Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Dr. Phil Is Even Worse Than You Think And You Probably Think He Sucks
Aired: 2021-05-13
Duration: 01:11:50


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=== Life Laws and Logic (15:37) ===

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[00:02:28]  Hey, everybody.
[00:02:29]  Before we get into the episode, I wanted to talk about a fundraiser we're doing now.
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[00:03:08]  Thank you all so much.
[00:03:15]  Hello.
[00:03:16]  This is Behind the Bastards podcast.
[00:03:21]  Robert, you just had to look out haunted house.
[00:03:23]  Yeah, I don't know.
[00:03:25]  I never come into this show with a plan.
[00:03:28]  Like, I write 10,000 words a week to do this show, and then I consistently just completely fuck the introductions.
[00:03:36]  I think it's nice.
[00:03:38]  I think it's fun brand consistency.
[00:03:42]  That's our robber.
[00:03:43]  People are thinking.
[00:03:44]  That's Robert.
[00:03:45]  It's, you know, it's easy to have a consistent brand when your brand is being like a brain-damaged drug addict who is incapable of doing anything but writing long essays about bad people.
[00:04:01]  Simple brand, I think that's you're being reductive.
[00:04:04]  But also when people hear you say things like that about theirselves or about yourself, they go, that's our Robert.
[00:04:11]  I go, oh, my son.
[00:04:13]  So, so pure, so humble.
[00:04:18]  So probably shouldn't be trusted with large machinery anyway, definitely not.
[00:04:23]  You know who else shouldn't be trusted with large machinery?
[00:04:25]  Because of the horrible head injury.
[00:04:28]  Dr Phil, oh okay, I thought that was you introducing me.
[00:04:32]  I was like this is really me.
[00:04:34]  No you're, Jamie.
[00:04:35]  I would trust you with heavy machinery, although you don't have a driver's license, do you?
[00:04:40]  I don't have a driver's license, but it hasn't stopped me from driving hell yeah yeah well, good for you Jamie, I could probably get it.
[00:04:49]  I, I keep, I get like, i'm like I could probably get a driver's license if I really wanted to.
[00:04:54]  I just don't want to.
[00:04:54]  That's not true.
[00:04:55]  I've, i've failed the test several times.
[00:04:57]  The the key thing about cops, Jamie and this is some free advice for all of you out there they're never ready for you to just tuck and roll.
[00:05:04]  You know like, if this, as long as you're driving a cheap car, if they start to pull you over, just tuck and roll and then book it like I guarantee you they will not be ready.
[00:05:15]  Yeah, I like it, they're just not going to be ready.
[00:05:18]  Um and anyway, we should probably talk about dr Phil some huh sure yeah, let's probably probably chill out with our fill out.
[00:05:30]  I need to go actually that's, that's fair.
[00:05:34]  What if I just logged out of this this?
[00:05:36]  This has been the final episode of Behind The Bastards.
[00:05:38]  I'm so sorry.
[00:05:40]  All right yeah, let's chill out with our fill out.
[00:05:43]  Just a big old pudgy no, bald-headed Phil just flopping around yes, with a nice moussaw like him, flopping around like a like a skink on a hot rock.
[00:05:55]  Okay um okay, later that year.
[00:05:59]  So dr Phil helps Oprah out um and and like saves her, saves her bacon um, and she brings him on her show and does her like verdict episode statement much.
[00:06:11]  She was getting like sued for a lot of money and defamation and shit, like it was potentially something that would have really damaged her, her bottom line.
[00:06:20]  I was like I don't know this lingo.
[00:06:21]  Okay, so Dr Phil later that year would become a regular part of her show um, and this was part of a pivot in Oprah's show where she went from like doing a normal talk show um, to what she called Change your life tv.
[00:06:35]  Yeah, the goal of change your life tv was to take the experience people had in Phil seminars the very public crowd influenced catharsis of emotional change and put that shit on television for everybody to watch.
[00:06:46]  Mostly this involves dr Phil confronting people aggressively about their flaws so they would cry and say they learned something.
[00:06:53]  Quote, this is dr Phil explaining his methodology.
[00:06:58]  Yeah, in order for people to change, there has to be a dramatic event.
[00:07:01]  I think coming on the Opra Show as an event in itself is a watershed occurrence in people's lives.
[00:07:06]  They get Told the bottom line truth about where they are.
[00:07:08]  And in that environment, I don't think they will ever forget it.
[00:07:11]  If you embarrass people on national television, they remember.
[00:07:17]  I mean, that's, you know, that's not untrue.
[00:07:21]  That's not untrue.
[00:07:23]  Okay.
[00:07:23]  Okay.
[00:07:24]  Accurate.
[00:07:25]  Dr. Phil.
[00:07:26]  Accurate.
[00:07:28]  Jesus.
[00:07:28]  Okay.
[00:07:31]  Yeah.
[00:07:32]  So, um, so he's really like heading into the villain years.
[00:07:37]  Yeah.
[00:07:37]  Yeah.
[00:07:37]  He's, he's all, I mean, he's been in villain territory this whole time.
[00:07:41]  Right.
[00:07:41]  Um, so on Oprah's show, Dr. Phil focused on clients whose problems were fit things he could justify yelling about to them or yelling at them for.
[00:07:50]  One early case was a husband who was verbally abusive to his wife, calling her obscene names.
[00:07:56]  Phil could not just condemn the man, but he like didn't just condemn the man.
[00:08:01]  He made the man's wife tearfully recount everything he said to her on TV.
[00:08:06]  So like he's yelling at this guy for being a dick, but he's also demanding that this woman like in detail explain every horrible thing her husband said about her to millions of strangers.
[00:08:16]  Right.
[00:08:16]  Like the classic air out the worst thing that's ever happened to ratings for someone else.
[00:08:21]  Love that.
[00:08:22]  I don't think is great.
[00:08:24]  You know, I don't think that's great behavior would be my take on it.
[00:08:29]  Not a psychologist, but Phil isn't really a psychologist either.
[00:08:33]  So Phil then, after making this woman laborously explain the horrible things her husband said to her, got to help provide some of his own homespun wisdom.
[00:08:42]  In this case, he told the wife, you taught him how to treat you.
[00:08:46]  Now, this is a variation of one of Dr. Phil's life laws for people to follow, which he published in his plagiarized best-selling book, Life Strategies. Quote, we teach people how to treat us, own, rather than complain about how people treat us.
[00:09:03]  My mom has a book, Robert.
[00:09:06]  Did she blame herself for people being shitty to her?
[00:09:09]  For until about 2008?
[00:09:11]  Yeah.
[00:09:12]  Yeah.
[00:09:12]  Okay.
[00:09:13]  Well, yeah, that's good.
[00:09:14]  Life strategies, self matters, the ultimate weight solution.
[00:09:18]  God, I hate all of his titles.
[00:09:19]  Yeah.
[00:09:20]  We had them.
[00:09:20]  Relationship rescue.
[00:09:22]  We had that.
[00:09:23]  It wasn't on the main shelf, but it was in the house.
[00:09:25]  It was in the house.
[00:09:26]  It was somewhere up in there.
[00:09:28]  Yeah.
[00:09:28]  Well, I don't know.
[00:09:30]  Did it rescue your relationships?
[00:09:32]  Absolutely not.
[00:09:33]  I think what we got more out of John Edwards.
[00:09:37]  Do you remember him?
[00:09:38]  Or John Edwards?
[00:09:39]  Oh, yeah.
[00:09:40]  The talk to the dead guy?
[00:09:42]  Yeah, the one who would like record people in the audience talking about the dead people they wanted to hear from and then walking out and being like, aha.
[00:09:51]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:09:52]  Yeah.
[00:09:54]  That was a fun grift.
[00:09:55]  I mean, also, but also a traumatizing one.
[00:09:58]  They're all traumatizing.
[00:09:59]  They are all traumatizing grifts.
[00:10:01]  That's what makes them so satisfying.
[00:10:03]  Wow.
[00:10:04]  Wow.
[00:10:05]  We all learned a lesson, didn't we?
[00:10:08]  No.
[00:10:09]  No, we didn't.
[00:10:10]  So what's he up to?
[00:10:11]  What's he doing?
[00:10:12]  All right.
[00:10:12]  So Dr. Fucking Phil.
[00:10:14]  So I want to talk a little bit more about these life laws that he lays out in his first book, because this is a major reoccurring theme, especially in early Dr. Phil.
[00:10:23]  Like people will, he'll critique people by explaining which life law they violated, like the one where you're responsible for other people treating you shitty because we teach people how to treat us.
