply.
And 15 of Tulsa's 22 starters were shivering, feverish wrecks.
They tried to act energetic, but they were so weak.
Tulsa coach Glenn Dobbs remembered in 1985.
My sons Glenn III and John were on the team.
Their eyes were glazed with fever.
The team doctor pleaded with the coach to call off the game, but Dobbs, a former Tulsa star who, because the world just does whatever it wants, had been an icon for the Saskatchewan Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League, refused to surrender.
I just never liked backing out, he said afterward.
Tulsa had two defensive linemen who were well enough to travel.
One of them passed out before the coin flip.
So this game is a fucking disaster from the beginning.
I love this shit so much.
Oh, it's so good.
Finally, a sports movie for me.
Yeah.
That is.
Just puking and shitting to death.
Also, someone named Glenn III is involved.
Like, just the funniest fucking thing.
Passing out before the game starts.
Oh, that is just.
And kudos to the Grantland writer.
It's a very entertaining article.
Grantland, I miss Grantland.
Yeah.
By the end of the first quarter, Phil's team was down 14 to zero, which is a significant, like they're getting, it's not a great start to a game, but it's not insurmountable.
However, by the end of the game, they were down by a record-breaking 100 points to six.
Oh, my.
Jesus.
Did Phil get any of the points?
No, I don't believe so.
Not at all.
I think it's one of the greatest ass kickings in college ball history.
Wow.
Like in the entire history of the sport, like Dr. Phil's team got their asses beat almost the worst.
Way to lose, Phil.
Yeah, it's like a famously, a famous ass kicking.
It does like several rounds of like going back to being sad and then going back to being funny and then going back to being sad and then going and finally landing on being the funniest shit I've ever heard.
It's incredibly funny.
So, Dr. Phil brags about this game today, saying that it and that football in general helped awaken in him an interest in psychology by teaching him that people with advantages don't always win.
That said, the author of that Grantland article takes pains to point out that there is actually no evidence whatsoever that Phil played in this game.
And the facts that do exist from this time make it seem kind of unlikely.
I don't know how to, like, it was far enough back that there's not any comprehensive way to know for sure, really.
Um, but the doubt thrown onto it by this investigation might mean that as a grown-ass multi-millionaire, Dr. Phil lied to David Letterman about playing in one of the worst ass kickings in sports history.
And I have no idea what this says about him.
Like, I don't even know how to analyze that.
There's so many levels there.
Because if he did play in it, you're like, oh, what a, yeah, okay, that's fun.
Yeah, you like, I can see, like, if I was, if I, if I played in, if I partook in a famous ass kicking in a sports history, I would brag about that as an adult.
It would be funny, you know?
You get enough distance from it, sure.
Lying about it, though.
Lying about it is baffling.
What is this?
That's like a game of 4D chess.
I can barely conceive.
I have no idea what's going on with Dr. Phil, but, and for the most part, I do know what's going on with him.
This is just baffling to me because he's clearly a narcissist.
It's very strange as a narcissist to lie about this, you know?
To lie about one of the greatest failures.
Yeah, to just to lie about just getting just like fame historically wrecked.
Anything for clout, baby.
Anything for clout by any means.
Speaking of clout, you know who has all of my clout, Jamie.
Does it happen to be a product or maybe even a service?
It is the products and services that support this podcast.
Lying About Greatest Failure00:03:51
I sacrifice all of my clout to them, like members of the ancient cult of the old ones sacrifice virgin babies to Nyarilothep, the crawling chaos.
Much like that.
Yeah.
Here's some ads for dick pills.
10-10 shots fired.
City hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene from iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.
This is Rorschach.
Murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's docks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He allegedly was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
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.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Shariach stay with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
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.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
Business Brain Allows Money00:07:40
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
All right, we're back.
We're back.
We're back.
Worshiping the old gods.
I don't know.
Might deliver up some of my bodily fluids to a shoggoth later.
Who knows?
Who knows?
We're talking about Dr. Phil.
Anything can happen.
So, anyways, after this, at some point, I don't know the exact year, but at some point pretty soon after this disastrous game, because Phil was definitely on the team, at some point after this, Phil had another sports disaster.
He went in to tackle a running back and he got hit really hard.
And I don't mean just like, you know, sprained something.
I mean, he woke up blind.
Oh, my God.
The kind of head injury where when you come to your eyes don't work, which is medically speaking, bad.
It shouldn't be allowed.
No, it shouldn't be allowed.
It's scary.
It absolutely, like, I don't know.
I think adults should.
I think if you're like 22 and older, you should be allowed to play football, but certainly 18-year-olds should not be, nor should they be allowed to join the military, by the way.
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
So, he's still, yeah, it was the head injury was bad enough.
His eyesight came back, obviously, but it was a serious head injury.
And it ended in his, there was no chance of him continuing his career after that, right?
Like, it's one of those things you're like, you don't get to ever play football again because you get hit in the head one more time.