[00:10:33]  Which is like an inversion of the truth, which is that if you're like abusers and predators are good at spotting your vulnerabilities and taking advantage of them, right?
[00:10:43]  And so you need to be aware of your own vulnerabilities because you need to be aware of how dangerous people might take advantage of you.
[00:10:50]  That's the non-toxic way of framing that.
[00:10:53]  The toxic way is, hey, you taught him to be like that.
[00:10:56]  Like, no, you didn't.
[00:10:57]  He saw that you had this vulnerability and you took advantage of it.
[00:10:59]  That's a fair way to put it.
[00:11:01]  It's one of the most abuse, abusive tactics in the book.
[00:11:03]  Like, well, actually, it was your fault.
[00:11:05]  And if you weren't so weak, this wouldn't have happened to you.
[00:11:08]  It's just like, oh, go off and I want to try this logic with like crimes.
[00:11:15]  Like the next time I'm caught speeding, like, look, officer, you taught me how to drive this car that way.
[00:11:20]  Like by having the road be this straight and me be this drunk, you kind of taught me to speed, you know?
[00:11:26]  I will say that every time I try to teach my dog something, that is a some that it's a very low stakes version of that.
[00:11:33]  They're like, well, didn't you teach him he could cuckoo on your floor when you don't feel like standing up?
[00:11:38]  And I was like, yes, I guess I did.
[00:11:44]  Christ in heaven.
[00:11:46]  Okay.
[00:11:46]  So here's how he introduces the concept of life laws in his book.
[00:11:52]  Quote, Life laws are the rules of the game.
[00:11:54]  No one is going to ask you if you think these laws are fair or if you think they should exist.
[00:11:58]  Like the law of gravity, they simply are.
[00:12:01]  You don't get a vote.
[00:12:02]  You can ignore them and stumble along, wondering why you never seem to succeed.
[00:12:06]  Or you can learn them, adapt to them, mold your choices and behavior to them, and live effectively.
[00:12:11]  Learning these life laws is at the absolute core of what you must master in this book to have the essential knowledge for a personal life strategy.
[00:12:21]  What kind of he went from zero to being like my laws, much like the law of gravity.
[00:12:27]  That is like, that is galaxy brain that are as unavoidable and unchanging as the tide.
[00:12:38]  Yes, yes.
[00:12:39]  Gravity.
[00:12:40]  Oh, God.
[00:12:41]  You have to appreciate the flagrancy on display there.
[00:12:46]  Jesus.
[00:12:46]  Yeah.
[00:12:47]  It's, you know, it's good, Jamie.
[00:12:49]  It's like you're you being abused being your fault.
[00:12:52]  To me, that's gravity.
[00:12:54]  It's like, oh, I want to put you through a shredder.
[00:12:57]  Yeah.
[00:12:57]  Wow.
[00:12:58]  Yeah, that would be fun.
[00:12:59]  And I think we could probably get a pretty good primetime TV audience if we actually did that, Jamie.
[00:13:04]  If someone put Dr. Phil through a gigantic watch.
[00:13:10]  Like that scene in Fargo.
[00:13:14]  That's kind of like that's where his story is building.
[00:13:16]  Oh, fuck.
[00:13:16]  We get Steve Bushimian to present.
[00:13:18]  That's a fucking hour of TV right there.
[00:13:21]  There you go.
[00:13:22]  There you go.
[00:13:23]  And I'm sure he'd be happy to do it.
[00:13:25]  I'm sure he would.
[00:13:26]  Now, I bet, Jamie, you're hungry for some more of Dr. Phil's life laws.
[00:13:31]  I can see it in your eyes.
[00:13:33]  You're just, you're just, you're just, yeah, absolutely.
[00:13:35]  So most of these laws are pretty self-explanatory.
[00:13:40]  Stuff like life rewards action and you cannot change what you do not acknowledge.
[00:13:45]  My favorite is people do what works, which boils down to the idea that we engage in bad behavior because it rewards us in some way.
[00:13:52]  So, Dr. Phil says, if you want to stop the behavior, stop rewarding yourself for it, which makes sense until you think about the way, say, heroin or junk food works, because you can't stop it from the reward is the thing, right?
[00:14:05]  Like, these are all so manipulatively worded.
[00:14:09]  Yeah, the next time you take heroin, punch yourself in the dick so you don't enjoy it as much.
[00:14:15]  I don't know.
[00:14:16]  Yeah, how do you like statistically?
[00:14:20]  Most of the kind of people who want advice from me are going to be dealing with something like weight loss.
[00:14:23]  And it's like, no, the reward is eating food.
[00:14:26]  Like, that's that strategy isn't going to help, you know?
[00:14:31]  It's so frustrating, too, because it's like the way they're worded is so deliberate that it's like, oh, I understand why people fell for this, too.
[00:14:40]  Oh, yeah.
[00:14:40]  Yeah.
[00:14:41]  Yeah.
[00:14:42]  It's just all, it's just very, um, very transparent nonsense for the most part.
[00:14:48]  Yeah, it's words in a, in a certain sequence and charging you, uh, you know, $18.95 for a hard cover.
[00:14:55]  You got to give the man credit.
[00:14:57]  It is words in a sequence.
[00:14:59]  That is undeniable that Dr. Phil.
[00:15:03]  That was a sentence.
[00:15:04]  That's a the man uses sentences, you know?
[00:15:07]  You got to give that to him.
[00:15:09]  You can't take that from him.
[00:15:11]  So, yeah, some of his rules are, however, a little more sinister.
[00:15:15]  Probably the worst.
[00:15:16]  Well, one of the worst is, I don't know, there's a lot of worsts.
[00:15:19]  One is you create your own experiences.
[00:15:22]  Here's how he explains that one: don't play the role of victim or use past events to build excuses.
[00:15:28]  It guarantees you no progress, no healing, and no victory.
[00:15:31]  You will never fix a problem by blaming someone else.
[00:15:34]  That's first of all, not true.
[00:15:38]  And that's just like, I mean, yeah, he's just clearly not even good at the job he's getting famous for saying he's good at.
[00:15:45]  That's so backwards.
[00:15:47]  Yeah, it's it's I mean he sounds like a fucking Catholic priest.
[00:15:52]  He's like, well, push your emotions down, okay?
[00:15:56]  It's just such bad, it's particularly all bad advice for like abuse victims.
[00:16:00]  Because if you're an abuse victim, in a lot of cases, part of the healing process is realizing that your abuser is the person to blame and that all these things they got you to blame yourself for aren't things you did wrong.
[00:16:12]  And that they like that, that's a big part of healing from that sort of thing.
[00:16:15]  And he's just like, nah, nah, nah, don't be blaming this guy because he was beating you.
[00:16:19]  Maybe you didn't do the laundry right, you know?
[00:16:22]  Maybe you should have got him his beer faster.
[00:16:24]  I'm Dr. Phil.
[00:16:24]  I'm a doctor.
[00:16:25]  You know, like, God damn it.
[00:16:27]  I really don't like this guy.
[00:16:29]  Yeah, I also want to read you the, we said earlier, one of his rules is we teach people how to treat us, but the actual wording in the book of how he explains that is even creepier than you might guess.
[00:16:39]  Quote, you either teach people to treat you with dignity and respect or you don't.
[00:16:43]  This means you are partly responsible for the mistreatment that you get at the hands of someone else.
[00:16:48]  You shape others' behavior when you teach them what they can get away with and what they cannot.
[00:16:52]  This is like, oh, God, you're just like, oh, God.
[00:16:54]  Okay.
[00:16:54]  So what did you do that you need to believe this in order to live with yourself?
[00:16:59]  Yeah, right.
[00:17:00]  Jesus fucking Christ.
[00:17:02]  Yeah, he's he's really a bad person.
[00:17:04]  I don't like him.
[00:17:05]  This is in my house.
[00:17:06]  Wow.
[00:17:06]  It was next to, I like clearly remember it being next to my mom's bed.
[00:17:12]  Yeah, like, you know, it's the good book.
[00:17:14]  You gotta, gotta keep it close to you.
[00:17:16]  We didn't own the Bible.
[00:17:17]  We owned life strategies, the John Edward book, and that other one by that guy who said he could talk to dead people.
[00:17:26]  I forget who it was.
[00:17:26]  Oh, John Edwards.
[00:17:28]  There's a lot of dead people talking.
[00:17:29]  Yeah.
[00:17:30]  So despite the fundamental emptiness of Phil's philosophy, or perhaps because of it, Dr. Phil became a wild success.
[00:17:37]  His first episode ran in 2002 of the Dr. Phil show, like he spun off pretty quickly, and he's been on the air ever since.
[00:17:45]  He instinctively knew that the real money in this sort of TV was leaning in towards the most tragic and risque stories, drug addiction, spousal abuse, troubled teens, all that good shit.
[00:17:57]  He was happy to throw medical best practices out the window.

=== Dr. Phil's Lucrative Strategy (11:43) ===

[00:18:00]  In 2004, he interviewed a nine-year-old boy whose parents said he was being abusive towards his younger sister.
[00:18:06]  Dr. Phil said the child had nine of the 14 characteristics of a serial killer.
[00:18:11]  Then he added, Jeffrey Dahmer had seven.
[00:18:14]  Jesus.
[00:18:15]  Oh my God.
[00:18:18]  That was a very well-crafted insult.
[00:18:20]  That's beautiful.
[00:18:22]  Yeah.
[00:18:22]  It's like, so any reputable psychologist or psychiatrist will tell you that one thing you can't do, as in like, it's forbidden in the discipline, is to diagnose a child as a psychopath.
[00:18:39]  You're not allowed to do that because they're children.
[00:18:43]  Their brains are developing and shackling a child with that diagnosis is incredibly unethical.
[00:18:49]  Dr. Phil did it on national television.
[00:18:53]  He did it.
[00:18:54]  Isn't he still doing it on national television?
[00:18:57]  I mean, yes, yes, yes.
[00:18:58]  He does this all the fucking time.
[00:18:59]  Yes.
[00:18:59]  Yes.
[00:19:00]  From a write-up by BuzzFeed, quote, Dr. Phil purports to be a mental health professional, but he's diagnosing from videotape on the air, said then executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Michael Fitzpatrick to the Washington Post in a 2004 story about Dr. Phil's bad psychotherapy.
[00:19:17]  It's unethical to do that sort of, if you will, pop psychology.
[00:19:20]  You don't do that for ratings.
[00:19:22]  This is a human being.
[00:19:23]  A spokesperson for Dr. Phil at the time said that McGraw never labeled the child as mentally ill, which is technically true.
[00:19:30]  He merely brought up Jeffrey Dahmer.
[00:19:32]  So there you go.
[00:19:33]  This is like just next level.
[00:19:36]  It all rings like semi-familiar.
[00:19:39]  It is kind of like interesting to think about how used to as a culture, how used to we are of like Dr. Phil saying the most fucked up thing he could possibly think of at a child because he's been doing it for 25 years.
[00:19:51]  Yeah.
[00:19:52]  And I love how from the beginning.
[00:19:54]  Yeah, I was like, oh, that wasn't an escalation.
[00:19:56]  It was just always that.
[00:19:58]  No, people have been complaining about Dr. Phil in this way from the very beginning of his career, and it has never made a difference for a single second.
[00:20:08]  And it's never made him less money, it doesn't seem like.
[00:20:10]  This is so fucking bleak.
[00:20:12]  I think it's just made him more money, which is good.
[00:20:15]  I mean, he picked a good life strategy, you know?
[00:20:17]  You have more money than I do.
[00:20:19]  So Dr. Phil stopped renewing his license to practice as a psychologist in 2006.
[00:20:25]  He has never held a valid license in California where his show is filmed.
[00:20:29]  A spokesperson for his show confirmed that he stopped renewing his license because he, quote, no longer worked as a therapist, which I don't disagree with.
[00:20:40]  But I would argue he is absolutely marketing himself as a therapist and is still in the business of therapy.
[00:20:46]  He's presenting himself as someone who has a license.
[00:20:49]  He for sure is.
[00:20:51]  And he's not just still doing therapy on his show.
[00:20:54]  He is selling products to companies that make their whole, all of their money from doing therapy.
[00:21:00]  Like he, I'll get into that now.
[00:21:03]  A Stat News Boston Globe investigation several years ago revealed that Dr. Phil and his son, some dude named Jay, started a business called Dr. Phil's Path to Recovery and the late aughts.
[00:21:15]  This was a virtual reality addiction recovery program where a VR Dr. Phil would walk you through exercises to help you get and stay sober.
[00:21:23]  From BuzzFeed, quote, users don virtual reality goggles and are placed in scenarios with Dr. Phil.
[00:21:28]  In one, McGraw sits at a bar, arms folded across his chest, counseling his visitor on how to avoid the triggers of an evening out when alcohol is present.
[00:21:36]  In another scene, he reclines in jeans on the backyard patio of his sprawling estate, sparkling pool and fuchsia flowers behind him and a wide blue sky above, and shares coping strategies.
[00:21:47]  You'll leave these sessions feeling as though you just had an eye-opening and insightful conversation about your life with Dr. Phil, the Path to Recovery website promises.
[00:21:56]  The product is described as the culmination of more than four decades of experience Dr. Phil has working in the mental health profession and addiction recovery.
[00:22:06]  So that sounds helpful.
[00:22:07]  That's, yeah, that would thank you for that clarifying statement.
[00:22:12]  Now, obviously, there's absolutely no evidence that this program helps with addiction in any way.
[00:22:16]  A disclaimer on the website says that it is, quote, solely for general information purposes and is, quote, not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical health, mental or psychological problem or condition.
[00:22:27]  The worst kind of person, the worst kind of person, because now he's just outright targeting the most vulnerable people he can.
[00:22:34]  It's like, it was, I didn't care when he was targeting other grifters.
[00:22:37]  Yeah.
[00:22:37]  And he's not even doing it in a situation where they can choose to be grifted by him.
[00:22:42]  Because by the time they're in addiction recovery, like they're already paying.
[00:22:46]  They probably don't even know that this fucking thing is there.
[00:22:49]  Right.
[00:22:50]  Yeah.
[00:22:50]  Now, despite the fact that there's no evidence that this thing helps in any way, a number of addiction recovery programs purchased Path to Recovery to use.
[00:22:59]  You want to guess why they bought it?
[00:23:00]  Why?
[00:23:01]  Because Dr. Phil gave them free advertising on their show if they bought it.
[00:23:05]  No.
[00:23:06]  Oh, he's a business boy.
[00:23:08]  He's a business boy.
[00:23:09]  He's a good business boy.
[00:23:10]  He's a really good business boy.
[00:23:12]  Yeah.
[00:23:12]  Dr. Phil offered addiction treatment centers free endorsements on both the Dr. Phil show and his spin-off series, The Doctors, if they first bought his program.
[00:23:20]  BuzzFeed managed to get a hold of audio of one of these pitch sessions where McGraw's salesman told a customer, Our job is to get your phones to ring and the admissions hopefully follow.
[00:23:31]  He bragged that Dr. Phil's viewers were older, high-income people, not the addict calling because I told my mom I'd do it.
[00:23:38]  Oh my fucking God.
[00:23:42]  Okay, so we've arrived at cartoon villainy.
[00:23:46]  We sure have Jamie Loftus.
[00:23:47]  Oh, really?
[00:23:48]  We sure as shit have.
[00:23:50]  Okay.
[00:23:52]  Does Oprah ever.
[00:23:54]  Because I forget, because over the years, Oprah has endorsed a number of questionable people.
[00:24:00]  And sometimes.
[00:24:01]  Shout out, John of God.
[00:24:03]  And shout out, what's his name?
[00:24:05]  Who wrote a million little pieces?
[00:24:07]  Oh, yeah, Jonathan Frey, right?
[00:24:08]  Yeah.
[00:24:09]  Yeah.
[00:24:10]  She's had to apologize for having endorsed a lot of fucked up people over the years.
[00:24:16]  Has that moment has never happened for Dr. Phil, right?
[00:24:20]  She's never backed off.
[00:24:21]  Did she ever back off from him at any point?
[00:24:23]  No, They're still deeply tied together.
[00:24:26]  Why would she ever back off on him?
[00:24:27]  I guess that's true.
[00:24:29]  God.
[00:24:30]  Yep.
[00:24:30]  Deadman.
[00:24:32]  How are you?
[00:24:34]  Okay.
[00:24:34]  Well, that was the question I wanted a better answer to.
[00:24:37]  Yeah.
[00:24:38]  Accept the truth.
[00:24:39]  The truth is that why would she care?
[00:24:41]  She's doing just fine.
[00:24:44]  Yeah, she has plenty of money.
[00:24:46]  So like, what do you expect her to do, Jamie?
[00:24:49]  I don't know.
[00:24:50]  I don't know.
[00:24:51]  It's like, you can't expect anyone with that much money to be a good person.
[00:24:53]  You're just setting yourself up.
[00:24:55]  Yeah, you're just asking to be sad because they just ask me to be whack-a-mole right now.
[00:25:00]  Yeah, they never will be.
[00:25:02]  Because it's not lucrative to be a good person.
[00:25:04]  It's the opposite of lucrative to be a good person.
[00:25:06]  That's true.
[00:25:07]  That's true.
[00:25:08]  Yeah.
[00:25:08]  Yeah.
[00:25:09]  You know what is lucrative, though, Jamie?
[00:25:11]  Shilling the products and services that support this podcast.
[00:25:17]  What's up, everyone?
[00:25:18]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:25:19]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:25:26]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:25:30]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:25:33]  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.
[00:25:38]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:25:41]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
[00:25:45]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:25:50]  Yeah.
[00:25:50]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:25:53]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:25:54]  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.
[00:26:03]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:26:05]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:26:12]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:26:14]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:26:15]  There's a lot in life.
[00:26:16]  Yeah.
[00:26:17]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:26:27]  10-10 shots five, city hall building.
[00:26:30]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:26:34]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.
[00:26:38]  This is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:26:40]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:26:42]  Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:26:45]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:26:51]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:26:54]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:27:03]  Everybody in the chamber ducks.
[00:27:05]  A shocking public murder.
[00:27:07]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:27:09]  Those are shots.
[00:27:10]  Those are shots.
[00:27:10]  Get down.
[00:27:11]  A charismatic politician.
[00:27:12]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:27:15]  I still have a weapon.
[00:27:17]  And I could shoot you.
[00:27:20]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:27:22]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:27:25]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:27:27]  That may have been about sex.
[00:27:29]  Listening to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:27:32]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:27:42]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:27:46]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:27:49]  If you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:27:52]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:27:55]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:27:59]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:28:03]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:28:05]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:28:10]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:28:12]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:28:13]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:28:15]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:28:18]  They said, oh, hell no.
[00:28:20]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:28:22]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:28:27]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:28:29]  Trust me, babe.
[00:28:30]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:28:39]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:28:45]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:28:50]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:28:55]  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.
[00:29:05]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:29:10]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:29:13]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:29:16]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:29:18]  That's so funny.
[00:29:19]  Shariach stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:29:28]  Say you love me.
[00:29:31]  You know I.
[00:29:32]  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.
[00:29:42]  Oh, we're back.