That might be fucking it for you, you know?
Right.
Once his eyesight, yeah, and he still suffers.
Like, he's, there's after effects of this today.
Like, it's a lifelong injury.
He got really messed up.
It's a bad thing to do.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's bad.
Once his site came back, Phil returned to Wichita Falls to heal and to plot his next move.
He decided to put his college education on hold now that he couldn't do a football scholarship.
And he decided, you know, the thing to do now, I'm not going to, I'm going to, I'm going to think about college later.
I'm going to make some money now, right?
Which is not an unreasonable call to make in the situation.
And I'm going to quote from a write-up in the Dallas Observer.
He worked at a health club selling memberships and wound up owning a partnership interest in that club and a half dozen others.
That was typical of the way he did things, says Scott Madsen, who went into the building business with his future brother-in-law.
He is the smartest guy I ever met, a born leader.
Even at a young age, he had the insight to figure out how things work.
Others took a more damnable view of his business practices.
I didn't know of anyone who had a business deal with Phil at the time who felt they came out on top, says David Dickinson, a former friend of McGraw's from Wichita Falls.
It's like playing golf from someone who moves the ball around all the time.
So how young is he when he gets into business?
He's like right now.
He's like maybe 20 at the most, like 19 or 20.
And very quickly, he's a part earned, becomes a part owner in the sports club he's working at, becomes part owner in like a half dozen other clubs.
Like he's so he doesn't have, he doesn't have a degree yet of any kind.
No, but he's clearly very good at specifically the thing that Phil is objectively one of the best people in the world at is negotiating.
Yeah.
Like he is a terrifying negotiator.
I haven't run into any disagreement about that.
He's got all the grift.
He's got all the like the strongest rates grifters have.
Yeah.
And he's, he's very good at negotiating in a legal manner, which is a separate skill just from grifting, you know, and is honestly like the best kind of grifting because you can't get in trouble for that shit.
Yeah, yeah.
If he's willing to go into this game that young, that's so.
His brain.
He's wired for it, you know?
Or at least maybe with a football injury scrambled his wires and made him wired for it.
I don't know.
His reality is stressing me out.
Okay.
He's triggering my fight or flight response.
This is good.
Feeling good.
Yeah, that's how Dr. Phil works.
He really, really triggers a lot of responses.
Now, the article notes that when you interview that Dallas Observer article notes that when you interview a bunch of people who have known Dr. Phil over the course of decades, you tend to get two very different pictures of the man.
One from the people who like him is of an incredibly gifted expert in practical psychology who has a passion for helping people.
And the other picture you get of Dr. Phil is a, quote, charismatic opportunist who achieved great things by betraying the people closest to him in order to make a quick buck.
One of these spurned former friends is Elden Buck, who claimed to the observer, I put Phil in a couple of oil field deals and everyone pays me but him.
Phil is a smart, smart, smart son of a bitch, but he's only out for one thing and that's Phil.
Now, Phil denies all of this, but it is worth noting, as we've just heard, that Buck is not the only person with allegations like this against him.
He's not even just one of two, but we're going to get to that story in due time.
So he's also involved in oil fields down the line.
In anything that'll make him money.
Like this is like kind of all happening over a period of a couple of years.
He's just, he starts making money and he immediately reinvests that money.
He's in a bunch of businesses.
You know, I have a, I have a good, a very, very close friend who has that kind of brain, who's just always spinning off their money into one business or another.
And I don't know how they do it, but they just are able to keep track of like the fact that like I've got an investment in this business and through that business, I have an investment in this business and an interest in these other three businesses.
And those give me an interest in this.
And like, this is how all of that, like, I don't, I don't understand it, but like, it's kind of like being an engineer, you know?
Some people have the kind of brain where you can open up like a fucking HVAC system or like the flight control system on an airplane and know what all of the little cords and all of the lights go and do and how to, how to, how to work all of that.
Some people have a brain that allows them to just business, you know?
I respect people who use it for good, but holy shit, what an exhausting sounding it sounds like a nightmare.
I keep all of my money in a pile and I will never have investments.
Like I will never, like, I keep it in a bank, but like I have no, I have no investments and never will because the idea of investing money is terrifying to me and makes me want to huddle around a fire with a spear and stab outsiders.
I spent my all my savings on Dilbert NFTs.
Well, that's gonna appreciate, you know, Jamie.
Good feeling.
It's the only thing they're not making any more of.
That's a real thing.
They, the, the, you know, the Tashi Dilbert guy made Dilbert NFTs.
And the only difference from a regular Dilbert is that he says fuck in this one.
And so too much money.
Anyways, I would pay good money for a Dilbert NFT where he admits responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombing.
Oh my God.
I think that would be a good NFT.
If you're listening, Scott Adams, I'll invest in that one.
Dilbert, Dilbert admits to making a 6,000-pound fertilizer bomb and parking it out in front of the Murray building.
That's the NFT I want.