=== Caitlin's Heroic Story (14:23) ===

[00:29:44]  And I am just having a great time talking with my friend Jayloft about Dr. Dr. Philomar.
[00:29:55]  What's his middle name?
[00:29:56]  What's his middle name?
[00:29:57]  Oh, that's disappointing.
[00:29:58]  Philip Calvin, McGraw.
[00:30:00]  Calvin, yeah.
[00:30:00]  Jamie, I just talked to you about how Dr. Phil has this VR addiction treatment thing.
[00:30:05]  And he basically gives people, gives like treatment centers free advertising if they buy it.
[00:30:11]  I hate it.
[00:30:12]  Okay.
[00:30:12]  You want to guess the quality of the facilities that take Dr. Phil up on this offer?
[00:30:17]  Only the best, right?
[00:30:18]  Is it worse than nothing?
[00:30:20]  Oh, Jamie, it's a lot worse than nothing in some cases.
[00:30:23]  One facility that took Dr. Phil up on this author offer was Inspirations for Youth and Families, a Fort Lauderdale-based treatment center for teenagers.
[00:30:33]  Phil actually highlighted the facility run by Corcoran Walsh on his show the day he announced his new VR program, saying, we think outside the box in designing what addicts need.
[00:30:43]  What you need is something that pops out of the noise, something that rises above the noise, like a distinctive voice.
[00:30:48]  And that voice, in this case, is me.
[00:30:51]  Dr. Phil then introduced Walsh, saying she ran the nation's leading family addiction treatment and dual diagnosis center.
[00:30:58]  BuzzFeed actually investigated the facility and found that it had a well-documented history of children escaping and getting into danger.
[00:31:05]  Steven Sardouy, a PI who was hired to find two different girls who escaped from the facility and disappeared, said, it seems to be an ongoing problem in that particular facility.
[00:31:15]  Obviously, there's a gap somewhere, a loophole somewhere in the system where they're just leaving.
[00:31:20]  In the last two years, Inspiration staff members made 180 reports to police about children in their care going missing.
[00:31:26]  Sometimes the teens, sometimes the teens left for days or even escaped the state.
[00:31:30]  One escapee wound up prostituting herself for drugs.
[00:31:33]  A number of the teens wound up finding drugs one way or another after getting out of the facility.
[00:31:38]  Six were arrested.
[00:31:39]  Two were hospitalized.
[00:31:40]  One group who escaped together later robbed a homeless man.
[00:31:44]  BuzzFeed talked to Jill Walters of South Carolina, whose 17-year-old escaped from Inspirations in 2016 and wound up on the street in Miami.
[00:31:53]  She explained why she initially had chosen Inspirations to help her boy.
[00:31:57]  Quote, they touted this.
[00:31:58]  We were on Dr. Phil.
[00:32:00]  They use that as we must be a great facility because we were on Dr. Phil.
[00:32:04]  Well, that has nothing to do with how the facility is run.
[00:32:06]  You entrust your child to the care of these people and something like this happens.
[00:32:10]  It's good shit.
[00:32:12]  God, that's I, that, that, that, it wouldn't stop getting worse.
[00:32:19]  That is so fucking off.
[00:32:21]  It's like, I mean, it's pretty bad.
[00:32:23]  It's pretty, pretty bad, Jamie.
[00:32:25]  It speaks to like, yeah, just the level of clout he, but he's, he still upholds too, because it's like, yeah, I guess that if you think about it for a while, you're like, oh, well, he's not a licensed doctor.
[00:32:37]  And look at what he's actually saying.
[00:32:39]  But it's like the world was reinforcing his bullshit for so long.
[00:32:43]  That is so evil.
[00:32:45]  Oh, my God.
[00:32:46]  Yep.
[00:32:47]  It is evil, Jamie.
[00:32:49]  Sure, it.
[00:32:50]  But you know what's not evil?
[00:32:52]  What?
[00:32:53]  The products and services that I just advertised on this podcast that we're not actually cutting to again.
[00:32:58]  I just, I have a problem, Jamie.
[00:32:59]  I have a problem.
[00:33:00]  You can't stop thinking about it.
[00:33:02]  And I can't stop pivoting to ads, you know?
[00:33:05]  You're just, you've been, I mean, I'm, you know what, Jamie?
[00:33:09]  I'm an addict.
[00:33:12]  Oh, my God.
[00:33:13]  Get it?
[00:33:14]  Oh, oh, yeah.
[00:33:16]  I know.
[00:33:17]  Can you explain that to me?
[00:33:19]  I hated it.
[00:33:19]  That one's a good one.
[00:33:20]  That one's a, that's a keeper.
[00:33:22]  You know what?
[00:33:23]  We're done with the episode.
[00:33:24]  Go home.
[00:33:25]  I nailed it.
[00:33:27]  Wow.
[00:33:27]  Wow.
[00:33:28]  We got to end with Dr. Phil ruining the lives of children.
[00:33:31]  I mean, I guess that that is where the story is going to end no matter what.
[00:33:34]  It's where it began and it's where it'll end.
[00:33:36]  Yeah.
[00:33:37]  It's where it's how it will continue, I guess.
[00:33:40]  Dr. Phil.
[00:33:42]  Just kill me now.
[00:33:45]  I, God.
[00:33:45]  Okay.
[00:33:46]  I am going to, I am going to continue to advocate for putting Dr. Phil through a gigantic human-sized shredder on live TV.
[00:33:54]  I think that that is the kind of dystopian television.
[00:33:56]  Like we're already at Mask Singer.
[00:33:59]  That's the next logical step for me.
[00:34:01]  Fair enough.
[00:34:02]  Put a hated, a hated evil person through a shredder.
[00:34:05]  It's the modern guillotine.
[00:34:07]  Big old shredder.
[00:34:08]  Yeah, it's the best way to do anything, really.
[00:34:11]  Yeah.
[00:34:11]  Is a shredder.
[00:34:15]  Anyway, Jamie, Jayloft, Jaloftis, Joe Loft.
[00:34:22]  Joe Loft?
[00:34:22]  Sure.
[00:34:23]  Oh, God.
[00:34:24]  Yes.
[00:34:25]  We're actually still talking about inspirations.
[00:34:27]  So court records also reveal that the center's co-owner, Christopher Walsh, is by his own admission, a habitual drunkard who in 2015 sued a resort for serving him alcohol, saying they should have known he couldn't handle it.
[00:34:39]  And boy, howdy, does it ever get worse?
[00:34:42]  Let's talk about Todd Herzog.
[00:34:44]  Yeah.
[00:34:45]  Oh, yeah.
[00:34:45]  Boy.
[00:34:46]  Yeah.
[00:34:46]  That's the end of the inspiration stuff.
[00:34:48]  So Todd Herzog was another, was a repeated guest on the Dr. Phil show.
[00:34:53]  Now, Todd's backstory is that he won survivor back in the early aughts.
[00:34:56]  He got like a million dollars and then became a horrible, like developed a horrific addiction to alcohol, like a life-threatening addiction.
[00:35:04]  Now, Dr. Phil and his producers must have salivated at the combination of disastrous alcoholic and reality TV star.
[00:35:11]  Here's how Stat News described what happened next.
[00:35:14]  Quote, Herzog told Stat and the Boston Globe that he was not intoxicated when he arrived at the Los Angeles studio to film the Dr. Phil show.
[00:35:22]  In his dressing room, he said, he found a bottle of Smirnoff vodka.
[00:35:25]  He drank all of it.
[00:35:27]  Then someone handed him a Xanax, he said, telling him it would calm his nerves.
[00:35:32]  So this guy managed to sober himself up enough to like try to go on TV.
[00:35:40]  And Dr. Phil's people basically allegedly made sure there was a full bottle of vodka and a fucking gave him a Xanax.
[00:35:49]  Just because, you know, I think the reasoning is the more of a disaster you seem like on air, the more marketable you are.
[00:35:57]  Right, right.
[00:35:58]  Which is a proven model given the star of the show.
[00:36:01]  That is like bachelor levels of like fuckery.
[00:36:06]  Oh, no.
[00:36:07]  Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.
[00:36:08]  Let's get as close as we can to killing people.
[00:36:11]  Dear, sweet Jamie Loftus, we are not even at the worst part yet.
[00:36:16]  Oh, no.
[00:36:17]  Okay, keep going.
[00:36:18]  Keep going.
[00:36:19]  So by the time Herzog got on stage, he was so wasted that he could barely talk or function.
[00:36:25]  Dr. Phil and his assistant walked them out themselves, making a big show of helping him while highlighting just how wrecked he was.
[00:36:33]  And I want you to listen to this.