I can guarantee you that Kathy Geisweg, creator of Kathy Comics, does not know nor care what an NFT is.
Werner Herzog Estate Secrets00:13:55
And that's why she is, she is really, she's my strength in this world.
Stan Kathy.
You know who else I stand, Jamie?
No one.
That was like, it's not time for an ad pen.
He loves it today.
So he loves to do the like fake ad thing.
And then he thinks about it.
And then he's like, I can't stop myself.
He's just so good at it.
I mean, you know who I actually stand, who I have an unreasonable affection for and can't be convinced otherwise.
No, no, I think I have a reasonable love of LeVar Burton, as everyone does, right?
It's like a Capybara, you know, it's like loving a Capybara.
Like it's LeVar Burton, of course.
No, Verna Herzog.
Herzog is my unreasonable love.
Robert, I would love, you should start making Werner Herzog fan cams.
I don't know what that means, Jamie.
I'm going to make one of you and you're going to be horrified.
I wonder if Robert fan cams exist.
Listeners.
What the fuck is a fan cam?
How do I describe a fan cam?
It's usually like it's a short video made on an app.
I don't know what the app is, but it's just a series of clips of you.
And they put a glittery filter over it.
And there's like the cute song on in the background.
I don't think there's a lot of video of me where like you can actually see me.
So that might be hard to do.
Robert, you would, you would absolutely hate it, my friend.
I know I would.
There's enough video footage of you for a fan cam.
You need like three clips.
Well, all I'm interested in is a fan cam of Werner Herzog diving into a bunch of cactuses because he promised a group of little people that if they made it through the filming of a movie without injury, he would horribly hurt himself by diving into a bed of saguaros from 12 feet up.
Is that true?
Yeah, he absolutely did it.
And they begged him not to.
They were like, please don't do this.
Like, we don't want you to hurt yourself.
And he said, I made a promise.
And if I don't fulfill my promise, there's no reason for me to be alive.
And then he dove into a pile of cactuses because he's a fucking lunatic.
And I love him so much.
Wow.
Okay, Verner.
Oh, Werner Herzog.
Watch a Guir, The Wrath of God.
So Dr. Phil Robert.
Dr. Phil.
Yeah.
Sorry.
We're off the topic a little bit.
So after three years as a business/slash con man, Phil McGraw decided to return to the education system to study psychology.
He started off at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, where his father had gone, and then transferred to the University of North Texas, which is where the people who gave me huge amounts of drugs went to school.
I don't think Phil spent his time half a mile outside of campus downing 100 milligrams of 2CI and 15 to 20 milligrams of 5MeO MIPT and vaporizing DMT, which is probably why he graduated UNT with a PhD.
Well, my friends and I all dropped out of college to go, you know.
do stupid shit.
Anyway.
Yeah, Dr. Phil's not fucking punk enough.
No, he's not.
In his recollection, Phil both hated and excelled at college.
He later recalled, I almost quit every day.
The faculty just jacked with you all the time.
I remember telling one professor, either kick me out or get off my ass.
He did succeed in impressing other professors, though.
His mentor at UNT was Dr. G. Frank Lawless, who still considers Dr. Phil, quote, by far the most brilliant psychologist I ever worked with, which is meaningful praise, but also we are talking UNT here.
You know, we're not talking like one of the famous psychology schools in the country.
So not a nothing compliment, but not like a doctor, not like people saying Dr. Oz is the best heart surgeon ever, you know, because that motherfucker's working at Columbia, right?
They know from heart surgery.
Right.
Okay.
I don't know.
I'm not throwing shade at Frank Lawless.
I'm just saying I don't think Dr. Phil is the most brilliant psychologist ever to exist.
I haven't gotten past the fact that Frank Lawless sounds like a made-up person.
That sounds like a cartoon character.
I'm assuming he's Xena's father.
So McGraw got his doctorate in 1979 and returned to Wichita Falls for reasons that are impossible to explain.
Any person who returns to Kansas, I just don't, I don't understand.
He started a business partnership with his dad, and together the two veered their practice towards treating the mental ailments of the rich and socially prominent, circulating among country clubs to cater to doctors, lawyers, bankers, and their wives.
One of Dr. Philm's Phil's friends later claimed, quote, Phil moved right into the money circles.
If there wasn't a buck in it, he wasn't much interested.
So, you know, that's the field he gets into is dealing with like rich people who are neurotic or whatever.
Okay, so he comes to being a charlatan early.
Yeah, I mean, you know, at this point, again, if you're grifting rich people, I don't care.
Who cares?
Yeah.
Sometimes I might find it interesting for an off week, but I don't consider that evil behavior, right?
They have too much money, whatever.
He specialized in cognitive behavioral therapy, which Phil at least claimed was a cause and effect therapy that treated thoughts and behavior the same.
Quote, people would come in and say, I had a hard childhood.
Therefore, I am not doing well as an adult.
A Freudian would say, let's work through your childhood.
I would say, that's fine, but right now you are an adult.
You have a choice to stop yelling at your kids.
I've done CBT.
Yeah, that's not, that doesn't sound bad, right?
Like, that is a reasonable take, which is like, okay, it's fine to like, you know, work through a difficult childhood, but you can't be shitty to your kids just because you had a bad childhood.
Reasonable statement.
Past trauma doesn't excuse current bad behavior.
Perfectly valid statement.
Absolutely.
And this kind of no-nonsense approach was very popular with some of his clients.
I can see how it would have been useful in a number of cases.
But Dr. Phil himself admits that he was, quote, probably the worst marital therapist in the history of the world.
I was teaching what they taught me, but I was real impatient.
Everybody was getting divorced.
The way he relates it, realizing the shortcomings of his education convinced Phil to seek out less traditional ways to practice his profession and to market it.
And I should note here as an aside that during this period, Dr. Phil got married and was briefly with a woman before cheating on her repeatedly and then leaving her.
Oh.
Yeah.
So anyway.
Well, maybe he should have been a little more patient.
Maybe he should have taken some of his own medicine.
Yeah.
I mean, he does.
I mean, to be fair, he admits he was a bad marriage therapist.
So I can't call him like a hypocrite.
If you're saying, I was a, I, I was a shitty husband and a shitty marriage therapist, that all scams.
Right.
You know, like, um, that's, I, yeah, he's being honest here, so we won't belabor the point.
Okay.
Yeah.
He started holding pain clinics, weight loss clinics, and executive, giving executive recruiting advice and even expert legal testimony for court cases.
He was like an expert witness.
Yeah.
And this is like for court cases, right?
Like you need someone to come and, you know, you have like somebody who's claiming like, oh, you know, I can't be held responsible for this because I'm, I'm, you know, like mentally ill or whatever, like, you know, not guilty by reason of insanity.
He comes in and he's like, yes, that's valid or no, that's not valid, depending on who pays him, you know?
So just a general mental health professional.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's the kind of, we just, we just finished the chauvin trial.
You know, we had all these kind of use of force experts.
There's a bunch of people in different fields whose main job is to take that expertise in another field and testify about it in court because it's relevant, right?
You have like engineering specialists who are like, I'm going to go testify about this bridge that collapsed to either defend the people who made it or explain how irresponsible they were, whatever.
Like that's a whole, there's a whole industry.
Dr. Phil gets into the providing expertise.
There's a lot of money in that industry.
There's a fuckload of, you can get real goddamn rich doing that.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, especially if you're willing to lie about your area of expertise.
Yeah.
And by the way, lawyers listening, I will testify as an expert witness on literally anything.
As a certified reverend doctor in the state of New Jersey, my purview is wide.
So, you know what?
12 grand an hour.
The podcast is just going to disappear one day and it's the instant.
I'm fucking done.
You know, like, fuck this podcast.
I'm going to go lie under oath about, I don't know, whatever.
Anyway, Dr. Phil started, yeah, holding, you know, so he started, he gets into like the whole the business of if I really want to make money at scale as a psychologist, having individual, even if they're rich, individual clients isn't the thing to do.
I'm going to do a bunch of clinics on like dealing with pain, dealing with weight loss, you know, recruiting people.
I'll do like, so he gets very quickly into the, I'm less about helping people and more about making money as a psychologist.
Okay.
In 1984, he meets Thelma Box, an insurance and real estate agent from Graham, Texas, who asked him to go into business with her to create a brand new motivational seminar.
Now, we're talking again, like the 70s, 80s, which is the golden age of motivational seminars.
That's when this whole thing really explodes.
Motivational seminars are basically short-term cults.
For two to five days, several dozen to several hundred to sometimes even a couple of thousand people will pack into an auditorium where a charismatic front man and a handful of his buddies will coach them, usually by hyping the room up using simple crowd work tactics to make people feel temporarily elated and tricking them into having like cathartic experiences and thinking they've learned something, you know?
Yeah.
That's the whole idea.
Have people get like people, the mania of a crowd kind of going, make people cry or laugh and think like something significant has happened.
Ask probing personal questions in public in front of a bunch of people.
It's a whole big grift.
Yeah.
Thelma box was a, well, I don't know, grift.
I think a lot of people just like them.
I've known people who like admit that they never got anything long-term out of it, but just enjoy the experience.
And I guess if that's your thing.
It kind of depends.
Whatever.
Some people are just like, they're like, yeah, I know Tony.
Well, Tony Robbins is maybe not the best example.
But like, I know this person's like basically full of shit.
But, you know, I had a couple hundred dollars to burn and a weekend to burn.
It made me feel good.
You know, I don't care, I guess, if that's your thing.
We all have take joy where you can get it.
Yeah.
There's a lot of people who like to, there's people who like to climb the ice-filled sides of mountains with crampons and fucking like pitons and stuff.
And a lot of them die.
There's people who like to do cave diving, which is the deadliest thing you could possibly do to relax.
So like, I don't know, people do shit.