[00:36:35]  Jamie, I want you to watch this, obviously, but I want everyone at home or in your car or pooping or whatever it is you're doing.
[00:36:43]  God, I can't describe the anxiety of seeing Robert Evans has started screen sharing.
[00:36:48]  I know, I know.
[00:36:50]  I know.
[00:36:51]  All right.
[00:36:51]  Here's the Dr. Phil show.
[00:36:53]  Dr. Phil.
[00:36:54]  Hi, I'm Todd.
[00:36:56]  Nice to meet you.
[00:36:57]  How you feel, ma'am?
[00:36:58]  Can you walk?
[00:37:00]  Barely.
[00:37:01]  I have to have help.
[00:37:04]  Sorry, I'm very...
[00:37:06]  What's right?
[00:37:07]  Brandon, why don't you get over there and take Debbie's spot?
[00:37:11]  Yeah, I'll go.
[00:37:16]  I'm sorry, I'm crying because I just can't believe this is happening.
[00:37:22]  So finish come turn around.
[00:37:26]  One.
[00:37:27]  Two, three.
[00:37:29]  So that's all I want to play of that.
[00:37:31]  He can barely move.
[00:37:33]  It is fundamentally unethical to have someone in that state on your television show.
[00:37:40]  I mean, even if they had been inebriated of their own volition and being like fed drugs, that is.
[00:37:47]  Even if they had consented earlier, I don't think you can consent to that.
[00:37:55]  No, absolutely not.
[00:37:56]  Like, God, that is like the worst situation imaginable.
[00:38:02]  That is fucking evil.
[00:38:04]  Yeah, it's not, it's not good, Jamie.
[00:38:07]  It's just not a good thing to do, I would say.
[00:38:10]  I would recommend not doing that.
[00:38:12]  If I was, if someone asked me, should I take someone who has a problem with addiction and give them drugs and then film them disastrously wrecked?
[00:38:25]  I would say, no, that sounds like an evil thing to do.
[00:38:28]  That is absolute cruel.
[00:38:32]  God, it's cruel and good, Jamie.
[00:38:36]  Cruel and good.
[00:38:39]  And they just had that on in waiting rooms.
[00:38:42]  That was just what you watched while you were waiting to see the dentist.
[00:38:45]  Yeah.
[00:38:47]  Fuck.
[00:38:48]  So when questioned, representatives of the Dr. Phil show deny that they provided Herzog with alcohol and drugs.
[00:38:54]  They said junkies lie, in essence, about his claims.
[00:38:57]  And then they pointed out that they weren't a medical facility and couldn't watch their guests at all times.
[00:39:02]  The director of the treatment facility where Herzog agreed to go for help at the end of the show, however, was horrified when he saw him on television.
[00:39:10]  He was so upset by the condition that Dr. Phil let Herzog appear on air in that he refused to ever have anything to do with the Dr. Phil show again.
[00:39:19]  So this was so outrageous that it convinced the head of a treatment program that all of the free advertising the Dr. Phil show could provide was not worth the ethical compromise of dealing with that man.
[00:39:31]  I can't, I mean, I can't, you can't really hand it to him for that, but that's, I mean, that's fucking something.
[00:39:37]  That's for sure.
[00:39:38]  So bleak.
[00:39:39]  Yeah.
[00:39:39]  Yeah.
[00:39:40]  It's just, you have to really, like, you have to really do bad to convince someone of that, I think.
[00:39:47]  Like, that's a, yeah, like, that, that's throwing a lot of money out.
[00:39:52]  And I don't know, I'm not going to say all people in the rehab facility business are sketchy, but there's a lot of sketchy motherfuckers in that industry, you know?
[00:40:00]  Yeah, it's cool and good, Jamie.
[00:40:06]  Wow, I feel really not very good.
[00:40:09]  Jamie, that's thank you so much for saying that.
[00:40:12]  You know, here at Behind the Bastards, that's exactly what we go for at all.
[00:40:18]  Every time I convince myself that this is going to be a fun one, and every time, except the one time, I'm dead wrong.
[00:40:26]  Yeah.
[00:40:26]  Even worse than I could have conceived.
[00:40:28]  All I ever want is for you to feel bad.
[00:40:33]  Thank you so much.
[00:40:34]  That's my whole goal.
[00:40:35]  You know?
[00:40:36]  You're a successful person.
[00:40:37]  I'm not a hero.
[00:40:38]  I'm just, I'm a hero.
[00:40:41]  Okay.
[00:40:41]  I'm a hero.
[00:40:43]  I'm not a hero.
[00:40:45]  Todd Herzog's story does not appear to be an isolated one.
[00:40:49]  No.
[00:40:49]  Jordan Smith appeared on the Dr. Phil show in 2012 in an episode titled Young, Reckless, and Enabled.
[00:40:56]  Smith's aunt claims she contacted the show to help get her niece off of heroin.
[00:41:01]  When they arrived in LA from out of state, Jordan started going through withdrawal.
[00:41:05]  Her aunt told a show producer that her niece needed heroin and something or something else to help with the withdrawal.
[00:41:11]  The producer suggested that they go to Skid Row and buy heroin together.
[00:41:16]  She then told them not to say who made that suggestion later.
[00:41:20]  Now, guests like Smith receive free addiction treatment at an expensive center after their appearance on the show, which is why many do it.
[00:41:28]  But prior to taping, no medical treatment is provided or offered.
[00:41:32]  Smith and her family were in Los Angeles alone for two nights before taping.
[00:41:37]  A less trusting person than me might suggest that the show does this so that these people will be extra fucked up and sad when it comes time for them to be on television.
[00:41:45]  Sure, sure.
[00:41:46]  Yeah, it's very ethical.
[00:41:48]  That is extremely like, you have to be thinking so hard to come up with something like that.
[00:41:55]  It's so innocuous, naming.
[00:41:56]  Wow.
[00:41:57]  Yeah.
[00:41:57]  These people's lives are already off the fucking rails.
[00:42:00]  How can we make it a little worse?
[00:42:01]  I'm Dr. Phil.
[00:42:03]  Joel King Parrish brought her 28-year-old daughter, Caitlin, to Dr. Phil for help kicking a heroin addiction.
[00:42:09]  Caitlin was six months pregnant at the time.
[00:42:11]  Her mother assumed that when they landed, they would receive medical attention, since withdrawal could endanger the fetus.
[00:42:17]  But when Caitlin's mom asked the staff for help, they told her to, quote, take care of it.
[00:42:22]  She took her daughter to the hospital, which she left without receiving treatment.
[00:42:27]  Next, from Stat News, quote, the producer texted to say she should stay at the hospital, but Caitlin would not, and King Parrish was terrified the baby would die if her daughter did not get medicine or drugs.
[00:42:38]  King Parrish and Caitlin went to the Dr. Phil studio, where another show staffer joined them.
[00:42:43]  All three got into a cab headed for Skid Row.
[00:42:46]  The staffer shot video, which later aired on the show.
[00:42:49]  In it, King Parrish tells the camera, I am scared to death right now.
[00:42:53]  The camera follows Caitlin from behind.
[00:42:55]  She walks towards homeless encampments.
[00:42:57]  King Parrish said Caitlin Lynn was gone for about a half hour while she shot up heroin.
[00:43:01]  So they just like went out to go buy a horse at Skid Row and filmed it.
[00:43:06]  That's, I mean, and that's like.
[00:43:07]  That's good TV is what that is.
[00:43:10]  This is genuinely really empathetic.
[00:43:12]  I mean, yeah, I mean, on top of the fact that that's an extreme disservice to her, that's also like yet another example of like bullshit, high-rated TV heading into unhoused encampments to just frame people in a completely contextless, fucked up way.
[00:43:30]  I hate that shit so much.
[00:43:31]  That is awful.
[00:43:33]  I think it's cool and good, Jamie.
[00:43:35]  Wow.
[00:43:36]  I think it's cool and good.
[00:43:39]  I hate this shit so much.
[00:43:43]  Oh, Loftus.
[00:43:44]  We do have fun on this show, though.
[00:43:47]  We sure do.
[00:43:51]  Tend to bust out the franzia and really dial this up.
[00:43:55]  Yeah, Franz out with our glands out.
[00:43:57]  I don't know.
[00:43:59]  I'm stuck.
[00:43:59]  I'm stuck making that exact kind of joke repeatedly.
[00:44:03]  I'm still chilling with my filling.

=== Deeply Uncomfortable Jokes (04:09) ===

[00:44:08]  Yeah.
[00:44:08]  Wow.
[00:44:09]  That's gross.
[00:44:10]  No, no, no.
[00:44:12]  It's all deeply uncomfortable.
[00:44:15]  Robert, you know what's not deeply uncomfortable?
[00:44:18]  The products and services that support this podcast?
[00:44:21]  Facts.
[00:44:21]  No, every one of them will gently cradle your head or whatever other part of your body you would like them to cradle.
[00:44:28]  Absolutely.
[00:44:29]  Or wherever.
[00:44:30]  They'll just kiss you, you know?
[00:44:31]  They're just going to kiss you.
[00:44:33]  That's the behind the bastards promise.
[00:44:36]  Random kisses from a product.
[00:44:40]  Yep.
[00:44:41]  Here's some ads.
[00:44:44]  What's up, everyone?
[00:44:45]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:44:46]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:44:54]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:44:57]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:45:01]  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.
[00:45:06]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:45:08]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:45:09]  I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:45:12]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:45:17]  Yeah.
[00:45:18]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:45:20]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:45:22]  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.
[00:45:30]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:45:33]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:45:39]  Just hang in there.
[00:45:40]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:45:42]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:45:43]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:45:45]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:45:55]  10-10 shots fired.
[00:45:56]  City hall building.
[00:45:58]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:46:02]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.
[00:46:05]  This is Rorschach.
[00:46:07]  Murder at City Hall.
[00:46:08]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:46:10]  Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey.
[00:46:11]  Hooked it up.
[00:46:12]  July 2003.
[00:46:14]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:46:19]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:46:22]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:46:30]  Everybody in the chambers ducks.
[00:46:33]  A shocking public murder.
[00:46:35]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:46:36]  Those are shots.
[00:46:37]  Those are shots.
[00:46:38]  Get down.
[00:46:38]  A charismatic politician.
[00:46:40]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:46:42]  I still have a weapon.
[00:46:45]  And I could shoot you.
[00:46:48]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:46:50]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:46:53]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:46:54]  That may have been about sex.
[00:46:56]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:47:00]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:47:09]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:47:13]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:47:17]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:47:19]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:47:23]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:47:27]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:47:30]  Oh my god, this is the same man.
[00:47:32]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:47:37]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:47:39]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:47:41]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:47:43]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:47:46]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:47:48]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:47:50]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:47:55]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:47:56]  Trust me, babe.
[00:47:57]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:48:07]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:48:13]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.

=== Coach the Audience Response (05:40) ===

[00:48:17]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:48:23]  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.
[00:48:32]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:48:37]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:48:41]  You he related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:48:44]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:48:45]  That's so funny.
[00:48:47]  Shariach stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:48:55]  Say you love me.
[00:48:58]  You know I.
[00:49:00]  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.
[00:49:10]  Okay, so there are a bunch of stories like this.
[00:49:12]  And one of the saddest parts of all these stories is that the people who will like who the people who Dr. Phil clearly takes advantage of will still claim that his show helped them because they were able to receive free addiction recovery care that they couldn't have afforded without the Dr. Phil show.
[00:49:29]  Almost no aspect of his show works if there's single-payer healthcare that covers addiction treatment.
[00:49:35]  The Dr. Phil show profits off of sadness porn, the shock and embarrassment people feel watching the ruined lives of his guests and the sassy no bullshit advice Dr. Phil gives them.
[00:49:46]  He earns between $60 and $80 million a year.
[00:49:49]  Of course, the Dr. Phil show, I know, right?
[00:49:52]  That's an obscene number, isn't it?
[00:49:54]  Yeah, fucking.
[00:49:55]  Just makes you want to light some shit on fire, doesn't it?
[00:49:58]  Yep, it does.
[00:49:59]  Yeah, it sure does, Jamie.
[00:50:02]  It sure does.
[00:50:03]  So, of course, the Dr. Phil show would get boring pretty quick if he only dealt with people suffering from drug addictions and abusive spouses.
[00:50:10]  From the beginning, a major source of content for McGraw was so-called trouble teens.
[00:50:16]  Kids in crisis are big business for grifty TV therapists because, being children, those kids have no ability to regulate their emotions and no sense of proportion.
[00:50:25]  This leads to TV-friendly explosions of rage.
[00:50:28]  In 2016, Dr. Phil interviewed Danielle Brigoli for an episode titled, I want to give up my car-stealing, knife-wielding, twerking 13-year-old daughter who tried to frame me for a crime, which is just a title meant to show up on a leg, like throwing twerking in there with fucking car stealing.
[00:50:47]  Shameless.
[00:50:47]  The word twerking, there was a cultural heft to it.
[00:50:51]  Now, Brigoli now goes by the stage name Bad Baby, B-H-A-D-B-H-A-B-I-E, was a prime time-ready delinquent.
[00:51:01]  She spoke in a ridiculously affected hood accent and pretended to basically be a gangster in the kind of confrontational, like nonsense teenage way that gave Dr. Phil a lot of openings to mock her with his witty rejoinders.
[00:51:15]  I don't want to play much of her appearance because she was a child.
[00:51:19]  And I think what Dr. Phil does by having her on is fundamentally abusive.
[00:51:24]  But I do think it's important to play how the episode starts so you can see how he introduces this segment and hear it.
[00:51:31]  You listening will hear it.
[00:51:32]  Jamie, I want you to pay attention to the looks on the faces of the people in his audience.
[00:51:37]  Okay.
[00:51:38]  She's defiant.
[00:51:40]  Stop it.
[00:51:41]  Oh, yo.
[00:51:41]  What has she met her match?
[00:51:43]  You want to do it again?
[00:51:44]  Sit down with Dr. Phil.
[00:51:46]  You can threaten them.
[00:51:47]  But I'm your worst nightmare, girl.
[00:51:52]  Well, thank you, Megan.
[00:51:54]  Well, you know, I've been doing this show for 15 years and I've met some truly remarkable people and I have heard thousands of stories.
[00:52:03]  Now, in that time, you get to thinking that you've seen and heard just about everything.
[00:52:09]  That was until today.
[00:52:13]  Meet Danielle.
[00:52:14]  Now, Danielle's mom, Barbara Ann, has written to me every year for the past three years about her daughter, who has stole thousands of dollars, framed her mother as a drug user, and then called 911 to report her and is currently facing grand theft charges.
[00:52:33]  Now, I answered her call for help, and I sent my film crew across the country to capture what was going on inside this home.
[00:52:44]  Needless to say, while my team was there, something shocking and unexpected happened.
[00:52:51]  Shortly after they had finished filming, one of my crew members noticed that Danielle had vanished with the keys to my crew member's car.
[00:53:03]  Now, sure enough, when Danielle's grandmother, Barbara, went outside, she found out that Danielle had stolen the car, which had the crew member's handbag, wallet, ID, and cash inside.
[00:53:18]  Now, that's not bad enough.
[00:53:19]  Danielle's only 13 years old.
[00:53:23]  So, you see, the thing that's most interesting to me about that is the faces of the women in the audience.
[00:53:31]  Because they are particularly the glee, right?
[00:53:35]  Like, that's the thing that's most unsettling to me is like how excited they are with every new aspect of this story that Dr. Phil reveals.
[00:53:42]  Well, and I also think that those reactions may not even be, I mean, those reactions in themselves are extremely coached.
[00:53:50]  Where I like, I used to do like audience work when I first had moved here and had like no money to my name.