I don't care.
But most of the people doing these seminars are actually like people at some kind of like crisis point in their life having a difficulty.
And that, that's, that's the problem with it.
And it's like, it depends on how you sell it too.
Like if you're like promising, oh, if you come this weekend, you're going to leave and make a million dollars in the next couple, you know, that there's varying degrees of bullshit.
There's varying degrees.
Some of them are just like, I'm going to make you feel good about yourself so you can go out and attack the world.
And I guess that's kind of less problematic where it's like, okay, like whatever, you know, it's basically expensive church.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like you will not make me not hate myself, friend.
Better men than you have tried.
So Thelma Box, who, you know, is Phil's friend, is a huge fan of these kind of motivational seminars.
She'd done all the big ones.
Zig Ziglar, actual guy out there.
You can find his books at any given estate sale.
Dale Carnegie, you can also find his books at any given estate sale.
Tony Robbins, you can also find his books at any given estate sale.
All the estate sale greats.
She does their seminars.
With like boogers on the side of the books.
Yeah.
Most of her classes had been focused on her career.
Like they'd been like focused on helping salesmen, right?
Because that's a big subset of this industry.
She sold insurance and real estate.
So they'd been conferences to help real estate and insurance salesmen sell better.
Box felt that there was a market for a seminar focused instead of financial stuff on personal growth, on how to actually be a better person.
Now, Box had gotten to know Dr. Phil because her son had hired him to renegotiate a bunch of bank loans.
She decided Phil was the best negotiator she'd ever seen.
Quote, he has a God-given gift, a combination of charm and charisma that can mesmerize a room full of people.
And again, people disagree about a lot of stuff about Dr. Phil.
Nobody disagrees about this part.
He's apparently just an incredible negotiator.
So she decides he's going to be a great frontman for this life improvement seminar she wants to host.
Now, her initial plan had been to lead a success seminar for single women, but McGraw pushed back against this.
He didn't want to limit himself to just female customers.
Instead, the plan that he made was for Bot, or instead, he was like, we should do like a general like life improvement for everybody.
Like, come here and I'll help you deal with whatever things are holding you back in your life, right?
Like, that's kind of how Phil innovates the pitch.
Now, initially, the plan that Box had fronted was for Box and Phil to be 50-50 partners in this venture.
But right before they started going.
Yeah, exactly.
Right before they started going, Dr. Phil demanded that he was going to walk if she didn't bring his dad in as an equal shareholder.
Yeah.
Bringing daddy into it?
Yeah.
And this was a negotiation tactic from Box.
Quote, getting his dad involved would give Phil control.
I didn't want to be a minority owner, but he threatened to do the seminars without me.
Now, since Box was not a doctor and she'd already given Phil all of her ideas, she didn't feel like she could do the seminar without him, but he could do it without her.
So she was kind of in a tight spot here.
So she agreed.
She claims that she basically...
That's brilliant.
Yeah, that's the guy he is.
She claims she built the curriculum of the program from the ground up, designing most of the games and all of like the different like worksheets and shit you had to do.
And basically, in fairness, like, I don't think Box is a great person.
She's taking all of the information for this from other seminars she attended and is just modifying them enough to avoid plagiarism.
She's grifting the grifter and the grifter never likes that.
Grifting The Grifter00:05:15
Yeah.
She gets fucked over by Phil, but like, I don't particularly like her either.
So I want to take that negotiation tactic and apply it to the stand-up comedy world.
And I'd be like, all right, I know that you're supposed to be featuring for me, but actually my dad is going to be opening now.
So it's going to be my dad, then you, you'll be doing a shorter set.
I will then be doing five hours.
Like that, oh, that would be so fun.
Uh, yeah.
I'm, I'm, I'm excited for that for you, Jamie.
Thank you.
But you know what isn't exciting?
What isn't exciting?
Life without the products and services that support this podcast.
Absolutely.
I'm too.
Not even really worth living.
Like, if we're being frank, what are you been doing without these products and services?
What are you?
Nothing.
Nothing.
All right.
Here's ads.
10-10 shots fired in the city hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey Hood did it.
July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I scream, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, you just bent the rules all the time.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
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You related to the Phantom at that point.
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Sketchy Relationship Pathways00:15:08
We're back.
I hope you all spent money because this whole fucking wheel of blood doesn't keep turning if you don't put money into it, people.
Oh, boy.
You know?
Yeah.
That's how it works.
Yeah.
That's how it works.
You want this to fall apart?
No.
Yes.
Anyway, so yeah, the basic idea of these seminars that Box mostly cooks up and Phil is supposed to present is to teach people how to find out what they want from life by making them more accountable, by expressing vulnerabilities, stripping away self-deception, which all just means like making people cry in a big room surrounded by other people, you know?
Like, that's the goal.
That's the goal.
Yeah, with no connection to the outside world and just gaslight them into believing something that they don't.