=== Human Trafficking Allegations (13:29) ===

[00:53:58]  And you're so extremely coached.
[00:54:00]  And like before the show even starts, you're told to do a series of facial expressions for the editors to work with.
[00:54:06]  And so it's like manipulation top to bottom with how it's handled.
[00:54:10]  Cause it's like, not only is he obviously not, has no vested interest in the well-being of this kid, like he also, like, I would argue probably that editing is completely fucking doctored as well.
[00:54:22]  Yeah, I have no idea if that's the, if those face expressions match like what was actually going down.
[00:54:28]  But like, it's all, I guess, specifically the idea that they wanted to show those reactions because I think they're trying to coach a response.
[00:54:35]  They're trying to coach a response from the people watching at home too, right?
[00:54:38]  This like this, the voyeurism.
[00:54:40]  Like it makes it clear none of this is about helping anyone.
[00:54:43]  It's about laughing at quote unquote low-class people and their problems.
[00:54:48]  You know, that's, that's what Dr. Phil really makes his bread doing.
[00:54:52]  For sure.
[00:54:52]  Yeah.
[00:54:54]  But fuck him.
[00:54:54]  Like she went on to like have a successful, like she's 18.
[00:54:58]  She was nominated for an American Music Award.
[00:55:01]  Oh, she was?
[00:55:01]  I didn't know that.
[00:55:03]  Well, good.
[00:55:03]  I'm glad there's a happy ending.
[00:55:05]  I don't know much about Bad Baby.
[00:55:06]  She's 18 now and like she's, you know, signed a record label.
[00:55:11]  I mean, and she is standing up for what happened to her, which I think is a good idea.
[00:55:16]  Yeah, we're about to get into that.
[00:55:18]  Yeah.
[00:55:19]  So Brigoli went viral.
[00:55:21]  And within the confines of the episode, Dr. Phil positions himself as the dispenser of tough love.
[00:55:26]  His prescription was to send Brigoli to one of his favorite therapeutic boarding schools, Turnabout Ranch in Utah.
[00:55:33]  This is an actual working ranch where tripled teens are sent under the impression that working in the country and riding horses will get them off of drugs, premarital sex, and petty crime.
[00:55:43]  In subsequent episodes, Brigoli filmed an update from the ranch where she dropped her fake accent and claimed to feel okay with who I am now.
[00:55:52]  But she was not being honest, understandably so.
[00:55:54]  In 2018, she released an original song and gave a different view of her experience at Turnabout.
[00:56:00]  Quote, it was pretty miserable.
[00:56:02]  I did not know what was going on in the real world.
[00:56:04]  This place was far away from anything.
[00:56:06]  There wasn't even service there, she says in the song.
[00:56:08]  A couple weeks after being home, I finally decided that I wanted to meet up with my best friend again, somebody who was not good for me at all.
[00:56:15]  Instantly, I'd say it was the next day, we got back to doing our old shit again, smoking, trying to finesse people for money, just doing really, really dumb shit.
[00:56:25]  Her reintegration into society was made all the more difficult by the fact that when she returned to school and the internet, she realized rather suddenly that she'd gone viral for being a ridiculous train wreck of a person on a nationally syndicated TV program.
[00:56:39]  She claims that this basically made her decide to, quote, lean into the bad behavior that had made her famous.
[00:56:45]  Once you become a meme, there aren't a lot of ways to get a clean slate.
[00:56:49]  There's no right to be forgotten in the U.S.
[00:56:52]  So why wouldn't Brigoli just keep being the person everyone already thought she was?
[00:56:56]  Yeah.
[00:56:57]  This gets to one of the things I think is worst about the Dr. Phil show.
[00:57:00]  It's one thing to shamelessly milk the worst moments and the greatest shames in the life of an adult.
[00:57:05]  It's another thing entirely to do that to a child who has no real way to understand the long-term consequences.
[00:57:11]  Yeah.
[00:57:11]  No way that she could have possibly understood the long-term consequences of becoming that kind of famous.
[00:57:17]  It's completely, yeah, it's like vile on every level.
[00:57:20]  And it's like, whatever.
[00:57:21]  I mean, clearly Dr. Phil does not give a fuck.
[00:57:24]  No, no, not a, not a third of a fuck.
[00:57:26]  Yeah.
[00:57:27]  But it is.
[00:57:27]  And it also, I think, like speaks to how, especially for a kid, which is like that should doing what he does to children should be illegal.
[00:57:38]  It should be a crime.
[00:57:39]  Yes.
[00:57:40]  You should not be allowed to do shit like that.
[00:57:42]  And on top of that, it speaks to like how, I don't know, it's like, I remember that clip when it first came out.
[00:57:48]  And there was no popular conversation about like the well-being of the child who's clearly being exploited by a multi-millionaire.
[00:57:58]  Yeah.
[00:57:58]  And it's all and it, and I, I see that.
[00:58:02]  I mean, it's when you're introduced into the public that way and you are coming from a place of poverty and you are not being empowered at all or protected.
[00:58:10]  Like, what are you supposed to do?
[00:58:13]  Like, that's such a miserable, cruel situation to be put in.
[00:58:17]  It's, oh, it's fucked up.
[00:58:20]  Yeah.
[00:58:21]  Now, Jamie, that's all pretty bad, right?
[00:58:24]  Everything we've talked about happening to Bergoli is bad.
[00:58:27]  But to make matters worse, the ranch Dr. Phil sent her and a bunch of other kids to was about as ethical as, oh, I don't know, the drug rehabilitation treatment programs he was also sending kids to.
[00:58:38]  I'm going to quote again from BuzzFeed.
[00:58:40]  It's not clear if Turnabout is actually helpful to the kids who go or if it's just another facility that takes advantage of the minors who are sent there to get better.
[00:58:48]  Just last week, 19-year-old Hannah Archuleta sued the school for an alleged sexual assault that she said happened to her while she was staying at Turnabout at just 17.
[00:58:57]  This is likely to be a high-priced profile case too, with Gloria Allred representing her.
[00:59:02]  Turnabout administrators provided a statement to me saying they took immediate action after Archuletta claimed she had been assaulted, but that her father removed her from the facility before we could conduct a full inquiry.
[00:59:13]  The statement continued, we would never take lightly an allegation of mistreatment to any of our students.
[00:59:18]  Now that this incident is the subject of litigation, we must withhold our full response for a later date.
[00:59:23]  Now, the owner of this ranch is Aspen Education Group, which was then bought by CRC, which is now owned by Acadia Healthcare.
[00:59:31]  In an email statement to BuzzFeed News, Acadia's director of investor relations, Gretchen Homerich, said, It is my understanding that Turnabout Ranch and Aspen Educational Group were closed or sold prior to Acadia's acquisition of CRC Health.
[00:59:43]  In any event, Acadia never operated either of the facilities.
[00:59:47]  Turnabout has gone through multiple owners and since 2014 has been owned by current and former employees of the ranch.
[00:59:54]  But Aspen Education has been accused of multiple infractions by former attendees, including lawsuits that claimed psychological torture, abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking.
[01:00:03]  The torture suit was dismissed, but CRC, the owner of Aspen Education at the time, declined to address specific allegations.
[01:00:10]  Arcadia did not answer our questions about these allegations either.
[01:00:14]  So just not only like a bunch of people involved in this have been alleged of things including human trafficking.
[01:00:20]  There's been sexual assault allegations at the ranch, but it like goes through this revolving carousel of owners because it's like a shady fucking, it's just like they're pumping a quick amount of cash out and then selling it to somebody else.
[01:00:31]  It's so fucking shady.
[01:00:32]  I'm sure that that's, yeah, I'm sure that that's like integral to it being able to survive at all.
[01:00:36]  Like it needs to be constantly changing hands.
[01:00:38]  That's I mean, the whole teen treatment industry, like I've done a number of art, back when I was at Cracked, I did a number of articles with survivors of these facilities.
[01:00:45]  Like all of these facilities are basically child molestation factories and like child abuse factories in general.
[01:00:51]  Not always molestation.
[01:00:52]  Sometimes they just kill them from neglect, you know?
[01:00:55]  There was there was a good ones.
[01:00:57]  That reached the point where like Paris Hilton made a documentary about it last year.
[01:01:01]  Yeah.
[01:01:01]  Yeah.
[01:01:02]  Paris Hilton and actually Danielle Bergoli Bad Baby are involved right now with going against Dr. Phil about this exact place.
[01:01:09]  So it's very interesting that you mentioned Paris Hilton.
[01:01:12]  It does.
[01:01:13]  I don't know much about her.
[01:01:14]  I'm always mentioning her.
[01:01:15]  But besides the stuff that was like famous about how shitty she was 15, 20 years ago, but it seems like she's been doing some like good, socially responsible stuff lately.
[01:01:24]  Paris, yeah.
[01:01:24]  I don't know.
[01:01:25]  Yeah.
[01:01:25]  Yeah.
[01:01:26]  It seems like it seems like she has, I mean, also, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not about to go to back for the stop being poor lady.
[01:01:35]  But yeah.
[01:01:36]  Right.
[01:01:36]  Right, right, right.
[01:01:37]  But, but, yeah, that, that specific instance, I'm, I'm glad she's not.
[01:01:41]  If you have wealth and prominence and you use it to take a swing at the teen treatment industry, that gets you a couple of points in my book.
[01:01:46]  Absolutely.
[01:01:47]  Because it's a fucking nightmare.
[01:01:49]  Maybe we'll do a deeper episode about it at some point.
[01:01:52]  But a lot of the allegations that we just listed about this facility and its many owners predate the episodes of Dr. Phil, where he gave free advertisements to the ranch.
[01:02:02]  This means that McGraw and his staff were well aware of the allegations against Aspen and the ranch when they sent children there.
[01:02:09]  When questioned about this, a spokesperson for the show said, we're aware and we're monitoring things.
[01:02:15]  Since Archuletta went public with her allegations, Bergoli has come forward with more detail about her own experience.
[01:02:20]  She now says she was denied food at times and that camp administrators often refuse to let inmates change their clothes for days on end.
[01:02:28]  Inmates.
[01:02:29]  Yeah, that's my framing, but yes.
[01:02:32]  You're helpless.
[01:02:33]  You can't call your parent.
[01:02:34]  You can't email your parent.
[01:02:35]  If the state says they have to give you two pebbles, they're going to find the smallest fucking pebbles to give you.
[01:02:41]  That's supposed to help kids get over trauma.
[01:02:43]  I would have rather went to jail.
[01:02:46]  Like one of the girls I talked to who did this when she was like 14 or 15, like one of the punishments they gave her was she had to dig up the stump of a mature tree on her own, which if you've never had to remove a stump, it's something like three to four large adult men usually do with a fucking truck and power tools.
[01:03:03]  She just spent days in 120 degree heat, like slowly dying as she tried to force the stump out as a child.
[01:03:10]  Like these places are all nightmares.
[01:03:12]  Horrible.
[01:03:14]  Brigoli is, of course, not the only teenager featured on the Dr. Phil show.
[01:03:18]  BuzzFeed writer Scotchy Cowell announces announce, sorry, Scotchie, I don't know if I'm getting that right.
[01:03:24]  Alleges that while McGraw is healthy, is happy to feature children of all genders, he gets particularly aggressive with teenage girls.
[01:03:31]  Quote, their most vulnerable private moments, screaming and crying at home, are used on the show until the very end when their parents decide to send them to turnabout.
[01:03:41]  Every episode of the Dr. Phil show ends with an after-the-taping segment where the kids find out they're going to a ranch in the middle of nowhere and usually cry, which is, of course, great television.
[01:03:51]  Most kids featured in this way do not get any updates on the Dr. Phil show or are at most mentioned briefly once more.
[01:03:57]  Daytime TV moves too fast for the doctor to actually check back in with most of his patients.
[01:04:04]  In 2008, Dr. Phil spun off and created a new show, The Doctors.
[01:04:08]  Every episode of this show features a plastic surgeon, an obstetrician, and an ER doc who talk about different health topics.
[01:04:15]  This sounds like it might be...
[01:04:19]  We're not going to go into a lot of detail about this, but a 2014 study of the show determined that about 37% of their recommendations were not credible, which honestly means they're doing better than I, yeah, I expected worse.
[01:04:30]  This is a better report card than I expected.
[01:04:33]  If your doctor, for example, said 37% of the time, I'm going to give you bad advice, you would find a new doctor.
[01:04:40]  That's fair.
[01:04:40]  I was like, oh, wow, D-plus, that's not the worst thing.
[01:04:44]  Yeah, imagine a mechanic saying that.
[01:04:46]  Yeah, 37% of the time, the brakes I put in work.
[01:04:48]  You know, your odds are pretty good.
[01:04:51]  Okay, fair enough.
[01:04:54]  I thought it was like, there's no way they're somewhat correct.
[01:04:58]  63% of the time.
[01:05:00]  Yes.
[01:05:00]  And again, somewhat being the operative word.
[01:05:02]  Sure.
[01:05:03]  We could go into a lot of other case studies of particularly egregious guest choices, but going over all these sad people and the way Phil exploits them ad nauseum kind of runs the risk of being sorrow porn itself.
[01:05:15]  I do think it behooves us to look at one last case study, perhaps the most nauseating guest choice of the whole series.
[01:05:22]  24-year-old Gabby came on the Dr. Phil show in February of 2020.
[01:05:26]  She had promised to act as a surrogate womb for two different couples.
[01:05:30]  Gabby had not taken any money from them, and she could not bear children.
[01:05:35]  She is infertile and chronically ill.
[01:05:37]  Her father claims she has psychosis, bipolar disorder, and learning disabilities.
[01:05:42]  In the show, it's revealed that Gabby's mom died right around the time she started pretending to be a surrogate, which was also a period where she was the victim of constant bullying at school.
[01:05:52]  From BuzzFeed, quote, her scam wasn't illegal because Gabby never asked for money or items from the couple she lied to.
[01:05:59]  It's just tragic, hurtful behavior from someone deeply isolated and in dire need of mental health care from multiple past traumas.
[01:06:06]  Most of the episode focuses on the producers following Gabby around backstage, begging her to come on stage when she clearly doesn't want to.
[01:06:14]  They call her difficult and volatile.
[01:06:16]  And though she signed an appearance release, it's not clear to the audience that she has read and understood it.
[01:06:21]  When a producer asks her on camera to confirm she understands the waiver, she doesn't respond and covers her face with the pages of the release.
[01:06:28]  But she's certainly remorseful and seems to feel guilty.
[01:06:31]  In a pre-taped interview, Gabby cries to the producers, I just want to say sorry to everyone that I've hurt.
[01:06:38]  When she walks off the stage in anguish, McGraw merely sips his water and sighs.
[01:06:43]  The episode is near unwatchable.
[01:06:45]  Yeah, I mean, that doesn't sound like consent was gained at all.
[01:06:49]  I mean, there were so many red flags.
[01:06:51]  It doesn't sound like she's capable of consenting to that.
[01:06:54]  Yeah.
[01:06:56]  I don't even know what to think.
[01:06:57]  I mean, that entire, though, I, because I don't trust any of the information that anyone is presenting in this, in, in this way, but that's just, I mean, very clear, this is not an issue that should be handled on television or national TV.
[01:07:11]  Yeah.
[01:07:12]  To say the very fucking least, that is, yeah, that is just fucking despicable.
[01:07:17]  So Dr. Jeff Sugar, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at USC, provided a description of the Dr. Phil show that I think acts as as good a coda to this episode as anything.