Short-term cults, which is the kind of cult I'd like to do because it does sound exhausting having to like, every time I watch my favorite TV show, which is the Waco TV show where they made David Koresh have incredible cum gutters.
50 minutes, 40 seconds before editing.
Before Waco.
I just, it seems like it's exhausting.
Like we all love David Koresh, but my God, the man had to put in a lot of work just to, just to keep a cult going.
Like it just doesn't seem worth it.
Where to begin with that sentence?
Short-term cults.
Like if I could just do like a limited waco like five or six times a year over the course of like four days, that seems much better.
It's like a juicing.
Yeah.
It's a juicing of the spirit.
You're just left like you feel like you're better off.
You're probably not.
It doesn't matter because you can sleep for three days.
Yeah.
Sophie, take out, take down a podcast idea, the 40-minute Waco.
I think we could make a lot of money with this.
Anyway, back to Dr. Phil.
So what made this seminar thing that he launches with Box special is the group dynamic, getting 100 or so people together in a room, crying and sharing stories and having the kind of addictive cathartic experiences that make seminar hosts rich people.
Phil and Box were good at it.
And Dr. Phil instantly gained a reputation as a magnetic host.
One attendee recalled, quote, his voice was mic'd and he sounded godlike.
I watched powerful men crumble as he questioned them.
He knew just the right buttons to push.
Wow.
You know, it's not that he's a great psychologist, is that he is an incredibly intuitive man who understands people, which is why he's a good negotiator.
He does have a great voice.
I'll give that to him.
He does.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
He knows how to manipulate people, right?
He's a great manipulator in that you could make a lot of money doing that.
That's the most like dangerous trade in the world is understanding people, but just not caring what happens to them.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
I understand people, but care about what happens to them, which is why I tell them to buy machetes and bolt cutters and Claymore anti-personnel minds.
Yes, definitely saving lives.
By the way, when you're ordering your Claymore anti-personnel line, use promo code bastards for 15% off if you buy four or more.
Claymore.
Fuck anyone in front of you.
What?
No.
Sophie.
Robert, Dr. Phil.
Okay.
Yeah.
So this seminar series was called Pathways and it became hugely popular.
For a while, they were making fucking bank.
And the whole process of doing this awoke in Phil, or at least accelerated, a deep desire to get on TV.
He started pushing for his own talk show, schmoozing with a Hollywood producer who made the mistake of attending one of his seminars.
Phil succeeded in talking said producer into filming a pilot episode of a show where three people went through Dr. Phil's training and told their stories of like, you know, how it had helped them.
The show sounds incredibly boring, and clearly it was not picked up.
Now, over his years with Pathways, McGraw developed into a talented showman.
One of his co-workers, David Dickinson, later recalled, once he got in front of the room, it didn't take long to feel the power.
He loved being godlike and worshipped.
The only reason it didn't become a cult is because Thelma wouldn't let it.
Yeah.
Wow.
Wow.
Okay.
He really does sound like Chaos Frazier.
Yeah.
Chaos Frasier?
Yes.
Yeah.
Dr. Phil was on Frasier.
For all you Frasier heads.
Dr. Philippe.
Oh, God, you're right.
He was.
The show, the episode, The Devil and Dr. Phil.
I mean, the thing is, if you actually, Frasier was a big show for my family growing up.
And so like while my mom was dying, we watched a lot of episodes because, you know, there wasn't a lot that she could do.
And it was kind of a thing that was nostalgic for all of us.
But one of the through lines of the series is that Frasier's not a good psychologist, like not a good psychiatrist.
Like he's bad at psychology.
Like that's why he's on the radio.
He's a bit of a drifter, too.
Yeah, Niles is supposed to be good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Niles is competent.
Although problematic.
Definitely some stalking behavior from Niles.
Oh, yes.
Niles is also canceled.
Nobody on that show is a good person but John Mahoney, the only good cop, Frasier's dad.
That's absolutely true.
And not even Eddie is safe from...
No, no, from cancellation.
And honestly, not a good cop.
John Mahoney admits to lying on the stand in order to get a man incarcerated during an episode of Frasier.
It's just like an offside comment.
Yes, he absolutely does.
He's just such a damn charismatic actor.
I can't stay mad at the man.
So by the late 1980s, Pathways had moved to Dallas, where each year more than a thousand people would pay $1,000 each to attend a single weekend event with McGraw.
That's a million bucks in a weekend.
So again, great money in this.
Yeah, so Dr. Phil is, I don't know if he's a millionaire at this point, but he is well off at this point.
Now, he, unfortunately, like his dad is involved in the whole thing.
And Dr. Phil never had a great relationship with his father.
I think he was just kind of using him to get control of the thing, but like he and his dad don't get along.
They're both egomaniacs.
And to make matters worse, the older Dr. McGraw was basically just kind of like there to cash a check.
Like when he would show up on stage, he'd be like erratic and kind of say nonsense and not really help the business at all.
So worse than nothing.
Worse than nothing.
The two men started to hate each other, which a number of employees noted as somewhat hypocritical.
Quote, come on, here is a guy who was running a relationship seminar and he doesn't speak to his own father in the training room for years.
He didn't walk his own talk.
That is a fair hypocritical criticism.
Fair point.
That's hilarious, though.
And while Dr. Phil's relationship with his dad kind of went to shit, his relationship with Thelma Box, who had founded the program that made him rich and developed its curriculum, got even worse.
The Dallas Observer writes, quote, though McGraw and Box were partners for more than seven years and friends for more than a dozen, his treatment of her didn't seem much better.
On November 16th, 1992, Box received a faxed memo from McGraw informing her that he had made a tentative deal to sell his interest in Pathways to Midland philanthropist Steve Davidson.
McGraw was ready to move on, his father ready to retire.
That's why his father had sold his one-third interest, the memo informed her, to a Wichita Falls businessman.
Of course, the new partners, quote, understand yours and my relationship and know that I am committed to you as a friend and associate and expect fair treatment.
Basically, he sold me down the river, says Box, who recalls having heated discussions with McGraw about either selling her own Pathways interest or buying him out in the two weeks prior to the memo.
Phil and I hadn't been getting along.
He stopped talking to me and I knew we couldn't go on that way.
What he had neglected to tell her, she says, is that he had engineered this corporate takeover scheme by actually selling his interest more than a year earlier.
On October 15th, 1991, he signed an agreement for his sale of path for the sale of his Pathways stock for $325,000.
I absolutely told her I was selling, McGraw says.
What she didn't like was who I was selling to.
Now, you can take whoever's word you want on this, but the author of that article was giving a memo, was given a memo that McGraw sent to the buyer of his stock in which he agreed, the buyer agreed that the sale would be kept confidential from everyone, including Box.
So I'm going to go ahead and say that Phil is the liar here.
He basically knew he wanted to sell out early when his stuff was worth more than hers would be, like with only a third of it left.
She's not going to get as much money for it.
And he lies.
She's trying to buy it from him for a year after he's already sold it and he's just stonewalling her.
Yeah, it's a shitty way to treat a business partner.
It absolutely is.
Yeah.
It's like, it's hard to care about anyone involved in this, this whole situation, but he does sound like the party who wronged her.
Yeah.
And he acknowledges that the material from his first best-selling book was basically lifted entirely from the Pathways curriculum, but he has never acknowledged that Thelma Box actually wrote the curriculum he based his best-selling book on.
And they definitely didn't mention whoever Thelma Box stole it from.
So there's no.
No, and that, again, that's the thing.
Like, right?
The point is that he is a con man, not that she is particularly a victim here, you know?
It's like, I don't care about Thelma Box.
In 1989, Dr. Phil was living and working in Wichita.
He keeps going back to fucking Kansas, enjoying his Pathways money and working as a psychologist.
One of his patients was a young woman who he started and maintained a, quote, inappropriate dual relationship with.
Again, that means dual.
Yeah, he is her, he is her doctor and he is fucking her.
Oh, don't fuck your doctor.
Come on.
Yeah.
Shouldn't be doing that with the patient you're providing psychiatric care to.
Definitely don't fucking do it.
Kind of a no-no.
But also don't fuck your doctor.
He then made the relationship even more inappropriate when he hired her part-time while she was still his patient and lover, which is so many conflicts of interest.
No.
That is.
You got to give the man credit for really going out of his way to do the most unethical version of that thing he could.
You're right, Robert.
I do got it handed to you.
Critical support to Dr. Phil for managing the fucking, the fucking, I don't know, what do you, the trifecta, I guess.
I will.
My spirit is worn down.
I'll hand it to him.
Dr. Phil considers this transgression to just have been a misdemeanor.
But the journalist from the Dall behind the, the journalist who wrote that Dallas Observer article looked into the situation.
He found the woman Dr. Phil had the relationship with, and he found out a lot more besides, and it's pretty fucking sketchy.
Quote, in 1984, she was a college student returning home after her sophomore year depressed, lonely, and suicidal.
I was emotionally abused as a child, she says, and suffered from low self-esteem.
When McGraw began treating her, she says, he became fully involved in her life, demanding to know with whom she spoke, when she went to bed at night, what she did that day.
If I was depressed or anxious, his first question was, why didn't you call me?
Every time I felt bad, he insisted only he could fix me.
When she wanted to spend the following summer working for a professor at the Houston University she was attending, he persuaded her to work in his biofeedback lab in Wichita Falls.
He kept me totally dependent on him, she says.
So that's textbook abuse.
Like that's just like literally textbook abuse.
Yeah.
Couldn't be clearer.
I hate it.
I hate it so much.
On so many levels, too.
Like on multiple levels.
God, that's fucking terrible.
It's really bad.
It's really, he's a bad person, Jamie.
He's just a real bad person.
He's your employer.
Like, fucking hell.