=== Red Flags and Consent (02:43) ===

[01:07:28]  Quote, it's a callous and inexcusable exploitation.
[01:07:32]  These people are barely hanging on.
[01:07:34]  It's like if one of them was drowning and approaching a lifeboat, and instead of throwing them an inflatable donut, you throw them an anchor.
[01:07:40]  And that's Dr. Phil, baby.
[01:07:41]  D.Phil.
[01:07:44]  I am so upset about that.
[01:07:47]  Like, I just, this was like one of my, like, the toughest listens of all time.
[01:07:51]  Maybe because he's just still such a real present public disgrace and danger.
[01:07:57]  But like, holy shit.
[01:07:59]  I can't even enjoy Dr. Phil Neves.
[01:08:01]  I was going to show you Dr. Phil Neves.
[01:08:03]  I'm not going to.
[01:08:03]  Not worth it.
[01:08:05]  Fuck it.
[01:08:06]  Fuck it.
[01:08:06]  Fuck him.
[01:08:07]  Put him through a shredder.
[01:08:08]  Put him through a shredder.
[01:08:11]  And you at home, put yourself through a shredder.
[01:08:14]  But a good kind of shredder that makes you healthy.
[01:08:18]  It's a cool life-affirming kind of shredder.
[01:08:20]  Yeah.
[01:08:20]  You know, in a way, in a way, every is that it's not just capitalism.
[01:08:25]  Put yourself through a shredder.
[01:08:27]  Well, with that, Jamie, I think it's time for you to plug a pluggable and get the, get the fuck out of this Zoom call and go live your goddamn life, Jamie.
[01:08:35]  Go live your fucking life.
[01:08:37]  You know, I'm, I'm dying to live my life.
[01:08:41]  So you can just, you can, you can listen to the podcast.
[01:08:44]  You can listen to Backfill Past.
[01:08:45]  You can listen to the Lolita podcast.
[01:08:47]  You can listen to my year and menta.
[01:08:48]  And you can listen to my new show about Kathy Comics that comes out in June.
[01:08:51]  God damn it.
[01:08:53]  God damn it.
[01:08:55]  And all of you at home.
[01:08:56]  Robert, this was miserable.
[01:08:57]  Damn God yourself.
[01:08:59]  Yeah, it was, Jamie.
[01:09:02]  It really was.
[01:09:03]  All right.
[01:09:04]  Well, fuck the internet.
[01:09:07]  Fuck life.
[01:09:22]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:09:30]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:09:33]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:09:35]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:09:37]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[01:09:42]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:09:43]  Trust me, babe.
[01:09:44]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:09:53]  What's up, everyone?
[01:09:54]  I'm Ego Modern.
[01:09:56]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[01:10:00]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:10:03]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:10:04]  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.

=== Forgotten City Hall Tragedy (01:38) ===

[01:10:11]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:10:13]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[01:10:21]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:10:23]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:10:24]  There's a lot in life.
[01:10:25]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:10:33]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[01:10:40]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[01:10:43]  I doctored the test once.
[01:10:45]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[01:10:50]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[01:10:52]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
[01:10:54]  My mind was blown.
[01:10:56]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[01:10:57]  This is Love Trapped.
[01:10:59]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[01:11:01]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[01:11:05]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:11:13]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[01:11:15]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[01:11:17]  Somebody tell me that.
[01:11:19]  A shocking public murder.
[01:11:20]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[01:11:27]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[01:11:29]  Those are shots.
[01:11:31]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[01:11:33]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
[01:11:37]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:11:46]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:11:49]  Guaranteed human.