Not to be like complimenting Dr. Oz, but by this point in the Dr. Oz story, he's performed thousands of open heart surgeries.
Again, Dr. Phil, they're both grifters.
Dr. Phil never does a single good thing, like to even the scales at all.
He's just a monster.
Right.
And you get the feeling Dr. Oz, I have never heard a complaint that he's abusive in his personal relationships.
People mostly, I've heard reports that he's kind of a narcissist, but I've never heard that he's like a monster.
Dr. Phil's a monster.
I would make a fan cam of him already.
I don't know.
I'm just, he's a useful, he's a useful comparison.
I just really hate Dr. Phil.
Yes.
So the formal complaint this woman filed led to a decision from the psychology board that Dr. Phil's practice would have to be supervised for a year.
Before that time came up, he quit his practice and moved to Dallas to start a new company, Courtroom Sciences Incorporated, or CSI, with his neighbor from Wichita.
His job was basically to use his psychology knowledge to help lawyers pick jurors.
He loved the work, particularly the adrenaline that came from the high stakes of a court case.
Dr. Phil's company was a hit and his client soon included every major airline on earth, three TV networks and dozens of Fortune 500 companies.
Before long, it came to include Oprah Winfrey.
Damn it, Oprah.
No!
Yeah.
I mean, like, you know, it's coming, but I know it's coming.
Why Oprah and airlines?
Yeah, the two sacred things in our society, Oprah and the airlines.
I want to know every single time Oprah comes into the discussion, I am like, where was Stedman on all of this?
Where does he, because Stedman, what were you fucking doing?
Stedman, where is because Steadman writes books that are alleging to be about something, but are actually about nothing, but he's, but he's nice.
So I don't care.
Yeah.
I hope that Steadman was like, something's not right, Oprah.
And she was like, I'm not listening to you, Stedman.
I'm assuming that's how their relationship works.
She was like, I'm going to make so much money, an outrageous amount of money, Stedman.
Steadman, quiet.
We're getting a yaw.
I will be able to clone you when you die, Stedman.
That's how much money I'm going to make off this.
Maybe that's what solves him.
I used to do little fan drawings of Stedman, Graham, and the barefoot Contessa's husband hanging out.
That's very unsettling, Jamie.
They would just be like sharing an umbrella.
Anyways.
So Oprah had made the questionable decision to do an episode of her show on the dangers of disease in the American beef supply.
A bunch of Texas cattlemen sued her for fraud, defamation, and, you know, just hurting their businesses.
Now, I have no idea who's in the right here, and I really don't care.
The case looked like to be going badly for Oprah until she brought in Dr. Phil to be a part of her trial team.
He instantly recognized her as someone he could make money off of, and he set to work charming her.
Phil did his job.
He coached her and the defense team in how to respond under questioning, and he won Oprah's adoration.
And to his credit, it seems like he did a good job because she was exonerated.
Oh, wow.
And after the case ended in her favor, she did a verdict episode of her show from Amarillo, Texas, where for the first time, she introduced Dr. Phil McGraw to a national audience.
She called him one of the smartest men in the world.
She was so impressed that she added that he was like literally the most intelligent man she'd met in her 12 years of talking to medical experts.
She said she wanted to share his brilliance with the world.
Erotic Podcast Verdict00:04:40
Yeah.
This hyperbole is going to get and we are we are going to talk about where this hyperbole gets all of us in part two of our epic series Dr. Phil.
What a what a dick what is that the subtitle of yep Perfect fuck fucking A Dr. Phil Come on you're a dick.
Could you not?
Could you not?
Could you just go back to football?
I feel like one more head injury could really solve a lot of our problems as a country.
The thing is like that every single time you're like, well, god damn, I bet that if this whole football thing had gone different, the world would be a lot less Dr. Phil.
Yeah, I don't even necessarily want his football career to have gone well if he just gotten hit 20% harder, you know?
That would have been enough for me.
Okay, okay.
You know what?
I see your point of view.
Yeah.
Anyway, Jamie, you got any pluggables you want to drop?
Yeah, just the usuals.
You can listen to Vectal Cast, the Leta podcast, and my urine mensa on iHeartRadio.
And then I have a new podcast coming up about Kathy Comics in June that Sophie's producing.
I'm excited.
Check out Jamie's erotic Kathy podcast.
I assume it's erotic.
Is that correct?
No.
I mean, it's very, you know what?
I admit, you know, I wish that Kathy was having a lot of sex, but you can't do that in the newspapers.
Not then.
I mean, it doesn't, she doesn't need to be having sex for the podcast about Kathy to just be like the fundamental, the fundamental eros of Kathy is so overwhelming, you know?
Yeah.
You just, you just hear that last name, Gus White, and there's still time.
There's still time.
There's still time.
I'll let her know.
Fixed it in post.
It's going to be an erotic podcast.
Can you make it hornier, Kathy?
Just like 12%.
Anyway, I hope the rest of you have a day that's 12% hornier.
We'll be back Thursday.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modern.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.